Champion cavalry improvements

[Deicide4u]

I think the real question isn't "Why are massed Champion cavalry so broken?"

The real question is:
"Why did I let my opponent mass expensive Champion cavalry in total peace and quiet of his turtled-up base?"

Edited Thursday at 20:44 by Deicide4u
Grammar

[Atrik]

16 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

I think the real question isn't "Why are massed Champion cavalry so broken?"

The real question is:
"Why did I let my opponent mass expensive Champion cavalry in total peace and quiet of his turtled-up base?"

Yes, almost. But the games in which champion cavalry feels the most unfair is when you were active and team-working from early on in the game, that you took out 2 players, but one single enemy was left unchecked, made champ cavs, and now vaporize all your teams armies, even if they are regrouped.
Champions cavalry are:

• Cheap (VERY resource efficient)
• Strong (EXTREMELY population efficient)
• Fast (mobility is good both in fights AND on map control)
• Counter everything (hack dps for melees)
• Don't have serious counter (Spears champs have x2.5 dps, BUT less base dps, x0.6 hp x0.5 movement speed, most civ require special building.)

The accumulation of perks, and lack of any counters is what makes them feel so unbalanced. That being said, I don't think we should over-nerf them. Just give them 1 real weakness as should strong units have, and/or make them a little less cheap.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

Eh. 10% isn’t that much in the cav vs one discussion—cav is already much faster than inf. Getting the Brit speed hero doesn’t suddenly let make inf much better than cav with the tech, for example.

1.8 m/s difference for spear cav is just about as big as the speed difference between spearmen and skirmishers. It doesn't make for much of an apparent difference because cav are generally on another planet in terms of mobility.

in another rts game, speed is very carefully balanced, with small differences in movement speed making substantial differences in perceived mobility:

I'm not saying we should copy this, its for juxtaposition against our situation. If spearmen and champcav in 0ad had the same disparity as pikemen and knights above, champcav would only go 12.8 m/s. I just don't think its good for the only counter to champcav to be 0.5 to 0.4 times as fast, but absolutely massacre them if they end up fighting.

We can experiment in the near term with palisades, walls, and buildings soon (as well as building walls over forests).

[Dakara]

random troll idea : make unable cav to capture , delete tech +10% hp cav and slighty decrease the resource efficient (at least same as champ infantery)

[Atrik]

4 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I just don't think its good for the only counter to champcav to be 0.5 to 0.4 times as fast, but absolutely massacre them if they end up fighting

Would solve the main problem that champ cavs currently can slam into infantry formations, meat-shield, and even melt them by their own, which is prob what most people think is broken right now. Slowing heavy cav movement speed will mean they no longer counter ranged light cavs? Or at least ranged light cavs can escape them pretty easy? Could make sens for realism but this might have a lot of consequences balance wise.

Edited Friday at 01:59 by Atrik

[Seleucids]

15 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

well that kind of sucks, then you just hardly ever see them. Also, what does that mean for champ melee infantry? They would be even less used.

which is good. 

You can still train champions from fortress non-stop and it would actually make the fort an useful production building instead of a pure Sentry Tower ProMax++.  We have separated out the siege workshop and the elephant stables so we will still see more champs than A23, but no champ spam. Champions will be truely noble units that are cherished and valued instead of being used as meatshields. They will also be possible to counter for the given structure tree. 

[Seleucids]

13 hours ago, Atrik said:

Just give them 1 real weakness

This is another idea for those who do want to keep spamming champions. For example we can let melee inf have a 5x counter against melee champ cav.  Or we can introduce a new formation which gives some additional resistance against champ cav attacks. The Roman anti-cav formation is a good place to start. 

[Deicide4u]

24 minutes ago, Seleucids said:

For example we can let melee inf have a 5x counter against melee champ cav.  Or we can introduce a new formation which gives some additional resistance against champ cav attacks.

It's better to avoid the "this specific unit is good only against that other specific unit" hard counter situations. Spearmen and pikemen should be strong against cavalry in general, not just against melee champion cavalry.

It's a historical fact that the best defense against horsemen was a long spear. It's also a fact that cavalry obliterated archers on open fields. Most other (semi)historical RTS games reflect these facts by giving attack bonuses or armor weaknesses.

If cavalry are really a problem, a simple solution would be to improve the already existing counters.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

5 hours ago, Seleucids said:

This is another idea for those who do want to keep spamming champions. For example we can let melee inf have a 5x counter against melee champ cav.  Or we can introduce a new formation which gives some additional resistance against champ cav attacks. The Roman anti-cav formation is a good place to start. 

That would push us even further into playing "keep away" from the spearmen, which is pretty easy, but when you are forced to take a fight against spears, they will just get absolutely melted. A 5x counter might actually win with a numerical disadvantage for spearmen since they would rank up incredibly fast.

edit: spears can win 25 vs 20 champ spearcav w/full techs.

14 hours ago, Atrik said:

Slowing heavy cav movement speed will mean they no longer counter ranged light cavs? Or at least ranged light cavs can escape them pretty easy? Could make sens for realism but this might have a lot of consequences balance wise.

No, I'm thinking bigger picture speed balancing, but it will be near the bottom of my list.

[Seleucids]

3 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

they will just get absolutely melted. A 5x counter might actually win with a numerical disadvantage for spearmen since they would rank up incredibly fast.

This is exactly what we want - a counter unit. Even at 5x bonus, the spearman would still take some heavy damage because of the insane damage values from the champ cav. it would make the champion cav sufficiently weak in a fight against other unit types, so the op problem is solved. If all you can do is have a lot of champions running around but not take fights, then players will be discouraged from champ spam. 

 

but this is still not as good as just moving them to a fort or a special building only. 

[Atrik]

27 minutes ago, Seleucids said:

Even at 5x bonus

x3 was known to work in some a26 com mod version. Champ cavs where countered more like one would expect by spears. If this is too much early on against cs melee cavs, we could instead add a tech with this +50% (+x0.5) dps against cav bonus? Melee cavs are quite strong early game anyways so could be either way.

[chrstgtr]

54 minutes ago, Atrik said:

x3 was known to work in some a26 com mod version. Champ cavs where countered more like one would expect by spears. If this is too much early on against cs melee cavs, we could instead add a tech with this +50% (+x0.5) dps against cav bonus? Melee cavs are quite strong early game anyways so could be either way.

This is why I think any change should be only done to the inf spear modifier. Against cav

I think this is just a such obvious solution.  Almost everyone agrees that champ cav are too strong against cs spear inf. Any other change would mess with other balance. It’s targeted and gets what everyone thinks should change. 

Edited Friday at 17:41 by chrstgtr

[Fabius]

23 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

@Seleucids with that said on fortresses, I would like to come up with some more truly unique champion units, not just your "standard" champs, and some of these could make forts their home.

I like this idea, unique civ things are good for differentiation and interest

[Atrik]

4 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

That would push us even further into playing "keep away" from the spearmen, which is pretty easy, but when you are forced to take a fight against spears, they will just get absolutely melted.

I would like to take an example of very nice improvements that emerged in a27: defenses buildings. Now they better balanced in each phase, and in p3, are generally much stronger. Especially forts. However they've been added some weaknesses like easier to capture, and min range for forts, so overall they feel like successfully balanced and fun to me.

[Deicide4u]

1 hour ago, Atrik said:

However they've been added some weaknesses like easier to capture, and min range for forts,

Which makes Murder holes actually useful. Yet, I wonder how many people research it? 

[Gurken Khan]

@Deicide4u I always get them, but don't know if SP counts.

[Atrik]

1 hour ago, Gurken Khan said:

@Deicide4u I always get them, but don't know if SP counts.

What tech do you do last would maybe be more interesting to know. Since as I imagine, SP players mostly play just to build the most developed city possible with no constraint on trying to optimize anything.

[Emacz]

14 hours ago, Seleucids said:

This is another idea for those who do want to keep spamming champions. For example we can let melee inf have a 5x counter against melee champ cav.  Or we can introduce a new formation which gives some additional resistance against champ cav attacks. The Roman anti-cav formation is a good place to start. 

My understanding is formations currently dont work, unless that was fixxed in a27? 
They dont add any bonuses, nor can you attack from formation.  They just help you "run" faster into postion you want to be in when you fight.

Please let me know if I am wrong here!  Cause for now what we have done in historical is added "auras" to different units that have formations to kind of mimic those formations when they are in close enough proximity.

[Gurken Khan]

2 hours ago, Atrik said:

What tech do you do last would maybe be more interesting to know.

I usually build twin towers and man them, then get the extra arrow pretty early. Murder holes is next, then the extra reach when I can spare the metal. All depending who I am and what my situation is; sometimes, when there's no traffic at my borders (or I'm iber), I never build or upgrade stone towers myself and just do it later when I captured something. I hardly ever get the other two tecs, if I do it's extra arrow per garrison before (if ever) the extra health.

[LienRag]

On 17/04/2025 at 7:48 PM, TheCJ said:

now this, this is beautiful. Make stone walls cheaper, faster to build, a little smaller and with less hp and the "cav problem" is gone.

Because the cav cant realistically engage the actual enemy army (which consists of up to 100 spearman) without heavy losses and with more useful walls, they cant really disrupt your economy (if you prepare sufficiently).

Nah.

Walls should take some time to build.

Palissades are historically exactly what is used to slow down enemy attacks, especially cavalry.

Maybe get a tech "staked palissades" (or caltrops, maybe) that forbid cavalry to attack palissades (ideally, force them to dismount to attack palissades, but we don't have a dismounting mechanism - so maybe give the staked palissage a small aura that slow down cavalry).

What we want is spear infantry on choke points created by palissades to be able to destroy champion cavalry, while cavalry still being dominant on the open field against unarmored foes, and champion cavalry able to take on armored foes on open field in a somewhat equal foot.

Edited Saturday at 18:37 by LienRag
typo

[LienRag]

On 17/04/2025 at 10:15 PM, Dakara said:

random troll idea : make unable cav to capture

Could be nice indeed.

A bit too strong change of balance though, not sure if a middleground can be found.

Unable to take garrisonned buildings, maybe (so still able to mount a devastating raid if the enemy makes a mistake).

[LienRag]

On 18/04/2025 at 11:03 AM, Seleucids said:

Or we can introduce a new formation which gives some additional resistance against champ cav attacks. The Roman anti-cav formation is a good place to start. 

Formations are a nice idea.

[LienRag]

On 17/04/2025 at 8:26 PM, chrstgtr said:

the cav vs spear example you give isn’t representative of real fights. In real fights, you have a bunch of range killing that spear too.

We're back to another main problem : ranged units should only be able to kill unarmored units, and only harass armored units. As they did historically.

[LienRag]

On 16/04/2025 at 6:22 PM, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

How much faster compared to infantry do cavalry need to be to have a significant mobility advantage? Do they still have a mobility advantage if they are say 1.5x faster instead of 2x? would that result in less cavalry balance problems?

What ?

Cavalry should be quicker than infantry, making them less distinct from infantry isn't the way to go.

 

[TheCJ]

3 hours ago, LienRag said:

Palissades are historically exactly what is used to slow down enemy attacks, especially cavalry.

Palisades are not cheap enough either. They also take too long to build. Closing up your base (or vulnerable parts) just because you think cav might be coming gives you too big of an economic disadvantage. And reacting with palisades after the first raid hitted just means the first raid did even more damage.

Also they are paper to anything melee.

2 hours ago, LienRag said:

ranged units should only be able to kill unarmored units, and only harass armored units. As they did historically

Is that not what they are currently doing? If I need 100 citizen archers to actually one-shot a champion cavalry unit, Id say each one is doing more of a "harassment" than a "killing". Also, almost all units have armor?

2 hours ago, LienRag said:

Cavalry should be quicker than infantry, making them less distinct from infantry isn't the way to go.

If cavalry was 1.5x as quick than infantry, it would still be quicker? 

Just for reference; the fastest base cav unit in AoE2 (the hussar) is 1.5x as fast as their counter (the halberdier). If it works for them, it might just work for us.

Edited Saturday at 21:32 by TheCJ
typo