TLDR at bottom. My goal in these remarks are the most limited changes for the biggest impact.
@acluewithout thou shall incur the price of mentioning me in a comment- a tsunami of text!
Anticav have, IMO, two distinct sets of problems.
In the first half of the game they are simply too weak.
In the second half of the game, cav are too strong.
The nature of civ games means that AC either won't be trained or will not survive into the midgame, rendering promotions moot.
I repeat this in every thread relating to unit classes but there appears to be very strong evidence of an intended progression of unit strength through the ages - namely, 25+10 per era past the ancient. Some classes, like heavy cav, are stronger, the ranged class is nigh universally -5 ranged from this target and -10 melee from their ranged str. Etc etc. Keep this in mind when reading the following...
Section I: the Weakness of Spears & Pikes
When we say anticav, most people are thinking of spearmen and pikemen.
Pretty much everyone agrees these units are not very impactful.
Spearmen and Pikes actually suck for different reasons. Because of civ6's every-other-era upgrade scheme, where in any given era some classes are more "advanced" and some are lagging behind, and then it generally reverses the next era - at some point, the game has to start. This means out of the gate, some classes will beat others. Many people point out that warriors beat spears 1v1 and in cost. Not great!
But, the ancient era is either warrior rush or barb defense. You usually make the classical before true large scale wars can start... At which point, you're dealing with swords and horses. Spears are an ancient unit that has to fight on a classical field. This means they will get slaughtered. The designers actually seem to have consciously adjusted archers from 20
to 25
to account for the lack of a classical upgrade. Spears function well in a world warriors-spears-heavy chariots. In fact, let's look at spears v chariots for a second: both cost 65, spears beat chariots by +7 but chariots generally have the strength and move advantage. No one has ever complained that spears are ineffective vs chariots. We will come back to this point.
If we change nothing else, spears should be boosted to 30
. This is the same treatment that archers get, and its to recognize that the classical is a scary place for ancient units. There is no "pre-historic era" where people plod around on 15
donkeys for spears to have an advantage over. We must recognize that the upgrade system is discrete and it has a serious breakdown at the very start. Spears would fight warriors at parity, get decent trades against archers, beat horsemen, and still lose badly to swords.
While spears match the strength template and I suggest should be boosted because of the early game dynamic, Pikes don't match the template: they
should be strength 45, but inexplicably got 41. They then molded a bunch of military tactics UUs on pikes, made them also 41
180
ish, realized those unique units were hot garbage, and buffed them to about 45
160
, but left pikes alone. Imagine for a minute what Pikes at 45 would mean. it would mean that they beat knights by +7, just like spears v chariots. They still lose to swords by +1, and swords cost half of a pike. So you have a very viable counter right there. Plus you have Xbows, which hit pikes for -5, a very normal tradeoff in every other era. I can assure you things would be balanced. How can I say this with confidence?
Because in the next era, which I believe is the only long term solution to melee/anticav dichotomy, Muskets and Pike&Shot are both 55
and cost 240/250. Muskets have an advantage over P&S, who themselves beat back mounted units and hit everything else the same. In fact, P&S can stand up to Cuirassiers, while musket's can't. But for the same 20 niter, a musket will beat a P&S! Wonderful balance. Also, field cannons take both these footmen to pound town, but such is the life of not having Riflemen. No one complains that P&S are bad units. The only complaint I've ever seen is AC don't survive long enough to have promoted units to upgrade into P&S.
Section II: the dominance of Tanks
Once we leave the early game, we run into a different issue entirely. We see it in Spears v Horsemen, too: Anticav doesn't actually beat Mounted in combat. At crews and Modern AT tie their armored counterparts, while being
minimally cheaper. In a civ game, sure, a hypothetical 20% cost differential would matter over time, but the fact that there are only so many units on the board means that if I can kill some of yours, i have an advantage even if you have long term economics. This isn't a Total War game. So, what should be done here? Well, for starters, infantry+AT crews are unreasonably weak units; they should be 75
, not 70. I think that the paucity of unit upgrades on release caused some interesting balance choices, but now we aren't as constrained. They actually buffed mech. Infantry from 80 to 85 right away, iirc, and the same should be done for Modern AT. It's a very noticeable pit in the unit strength graphs. Then, AC will have +5 on tank types, lose -10 to infantry, balanced, <InsertThanosMeme.>
This issue is entirely swept under the rug because spears are so bad in the classical that no one builds them; this in turn compounds to a lack of AC in general, so these units are not noticed. It's easy to think AC actually counters cavalry, but at many stages of the game they don't: AT crew vs Tank is so skewed that even if those were
the only two units you'd be saying "a 20% increase in price for +2
movement is a balanced trade." Adding in other units only favors the tank more (because it stomps them while AT suffers.) Repeat exactly for Modern Armor/AT, except Mech Inf crush AT even harder.
Conclusion
While a +10 modifier attached to a unit class is not inherently imbalanced, several Anticavalry units are below trend for strength. By fixing this in 3 instances (Pikemen; AT crew; Modern AT, plus Infantry) we can ameliorate the mid-late game disadvantage AC units have. While Spearman are right on trend, we note that they must fight in 2 eras; thus, in line with Archers, it is proposed that they also see a +5
strength increase.
TLDR, 4 targeted strength adjustments would allow AC units to have consistent, balanced matchups and be able to demonstrate a viable threat to contemporary mounted units. This does not adjust any other unit class design choices; rather it preserves the original game design.
