How would you change current base units upgrade trees?

If you coul.d change them. For me personally they are really good (much better than civ5 and its infamous anti cavalry unit line ).

The only unit really lacking for me is Rifleman unit between Musketman and Infantry, it just feels wrong, the jump is too big for immersion.
There's also one unit I'd actually prefer this game to not have, and by this I mean Slinger. Somewhat ahistorical IMO and I fail to understand why is it even here because bow is prehistoric invention and Archer could replace it as instant access unit, with first researchable ranged unit being Composite Bowman.

To be honest I could invent some revolutionary unit upgrade lines but they wouldn't be imolemented for civ6 anyway, and I'm speaking about this iteration.

 

Longswords man (or macemen) and rifleman to complete the melee line. I would also add trebuchets to the artillery line.

 

Slingers are not ahistorical. They just filled a different role than archers. Particularly against armored foes, slingers were more effective than archers as stones or cast lead bullets have a lot more mass than arrows.

 

Slingers shouldn’t upgrade to archers. They should continue to be available into the Middle Ages as a cheap ranged unit w/ bonuses for rugged terrain.

Insert “Man-at-Arms” as an intermediate step after Swordsman.

Rifleman is needed between Musketeers and Infantry.

Horse Archers and later Dragoons are needed as ranged cavalry.

Everyone should be able build war elephants and camelry if they have those animals, esp. if they don’t have horses.

 

Personally I think they need to make the anti-cav line more useful before they start adding extra units. The era gaps are jarring from a historical and aesthetic point of view, but the technological gaps in-game aren't too long.

The biggest gaps to my mind are in the naval lines. I'd like to see something between Galleys and Caravels, and possibly Quadriremes and Frigates. But naval combat in general is underdeveloped and lacking in utility now that cities are rarely built on coasts. They could at least give reefs a movement penalty as well as the defensive bonus (à la hills or forests on land).

 

First I think the game needs a new era in between the renaissance and the industrial era, both for pacing and for flavour plus more room for units.

Now onto things I'd like to see:


Riflemen at nationalism in the civics tree

Galeasses as a ranged naval unit at naval tradition

I like the idea of a separate ranged cavalry line and I would add a Reiters in between the horse archer and the Dragoon.

Men at arms and trebuchets as others said in the medieval era.

Personally I really miss the ww1 era units from CiV. WW1 tank and infantry to go along the biplane.


Honestly I think they should do more with forts too, zoc, passive damage on adjacent units and a trench replacement later on.


If we ever get a third expansion with disease in the same vein as the scenario like some are speculating I'm really hoping we get more WMDs to tie in with epidemics. Also chemical weapons to stick with the ww1 theme.

WMDs would also tie in nicely with the world congress and emergencies.

 

Just a few comments.
Originally, Civ VI tried to have units upgrade every other Era. They didn't do that well, so we wound up with Knights that took 3 Eras to upgrade to Tanks, and Scouts that took 5 Eras to Upgrade to Rangers. Now, as of GS, they have started 'padding' the Unit Upgrades so that they have a number of 1 Era gaps:
Courser to Cavalry
Cuirassier to Tank
Caravel to Ironclad
This in addition to the air units, which are all 1 Era upgrades.

In addition, Civ VI has a number of 'Artificial' Units that don't belong in the game at all:
Musketman - Yes, I know it's a 'staple' of Civ games, but in fact the first matchlock arquebus appears in 1472, the first effective 'musket' handgun, and the first pike and shot unit, the Spanish Colunela (predecessor of the Tercio, which was three Colonelas combined into one unit) appears in 1493 - 21 years later. The 'Musket' was ALWAYS combined with something else, because a 'musket man' had virtually no melee factor - he carried a 20 lb clumsy club and a cheap short sword that he wasn't trained to use, and virtually no armor.
AT Crew and Modern AT - at the scale of the game, these are part of every regular Infantry and Mech Infantry unit. As separate units they are ridiculous.
Machine Gun - even more so. Machine-guns have been integrated with regular infantry units down to battalion (less than 1000 men) since 1914.

Finally, we have the ludicrous situation in which troops armed entirely with shooting weapons (modern infantry) have no ranged factor at all, while troops whose 'ranged' weapons (slings, bows) have a fraction of the range of modern infantry weapons are 'ranged' in the game.

My solution, which I've come to after quite a bit of thinking and rethinking the Civ VI units, is to add two things to the general Civ VI units:
1. Melee and Anti-Civ lines both end in the Renaissance Era. At that point, both Swordsmen and Pikemen can be Upgraded to a new Category: Firepower Infantry. The Firepower Infantry Category is as follows:
Pike and Shot - Renaissance Era
Fusiliers - Industrial Era
Infantry - Modern Era
Mech. Infantry - Atomic Era
Firepower Infantry all have one 'unique' capability: they have a Ranged Factor before Melee on both defense and attack. This represents the fact that their primary weapons are ranged weapons, even though their doctrine may call for them to 'close with and destroy the enemy'. Pike and Shot and Fusliers both have an Anti-Cav capability as well, because they have either bayonets or pikes with them in dense formations.
When Upgraded to Firepower Infantry, Melee or Anti-Cav lose all their Promotions from the former Category, but they immediately get Promotions in the Firepower Infantry category up to 1/2 the promotions they previously had, rounded up. So if you had 3 Promotions before, you lose 1, had 1 keep 1, had 4 lose 2.

2. The Tech Promotions/Upgrades mechanism of the Giant Debt Robot should be incoporated into the rest of the Unit Categories.
Among these, and I'm still working on a complete list for all units/Eras/Categories, would be a Heavy Weapons Upgrade for Firepower Infantry in the Modern Era representing the adding of Machine-guns to the infantry units, and a Light Antitank Weapons Upgrade in the Atomic Era representing the antitank rockets, and a Fire and Forget Ugrade in the Atomic Era or Information Era representing antitank missiles.
Another Tech Upgrade, for Artillery, would be Tungsten Core Shot in the Atomic Era, which gives Artillery a hefty Anti-Tank capability.

And if people still want 'riflemen', the Fusilier could have Tech Upgrades for Rifled Firearm or Breech Loading that would make them the rifleman equivalent.

Ideally, Tech Upgrades would include Graphic changes to the unit: add a rocket-launcher carrier to the infantry unit, or a machinegun team, and even change the Fusilier from a tricorn-hatted frock-coat-wearing Redcoat-type to a 19th century infantryman in spiked helmet or kepi, but still with the colorful uniforms - the dull olive or feldgrau can wait until modern Infantry in the next Era.

 

Is there a good chart available that shows the full unit upgrade tree as it stands right now?

 

Yeah, I have never liked how in civ5 machine guns and anti tank weapons became separate divisions of troops, what a nonsense, especially as machine guns not only run across battlefields as fast as infantry, they are 100% effective against tanks. These were always just specialized parts of infantry divisions.

The reason why we got them as separate units: Firaxis made archer-crossbowman unit line in civ5 stupidly upgrade to riflemen and wasting their ranged promotions. What I really don't understand is why ranged promotions couldn't have been simply coded to "convert" to melee upon upgrade to riflemen. That +1 range or indirect fire bonuses would convert to march or whatever. Or even you could make it so ranged units upon conversion to riflemen have their promotions "reset" as in, you can spend that xp levelsl on melee tree.

They could also make something exactly opposite: riflemen as actually ranged units with the ability to take cities and vulnerable to direct cavalry charge (but not as much as archers and cannons and with the possibility of Bayonets promotion to neutralize that).

Instead we got ridiculous concept of crossbowmen being retrained to canoneers and canoneers not to artillery but to pure machine gun troop divisions, that consist only of MGs yet are effective against armor.

And thats still much better than the absurdity of civ5 xbowmen upgrading to gatling guns (1860s niche weapon barely used in serious warfare), then MGs and then rocket launcher infantry. I won't even comment on the civ5 abomination of anti cavalry line

I really like this idea.

 

One more rant.

It really annoys me how in civ the first unit in 4000BC is "warrior", that weird band of man with some sort of clubs, and on top of that they have "caveman club" icon in civ6.

Realistically the first unit should be some sort of very primitive spearman. Spear is a cultural universal, a concept appearing all over the world in all cultures, major pre-gun weapon of history and prehistory of mankind. Everybody has used long pointy sticks, this should be main unit line until guns, from simplest tribes to tercios.

There is an obvious problem: if in game main unit line already has anti-cavalry weapon, then what is the purpose of cavalry?

Maybe it could be made so initial spear unit would be heavily countered by some bronze age, which in turn would be heavily countered by the first cavalry unit, from the late iron age, then countered by spearmen or its upgraded version.

https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Units_(Civ6)

 

The earliest warriors depicted are from pre-dynastic Egypt (about 3000 BCE), Canaan/Syria (3200 BCE) and Sumer (3500 BCE) and they are very similar: stone-tipped put thrusting spears, bows, slings, stone-headed clubs or maces, flint knives, throwing spears or javelins. Both the earliest 'militant' Pharaoh depicted (Narmer) and the earliest Sumerian 'King' are shown as archers, implying that the bow was a 'speciality' weapon.
BOTH Egyptian and Sumer/Mesopotamian spearmen are shown with hide or wicker shields, as is at least one Egyptian pre-dynastic 'club' or mace-wielder.

The first use of metal did not make much difference in the weapon-types: copper-bladed knives, copper-headed 'axes' or 'maces', copper-pointed spears. It is only with Bronze a thousand years or more later that 'new' weaponry appears: the short bronze sword, metal body armor and helmets.

So much for history (China and India are purposely left out of this discussion because the earliest depictions of 'warriors' there are 1000-2500 years later than in Egypt/Middle East but are similar: spears, knives, heavy-head clubs or maces, bows and slings).

The use of both primitive spearmen and non-spear (club, mace men) is appropriate in the game. What really makes the 'spear' unit an effective anti-cavalry unit is not the use of a spear: it is the cohesion of a body of men with spears that can present a wall of unbroken spearpoints against horses: the development is not of weaponry, but of tactics, cohesion, discipline and training. A bunch of individuals on foot no matter how well-armed, will be ridden down by chariots or horsemen, because very few weapons in the hands of a 160 pound man can make up for the impact of an 800 pound horse at speed, let alone the weapons wielded by the rider or (chariot) driver/crew.

So, I have nothing against the development of Spearmen as specifically Anti-Cav to be later than the 'Warrior' at Start of Game. Although I suspect it is serendipity, even making the Spearman available at Bronze Working is not inappropriate: the earliest close-ranked formations of spearmen, shown in the 'Standard of Ur' and 'Vulture Stele' depictions in Mesopotamia, are from the early Bronze Age (2600 BCE) and the men are carrying large wicker shields and long, bronze-tipped spears (the Standard of Ur even shows men holding extra-long spears in both hands, which technically makes them Pikemen!).

My only quibble would be, in fact, with the Warriors. The one apparent certainty from all the various frescos, sculptures, bas-reliefs and funerary models is that if you were going to get close enough to hit somebody with a spear or a club/mace/knife, you carried a shield. Shieldless was for hunters, not warriors.

Finally, Spearmen and Cavalry co-existed in various forms almost 4000 years: from 2500 BCE or so until 1300 CE (when the Pikeman took over from the Spearman). That's because Tactics and Situation all too frequently Trump Weapons. A cohesive, well-shielded, well-armed mass of spearmen that gets hit in the rear on open ground by charging chariots or horsemen is Dead Meat regardless of the length of their spears or the depth of their formation. A group of cavalry that tries to charge over marshy ground against Anybody is going to become a bunch of men sitting on stuck-fast horses while lighter men on foot turn them into Hamburger Helper.

Civ VI started with some terrain/weapon variations in factors, but (as usual in Civ VI) didn't go Far Enough.

Just for starters, I'd add:
Negative Modifiers:
Mounted in Marsh, Flood Plain, Rain Forest, Old Growth Forest terrain
Spearmen/Pikemen in Rain Forest, Old Growth Forest (breaks up the advantage of formation)
Positive Modifiers:
Melee or Recon in Rain Forest, Old Growth Forest, Hills versus Anybody Else.
These, basically, are Tactical Modifiers showing the greater or lesser effectiveness of weapons and formations in certain situations. There should be lots more of these.

 

Civ would need a much better UI for this to be fun for the casual player - which hopefully it will have someday. Something like showing you which hexes have negative modifiers or could be attacked multiple times for your units, which attacks have positive modifiers for you units and which enemy units can be attacked multiple times.

It's a 'gamey' way of deterring which units can capture a city and which ones can't. It's funny to see someone pounding away a zero health city with only ranged weapons and not know why they can't take it.

They really should allow Melee or Anti-Cav create corps with Ranged.

 

One kinda rough concept I've thought of before would be replacing the current melee and anti-cav categories with some sort of "light infantry" and "heavy infantry" system; I like Boris' suggestion of a combined firearms infantry category later in the game as well!

One small tweak that'd make the current system better, I think, is to make anti-cav exert zone of control against cavalry units, and have their penalty vs. melee be removed if the anti-cav unit is fortified. Anti-cav could also benefit more from forts and hills; lance weapons would lend themselves better to defense, I imagine.

 

Or not have promotions that specify melee/ranged in the first place.

Or have a promotion tree for crossbows and guns. Then the crossbows upgrade to Rifles and the promos work.

 

I have a sudden mental image of a Military Advisor icon cropping up when you indicate an Attack: a Sun-Tzu-like character in the Ancient/Classical Era, a mustachioed von Moltke or Clauswitz in Industrial/Modern Eras, pointing out to you that you are not getting all the tactical advantages you should be getting. . .

I've always considered it a nod to the 'modern' infantry, which in almost all armies has the basic task/goal of 'closing with the enemy' and destroying him - even if, in fact, nobody does much closing any more because firepower kills or drives away the enemy before you can reach him. The game problem is that since gunpowder, the firepower of the infantry in question was always a more important casualty-causing mechanism than any amount of bayonets, knives, pikes, swords, etc.

That, unfortunately, would create a new unit with both melee and ranged attack factors, which they have so far strenuously avoided in Civ VI. This is a shame, because, as noted above, virtually ALL military formations with gunpowder weapons have a ranged factor of increasing importance and strength and effect as the technology improves. Their actual 'melee' factor, then, becomes increasingly short-range firepower instead of actual 'hand-to-hand' combat factor.

 

Give light cav and heavy cav strength penalty against cities, give city walls and encampments priority target (so they can focus down rams and siege towers). Introduce a rifleman unit. Make siege units cheaper.

 

You can simply keep the light infantry vs heavy infantry divide into modern times easily. Though it should be more like backbone infantry (spear line) and elite infantry(sword line). Your backbone infantry is your normal everyday GI type in more modern eras while your elite infantry is your paratroopers, marines,etc. The divisions that are more highly trained than your average soldier but are not the special operations types.

 

'Light' versus 'Heavy' Infantry is a slippery way to divide, because they really don't represent the same capabilities through the Eras.

Light Infantry in the Ancient, Classical, and really up to Gunpowder times was almost always a combination of Recon and Ranged: people who had no intention of getting close enough for someone on the other side to stick them with something. They could (and did) run down fleeing enemy that were already broken, or harass enemy who were advancing, but they couldn't really 'stand and fight'. Basically, in game terms, if they get into Melee they are toast.

Once you have gunpowder, anybody with a firearm starts to shed armor, because there just isn't any personal armor you can wear and still move in that will protect you from a musket - let along a modern rifle - until you reach composite/Kevlar technology, if then. So now 'Light' infantry is Shooting Infantry, who quickly become Elite Infantry because more initiative is expected from men turned loose to shoot from cover than from those still standing in ranks, So, 'Jaegers', 'Yegerskii' and such became not just Light Infantry, but Mountain Infantry (Gebirgsjaeger) or lightly equipped paratroops (Fallschirmjaeger).
But this is very different from the capabilities and expectations for the pre-gunpowder 'light infantry' .

This is another reason why I've come around to the conclusion that both 'Light' and 'Heavy' or Ranged, Melee, Anti-Cav, or whatever the 'muscle-powered' troops are called, need to convert to a completely new Category with gunpowder weapons: Firepower Infantry..

The Promotions for this new Category could include a Marine/Amphibious Promotion and a Mountain/Jaeger Promotion for the specialized skills of the mountain and marine units. Paratroops - and all their variations the air assault/helicopter and glider-landed troops - require both specialized Training Facilities (there's a reason why the US and other armies have usually one Airborne Training Facility each) and specially-trained 'carriers' - transports, helicopters, gliders, etc. Therefore, they should probably require some Special Handling - just as Special Forces do for the same reasons.

 

That is why instead of light and heavy I went with backbone (your militia to GI types) and elite (Your well equipped rich to your more highly trained modern divisions). What actual light infantry did would be more along the scout line which is somewhat represented.

 

Warning! A Challenger Wall of Text approaches!!
If I were to tackle this from a civ6 is a game perspective (so I'll be a little ahistorical) I think I would have 3 guiding approaches:

1. Balance at the Class level (Strategic balance)
2. Balance at the Unit combat level (Temporal balance)
3. Balance at the Unit cost level (Economic balance)

In that order of priority; that is, first I seek to balance the unit classes against other classes, then i seek to ensure they specific units are in good shape when they fight each other; then lastly I adjust costs as a final lever.
I will also stick to working within the confines of what we have. I would really love to pull some shenanigans where units promote to a different class but I'll avoid that here. I'm also just going to stick to land units because Naval units are in a really bad place.

1. Strategic Balance
I fundamentally believe the current unit classes are not balanced against each other properly. Especially with regards to Light/Heavy Mounted and Melee/Anti-cavalry.
I wrote a post a year ago that gives good background to my way of thinking about unit classes.
My fundamental thesis is that if there were a "blank" unit line with no special attributes, his strength in every era would be precisely
An/C/Me/R/I/Mo/At&Inf
25/35/45/55/65/75/85 with 2 movement.
The Melee line actually almost perfectly fits this, if you include the khevsur and redcoat units. So that's the standard I'm going to use.
Class characteristics as I see them:
Melee: Average strength, +10 vs Anticav
AC: Average Strength*, +10 vs Mounted
LC: Weaker Str (-3), very fast movement
HC: Higher Str (+3-5), fast movement
Ranged, Lower Str (-5.), -10 when defending against melee, -17 vs cities
Siege: Average Str, no penalty vs cities

*I think AC were intended to be average strength units but the huge number of unit gaps in vanilla led to some balance choices that have proved extremely questionable and have never been addressed.
Why did this end up this way? Well, the answer is civ5. In civ5, there was a top and bottom half of the tech tree in the early game similar to now. The top half had key science and wonder unlocks. The bottom half mostly had military units.
The problem arose that after the G+K combat rebalance, swordsmen had 14 str (bottom branch) while pikes had 16 (upper branch.) They sat on different upgrade lines like now. The issue was that you could pick up pikes while rushing the science techs and be able to effectively fight off those who went for swords and slowed down their science game. Swords further needed iron, which you had to gamble would be in your territory. It was very messy.
Anyways, that's how Melee got it's bonus vs AC. This basically kills the hope of AC being practical in almost every era.

Okay, so how would I change the unit classes?

Foot soldiers
First, I would strip Melee of its inherent bonus vs AC. Instead, Melee now has +10 defense from ranged strikes.
Anticav and Melee both get tweaks to their first tier promotions:
Melee's Battlecry swaps to a buffed +10 Zweihander. Tortoise becomes +7 def vs ranged instead. Battlecry, now a t3 promo, offers +10 attacking vs melee troops only.
AC's Thrust would become +10 vs districts. Call it Ransack. Schiltron remains.

Why do this?
At the class level, AC is weak to ranged and melee units while offering a bonus against mounted; Melee has the nominal weakness to ranged until they get a promotion, then they chew em up pretty decently. This is less than ideal.
I would rather make AC into basic, defensive infantry that players can always build (no resources) and which offer a cost effective counter to Mounted units that strong empires will throw at them. They are best countered by ranged strikes, against which they have little recourse; they could be soft countered by promoted melee units. Again, AC are primarily defensive units now. I think this is okay. I gave AC an earlier district bonus than Melee because I thought that levied peasants are probably pretty upset about life and thus good at burning stuff down . But seriously, as I will lay out with mounted units, I make a distinction between classes that effective at fighting in the field and those that are better for a siege. I think foot soldiers should be the superior besiegers generally, while AC are the superior siege option and Melee better at clearing the field.

Mounted lines
Currently, Mounted units are just better versions of infantry units: they are faster and often hit harder with no downside but anti-cavalry units (which suck, and thus, are never used.)
They also suffer when compared to each other: heavy cav is just as fast most of the time, and stronger than light cav, and often uses the same resource. So why build light cav? I'm looking to really address these points.

My changes:
Light Cav will be specialized as fast raiding and harassing units. Heavy Cav will be properly focused on just smashing other units. Mounted in general is oriented to being the superior choice for killing an enemy force on the field.
Mounted generally: -10 vs cities.
Light cav: retains lower Str, high speed; also keeps ZoC ignoring power.
Heavy Cav: retains higher str, speed; loses the ability to ignore ZoC.
Promotions: LC's coursers ability boosted to +10.
HC: Marauding swapped with Armor Piercing.

Why do this?
First, mounted needs some reduction in power level. They just have so many advantages, especially in movement, with the new terrain system. The idea is that they lose the ability to effectively take on cities. Bring in the angry peasant mob for that job. Mounted can sit out of garrison range and move in to sack the city. This is exactly why they slapped a -33% vs cities on every mounted unit in civ5 at the first patch (-10 when attacking is a -33% penalty. +10 is +50%. Fractions are weird.) Mounted units, especially HC, can still do their job of slaughtering units in the field, though. LC are specialized to pillage and go after vulnerable ranged and siege units, via retaining the ignorance of ZOC. A force of LC/HC fighting a melee/ranged army would have the HC crash into the front line, while LC could slip around them and butcher the ranged units. During sieges, LC would be especially handy to snipe enemy siege weapons. I like this. HC may not be able to literally walk around enemy formations, but recall that they boast the highest strength and best fighting ability man for man. They'll be okay.

2. Temporal Balance
Even with the unit class characteristics balanced, there is still the issue of some units not stacking up well. Since I won't fill in every unit gap, that means there will be struggle points: a Unit will fight units one era behind (when it is first unlocked) and one era ahead (when it is about to unlock its upgrade.)
I'll try to smooth out some of them.
Foot soldiers:
AC line: first, I'm going to actually make it average strength. Pike to 45 str. AT crews to 75 strength. Modern AT to 85 strength.
Melee: Swords and sword UUs reverted down to 35 again. (Legions stay at 40.) Infantry to 75 strength.
LC: horses to 35 strength. Helicopters to 5 move if they don't have it already, and ignore terrain costs.
HC: pretty happy with these guys. Cuirassiers to 65; Teddy's Rough Riders now replace cuirs.
Ranged: MG to 70/65; add an upgrade for info era (Civ6 bazooka, anyone?) for 80/75. Assuming the 2 range from GS stays. If we went back to 1 range then +5 to their melee strengths.
New units:
Siege: Trebuchet. For handling Medieval Walls and Meme warfare.
Ranged: Aforementioned 'bazooka' type unit.
Melee: Rifleman at Rifling. 65str. (I would also love a longswordsman at 45 str in the middle ages... I guess he can be optional.)
Rule Change: Unique Units that don't replace anything can now be upgraded into.

Why do this?
The main bulk of changes are to make AC viable, and to fix a problem from vanilla where fewer unit upgrades meant foot soldiers only got 70 instead of 75 strength; this makes tanks @ 80 OP.
I want riflemen to help handle industrial warfare. There are no footsoldiers in industrial combat that can stand up to cuirs. This gives a counterweight. Extant Pike and shot will still be useable as a cheap alternative to enemies massing horsies.
I want Trebs because darn it, why do walls get 3 levels but siege units get the shaft? Plus it would give the Domrey a better raison d'etre: elephant trebuchet (I would buff it more if it had a base unit.) Memetic.
Ranged units really need something that is functional at the late game, Especially in the context of the new air units and resources.

3. Economic Balance
If the first two rounds of changes have been effective, then there won't be too much to change here.
If I hadn't touched unit strengths, production costs would be massively unbalanced. But now they are okay. Mainly my concerns are that resource costs are generally a bit out of place.
Key tweaks:
No longer need oil to make infantry or artillery (but do need it for Rocket Arty and Mech Inf.)
Tanks+Modern armor require 20 iron to be built, oil to fuel.
Cavalry unit requires horses instead of niter.
Primarily I want to make sure LC/HC are differentiated more in the industrial, and that people without oil have some recourse to posses a military in the modern era. Tanks are still amazing units, and the end of tree units need oil. My goal is that end game warfare is more of a "have a military of X units, which are a mix of resource less and as many advanced, oil using units as you can afford.)

Addendum:
In v2 of this I would also tweak the later recon units so they could truly function as skirmishing units. With the extensive changes to Anticav, I would also look at tweaks to strength advantage of H Cav (possibly improving knights and chariots to +5 over average) and the strength of anticav line itself (possibly pulling back their str to something like -3 vs average.) This would be in case melee's soft counter ability isn't working as intended or if AC's general strength improvements become too overwhelming to justify the cost of HCav.
This focused on game balance and not realism. As I said at the beginning, I'd really prefer to do things like merge both foot soldier lines into riflemen and create an AT support unit line, etc. But I'm sticking to simple number tweaks and just a couple unit additions to do the heavy lifting.