Because after melee re-balance, melees were killing other melees faster. For spear inf vs cav, this is even more visible because of this damage multiplier. But note : The melee re-balance didn't change relative strengths* of inf spears vs cavs, it just made fights happens faster So the following reduction of inf counter was a net nerf, which tipped off the balance in favor of melee cav * However in army with mixed compositions, inf spears became more impactful as they were before since the % of dps dealt by them was increased.     Now that we identified the above, we can discuss if units dying faster is desirable, and if not, how to mitigate it without inadvertently breaking unit balance.      About that my take on this is that it's not bad to have faster paced slaughters when a player miss-micro cavalry, as cavalry are already pretty hard to catch:  It seems preferable to keep cavalry stats and mobility high but not too fail safe Then the opposite : make cavalry more normalized with infantry (slower movement, lower stats...)

okay then, why was it reduced in the first place from 3x?

don't know why you'd say that. Compared to last year, the model has improved and also apparently acquired some understandment of the game, but still the strict majority of the recommendations given in that answer are trash.

@wraitiiNothing big, but, maybe it is time to change the title of this threat?  (I'd suggest to remove reference to A26 as people may believe this is outdated which is not true at all)

This could be a great solution to this bug/exploit:  

https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/7979 maybe?

Basically I think what would be nice is to have cavs used for their mobility, and not a unit that will always be the best suited in all situations as main core troop. To keep melee cav skirmishing still possible they need to have mobility, but being less effective then infantry to fight as front-lines. Restoring x2 spear cav vs cav would also make them a good choice when needing to counter ranged cavs. Strong counters is a easy way to make units more balanced overall because one player can... counter... any unit "abused" by it's opponent.