Why do spear cav attack slower than their infantry counterpart?

[LetswaveaBook]

We have been talking about melee cavalry, but there is something that strikes me as odd and I have mentioned it earlier. If we want to get a proper feeling of balance, it would help if spear cavalry was decent, such that we have something to compare sword cavalry too. On top of that, better spear cavalry gives a decent counter to sword cavalry. On top of better attack, sword cavalry has better armor but cost 10 metal.

 

So why do have spear cavalry a DPS of 5.6 (9.8 against cavalry) and sword cavalry a DPS of 8.66?

[Player of 0AD]

Because they don't cost metal? Lol

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

58 minutes ago, Player of 0AD said:

Because they don't cost metal? Lol

Metal is relatively more plentiful now though.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

10 metal has always been pretty trivial, even in a24.

It is a great point to raise, @LetswaveaBook

Having better armor and better attack is too much, and leaves spearcav to 1) be spammed 2) fail to counter other cavalry (not enough dps)

We don't want spearcavalry to have the same total armor and same total attack because that would be boring.

I feel swordcavalry should have less armor and more dps, and spearcavalry less dps and more overall armor. A justification could be that sword usage requires more flexibility, and extra armor can impede that. Having different stats help to differentiate their roles as units.

Keep in mind that this swordcav vs spearcav power imbalance is also a problem at the champion level, where consular bodyguard are head and shoulders over the rest.

 

[LetswaveaBook]

4 hours ago, Player of 0AD said:

Because they don't cost metal? Lol

infantry Swordsmen have 10% metal cost and have 33% more attack than infantry spearmen and similar armor. Sword cavalry has only 6.7% metal cost and do 55% more damage and have better armor.

I guess 10 metal can't justify the difference and on top of that, CS spear cavalry are fairly useless. Any faction that gets spear cavalry in p2 might as well not get them in 99% of the games.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Honestly I thought Spear Cav should be the main line cavalry, with Sword Cav being the counter cav. Similar to Spear Infantry being the mainline heavy infantry and Sword Infantry being the counter inf. Archers the mainline light Infantry with Jav Infantry or Slinger Infantry being the counter ranged.

[chrstgtr]

23 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

So why do have spear cavalry a DPS of 5.6 (9.8 against cavalry) and sword cavalry a DPS of 8.66?

Because it is supposed to be the counter to cav with its anti cav bonus. If spear DPS is better then there is no reason to ever make sword cav instead of spear cav. 

[davidsrsb]

Not very realistic either, a sword cavalry would get skewered by a spear cavalry before he got close

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Having sword cav be your mainline cavalry unit doesn't make sense historically. 

[alre]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

Because it is supposed to be the counter to cav with its anti cav bonus. If spear DPS is better then there is no reason to ever make sword cav instead of spear cav. 

come on, it's not about who's better, it's the magnitude. they are about equal when factoring the bonus, sword cavalry is like twice as good otherwise. at now noone makes spear cav if they can make sword cav instead, it's not like any nerf can only result in the opposite situation.

16 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Honestly I thought Spear Cav should be the main line cavalry, with Sword Cav being the counter cav. Similar to Spear Infantry being the mainline heavy infantry and Sword Infantry being the counter inf. Archers the mainline light Infantry with Jav Infantry or Slinger Infantry being the counter ranged.

mmh not sure. we know of cavalrymen using spears for dueling since antiquity. the bonus makes sense.

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

In short spear cav as about as good as sword cav when dealing with other cav but fall short on everything by virtue of having worse armour and worse attack speed than the latter( poor spear cav, even jav cav beat them  ). Maybe look at other RTSs ? Perhaps having only two melee types is not enough?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I'm pretty sure the main weapons of heavy cavalry were spears and lances, not swords (swords were side arms). So spear cav should be ur main melee cav unit in the game, not sword cavalry, which are largely apocryphal and only included to pad out the unit classes.

[alre]

yes, but even for infantry swords were often just side arms, not the only weapon anyway.

on his text on equitation, Xenophon reccomends using two throwing spears and a long sword (makhaira). swords were used by hellenistic cavalry (not just celtic) just as much as by roman legionnaires, or almost so.

[alre]

leaving aside this historical food for thought, I think both sword and spear cav should have the same pierce armor. there are two reasons for this: 

- as already pointed out by @LetswaveaBook, there is no realistic motive for this difference, it's anti-historical and counter-intuitive

- from a gameplay perspective, I'm convinced that its higher armor is justified by the fact that sword cav is designed as a natural counter for ranged units, however, it's perplexing that only a handful of civs have access to a part of this fundamental rock-paper-scissor system. sword cav and spear cav can be differentiated in some way that makes them both decent against ranged units.

[LetswaveaBook]

28 minutes ago, alre said:

yes, but even for infantry swords were often just side arms, not the only weapon anyway.

Going off topic, I would like to comment that in Italy there were some units that had the sword as their main weapon. So a swordsmen would not be totally unhistorical, but it would be uncommon. The Rhomphaia also seems to be a little to long for being a side-arm.

4 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Because it is supposed to be the counter to cav with its anti cav bonus. If spear DPS is better then there is no reason to ever make sword cav instead of spear cav. 

I understand that the idea is that the spear cavalry is the counter unit, but the gap is bigger than it needs to be. I would advocate giving the spear cavalry an attack of 3.5 hack and 2.5 pierce per 1 second and giving sword cavalry 6.0 hack attack per 0.75 seconds. On top of that I think it would be acceptable if both units had the 4 hack and 3 pierce armor (Also I think most ranged units need a 10% decrease in attack as a DPS of 12.8 seems disproportional). That would still allow the spear cavalry to function as a counter, while the sword cavalry would be superior in most cases.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

5 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Because it is supposed to be the counter to cav with its anti cav bonus. If spear DPS is better then there is no reason to ever make sword cav instead of spear cav.

Swordcavalry would still be better at most other things if spearcav were to have better DPS against swordcav after accounting for the 1.75x. I argue that instead of increasing spear damage, we reduce swordcav armor. If we increase spear damage, it would make cavalry even better overall, which I don't think we need. That way we would still train swordcav for dealing lots of damage to non-spear/pike infantry, and we would train spearcav to try to counter cavalry as well as resist spears/pikes slightly better than swordcav (not by killing them fast like we see with carth merc, but by not dying to them super quickly).

I think this leaves a varied and diverse set of possibilities to use each unit, and prevents cavalry from becoming more op. @chrstgtr does this seem like a good compromise?

 

Edited September 29, 2021 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[chrstgtr]

4 hours ago, alre said:

come on, it's not about who's better, it's the magnitude. they are about equal when factoring the bonus, sword cavalry is like twice as good otherwise. at now noone makes spear cav if they can make sword cav instead, it's not like any nerf can only result in the opposite situation.

That just means the balance is off. Spear cav should do a little better against cav than it currently does. If spear cav got the same DPS as sword cav plus the counter bonus then there is no reason to make sword cav. 

1 hour ago, LetswaveaBook said:

I understand that the idea is that the spear cavalry is the counter unit, but the gap is bigger than it needs to be. I would advocate giving the spear cavalry an attack of 3.5 hack and 2.5 pierce per 1 second and giving sword cavalry 6.0 hack attack per 0.75 seconds. On top of that I think it would be acceptable if both units had the 4 hack and 3 pierce armor (Also I think most ranged units need a 10% decrease in attack as a DPS of 12.8 seems disproportional). That would still allow the spear cavalry to function as a counter, while the sword cavalry would be superior in most cases.

Again, just means spear cav should get a slight buff to dmg to be better against cav (i.e., a bonus multiplier buff). That would keep intact the structure of sword cav as being a good melee cav unit, jav/archer cav as being good range cav units, and spear cav as being the anti-cav cav unit. Changing all the other stats just makes balancing more complicated (and more likely to be screwed up) because multiple variables will be changing at once. 

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Swordcavalry would still be better at most other things if spearcav were to have better DPS against swordcav after accounting for the 1.75x. I argue that instead of increasing spear damage, we reduce swordcav armor. If we increase spear damage, it would make cavalry even better overall, which I don't think we need. That way we would still train swordcav for dealing lots of damage to non-spear/pike infantry, and we would train spearcav to try to counter cavalry as well as resist spears/pikes slightly better than swordcav (not by killing them fast like we see with carth merc, but by not dying to them super quickly).

I think this leaves a varied and diverse set of possibilities to use each unit, and prevents cavalry from becoming more op. @chrstgtr does this seem like a good compromise?

 

That would mess with inf vs cav balance a lot (which needs a little work, but not much for generic sword cav)

--------------

People in thread need to remember that a general buff to spear cav dmg will also make roman cav rush OP. 

A dmg multiplier buff against cav seems like the obvious solution. 

[LetswaveaBook]

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

If we increase spear damage, it would make cavalry even better overall, which I don't think we need.

In my view, increasing damage of spear cavalry does not make cavalry better overall. It just makes spear cavalry better.

 

4 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Changing all the other stats just makes balancing more complicated (and more likely to be screwed up) because multiple variables will be changing at once. 

Things are all ready screwed up. If you try to have 20% of your army to be CS spear cavalry, you would lose in an otherwise even matchup.

 

Also, I tried 10 spear+javelin cav vs. 10 sword+javelin cav and the side with the sword cavalry won the fights with a small margin. So that's how decent of a counter it actually it.

 

 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

4 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

In my view, increasing damage of spear cavalry does not make cavalry better overall. It just makes spear cavalry better.

 

We have swordcav, which are considered slightly op by many people. If we buff spearcav rather than nerf swordcav, more cavalry units become more powerful, which by weighted average makes cavalry as a class of unit more powerful.

4 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

That would mess with inf vs cav balance a lot (which needs a little work, but not much for generic sword cav)

 

What problems would arise?

In my opinion, buffing the counter to other cav would make them annoyingly effective at stopping other cavalry during early game, and leave them simply worse than swordcavalry for everything else. I think -1 armor for swordcavalry would be fine.

[davidsrsb]

For historic accuracy, spear/lance cavalry should have very high pierce damage, but then should switch to sword hack after a hit. The spear would often be lost after killing an opponent

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

3 hours ago, davidsrsb said:

For historic accuracy, spear/lance cavalry should have very high pierce damage, but then should switch to sword hack after a hit. The spear would often be lost after killing an opponent

not after one as they did not couch the lance, an over the shoulder strike was the prefered method.

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

A side note here, how come the romans have a good cav roster? With champ swords and trashy spear cav to tank hits? From battle reports against hellenic forces we know that romans were inept at cav combat, standing their ground and fighting like infantry thus using cav in a more defensive role, wasting the most important atribute of a cavalry corps, it's agility.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

10 hours ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:

A side note here, how come the romans have a good cav roster? With champ swords and trashy spear cav to tank hits? From battle reports against hellenic forces we know that romans were inept at cav combat, standing their ground and fighting like infantry thus using cav in a more defensive role, wasting the most important atribute of a cavalry corps, it's agility.

In my "All civs are my favorite" thread, I suggested promotion techs for all units, up to advanced, with 1 unit getting an elite rank tech and 1 unit not receiving a rank tech at all. I'd say the either the Roman spear cav or the jav cav would be the troop type not getting any rank tech, and neither would be the one to get an elite tech.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

58 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

n my "All civs are my favorite" thread, I suggested promotion techs for all units, up to advanced, with 1 unit getting an elite rank tech and 1 unit not receiving a rank tech at all. I'd say the either the Roman spear cav or the jav cav would be the troop type not getting any rank tech, and neither would be the one to get an elite tech.

I actually really like this idea of his, because it gives an extra way for players to respond to changes in enemy unit composition. A player would want to be careful with the units they select for rank 2 or rank 3, because they would want to leave some at home for eco. I have not heard many people talk about it in opposition or support, so if you are interested go to "all civs are my favorite" and see how you like it.

 

[Fabius]

On 03/10/2021 at 7:43 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

In my "All civs are my favorite" thread, I suggested promotion techs for all units, up to advanced, with 1 unit getting an elite rank tech and 1 unit not receiving a rank tech at all. I'd say the either the Roman spear cav or the jav cav would be the troop type not getting any rank tech, and neither would be the one to get an elite tech.

The javelin cavalry is termed as an allied unit so theoretically would have some skill at their choice of combat, so the lance cavalry seems a more appropriate target for not getting any ranking bonus since its a native Roman unit.