PyrrhicVictoryGuy

You know i remember when everyday i saw maurya and persians in multiplayer, back in the days of A24, didn't enjoy fighting them one bit.

Not what i meant. In a CS fight, with meat shield + skirms against cav, the meat shield units( spears or pikes) won't actually kill cav faster than the skirms

That's is also a lot of people forget about when they pit 2 units against each other. Not only one must account for total resources spent, but also "wasted time". This last one is very important because CS can gather resources and are relatively fast to train whilst cav is limited to hunt and champ cav can't even work or add to your resources. Therefore the only way champ cav pays for itself is by killing units.

Yes this is why people spam skirmishers, because they, unlike spear cav, kill champion cav

Just for the record, I'm still in favor of hard counters.

When? It certainly wasn't in A24 or A25.

Is the lackluster role of melee units in general adressed in this mod or the meta is still prioritising javelins and ranged dmg over everything else in combat?

While trying carthage i noticed that out of three embassies,which have different costs, 1 of them isn't equal in terms of value to the others. So lets evaluate them one at the time. While all 3 offer u a swordsman unit each, a unit that is simply put of the best in game, the italian embassy also gives you a spear cav unit, the campanian horseman, a meh unit. This wouldn't be a problem necessarily but coupled with the 100 metal cost of this building makes it problematic. The iberian embassy costs 100 wood and 100 stone Which is more in line with a normal barrack. But with this building u get a javelineer cav, again one the better units in game. A good unit selection balanced with an increased initial cost. Finally the Celtic embassy has a standard 200 wood cost nd offers you 2 units like the rest, a swordsman and sword cav, which one can argue that it is a bit redundant but still these are the best melee fighters in the game. The cost alone makes this building spammable. In conclusion, the iberian and celtic embassies are fine but the italian embassy leaves a lot to be desired.

Why would swords be better than spears? I am all in favor of hard counters but you can't say that a spear is worse than a sword. Again i would like to say that jav cav still beats every other cav, that mobility and high dmg values combined with a very small attack interval make them the very best cav in the game, hence why iberians are so good. They have jav cav, swords and spears so they can o everything

well i've heard that the high capture rate of cav is to represent the act of looting/sacking baggage trains or camps which was done traditionally by cavalry. Now if champ cav is a problem then rome must be really op right now

Ok ok now I'm asking why r they spamming spear cav when sword was and i think is still better

The only criticism i have of schwerpunkt is that he is not the best way to get into hellenic warfare.

Well i did suggest the podcast precisely because it is more concise than the sources used. Again i must reiterate that the phalanx was never used in italy not even by the greek colonies there. These last ones had the adapt to the tactics used by the italians. The greeks called every heavy formation a phalanx just has the romans latter describe every heavy formation with bigger shields a maniple or a legion. This is the reason we get discription of "imitation" legions, to them everyone armed with a sword and thyreos like shield was a legionary.

Although the elite italians, ie: etruscans and the oscan speakers, used the hoplite panoply we know that hoplitic tactics were never used in italy. Schwerpunkt illustrated this perfectly in the following 2 videos: The fact is that italic warfare is born out a feudalistic reality and therefore was much more individualistic and tribalistic. As such romewhile wealthy for most of it's archaic period wasmore barbarian than people think and only become extremely Hellenised in very late republic. Individualistic to the point that even the stereotypical triplex acies formation is under scrutiny. Again see schwerpunkt's content were he adresses various author's commentaries:

What do u mean by spear cav being op? I'm returning now in alpha 26 and in previous alphas sword cavalry dominated everything with their single dmg type, more armor, when compared to spear cav and 0.75 attack interval. The same thing would happen when comparing spear to sword infantry. The only option which of course everyone opted for was spear meatshield with mass javelins behind it. Then the next best thing was to substitute your jvaelin men with javelin cav because they had more hp and could run away with your meatshield crumbled