Iberian champion cavalry

[Reyhan]

Cataphracts should be more effective counter against the fire cav than sword cav. To boost spear cavalry, we can give them higher speeds than sword cavalry, so that they can chase after champions fire cav.

It has also come to my notice that Carthaginian mercenary sword cavalry is very strong as well, but they deserve the extra attack for their cost. 

[Fabius]

16 hours ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:

1. My favorite solution is to make the Iberian champ attack + fire damage equal Briton chariot attack.

2. So the cataphract, which is supposed to be an anti-cavalry unit, does worse against the chariot than than the consular bodyguard?  This is not good my friends. Sword cav may need to have 1 less pierce armor or something.

Why not also increase the damage of the lancer? And/or give them an attack speed equal to spearmen?

[LetswaveaBook]

17 hours ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:

2. So the cataphract, which is supposed to be an anti-cavalry unit, does worse against the chariot than than the consular bodyguard?  This is not good my friends. Sword cav may need to have 1 less pierce armor or something.

Oh, this is hardly any news.

All melee units deal double damage compared to CS, the odd exception being the spear infantry who also has 10% faster attack rate. Melee champion infantry see their HP doubled and +3 armor compared to CS(for 275% total durability). Champion spear cavalry see their HP increased by 15/8-th and get +4 armor (for 286% total durability). While sword cavalry have a preferable armor typing to begin with, they see their HP increased by 15/8-th and and +4 hack armor and +5 pierce armor. I don't see why the oddity of +5 pierce armor is needed to begin with.

Finally, spear cavalry has been disappointing for me. I would say they score a 4/10 against infantry and a 6/10 against cavarly. Spear cav narrowly get the job done against other cavalry but spear cav seriously disappoint against infantry if you factor in costs (and lack of gathering for CS).

However I have seen post of @BreakfastBurrito_007 that lead me to think that some player consider (champion) spear cavalry very useful and OP. So I would be careful with buffing them.

 

Spear cavalry has a DPS of 5.6 (9.8 against cavalry), sword cavalry has a DPS of 8.66 and javelin cavalry has a DPS of 14.4, which seems to indicate to me that the 1.75x advantage the spear cavalry has against other cavalry gets wasted by its low base damage.

Anyway, comparing the units that are not directly related to this topic can preferably be discussed somewhere else.

 

[davidsrsb]

Why do cavalry have such high pierce armour? Foot soldiers, especially Roman, had large and effective shields. Nobody had cavalry with good anti-pierce armour until plate armoured knights in the Middle Ages

[Fabius]

31 minutes ago, davidsrsb said:

Why do cavalry have such high pierce armour? Foot soldiers, especially Roman, had large and effective shields. Nobody had cavalry with good anti-pierce armour until plate armoured knights in the Middle Ages

Well there are cataphracts which are basically precursors to the plate armoured knight. So yes they did have cavalry with high pierce resistance.

[Yekaterina]

I have a good idea: instead of cav, we make them an infantry javelineer champion, and lower their attack accordingly. The reasoning is , cav have naturally higher health and able to escape if things get nasty, so once you make 30 of these units they never die. Infantry however, cannot escape from enemy cav units as easily so if you commit to a fight, you either win it or lose something.

[Yekaterina]

If the Hans have very expensive fire archer infantry, the Iberians do not deserve their fire cav at such a cheap price. If the single players really want to have this unit unchanged, then I suggest tripling the cost to 450 food, 240 wood and 300 metal each.

Edited December 25, 2021 by Yekaterina

[Yekaterina]

@LetswaveaBook what do you think about these 2 proposals?

[Yekaterina]

@Player of 0AD the Han civ has fire and poison archers that are obtained by upgrading regular infantry champion archers. Similar story applies for their champion swordsman. 

Tripling the price makes it difficult to mass 30 of these op units

10 units is not so devastating. But 20 is. The power is not directly proportional to number.

Edited December 25, 2021 by Yekaterina

[LetswaveaBook]

1 hour ago, Yekaterina said:

I have a good idea: instead of cav, we make them an infantry javelineer champion

We don't have an infantry javelineer champion, so having one would be welcome. Do you have a 3D model for the champion infantry javelineer?

 

1 hour ago, Yekaterina said:

the Iberians do not deserve their fire cav at such a cheap price.

I think this is part of the problem when the Iberian player also has indibil. Maybe a "correct nerf" for fire cav would be changing indibils aura such that it no longer affects champions. However there are probably many ways we could balance the fire champion and making them an infantry unit is a creative one.

 

However rather than removing features, I would prefer to balance the features that we currently have, so keeping the fire cavalry would be fine, if it was well balanced. The unit most similar to the fire cavalry is the Briton chariot and I honestly do not know if that unit is well balanced.

Adding features is cool anyway, so it would be a possibility to add infantry fire javelineer champions to Iberians.

[soloooy0]

it seems that more than a nerf you want to make the iber fire cav useless or directly that it is infantry.
the problems it has: cumulative fire damage, too much armor and fast firing (I've been complaining for a long time that it takes 1sec per shot, it's absurd).

solutions
1.2sec or 1.3 sec triggering
precision vs. reduced units (since it is specialist vs. buildings)
fire damage up to x2 vs. organic units
reduce armor as it is a ranged unit

lastly, the issue of raising costs to champions, if they can increase x% of population more than 20% or 25% increase the price of units and / or champions something or in general without champions to force a quick war and rely more on trade. 

[LetswaveaBook]

1 hour ago, soloooy0 said:

I've been complaining for a long time that it takes 1sec per shot, it's absurd

As far as I could see, it takes 1.25 second per shot. I watched it perform in the scenario editor against a Briton chariot and the units were in sinc. I watched also the situation with a chariot archer and the chariot archer fired faster than the fire cav.

[Fabius]

8 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

We don't have an infantry javelineer champion, so having one would be welcome. Do you have a 3D model for the champion infantry javelineer?

We did have champion javalineers in A23 for Persia, Sparta and Athens. They were all clipped for A24.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, Fabius said:

We did have champion javalineers in A23 for Persia, Sparta and Athens. They were all clipped for A24.

Ehhh, for Athens and Sparta they were pretty suss. For Persians there was some disputed historical justification for them. 

[Yekaterina]

45 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Ehhh, for Athens and Sparta they were pretty suss. For Persians there was some disputed historical justification for them. 

I really liked using them back in A23!

But I was cosmic back then so I don't know how well they were balanced. But the Stoa was cool. 

[Yekaterina]

The Brit chariot is a simple anti-unit machine that does little damage to buildings, so players are less motivated to use them. Also their net damage output is lower than the fire cav, although they are still hyper OP against any  other units  when Boudica is present. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

18 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

If the Hans have very expensive fire archer infantry, the Iberians do not deserve their fire cav at such a cheap price. If the single players really want to have this unit unchanged, then I suggest tripling the cost to 450 food, 240 wood and 300 metal each.

perhaps just nerf indibil like @LetswaveaBook said instead of making them that expensive. Indibil is mad OP: both train time discount and for all units (then hero sits in fort all game). With indibil nerfed, we may not need to nerf firecav that heavily. Also, with unit acceleration, cav may have a little harder time quickly escaping hairy situations.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

perhaps just nerf indibil like @LetswaveaBook said instead of making them that expensive. Indibil is mad OP: both train time discount and for all units (then hero sits in fort all game). With indibil nerfed, we may not need to nerf firecav that heavily. Also, with unit acceleration, cav may have a little harder time quickly escaping hairy situations.

Honestly, I would like the option to state in the aura file whether it is active always, when garrisoned, or when notgarrisoned. Many hero auras can be fixed with this option.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

7 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Honestly, I would like the option to state in the aura file whether it is active always, when garrisoned, or when notgarrisoned. Many hero auras can be fixed with this option.

Yes this would help, that way one could go and try to snipe indibil. Honestly i think if the discount is kept, the -25 percent train time should be +25%. This way cheaper units require more time to train. Having both fast train time and cheaper units is too strong. I think this would especially punish people who avoid early CS battles to go straight to firecav.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

@real_tabasco_sauce I think other benefits of the +25% train time would be to make the choice of iberian heroes more important and less easy, and also to add economic risk when trying to make ibercav (firecav+spearcav+cs javcav). If a player trains indibil and then suddenly gets hit by a strong attack, they will have a hard time retraining, especially if they have prioritized stables rather than barracks. This means that it would be more viable to try beat the iber player in one blow (sele ele) to prevent the transition to champions.

I definitely still think the iberian fire damage should not apply to units.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I definitely still think the iberian fire damage should not apply to units.

yes maybe this and an indibil nerf are all that is needed to fix firecav.

indibil nerf could be:

-aura ineffective when garrisoned

- +25 percent train time instead of -25%

how many people think this is a good approach?

Edited December 26, 2021 by real_tabasco_sauce

[soloooy0]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

yes maybe this and an indibil nerf are all that is needed to fix firecav.

indibil nerf could be:

-aura ineffective when garrisoned

- +25 percent train time instead of -25%

how many people think this is a good approach?

the only thing I would change would be fire damage x2 maximum, I think it would be good and since I work in ovens, I see it as good and logical, if a burn at work can put me off work for 3 days or more, one of those javelins if you are sick should be able to kill someone.
the rest I am in favor in everything