Champion cavalry improvements

[Guest]

@Seleucids

You shared an image of a fully upgraded champion heavy cavalry. I see nothing wrong there, it's Seleucid ultimate unit for a reason. Just train more upgraded spearmen.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

People would argue whether or not seleucids have the best champ cav. Not me, I think they are the best but only with the hero alive. Seleucids also do not have a cheap melee cav option, so in a way they need their champ cav to be good. I agree champ cav in general needs to be nerfed of course but I disagree that seleucids unique bonuses are problematic.

[chrstgtr]

2 hours ago, Seleucids said:

For most civs, there is 0 counter to this madness. At the very least, remove these extra bonuses for Seleucids etc to make other civs playable

I always thought this was a really dumb change from a24

In a23 (and before), only Persia and Sele had the cav health upgrade. This made sense as those were the cav civs. Cav was still playable by other civs but it wasn’t OP. Persia and Sele had a true cav advantage but because they’re slower civs and going cav (vs inf) is slow, Sele and Persia never felt OP. 

Then in a24, all civs got the cav health upgrade. Suddenly, cav became the meta because all civs had access to OP cav that was much better than inf. In a24, Sele and Persia got the spear champ cav health upgrade, which was somehow both not useful enough (it only applied to one type of cav that is hard to produce so these cav civs were mostly the same as every other civ’s cav) and too useful (made spear champ cav, which was already the strongest unit in the game even stronger). 
 

tldr: the cav health upgrade shouldn’t exist for all civs and should replace the champ cav health upgrade for Persia and Sele. It will help with infvs cav balance and make Sele and Persia more unique while not being OP

Edited May 9, 2025 by chrstgtr

[Arup]

you could slow down the cataphract cav in comparison to other cavs in account of them having so much more armor, and also change the "multiplier against cavalry' for spear to a more total health percentage wise so instead of spear in dealing 1.5 times its own attack, it will deal an 5% of the cavalry (the one it is attacking) 's total health. this is just what i picked up from ark:survival where the biggest dinosaur, the titan can be countered by a smaller unit because that unit deals percentage wise damage

[Guest]

"QUICK! Nerf the champion spear cavalry!"

Meanwhile, CS javelin cavalry: Exists

The main reason ALL cavalry is OP is speed. They're simply too fast when compared to spear infantry (which should be their counter).

Spoiler

I just saw ValhiRant destroy Stockfishe's Spartiates using only hit and run javelin cavalry.

Either increase hoplite armor, or decrease the cavalry speed.

Edited June 7, 2025 by Deicide4u

[BeTe]

24 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

"QUICK! Nerf the champion spear cavalry!"

Meanwhile, CS javelin cavalry: Exists

Spoiler?! :p

Edited June 7, 2025 by BeTe

[Guest]

@BeTe, I put it, please remove the quoted spoiler part.

[Seleucids]

1 hour ago, Deicide4u said:

Meanwhile, CS javelin cavalry: Exists

CS jav cav was op in A25. But now they are not as OP because of the acceleration mechanic and the buffed spear cav hard countering them. 

 

1 hour ago, Deicide4u said:

The main reason ALL cavalry is OP is speed.

And speed is exactly why we make cavalry in the first place

 

1 hour ago, Deicide4u said:

ither increase hoplite armor

This is a good idea in my opinion

[BeTe]

4 hours ago, Deicide4u said:

"QUICK! Nerf the champion spear cavalry!"

Meanwhile, CS javelin cavalry: Exists

The main reason ALL cavalry is OP is speed. They're simply too fast when compared to spear infantry (which should be their counter).

  Hide contents

I just saw ValhiRant destroy Stockfishe's Spartiates using only hit and run javelin cavalry.

Either increase hoplite armor, or decrease the cavalry speed.

Aren't you the guy who fights against CS? So Cavs aren't CS so we want to encourage people to use them instead CS, don't we??

[Guest]

48 minutes ago, BeTe said:

Aren't you the guy who fights against CS?

The game was balanced for having CS from the start, so they should stay. However, we should still get rid of the Female citizens and replace them with the generic two-gendered citizen unit with slightly altered gather rates.

But, I won't get too much into off-topic. 

[Dakara]

I'm reading some strange comments. Of course, cavalry should be faster; that's the principle of the unit. It already has minor penalties, such as reduced capture attack and suffering damage multiplication. The solution isn't to have a common citizen unit with a lance destroy a very expensive champion unit! The champion cavalryman is one of the most expensive units, so it must be one of the strongest units.

Furthermore, I believe it's necessary to balance champion units between each civilization. If I'm not mistaken, the Persian and Selucid champion cavalrymen are better suited to long melee combat than other civilizations because they have better range and armor. Their range needs to be nerfed and made sure they can't stack too much in a small space. For example, champion chariots already have this feature. This will allow the infantry to do their job.

Additionally, it is absolutely necessary to remove the 20% extra life tech on champions.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

i'm going to go ahead and do 3x counter. Anything else to do in the near term?

[Arup]

@real_tabasco_sauce slow down all cavalry. it doesn't make sense to think armored cav is so much faster than human fighter. I am pretty sure the speed difference is not realistic. Look at historical patch for suggestions and specifica

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

i'm going to go ahead and do 3x counter. Anything else to do in the near term?

Speed. I think all cav could use a nerf. Setting their speed an about equal to fanatics seems about right with melee cav being slightly faster and range cav being the same as fana (also, would make fana a better counter, which I think it needs to be)

also, what exactly is the 3x counter? (Just want to make sure everyone is on same page)

kind of related, but melee inf should get a speed boost too. But that’s more of a range vs melee balancing issue. 

Edited June 15, 2025 by chrstgtr

[Seleucids]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

i'm going to go ahead and do 3x counter. Anything else to do in the near term?

3x for whom against whom?

Ideally inf spear and inf pike get giant counter against champion cav, like 3x 4x 5x

But spear cav shouldn't counter other cavs at this rate, otherwise you are basically banning all cav strategies as soon as someone makes a few spear cav. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

3x spearmen/pikemen against cav.

@chrstgtr @Arup I agree with you both on speed. Im doing the cav counter (2.5x to 3x) since it was widely requested earlier, but I’d like to experiment with some speed balance in the future.

[chrstgtr]

3 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

3x spearmen/pikemen against cav.

@chrstgtr @Arup I agree with you both on speed. Im doing the cav counter (2.5x to 3x) since it was widely requested earlier, but I’d like to experiment with some speed balance in the future.

Sounds good. 

I'm a little worried the 3x counter will be too much against CS cav. But we will see and adjust, if necessary. 

Edited June 16, 2025 by chrstgtr

[Arup]

2 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

I'm a little worried the 3x counter will be too much against CS cav. But we will see and adjust, if necessary. 

yes, I think 3x might be overkill too, but we gotta test first haha

[Atrik]

37 minutes ago, Arup said:

yes, I think 3x might be overkill too, but we gotta test first haha

It's x3 from existing x2.5.
x3 inf polearms vs cav and x2 spear cav vs cavs were the a26 values and cavs, especially champ cavs, where still op, just not as much as now.

[Atrik]

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.

[Arup]

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

[Atrik]

52 minutes ago, Arup said:

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

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...)

Edited June 16, 2025 by Atrik

[Seleucids]

2 hours ago, Atrik said:

 It seems preferable to keep cavalry stats and mobility high but not too fail safe

I prefer this. We make cav because we want speed. Otherwise, who would do cav when inf is cheaper and more useful as workers?

 

2 hours ago, Atrik said:

units dying faster is desirable

Definitely not. Units die too fast now and we just see people getting vapourised. 2v1 or bad fight = instant death -> more demanding on good ally and pocket -> less tolerance and more toxicity -> more DoctorOrgans behaviour + exclusion of newer players

 

@real_tabasco_sauce please reconsider the bonus on spear cav against other cavs. The issue is, most civs don't have spear cav. So as soon as someone makes a dozen spear cav, these civs Gaul, Brits, Athen, Maury, Sele are banned from using cav (unless they spam spear champs in P3). Is this what we want? 

Suggestion: due to the special nature of spear cav, we should give every civ a counter unit, e.g. fanatic, or just give every civ a spear cav option. 

[Guest]

I believe the best way to balance cavalry is to eliminate the "blending in" or stacking of units on top of each other. In other words, make the unit collision work as it should.

This would make it impossible to have a 30 spear cavalry death ball in just one tile. It will also nerf the range advantage that some champion spear cavalry currently has.

[BeTe]

Quote

we can discuss if units dying faster is desirable, and if not, how to mitigate it without inadvertently breaking unit balance.

 

I like this strategical discussion. It's important to clarify what "we" want before you/we do any changes.

Regarding this, my opinion is that more durable and fewer units on the battlefield what makes good RTS. More micro abilities not just Attack move and few target-fire clicks... It seems 0AD is too spamy now.