Fabius

Alright, thats seesm agreeable, i prefer token costs over heavier ones as the game runs so fast already its just annoying having to wait for something when every second counts and having to pay a lot for it into the bargain.

In what manner should the training be different?

Agreed on both counts, The cataphracts and chariots are currently under discussion in a different thread I believe. I noted they had dropped the pierce armour of pikemen by 2 in the changelog for A26.

Lower the experience and increase the health bonus received per level.

Hypothetically if we followed this path it would be ideal to drop ranged damage as well. It wont be necessary either to change the method of recruitment for champions as that will weaken them to much I think. cutting them off from blacksmith upgrades will be sufficient.

I must point out that citizen pikemen already have higher armour than foot champions, so this is not as unreasonable as one might think.

An interesting idea. Fortresses though don't train champions anymore anyway, so no issue there. Removing the affect of blacksmith on champions is an interesting idea, it would shake up things, I am just uncertain how beneficial that shaking will be. under current circumstances you will have citizen spear and sword infantry with 2 more armour than champions, the big difference being much less health. Even the attack might be higher, uncertain here. Therefore the question becomes how much does this reduce the usefulness of the champion overall. Cataphracts are just beefed up lancers. Chariots are simply beefed up skirmisher or archer cav. The only true unique champion units we have are foot axemen for Kush and elephants

The experience cost was already lowered in A24 or A25, I cannot recall. Lowering ranged damage is a reasonable idea. The one problem is that champions will become even more overwhelming. That also goes for the blacksmith. You will need technologies aimed specifically at citizen soldiers else champions will become stronger. At this stage the whole champion concept seems broken, were they intended as unique units or simply a troop that civ did really well in.

Fair observations. Thing is though, those experience levels are still largely unused on account of melee never surviving long enough to make any meaningful use of it. A possible solution could be to add extra armour technologies for melee troops, like we had in A23 before they unified them into single technologies.

A good idea if you intend to use experience as a resource that can be used to upgrade troops, but not for specific individuals unless you feel like doing micro on last hits, and we doing RTS not Dota last I checked

I want to see new features and a breaking of the status quo. The only way forward is to bite the proverbial bullet and assume you cannot please everyone. Whats more, there ought to be more cohesion and unification around progress, eg if an idea is put forward discuss and if it is reasonable accept it and pass it on to whoever has the coding skill to make it happen. You can't all do your own merry thing and expect your game to survive. lists, discussions, action, progress is what you need. And a unification of vision

The reason they get armour is because in this era the more elite soldiers could afford to buy their own gear and so it is reasonable that they get better armour the more experienced they get. Currently it is excruciatingly hard to make meaningful use of that experience bonus unless you are a Greek state with hoplite tradition or have idle troops in a barracks for 4 minutes.

True, I had forgotten that. Well how about the Senate house for Rome then? And other factions too if they happen to have a building of sorts for such things

Every Carthaginian players dream map

This is one very nice thing about Selucids and Ptolomies, you can immediately have a hero to lead your forces to battle, whats more they have an elephant hero that can level a civic center by itself if properly protected. Every other civ has to build a silly fort which costs a lot and takes an age. At least the Spartans, Athenians and Gauls have an easier time of things with unique buildings, I think Mauryas as well. But the others are stuck building forts

I believe the traction trebuchet originated in Asia and then made its way down to middle east and the eastern Romans who adopted it in part i think because it proved more reliable. The Romans liked using them for field battles among other things. Then later on it became the counterweight trebuchet.

Yes, Torsion weapons were generally a lot more complicated to build and maintain, and traction trebuchets and the later counterweight trebuchet proved much more useful and easier to build, and they could also be built larger so as to threaten previously impregnable fortifications.

It largely comes down to what would be most effective and simple to use.

A bolt shooter is in the same category as a ballista, I don't think it can shoot fireballs, though maybe flaming jars would work, sling arm catapulst would be a better choice for that. Also later era Roman bolt shooters used mostly metal components, so they could easily do incendiary bolts if necessary.

Also they would light and fire very close together so it probably would not have time to catch fire. Overall a fire pot would be a much more effective way to set something on fire than arrows.

metal plating, also its a long bolt so the flaming part is likely sticking out in front and not on the actual framework. Same way that incendiary arrows would work except on a larger scale.

Two because I would like to have a reason to enjoy using catapults again, and three for tactical diversity.

For use against siege yes, we need to be careful with ranged units though. This is why i prefer to add it to catapults, one because ranged units already have a lot going for them. Catapults do not.

Is that possible to code for?

Chiefly I would like to see it as a technology for those civs with catapults. Basically apply fire debuff to targets within a given radius.