Ahriman
Tyrant
25% is fine, but why a strength reduction? Rather, boost the swordsman and horsemen, since they will be rarer since resources will be less meaningful.Spears/pikes are probably fine with a modest strength reduction and reducing the innate anti-horse bonus to 25%.
We don't need to make spears/pikes worse vs archers and cities.
Not really, no. It's too narrow a role. It can be a secondary effect of swords and pikes, but the main effect needs to be as general resourceless infantry; ok for holding a line, ok for attacking cities, but not outstanding at anything. They're generalists.Do we need a specific mounted counter really though?
Many of the proposed solutions seem weaker than the problems they're designed to solve.
In my view, the main problems in BNW are:
a) Scouts have no upgrade potential.
b) Pikes -> lancer is a weird upgrade.
It's suggested that insufficient healing is a problem, but I don't think that is the case. Easy access to significant healing just makes warfare easy mode. The AI can't use it very well, it makes combat less lethal and damage less significant, which favors the human player.
It's suggested that there is a need for a recon unit role, but I don't think that is the case either. You can use mounted units to scout and screen, that's part of the advantage of their mobility. Recon also isn't something that the AI understands or can use well.
I just don't see that there is a need for two separate lines of resourceless infantry units.
I suggest:
Spearman - > pikeman -> arquebus -> musket -> rifle -> infantry -> mech inf.
Warrior -> swordsman -> longsword -> arquebus.... etc.
Scout -> pikeman -> arquebus ->... etc
Archer -> Composite bowman -> Crossbow-> Gatling gun -> Machine gun - > Bazooka.
Lancer -> AT gun -> helicopter
Chariot -> horseman -> knight -> dragoon -> landship -> tank -> modern armor -> GDR.
Special forces (ie paratrooper) -> Xcom unit.
You can have sight range promotions on melee units, a 5 hp medic promotion on melee units, anti-mounted/armor promotion on melee units, and so forth.
This gets rid of most of the weird multi-era gaps, means we don't need to add a whole bunch of units, and keeps the AI's army formation concentrated in units that it will use well.
Basically: in early eras we have strategic resource melee units, but that is a temporary unit line that then merges back into the main melee unit line.
Stop thinking about swords and longswords as being the main melee unit link, think of them as specialist city attackers that require a strategic resource, and then merge back into the main melee unit line, which are the general spear and pikes.
The same unit plan could work with scouts -> horseman, but I'm not as fond of that as you may not have horses nearby, and I'm not sure we want defensive promotions on mounted units.
But there is no reason for some separate support unit line that the AI won't use well.
No and no.Do we need medics? Do AI use them properly?
I don't have a huge objection to this, but I don't support it: that significantly weakens the factions with a sword UU by being unable to upgrade warriors who have gained experience from barb fighting, and it heavily pushes you towards horses over iron, because you can start building chariots early but you can't build swords until a classical era tech.Warriors should probably be upgradable to the spears line.