Champion cavalry improvements

[AInur]

Hi, I would like to discuss some potential changes to champion cavalry units and their role in the game.

Currently, many players dominate by spamming large amounts of spear champion cavalry in late game. It is becoming the common theme and is getting a bit monotonic. This is fine, however, it causes a few issues:

• Factions without champion spear cavalry suffer in late game: Athenians, Spartans, Mauryas and Britons have little defense against large numbers of spear cavalry champions.
• More spam and less strategy: early attacks and other creative plays always loose to one player who decides to spam large quantities of champions
• Monoculture army

Champions should be elite, rare and cherished, not spammed en masse. I am not saying they are too OP at all; each single champion unit is not significantly stronger than an infantry unit. The issue is the numbers.

My suggestion is to make champions only producible from certain buildings, for example the Imperial Academy of the Han civ, or only allow them to be porduced from fortresses. With this constraint imposed, we can turbo up their stats to even higher values so that they can be used strategically as true distinct champions  and not just spammed upgraded soldiers. The late game is still a game of strategic fights and not spam.

It also doesn't make sense that the same stable is training units of different classes. Elites need better environments and need longer time, so they should get their own buildings. Same applies for infantry champions.

Let me know what you think

Edited November 5 by AInur

[AInur]

Technical bugs with champion units:

- They do not show up on idle units list

- Their pathfinder often traps them in forests or between units

[Gurken Khan]

17 minutes ago, AInur said:

Technical bugs with champion units:

- They do not show up on idle units list

I believe it works as intended, only worker units are on the idle list. There are hotkeys for finding idle warriors, I think they should catch idle champions.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Hey @AInur,

A decent number of multiplayer players like to use the community mod.

Basically it is a balance and gameplay experimentation mod that has been updated a few times since a26 released. I think most of the com mod players would say that balance is overall better than the base game.

In the case of champ cav, they are still strong of course, but they are not almost invulnerable like they are in vanilla.

If you would like to give it a try, go settings->mod selection -> download mods

Edited November 5 by real_tabasco_sauce

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

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

[AInur]

3 hours ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:

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

Hi, I don't know about previous versions  and I am not saying that Spear Cavalry Champions are particularly OP. I am suggesting a general improvement to how champions are trained and used in the game. The status quo is that they are not being treated as cherished elite units but just hardened soldiers to be spammed everywhere. Not sure if this is a good motif.

Another issue is they ban the use of any other cavalry in the game, which removes any civ that doesn't have spear champions from late game.

 

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

2 hours ago, AInur said:

Hi, I don't know about previous versions  and I am not saying that Spear Cavalry Champions are particularly OP. I am suggesting a general improvement to how champions are trained and used in the game. The status quo is that they are not being treated as cherished elite units but just hardened soldiers to be spammed everywhere. Not sure if this is a good motif.

Another issue is they ban the use of any other cavalry in the game, which removes any civ that doesn't have spear champions from late game.

 

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

[Atrik]

20 minutes ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:

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

Champ spear cav is just more available and is also the champ cav for the civilsations who have buffed champ cavs; such as Persians, Seleucid and to a lesser extent Gauls.

I guess champs cavs are really just slightly too good of an option too often, because of the mobility and strength, and capture rate. The problem really is that the critical mass of a champ spam being unstoppable is reached too early. If some suggest that they should cost 2 pop, I think it would be too much of a nerf.

Spears could have increased counter damage (restore it to x3 in com mod as an example, no idea why it was brought down to x2.5) and maybe cost slightly increased, like 100metal instead of 80. Also all cavs could have 50% only of the capture rate of their equivalent infantry.

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

36 minutes ago, Atrik said:

Champ spear cav is just more available and is also the champ cav for the civilsations who have buffed champ cavs; such as Persians, Seleucid and to a lesser extent Gauls.

I guess champs cavs are really just slightly too good of an option too often, because of the mobility and strength, and capture rate. The problem really is that the critical mass of a champ spam being unstoppable is reached too early. If some suggest that they should cost 2 pop, I think it would be too much of a nerf.

Spears could have increased counter damage (restore it to x3 in com mod as an example, no idea why it was brought down to x2.5) and maybe cost slightly increased, like 100metal instead of 80. Also all cavs could have 50% only of the capture rate of their equivalent infantry.

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

[Atrik]

1 hour ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:

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.

If you need a reason to nerf cavalry capture rate you could also say that it's not as convenient to raid a buildings with cavalry. As for swords vs spears, of course against infantry, swords are better. But spears are still the 'alpha' cav as they would counter other cavs, and do pretty much well against infantry in the same time.

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 hour ago, Atrik said:

If you need a reason to nerf cavalry capture rate you could also say that it's not as convenient to raid a buildings with cavalry. As for swords vs spears, of course against infantry, swords are better. But spears are still the 'alpha' cav as they would counter other cavs, and do pretty much well against infantry in the same time.

It is unreal that a horse rider can take a fortress.

Should be reduced dramatically.