Champion cavalry improvements

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, Seleucids said:

@real_tabasco_sauce please reconsider the bonus on spear cav against other cavs.

I’ve left it alone so far. Or are you saying it should be lowered?

everyone chill out, these aren’t final! I’m setting up some stuff in the community mod. If we spend some time testing seriously, we can figure out what works and what doesn’t.

[Atrik]

40 minutes ago, BeTe said:

It's important to clarify what "we" want

As you can see from this thread, a consensus will never happen as for the solutions  

 

47 minutes ago, BeTe said:

you/we do any changes.

@real_tabasco_sauce makes the all the balancing PRs that get approved by the team atm. So rly it's almost about convincing him.

 

49 minutes ago, BeTe said:

It seems 0AD is too spamy now.

With current production stats (cost, prod time..) more durable units actually makes the game feel more spamy.
This because there are much more situation where both sides can sustain sending troops on the front-line, replacing dying units by new one for a long while. Since melee re-balance, this happens more rarely, as battles tend to play out slightly faster. I'll maintain that it did have a positive impact on the gameplay, also because it put less importance on sniping making other things matter more.

[TheCJ]

5 hours ago, Seleucids said:

We make cav because we want speed.

but do they have to be twice as fast?

wouldnt 1.5× or even 1.3× as fast be fast enough?

5 hours ago, Seleucids said:

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. 

I feel like this would be an unnecessary "unification" of playstyles across different civs.

A civ with good defensive options could (if walls, forts, towers werent so bad) secure their eco without needing to keep troops at home and force the enemy cav to take a fight by attacking the enemy base. Then the cav die to normal spearman and no "quick" counter unit is necessary.

[Deicide4u]

13 minutes ago, TheCJ said:

A civ with good defensive options could (if walls, forts, towers werent so bad) secure their eco without needing to keep troops at home and force the enemy cav to take a fight by attacking the enemy base. Then the cav die to normal spearman and no "quick" counter unit is necessary.

Yes, this is what is needed. Options. Cavalry can raid well, but it should 100% die to spears. At least, it shouldn't be cost-effective at killing it's supposed counter unit.

[Atrik]

1 hour ago, TheCJ said:

wouldnt 1.5× or even 1.3× as fast be fast enough?

Ranged cavalry are already within that range (x1.3-x1.6 of inf equivalent) melee cavalry have more and I feel it is smart gameplay-wise as melee cav intuitively can be used to:

1. engage backlines
2. be able to counter ranged cavs
3. raid with comparable effectiveness as skirmisher cavs. 

All 3 scenarios require melee cavalry to have this additional speed.

Edited June 16, 2025 by Atrik

[TheCJ]

2 hours ago, Atrik said:

All 3 scenarios require melee cavalry to have this additional speed.

I agree. Melee cavalry needs to be faster than ranged cavalry if its supposed to be a counter. And if ranged cav already falls in that range, thats also good.

But it might be better to equalize the speed of all ranged cav to a greater degree (so its not 1.3× to 1.6× but instead maybe 1.3× to 1.4×), then we could reduce the speed of melee cav while still having melee cav quicker than ranged cav (maybe at 1.5× to 1.6×)?

 

Lastly I wanted to add two more things I think are relevant to the cavalry issue as a whole:

For one the entire game is incredibly quick by the numbers; fast queue times, fast build times, fast gather rates. Thus, it feels like cavalry needs to be even faster to keep "the same advantage" as in other, slower rts.

Additionally most games are played on "standard mainland settings" or even ambush nomad or pizza, all of which are very small. You can see this by looking at how often people build additional ccs to get more map control (it doesnt happen often, atleast not in my games). Small maps also make cav more effective, since the moment you see them coming, they are basically already in your economy, thus you need to be very quick in reacting to defend sufficiently. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

2 hours ago, TheCJ said:

Small maps also make cav more effective, since the moment you see them coming, they are basically already in your economy, thus you need to be very quick in reacting to defend sufficiently. 

in my experience, larger maps are stronger for cav because there is more space to exploit the speed difference.

[TheCJ]

6 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

to exploit the speed difference

Well, larger maps are better for hit and run units, like cav archers, since you have more space to micro/run to. But jav cav doesnt really benefit since it cant hit and run (it gets outranged) and neither does melee cav.

For both of those (jav and melee cav), larger maps just mean more time for the enemy to react or build up defenses in preparation. For early rushes, you might get to my base before I have my first additional soldiers out on a small map, but after I got them on a large map; similarly on a large map when approaching lategame, you can scout that your enemy has cav and build palisades/towers before he arrives.

[Dakara]

20 hours ago, Deicide4u said:

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.

this is the best idea , specially for cav! chariot champ have already this kind of feature 

[Dakara]

9 hours ago, TheCJ said:

I agree. Melee cavalry needs to be faster than ranged cavalry if its supposed to be a counter. And if ranged cav already falls in that range, thats also good.

But it might be better to equalize the speed of all ranged cav to a greater degree (so its not 1.3× to 1.6× but instead maybe 1.3× to 1.4×), then we could reduce the speed of melee cav while still having melee cav quicker than ranged cav (maybe at 1.5× to 1.6×)?

 

Lastly I wanted to add two more things I think are relevant to the cavalry issue as a whole:

For one the entire game is incredibly quick by the numbers; fast queue times, fast build times, fast gather rates. Thus, it feels like cavalry needs to be even faster to keep "the same advantage" as in other, slower rts.

Additionally most games are played on "standard mainland settings" or even ambush nomad or pizza, all of which are very small. You can see this by looking at how often people build additional ccs to get more map control (it doesnt happen often, atleast not in my games). Small maps also make cav more effective, since the moment you see them coming, they are basically already in your economy, thus you need to be very quick in reacting to defend sufficiently. 

Building a second city center is equivalent to giving it to your opponent! Moreover, with the number of military improvements too high in the forge (I still don't see why there are two technologies at age 3) building a CC puts you behind from this point of view. On the other hand, the cc have a lower cost than before, now it is possible to make them.

[Dakara]

22 minutes ago, TheCJ said:

Well, larger maps are better for hit and run units, like cav archers, since you have more space to micro/run to. But jav cav doesnt really benefit since it cant hit and run (it gets outranged) and neither does melee cav.

For both of those (jav and melee cav), larger maps just mean more time for the enemy to react or build up defenses in preparation. For early rushes, you might get to my base before I have my first additional soldiers out on a small map, but after I got them on a large map; similarly on a large map when approaching lategame, you can scout that your enemy has cav and build palisades/towers before he arrives.

In the current configuration, the catas are powerful. We should not balance the game on this wall hypothesis. Especially when we can lose the allegiance of the walls if the enemy pushes its border.

We should nerf the cavalry by choosing some of the ideas from the thread. It's important to keep in mind that a single Citizen Lancer shouldn't be able to kill a cavalry champion. So this won't be a miracle solution.

We need to focus on the "invisible" strengths of this unit.

Their ability to stack, take up very little space, and move in close quarters isn't really realistic. This way, they decimate enemies. Change this. And their ARMOR!!!! 

I think that if we nerf this unit too much, the cavalry mercenaries will be the new hell of the game so take care

 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

5 hours ago, TheCJ said:

larger maps just mean more time for the enemy to react or build up defenses in preparation

For rushes yes. But if you try to do an early p3 infantry attack on a large map , and anyone has cav on the enemy team, you are pretty much guaranteed to get surrounded and 2v1ed.

in smaller maps, you are closer to your own buildings, walls, and importantly your allies.

in any case, I’m glad there’s more sentiment for speed balancing, we try out a couple alternatives in community mod versions.

[Fabius]

What about a damage reduction bonus that has spearmen take less damage from cavalry, a reverse multiplier if you will, specifically for melee cavalry. Eg does 0.75 damage against spear/pike troops.

[Deicide4u]

@Fabius there was already a precedent for that, so it's possible.

Elephants had a "Stench" aura in the early alphas. What that actually meant is they had 50% additional damage reduction from cavalry attacks.

[Fabius]

6 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

@Fabius there was already a precedent for that, so it's possible.

Elephants had a "Stench" aura in the early alphas. What that actually meant is they had 50% additional damage reduction from cavalry attacks.

That is a rather cool perk. I would be in favour of a negative multiplier as an interesting alternative to a positive one. Adding positives takes us closer to Age II levels of Spear/Cav counters, and I would prefer we did not have that degree

[Fabius]

Definitely agree about the speed reduction, current cavalry is way to fast on screen, you barely get any time to react to their coming and going

[LienRag]

On 16/06/2025 at 11:41 PM, TheCJ said:

I agree. Melee cavalry needs to be faster than ranged cavalry if its supposed to be a counter.

Light melee cavalry needs to be faster than ranged cavalry. FTFY.

Ranged cavalry, being light, should certainly be faster than heavy cavalry.

 

If we make disengaging from the enemy quite costly (as it was historically) either in time or in blood (the choice between the two options being made by the player through specific formations), then we can have light cavalry engaging the ranged cavalry and the heavy cavalry coming behind them to finish the job.

 

Is it difficult to implement Charges mechanism with cooldown timer after use ?

That would allow even light infantry to somehow counter ranged cavalry, and more so for champion cavalry.

[LienRag]

1 hour ago, Fabius said:

Definitely agree about the speed reduction, current cavalry is way to fast on screen, you barely get any time to react to their coming and going

That should be addressed by specific anti-cavalry formations (again, as it was historically).

[Fabius]

15 minutes ago, LienRag said:

That should be addressed by specific anti-cavalry formations (again, as it was historically).

Formations do not currently confer bonuses, so while that is a nice idea there is currently no method for application in that manner. So until something alters that, bonuses will have to coded onto the units themselves

[LienRag]

I wasn't thinking about bonus, but about AI : put the vulnerable units behind melee ones, close gaps, have the fast units engage the cavalry and the strong then come and destroy them.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

In the short term, I think we should go with the health nerf for the regular melee champ cav, and for the cataphracts which are so tanky, we can significantly reduce their speed, which will create better differentiation for the cataphracts (possibly also nerf the +100 hp tech for them too).

[Classic-Burger]

38 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

In the short term, I think we should go with the health nerf for the regular melee champ cav, and for the cataphracts which are so tanky, we can significantly reduce their speed, which will create better differentiation for the cataphracts (possibly also nerf the +100 hp tech for them too).

It's a good idea, they were supposed to tire quickly, couldn't fight for long, and were slow for cavalry.

[Deicide4u]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

In the short term, I think we should go with the health nerf for the regular melee champ cav

Bring back 130 HP champion cavalry, lol.

Good changes, thanks.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/8380

[Atrik]

18 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/8380

• Bactrians Chavs are have the same stats as Cataphract in a27, they are used more often for champ cav because of the Persian pop bonus. So they'll be nerfed more then Catapharct, intentionally?
• Your armor and HP changes barely change cav HP equivalent, but lowered it's speed, so they'll be worse at chasing other cavs but as good against infantry. A bit less map control too.