Heavy Cavalry has an unfortunate name that I have not yet figured out a better replacement for yet. The original Light Cavalry (now Heavy Horseman) and the current Heavy Cavalry come from the Charlemagne mod as weaker than the Knight, where it does work because there is no regular Cavalry to compare them to. We have regular Cavalry, so we need other names for these units; I think the upgrade paths would make more sense if the names were clearer.
OK, I think better names would help. Yep.
I did consider allowing one era's heavy mounted unit to upgrade to the next era's light mounted, but not the other way around. Otherwise, there is effectively just one long line of mounted units, and I do not want that. I'd like to leave it the way it is for now.
Can the units overlap a bit in terms of obsolescence? I think that even within a single 'line' it might be nice to have the older unit remain constructable for a bit longer - particularly as I recently found while playing as the Carthaginians, where that fantastic unique unit which starts with Speed (+1 moves) becomes obsolete even though I still want to build them. I guess the question is, are the upgrade options specified independently from the obsolescence technology? If they are independent (hopefully), then one could still build the older units after their newer replacements are available (and in principle, immediately upgrade them, but we'd just have to make sure that that's not worth doing, economically, which should already be the case with the cost formula being half-the-hammer-difference-plus-20 gold). The older unit could then become un-constructable at some other point further along, when it really is inconceivable that one would build them - e.g. when Cavalry with guns are available.
I will look into adding some other ability to the lighter mounted units to differentiate them better from the heavy counterparts. As I see it, the purpose of the heavy mounted units is to combine strong attacking power with movement 2 -- if you want heavier attacking power, switch to elephants. The light mounted units need something else, and I will see what I can do. I'm thinking about more flanking bonuses for light mounted, but I will look at other suggestions (maybe even move 3 for Lancer and Light Cav? They don't have innate Blitz, so they would move faster but not attack more often without a lot of advancement).
After I thought about this for a while, I came up with the following concepts. What do you think?
1) Strength: Light horse line is weaker than the heavy horse line in terms of the units' base strengths.
2) Withdraw: Light horse line has some significant inherent withdraw chance, which is consistent throughout the line (or increasing). Heavy horse line has no withdraw chance (except perhaps unique units), but they can still get Flanking promotions.
3) Flank attacks: Light horse line consistently has flank attack against archery units (or all infantry?), Heavy line has flank attack against siege units (just for example).
4) Moves: Light line should be faster, but three moves might be too much for a horse unit, so... Not sure.
5) Cost: the Light horse line should be cheaper, and require only the Horse resource. Units of the Heavy horse line should be expensive (hammer-wise), and require some resource such as copper or iron (perhaps only after a certain stage? I can't remember where this line starts...).
I think that a 'line' should be defined by what the units are good at (their abilities: strengths and weaknesses), and be consistent in those abilities. At the moment, my impression is that the two horse lines are quite muddled (e.g. the flank attacks and inherent withdraw chances are all mixed up), and I think that's why it's not clear to me why there are two 'lines'. What I am trying to convey in the above dot points is a consistency along the line, so that abilities don't arbitrarily disappear. When the 'line' is more consistent, there's less chance that the successor unit is not always better in every way than the older unit, reducing the likelihood of being in the situation I described further up, where one wants to build the old unit because the replacement unit is deficient in some regard.
Looking forward to hear your thoughts.
Cheers!
