Calvary...is there any point to melee units?

[Ryika]

The spearmen *are* the regular melee units, both in the game and historically.

No, spearmen are not "regular" melee units, Spearmen are Anti-Cavalry units, it even says so right there in the tooltip, and their promotion class is literally "Anti Cavalry". Well, at least that's their main role, they do of course also act as Fallback-Unit if you don't have Iron, although it's highly questionable whether spending 25 extra Production and 1 gpt maintenance (assuming the Policy to avoid that has not been chosen) is really worth 5 extra Strength over the Warrior.

"Regular" Melee Units are Swordsmen, as the name of their Promotion Class - "Melee" - demonstrates.

Of course that's how the system is meant to work, as correctly pointed out in earlier posts it doesn't quite work out that way.

In your pro-kryptonite scenario, you'd be better off just to skip the mounted units.

No idea why you'd think that. In a properly balanced system you'd produce what is efficient against your opponent's army, if you see a bunch of melee + ranged units but not a lot of spearmen then constructing Cavalry is exactly the correct decision, and against a more balanced army Cavalry would still be a great flanking unit that messes up the opponents formation. Or a nice distraction if you manage to sneak them into the opponent's territory.

 

[lindsay40k]

I think the fine tuning of the various units' stats isn't as big an influence on their performance as the way movement and map generation works. If an archery unit is on a hill and takes a shot at your spearman, they'll get to take another shot as you move next to them and then deal a bit more damage as you attack them. Horseman can start its turn out of range and get the first attack in. So, you want to be able to move your blocker units around, to deal with a flanking rider... which, with the new terrain rules, is a lot more difficult.

Whilst historically, the sort of troops represented by spearmen were deadliest in a 'combine harvester' strategy with cavalry protecting the flanks against their counterparts, I can see the argument for the game to use a stone-paper-scissors approach... especially when the battlefield on which your bronze age tribe takes on an invading warband is basically the size of China.