bumpyglint
Warlord
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- Aug 19, 2016
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What do you mean? Is it a a casual event or something similar?
Land Combat Units Need a Bit of a Rework
- Thread starter Jkchart
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One of the 'hidden' actions on a unit is a clock icon which is the 'alert' action. The unit waits until dangerous unit comes near and wakes up.
stealth_nsk
Deity
They are just infantry with more strength, that's the important part.
I think we need some more time to play around policy cards, resources, unique abilities, etc. to say how often infantry units are viable, but yes, it seems some rebalance of the core abilities would be nice.
wesplaysciv
Warlord
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- May 17, 2020
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- 276
Good ideas, yeah I think something to make cavalry weaker on the defensive side and higher maintenance cost would be good.
Has anyone tried mamluks btw? They are in contention for a bad UU but maybe I wasn’t using them right. They start with -10 CS!
Has anyone tried mamluks btw? They are in contention for a bad UU but maybe I wasn’t using them right. They start with -10 CS!
Great observations and solution proposals!
Based on them, creating a balancing-mod should be possible (not by me, unfortunately, as I have no modding skills) once the steam workshop is up and running, shouldn't it?
Because I doubt that Firaxis will be willing to change their combat system that deeply.
Much too elaborate and "difficult" to understand for beginners.
Based on them, creating a balancing-mod should be possible (not by me, unfortunately, as I have no modding skills) once the steam workshop is up and running, shouldn't it?
Because I doubt that Firaxis will be willing to change their combat system that deeply.
Much too elaborate and "difficult" to understand for beginners.
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bumpyglint
Warlord
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- 190
Sorry I misread your first message, I thought it was a feature already included in the game and I was shocked I didn't notice it
I was asking more details thinking it was already a feature
I like this as well, infantry to defend, while Cavs kill in the field
Taefin
King
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I used them to fend off a brutal triple invasion on deity. When operating in my cities this amounted to +3 or +4 I think, which was notable for hitting harder than my infantry, but then almost useless in towns, or in the strip of land between cities. I think -5 would have done well to capture their defensive intention (they are already brutal to fight when the AI has them in its cities). Icing on the cake was fighting the Normans who’s UU cav had a flat +5 bonus for free (and that my commander with the commendation was dead).
Vincent_lacruz
Warlord
The masteries that boost infantry tends to appear mid-age, while those that boost cavalry appears more toward the end. That's the way for infantry to catch up a bit versus cavalry in term of power.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
In reference to a bunch of comments on Maintenance Costs in-game:
Agree that it is hard to get a balance when the economy and therefore Gold available skyrockets in late-game (in my own experience, from about mid-Exploration Age on I am usually swimming in gold). On the other hand, that just means Maintenance Costs need to be 'tweaked' in some other way to be meaningful.
Like, make Cavalry cost Influence, the most dear of all the 'currencies' in the game. That would probably put a serious clamp on the number of cavalry units anybody could afford, though - too much unless a bunch of other Influence Costs are also balanced.
Even better, as suggested by one poster, would be to tie Horses to Cavalry (and later, Oil to Armor, the cavalry successor). But this does not have to be completely restrictive: even in Antiquity, Horses could be Moved to where they were needed, so having Horse resource slotted anywhere in any connected settlement should be enough to allow you to build Cavalry - but, for example, perhaps you can only acquire as many cavalry units/turn as you have Horses slotted. In other words, have 2 Horses slotted in connected Settlements and in a single turn you can only have two Cavalry units 'under construction' from Production, or bought with Gold, or received through other means (Charlemagne's Celebrations, for example). And if all your Horses are in an unconnected Settlement - too bad, that's the only place you can produce or buy Cavalry.
Something like that would not make the Horse (or later, the Oil) Resource an absolute prohibition on keeping any amount of Cavalry, but would make it harder to acquire them - or replace them if needed.
Infantry's advantages over Cavalry, where they existed, were the product of Formation and/or Firepower. No Horseman in his right mind would charge the front of a phalanx or taxeis of Macedonian or Swiss pikemen, or a square bristling with muskets and fixed bayonets. For one thing, he would have all he could do to get his horse to make such a charge into what appears to the Equine Mind as a Solid Wall. For a second thing, he would never do it twice because his chance of surviving the first attempt would not be great.
Previous Civ games, of course, have had 'built-in' bonuses or whole progressions of units called Anti-Cavalry to reflect this. I'd rather we didn't go back to that, because most of the 'melee' Infantry in the game already reflect the armored, close-order troops that would get any 'anti-cavalry' bonus. Chargng a dense mass of shielded, armored infantry even when they aren't equipped with spears was not easy - Roman Legions with swordsmen were only smashed by enemy cavalry when they got hit in the flank or rear (as at Adrianopolis in 378 CE). Facing cavalry, there's no evidence they were ever much concerned about them unless they were Very Heavy - cataphracts or armored Sarmatian Lancers, and then they just added some spearmen to the Legion and kept right on going.
So, another possibility is to put the vulnerability where it belongs: Ranged units whether archers or field cannon were prime targets for cavalry from Antiquity to (early) Modern Ages. Tweak the factors so that Cavalry, as now, can almost run over archers or field cannon in the open, but have to spend several turns 'chewing' through regular Infantry in all Ages without serious Bonuses (Commanders, Policies, et al)
This would, parenthetically, also make the combat in Civ VII close to the tactical tripod that existed throughout Real History: Cavalry using their mobility to get at the vulnerable parts of the enemy army - flanks, rear, 'light' ranged units - while infantry has great staying power and has to be ground down with ranged fire before cavalry or other infantry can take them.
All just ideas and suggestions. I agree that Something is needed to balance the Infantry - Cavalry - Ranged tripod in the game, but believe it may take more than a single 'fix' to achieve the goal.
Agree that it is hard to get a balance when the economy and therefore Gold available skyrockets in late-game (in my own experience, from about mid-Exploration Age on I am usually swimming in gold). On the other hand, that just means Maintenance Costs need to be 'tweaked' in some other way to be meaningful.
Like, make Cavalry cost Influence, the most dear of all the 'currencies' in the game. That would probably put a serious clamp on the number of cavalry units anybody could afford, though - too much unless a bunch of other Influence Costs are also balanced.
Even better, as suggested by one poster, would be to tie Horses to Cavalry (and later, Oil to Armor, the cavalry successor). But this does not have to be completely restrictive: even in Antiquity, Horses could be Moved to where they were needed, so having Horse resource slotted anywhere in any connected settlement should be enough to allow you to build Cavalry - but, for example, perhaps you can only acquire as many cavalry units/turn as you have Horses slotted. In other words, have 2 Horses slotted in connected Settlements and in a single turn you can only have two Cavalry units 'under construction' from Production, or bought with Gold, or received through other means (Charlemagne's Celebrations, for example). And if all your Horses are in an unconnected Settlement - too bad, that's the only place you can produce or buy Cavalry.
Something like that would not make the Horse (or later, the Oil) Resource an absolute prohibition on keeping any amount of Cavalry, but would make it harder to acquire them - or replace them if needed.
Infantry's advantages over Cavalry, where they existed, were the product of Formation and/or Firepower. No Horseman in his right mind would charge the front of a phalanx or taxeis of Macedonian or Swiss pikemen, or a square bristling with muskets and fixed bayonets. For one thing, he would have all he could do to get his horse to make such a charge into what appears to the Equine Mind as a Solid Wall. For a second thing, he would never do it twice because his chance of surviving the first attempt would not be great.
Previous Civ games, of course, have had 'built-in' bonuses or whole progressions of units called Anti-Cavalry to reflect this. I'd rather we didn't go back to that, because most of the 'melee' Infantry in the game already reflect the armored, close-order troops that would get any 'anti-cavalry' bonus. Chargng a dense mass of shielded, armored infantry even when they aren't equipped with spears was not easy - Roman Legions with swordsmen were only smashed by enemy cavalry when they got hit in the flank or rear (as at Adrianopolis in 378 CE). Facing cavalry, there's no evidence they were ever much concerned about them unless they were Very Heavy - cataphracts or armored Sarmatian Lancers, and then they just added some spearmen to the Legion and kept right on going.
So, another possibility is to put the vulnerability where it belongs: Ranged units whether archers or field cannon were prime targets for cavalry from Antiquity to (early) Modern Ages. Tweak the factors so that Cavalry, as now, can almost run over archers or field cannon in the open, but have to spend several turns 'chewing' through regular Infantry in all Ages without serious Bonuses (Commanders, Policies, et al)
This would, parenthetically, also make the combat in Civ VII close to the tactical tripod that existed throughout Real History: Cavalry using their mobility to get at the vulnerable parts of the enemy army - flanks, rear, 'light' ranged units - while infantry has great staying power and has to be ground down with ranged fire before cavalry or other infantry can take them.
All just ideas and suggestions. I agree that Something is needed to balance the Infantry - Cavalry - Ranged tripod in the game, but believe it may take more than a single 'fix' to achieve the goal.
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Aeon221
Lord of the Cheese Helmet
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- 1,994
Cavalry should be strictly superior to infantry in all respects in ideal terrain. When a country has been able to build a mostly or fully cavalry force in the past they have always done so. The chief disadvantages to the maintenance of a cavalry force are as follows:
* the need to support large stud farms to replace losses of mounts. This is extremely expensive and absolutely mandatory if you don't want your mounted cavalry to become infantry after the first clash
* the caloric and other health needs of horses. A US Army horse during the American Civil War horse required ~3x the food by weight of a standard infantryman. Many people (including in this thread) incorrectly generalize this to all horses in all armies. Steppe ponies require substantially less food by weight than a Central European draft horse (a true chonker of a horse!) and both are different in veterinary and shelter requirements as well (steppe ponies are much more resilient to weather than a Central European draft horse which requires a regular stable). Central and Western European officers have historically had immense difficulty grasping this point
* horses are dramatically less resilient than men to exhaustion and interruptions in supply. While a man can go seven days without food before suffering severe health consequences a horse is typically doomed to die after three.
* mobility. While light cavalry can typically go most places -- and mules can go anywhere a man can, making them still the premier choice for supply in high altitude environments -- heavy cavalry is constrained to operating only in open terrain with some fairly strict limits on ground state and terrain complexity. A big, heavy and potentially armored horse carrying a big, heavy and heavily armed and armored man is simply not able to cross a muddy field, river or complex terrain more generally
* water transport. Horses cannot safely be transported any great distance by sea without loss rates in excess of 70% (yes, really, even 100% loss rates are considered unfortunately but fairly typical) unless special accommodations are available. And by that I mean purpose built ships with special harnesses to suspend the horse in mid air. Horses panic in even mildly challenging sea state and have a tendency to badly injure themselves with panicked kicking. Here is a broadly accurate depiction of the British method of horse transport
Elephantery and Camelry have similar limitations but with some special twists. Elephantery's command and control challenges are well known, but the veterinary and especially nutritional requirements are if anything an even more insurmountable challenge! Not to mention elephant stud farms are quite challenging to build and so expensive that only a few states have been willing to maintain them for any length of time. Almost all nations abandoned elephantery as a concept relatively quickly. The sole exceptions are South East Asian states where elephants are nigh omnipresent and even there they were primarily used as an elite status symbol, not a primary combat arm. Camels are extremely good in their preferred desert operating environment and are the premier animal for long distance desert maneuver but lack the speed, strength and stamina of the horse and in terrain that isn't desert struggles to match their equine competitor in any aspect. They also happen to be... unpleasant companions. Where the horse tends to compete with the dog for the status of man's best friend... the camel is in contention with the cat for man's least agreeable companion.
So if I were going to modify cavalry to appropriately depict them and their historical limitations
* heavy shock cavalry should outperform infantry in open terrain, no question. The bonus should NOT be small! Think +5 or even +10
* heavy shock cavalry should not be able to fortify. Cavalry have to keep their mounts alive. This is no small task. They don't have time to waste on digging. Digging is the domain of the poor bloody infantry!
* heavy shock cavalry should have a baseline doubled flanking bonus. While they were perfectly capable of smashing infantry formations with a frontal charge whatever the claims of the "horses too scared to charge formed infantry" lobby -- despite the innumerable records of horses doing exactly that, including modern footage of horses charging large blocks of protestors.... or the fact that in the Macedonian system the cavalry was the decisive arm that shattered the phalanx of the enemy while the phalanx existed merely to fix the enemy in place for the killing blow -- the preference for the cavalry has always been to hammer the enemy after they have been worn down by the infantry as this permits the desired decisive blow
* heavy shock cavalry should have a HP replenishment penalty of 5. This means they would not replenish health in enemy territory without an appropriately promoted logistics general
* heavy shock cavalry should have a combat penalty in all non open terrain unless an appropriately promoted maneuver general is supporting them
* heavy shock cavalry should not be capable of ocean transport until the modern era (yes really, horse transports were a fairly late innovation. some horses made it over the ocean to the Americas but formations of heavy shock cavalry absolutely not)
* heavy shock cavalry should have high maintenance cost
It would be good if an explicit light cavalry branch was added that included but was not limited to horse archers. This formation would operate similarly to infantry -- including the option of ocean transport -- but with better vision range and better mobility. Their primary use case would be reconnaissance, screening, and escorting generals, settlers and the like high value targets. You wouldn't want to use them for direct combat and they wouldn't be particularly good at it, but they'd be a great tool for grabbing terrain, watching flanks and generally being the eyes and ears of the commander.
Summarizing the intended roles:
* heavy shock cavalry would be the premier high power tool in the field but lack the replenishment capability and defensive capability to match infantry in sustained combat. If you see a maneuver general with a packed blob of heavy shock cavalry, you should be deeply concerned
* infantry would dominate rough terrain and siege warfare by virtue of their ability to replenish more quickly and to dig in
* infantry would be the preferred tool for expeditionary warfare as unlike cavalry they would be sea transportable
* the need to support large stud farms to replace losses of mounts. This is extremely expensive and absolutely mandatory if you don't want your mounted cavalry to become infantry after the first clash
* the caloric and other health needs of horses. A US Army horse during the American Civil War horse required ~3x the food by weight of a standard infantryman. Many people (including in this thread) incorrectly generalize this to all horses in all armies. Steppe ponies require substantially less food by weight than a Central European draft horse (a true chonker of a horse!) and both are different in veterinary and shelter requirements as well (steppe ponies are much more resilient to weather than a Central European draft horse which requires a regular stable). Central and Western European officers have historically had immense difficulty grasping this point
* horses are dramatically less resilient than men to exhaustion and interruptions in supply. While a man can go seven days without food before suffering severe health consequences a horse is typically doomed to die after three.
* mobility. While light cavalry can typically go most places -- and mules can go anywhere a man can, making them still the premier choice for supply in high altitude environments -- heavy cavalry is constrained to operating only in open terrain with some fairly strict limits on ground state and terrain complexity. A big, heavy and potentially armored horse carrying a big, heavy and heavily armed and armored man is simply not able to cross a muddy field, river or complex terrain more generally
* water transport. Horses cannot safely be transported any great distance by sea without loss rates in excess of 70% (yes, really, even 100% loss rates are considered unfortunately but fairly typical) unless special accommodations are available. And by that I mean purpose built ships with special harnesses to suspend the horse in mid air. Horses panic in even mildly challenging sea state and have a tendency to badly injure themselves with panicked kicking. Here is a broadly accurate depiction of the British method of horse transport
Elephantery and Camelry have similar limitations but with some special twists. Elephantery's command and control challenges are well known, but the veterinary and especially nutritional requirements are if anything an even more insurmountable challenge! Not to mention elephant stud farms are quite challenging to build and so expensive that only a few states have been willing to maintain them for any length of time. Almost all nations abandoned elephantery as a concept relatively quickly. The sole exceptions are South East Asian states where elephants are nigh omnipresent and even there they were primarily used as an elite status symbol, not a primary combat arm. Camels are extremely good in their preferred desert operating environment and are the premier animal for long distance desert maneuver but lack the speed, strength and stamina of the horse and in terrain that isn't desert struggles to match their equine competitor in any aspect. They also happen to be... unpleasant companions. Where the horse tends to compete with the dog for the status of man's best friend... the camel is in contention with the cat for man's least agreeable companion.
So if I were going to modify cavalry to appropriately depict them and their historical limitations
* heavy shock cavalry should outperform infantry in open terrain, no question. The bonus should NOT be small! Think +5 or even +10
* heavy shock cavalry should not be able to fortify. Cavalry have to keep their mounts alive. This is no small task. They don't have time to waste on digging. Digging is the domain of the poor bloody infantry!
* heavy shock cavalry should have a baseline doubled flanking bonus. While they were perfectly capable of smashing infantry formations with a frontal charge whatever the claims of the "horses too scared to charge formed infantry" lobby -- despite the innumerable records of horses doing exactly that, including modern footage of horses charging large blocks of protestors.... or the fact that in the Macedonian system the cavalry was the decisive arm that shattered the phalanx of the enemy while the phalanx existed merely to fix the enemy in place for the killing blow -- the preference for the cavalry has always been to hammer the enemy after they have been worn down by the infantry as this permits the desired decisive blow
* heavy shock cavalry should have a HP replenishment penalty of 5. This means they would not replenish health in enemy territory without an appropriately promoted logistics general
* heavy shock cavalry should have a combat penalty in all non open terrain unless an appropriately promoted maneuver general is supporting them
* heavy shock cavalry should not be capable of ocean transport until the modern era (yes really, horse transports were a fairly late innovation. some horses made it over the ocean to the Americas but formations of heavy shock cavalry absolutely not)
* heavy shock cavalry should have high maintenance cost
It would be good if an explicit light cavalry branch was added that included but was not limited to horse archers. This formation would operate similarly to infantry -- including the option of ocean transport -- but with better vision range and better mobility. Their primary use case would be reconnaissance, screening, and escorting generals, settlers and the like high value targets. You wouldn't want to use them for direct combat and they wouldn't be particularly good at it, but they'd be a great tool for grabbing terrain, watching flanks and generally being the eyes and ears of the commander.
Summarizing the intended roles:
* heavy shock cavalry would be the premier high power tool in the field but lack the replenishment capability and defensive capability to match infantry in sustained combat. If you see a maneuver general with a packed blob of heavy shock cavalry, you should be deeply concerned
* infantry would dominate rough terrain and siege warfare by virtue of their ability to replenish more quickly and to dig in
* infantry would be the preferred tool for expeditionary warfare as unlike cavalry they would be sea transportable
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Some extra points to @Aeon221's excellent post.
The maintenance requirements for horses have varied wildly depending on both horse types and the culture. Pastoral groups from the Scythians to the Nez Perce had much less trouble maintaining enormous horse herds because their entire culture and economy were built around the horses and providing them with care, pasturage, and shelter was a huge part of the effort of the entire society. Attempts to 'graft' this experience onto more settled polities did not Go Well - prime example being Tang China, whose aristocracy was heavily intermarried with pastoral nomads ("northern barbarians") and influenced by them. Attempts to replace peasant farms with horse pastures resulted in widespread and near-continuous rebellion.
In the 20th century, both the German and Soviet armies in WWII classified horses into 'cart', 'riding' and 'artillery' types, with cart horses being the smallest and artillery horses by far the largest, the 'North German' or Pomeranian horses and their equivalents. These last required, by German estimates, up to 20 pounds of grain per day, or about 6 times a man's rations. By contrast, Soviet/Russian 'panje' (cart) horses could subsist by eating thatched roofs, leaves, branches, any grass and largely did not need fodder at all except in winter: the differences in required supplies for maintenance were enormous. German losses in artillery horses in 1941, largely due to exhaustion (overwork) and lack of food, were never made up during the war despite confiscating every large horse in western Europe: in 1942 even the most completely reinforced and rebuilt German infantry divisions only had about 80% of the mobility they had had before June 1941, and their mobility only went down from there.
Dedicated sea 'horse transports' date back to the Khelandion type ship of the Byzantines, an enlarged Dromon with ramps on the sides so that horses could be walked off onto the beach without having to be dangerously lifted over the side. Transporting cavalry units by sea is by no means impossible, but like everything else about horses, requires a great deal of prior planning and expensive preparation.
Light cavalry in game, unfortunately, would largely have the same function as the Scout units already included. Possibly that is how to 'sneak' them in, as an Exploration Age and later Scout taking over the reconnaissance missions but with just enough combat capability to also act as screens and/or escorts. In Modern Age those could upgrade (Tier 2?) to Armored Cars, a very fast ground unit with strictly situational combat capability.
If horses are expensive, elephants are like keeping luxury Yachts: the requirements are almost unbelievable. One Mughul record indicated that a single elephant ate as much as 15 camels or 25 horses. On the other hand, elephants were used in combat for almost 2000 years, only leaving the battlefield when gunpowder weapons made them simply too big a target to be missed. A lot of their inclusion on the battlefield was for the psychological effect, of course: they scared horses and men not familiar with them into panic-stricken flight on more than one occasion, which led commanders to think they would have the same effect on well-disciplined troops. That proved to be a false and frequently fatal delusion.
As to man's least agreeable companion, the military history of civilizations seems to indicate that it is other men . . .
The maintenance requirements for horses have varied wildly depending on both horse types and the culture. Pastoral groups from the Scythians to the Nez Perce had much less trouble maintaining enormous horse herds because their entire culture and economy were built around the horses and providing them with care, pasturage, and shelter was a huge part of the effort of the entire society. Attempts to 'graft' this experience onto more settled polities did not Go Well - prime example being Tang China, whose aristocracy was heavily intermarried with pastoral nomads ("northern barbarians") and influenced by them. Attempts to replace peasant farms with horse pastures resulted in widespread and near-continuous rebellion.
In the 20th century, both the German and Soviet armies in WWII classified horses into 'cart', 'riding' and 'artillery' types, with cart horses being the smallest and artillery horses by far the largest, the 'North German' or Pomeranian horses and their equivalents. These last required, by German estimates, up to 20 pounds of grain per day, or about 6 times a man's rations. By contrast, Soviet/Russian 'panje' (cart) horses could subsist by eating thatched roofs, leaves, branches, any grass and largely did not need fodder at all except in winter: the differences in required supplies for maintenance were enormous. German losses in artillery horses in 1941, largely due to exhaustion (overwork) and lack of food, were never made up during the war despite confiscating every large horse in western Europe: in 1942 even the most completely reinforced and rebuilt German infantry divisions only had about 80% of the mobility they had had before June 1941, and their mobility only went down from there.
Dedicated sea 'horse transports' date back to the Khelandion type ship of the Byzantines, an enlarged Dromon with ramps on the sides so that horses could be walked off onto the beach without having to be dangerously lifted over the side. Transporting cavalry units by sea is by no means impossible, but like everything else about horses, requires a great deal of prior planning and expensive preparation.
Light cavalry in game, unfortunately, would largely have the same function as the Scout units already included. Possibly that is how to 'sneak' them in, as an Exploration Age and later Scout taking over the reconnaissance missions but with just enough combat capability to also act as screens and/or escorts. In Modern Age those could upgrade (Tier 2?) to Armored Cars, a very fast ground unit with strictly situational combat capability.
If horses are expensive, elephants are like keeping luxury Yachts: the requirements are almost unbelievable. One Mughul record indicated that a single elephant ate as much as 15 camels or 25 horses. On the other hand, elephants were used in combat for almost 2000 years, only leaving the battlefield when gunpowder weapons made them simply too big a target to be missed. A lot of their inclusion on the battlefield was for the psychological effect, of course: they scared horses and men not familiar with them into panic-stricken flight on more than one occasion, which led commanders to think they would have the same effect on well-disciplined troops. That proved to be a false and frequently fatal delusion.
As to man's least agreeable companion, the military history of civilizations seems to indicate that it is other men . . .
ehecatzin
Emperor
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2007
- Messages
- 1,827
I agree with the suggestions. I would like to see cavarly unable to fortify in the first place, and while we are at it, have a penalty to attacking fortified units. on the open field cavalry should be able to crush anything, would make the bulwark promotion more valuable.
So perhaps
Cavalry... unable to fortify, flanking bonus, no terrain defense bonuses
(and a general increase in all maintenance costs ... but even more for Cavalry...possibly have the -1 maintenance abilities etc be per age)
ProMeTheus112
Prince
I think some unique infantries are good for the cost. I think if only infantries can fortify, it adds a little bit of movement management to place a cavalry back into the fortification, but why not. I was also thinking that sometimes, cavalry seems not that much more expansive for the added strength. But some unique infantries with their special actions are nice. I don't really know yet. It's already in a nice place overall, but maybe can be improved.
Aeon221
Lord of the Cheese Helmet
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2003
- Messages
- 1,994
Speaking specifically to the Roman cavalry transport by sea -- and they were far from the only ones to come up with basic traction sling horse transports -- my comment was about intercontinental voyages. I'm fine with heavy cavalry being able to cross *coastal* water which is what the Civ7 equivalent of the Roman horse transporters would be.
In Civ7 terms this would mean the technology that permits all land units to cross the open ocean would be changed to permitting all land units other than heavy cavalry to cross the open ocean.
This is a significant change! I don't know if anyone else has sent a maneuver general with a large complement of heavy cavalry to destroy a deity ai on the other side of the ocean but boy howdy did they get the job done.
In Civ7 terms this would mean the technology that permits all land units to cross the open ocean would be changed to permitting all land units other than heavy cavalry to cross the open ocean.
This is a significant change! I don't know if anyone else has sent a maneuver general with a large complement of heavy cavalry to destroy a deity ai on the other side of the ocean but boy howdy did they get the job done.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Byzantine - the Khelandion seems to have been developed almost 1000 years after the original Romans were gone.
But, piling on to your comments, amphibious landing and transport of heavy cavalry and its upgraded Tanks/Armor in Modern Age both required specialized transport and equipment. so, transport of Cavalry could be limited to Exploration Age and later, of Tanks and Armor to Modern Age only with the Armor or Armor Mastery Tech - relatively late in fthe tree for that Age. That fits neatly with the development of specialized heavy equipment landing and transport craft only at the end of the 1930s, or almost 3/4 of the way through the age.
Perhaps a small tweak to include some rock-paper-scissors effects from the SoD days would help. I do admit that I miss that considerably. Makes an issue of more unique units to contend with so perhaps not workable in 1UPT, but commanders could be a space to explore. Trees other than assault and maneuver are not often used anyways.
ProMeTheus112
Prince
I use all the trees tbh, I think they're good. As you climb up the difficulty, it makes more sense to take actual defensive stance for example.
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