gonna send you a pm.  We need ideas  but some of their p3 techs could be moved to p4 maybe remove a few techs from p1.  But give them a few new ablitlies as well.

Antiquity spear cavalry wasn't able to charge with "couched lance"since they had no stirrups. Couched lance charge is what made spear cavalry devastating in the middle ages.   So spear cavalry should be great against other cavalry, against archers, but certainly not against spearmen or any heavily armored unit.

Brett Devereaux (the acoup guy, aka the Orcs Logistics Guy) says that this idea comes from a bad translation from Polybius (I think ?) who meant that the carthaginians soldiers were paid instead of being citizens. But that most of them were levies, not mercenaries.

+1

Flavor-wise it's a good idea, but how do you balance that ?

Citizen soldiers are a staple of Oad indeed, but the OP has a point about the difficulty of mounting raids in 0ad. Which reduces the diversity of tactics (while everyone knows that diversity of tactics is important).   Maybe we should find another way to allow more trade-offs between eco and military ?

@TheCJ while that may be true, food is much easier to gather. I can have 30-35 women on 6-7 fields around my starting CC and farmstead and have near infinite food as long as I keep them safe. However, I'm forced to expand once my initial supply of wood runs dry. My wood gatherers are also more vulnerable to enemy raids. I also need to keep building storehouses next to the forest as my workers chop it down, to reduce the drop-off time. Which ironically costs me more wood.