Cavalry Units

[AstroCoral]

Hello everyone.

I have recently started playing this game (had about 50 games total) it is AWESOME Game and first of all I want to thank you everyone for the opportunity to play this game and to be part of the community, you guys are great.

I have a suggestion to rework the way cavalry units are produced and the way those units impact the game to make it more realistic and more balanced. This is my first topic so please forgive me for my bad English or for breaking some rules (not sure)

So these are few the things that I think is problematic in terms of game-play balance and are not realistic:

1. Cavalry units are trainable from Civic Center and some civilisations have melee spear cav at phase 1 which makes impossible to defend early cav rushes for some civs (yea spearman is a counter, but with good micro spearman can be kited forever and there is really no chance of defending the early cav rushes without taking any significant economical damage)

2. Having a Cavalry unit that is not available like normal unit (I play persia and my example would be having Melee sword cav, but not having simple sword soldiers available in the game.... a little bit illogical)

3. There is no cavalry unit that counters cavalry (at first when i started playing i thought if spearman counter cavalry then melee spearcav should counter cavalry too.. but i found out thats not the case which leads to unbalanced strats like mass chariots or horse archers since there is no way of dealing with that....)

4. It is simply too easy to mass cavalry early on specially if you have good spawn with a lot of animals around. Cavalry unit becomes so easy to produce without any commitment (except doing damage to enemy economy, which is really easy, so i guess that doesn't count) and its simply not realistic as having cavalry units should be some what luxury in that age (my opinion :D) 

So I thought about those issues and I came up with an interesting game play mechanic. This is quite game breaking but hear me out please:

What if...

The current cavalry production building was replaced with STABLES where you could produce horses at a cost of food, chariots with cost of food and wood (similar to corals like 50 food per horse so essentially unit cost would stay the same and for chariots should cost some wood too) And there would be a limit of horses per 1 stables ( for example 8-10 horses) and any walking unit in the game could be mounted on the horses to make cavalry and dismounted to but only at the stables. the building would cost only wood (300 or so) so it will be still available in phase 1 and the cavalry rushes would be still possible, but it will require more commitment and there would be higher risk/reward ratio.

Horses would add extra hp buffer to unit (like 50 or so) and static movement speed bonus (fast units would be faster cav and slow units like spearman would be slower cav, so it doesnt break balance and for example cav archers or skirmishers should be abble to escape when facing hard counter) also chariots should be able to carry 2 units but be more expensive(cost some additional food and some wood) there could be also added horsed wagons which could be specialized in gathering resources like wood, metal, stone from far away locations which are not occupied by territory ( and could carry like 100 resources per wagon and be mounted by 3-4 citizen workers/soldiers)

In combat i feel like when the cavalry unit loses 50 hp buffer then horse dies making the unit immobile but still able to fight then that would be very nice since spearcav ( if it was counter to cavalry) or spearman would be dealing 3x damage to horses and essentially would counter cavalry(horses) but not the unit itself which i think is very fair way of countering. 

I fully understand that it would require a lot of work to implement this feature and also its a little bit breaking the current game. But i personally think that if this feature was ever implemented it would make the game stand out as a unique game even more and would add interesting, realistic, competitive mechanics to game also increasing its depth and creating more opportunities for different game play styles and strategies.

Please let me know what you think about it.

This is only concept i would be greatly honoured if that feature was ever implemented.

Anyway, great game enjoy it so much

 

 

[causative]

Yes, age I cavalry is too strong.  Some possible solutions:

• Cheaper sentry towers costing 50w instead of 100w
• Towers shoot 3 arrows by default
• Houses garrison 10 units instead of 6, or 5 instead of 3
• CC can garrison 50 units (only the first 20 soldiers garrisoned add arrows) so you can put all your women farmers in the CC
• Make cavalry much weaker in age I, with an age II tech that makes them normal

[Imarok]

24 minutes ago, causative said:

 

• Houses garrison 10 units instead of 6, or 5 instead of 3
• CC can garrison 50 units (only the first 20 soldiers garrisoned add arrows) so you can put all your women farmers in the CC

Wouldn't this make cav rush useless?

As soon as the enemy sends cav, I just raise alarm and wait until the cav is gone again.

[Feldfeld]

Cavalry rushes can be balanced though. Now from what i saw in a22 changes, currently it may be skirmisher cav that is better than spear cav even early game. Still, interesting proposal in original post, but the way he described it would make for sure cavalry rushes, or even cavalry in general useless.

[Lion.Kanzen]

That why put resources around CC isn't good decision ,same let farms around CC.

both have right.

[AstroCoral]

6 minutes ago, Feldfeld said:

Cavalry rushes can be balanced though. Now from what i saw in a22 changes, currently it may be skirmisher cav that is better than spear cav even early game. Still, interesting proposal in original post, but the way he described it would make for sure cavalry rushes, or even cavalry in general useless.

well i only tried to describe general concept... im sorry, i know its a bit messy... but to see if its useless or useful there could be some testing done and yea i see your point.... cavalry should cost a little bit less to justify an extra building resource costs.... 
example of how it could be interesting to use you could still rush melee cav at phase one go to enemy do some harassment then come back to your stables unmount your units and mount some archers for example to continue the push further.... 

whether cavalry is useless or useful can be balanced by costs and by limit of horses per one stables..... but generally i think this concept is very cool and unique... did not see anything like that in any other rts game... 

[sphyrth]

Ever tried a mod called "Delenda Est"? Players are limited to train only 1 Cavalry. You can't train another until it dies. That limit increases only when you teched up only to a Later Phase.
I believe that it's a good limitation. Personally, I still think that Cav Rushing should still be viable, but not OP.
Limiting it to 2-4 Cavs in Phase 1 should be the ideal number.

Here's my  Cavalry Irk:
I still hold that Ranged Cavs < Melee Cavs for hunting food. They both have the same gathering rate but their LOW ACCURACY is making hunting with them quite unreliable. I'm better off scouting.

[temple]

One thing that's bugged me is that cavalry is the same size as infantry. Imagine if elephants were that size and never bumped into each other or had trouble pathfinding (relatively speaking). I think if cavalry were fatter (to match their art), then they'd do worse against large infantry armies since more spearmen could attack cavalry at a time than cavalry could attack spearmen.

[Grugnas]

On 26/6/2017 at 2:54 AM, sphyrth said:

Here's my  Cavalry Irk:
I still hold that Ranged Cavs < Melee Cavs for hunting food. They both have the same gathering rate but their LOW ACCURACY is making hunting with them quite unreliable. I'm better off scouting.

Actually the situation is drastically reverted in a22 because after the accuracy rework 6 cavalry skirmishers can kill a gaia elephant with ease and have an easy hunt while spear cavalry has hard time in luring an elephant with an unit while others damage it (it is even much slower).

Indeed soap giraffes are still likely flee from skirmishers but if you get near a soap giraffe with a bunch of skirmishers, you can kill it with 1 hit and eventually kill all other giraffes nearby and speed up your hunting without bother about a lone skirmisher who chases a fleeing giraffe around the whole area.

Technically Cavalry rush is op because the food boost that fruits + Wicker Basket gives you is amazing for the low wood cost of the tech (100 wood only) and the low wood cost of skirmisher cavalry (40 wood only). Potentially a player who choice to rely on wood based investments like infantry soldiers and eventually sentry towers where to garrison soldiers for a bit of damage/protection is in disadvantage because wood is gathered way slower and the wood is essential for houses.

Edited June 27, 2017 by Grugnas