Spearmen: I’m not sure there’s anyway to make these guys better specifically outside of just buffing anti-cav generally.
If you open the civilopedia page for spearman, it starts something like this: "Anti cavalry unit of the
Ancient Era"
In a world of warriors, spears, chariots, and archers, spears ain't so bad.
Unfortunately, the classical era is full of units with 36 base strength. Swordsmen are simply way too good at killing spears. In my honest opinion, we either have to ditch the unit gaps as a central design or do something unconventional.
It's just too unbalancing at the beginning of the game. (Swords are so dominant that you can't use spears, meaning there's nothing to upgrade to pikes, etc. It cascades through the game.)
Let's look at the archer for a moment. In a post I wrote in maybe march, that detailed a whole bunch of unit lines and their strengths and upgrades, one thing that was apparent was that archers uniquely straddle the ancient and classical era battlefields when you look at trend lines for combat strength. As an ancient unit, they
should have 20 strength. As a classical unit, they
should have 30. Yet they have 25. Someone clearly understood that if they made archers 20 strength, they would be a joke against classical units and players would be pretty upset. The spearman has the same problem the archer does: he doesn't get an upgrade until medieval, but comes in the ancient era, and so he really has to fight in two eras. Yet unlike the archer, he isn't balanced around that. He's very solidly on the ancient era dot if you look at the trend line. Would the game play better if spears had 30 base strength then- getting the archer treatment? Well, spears would actually be at par with warriors, which might be unbalancing for barb camps. They'd really muscle down other ancient era units. They would have a pretty good use case against horsemen. They would still be getting butchered by swords, though. For a classical battlefield to work, both units need to have a clear role- instead of swords doing better against cav than spears do.
Case in point: Muskets vs Pike&Shot. Cost almost the same (240 v 250) and have the same base strength, muskets getting a bonus vs p&s but requiring niter; P&S of course making quick work of those chivalrous noblemen still riding around and being resourceless. These two units are almost perfectly balanced against each other in my opinion. This is about how the infantry lines should match up throughout the game if we want balance.
Unconventional method: We add a mechanic to transition spears from an ancient unit to a classical unit, most likely in the tech/civic tree. One example would be, say, at iron working, spears get +5 strength. Or perhaps the Military Training civic. The icon is a spear and shield, after all.
Unconventional method two: we give spears (and all anticav) another niche: +10 vs district defenses, or something. I'm sure a reason can be justified- organized peasants are historically
phenomenal at smashing stuff- just something so players keep fielding spearmen in the classical.
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RE the thread: hoplites have an amazing ability. A pseudo 35 strength unit at bronze working is just crazy! Just one promotion gets you thrust, so they can stay in the game against swords. Only issue is pikes kinda suck, so you've got an awkward period to limp through. And fresh unpromoted units are at a serious disadvantage- you really can't lose troops after a certain point, because they'll either be too weak or be pikes, which cost over 3x what hoplites do. Unique units in the anticav line all have this feast/famine issue. Now, if we could somehow do Gorgo handing off to Shaka at medieval...
