Military Tweeks

Elmindra wrote: I don't think you need to weaken cavalry themselves, just change the terrain modifiers.  I am even in favor for upping the plains defense modifier for cavalry on plains.  They should be the best offensively AND defensively on the plains (and better on small hills).

reducing their terrain adv for plains IS weakening cav, upping the terrain def of all other troop types is weakening cav.
How will making the same troop type best for def and attack on certain terrains going to increase strategy?  It will purely mean everyone producing the same troops to fight over particular squares and would prove extremely boring game play.

Elmindra wrote: The actual troop numbers are fine, there just needs to be more of an incentive via terrain modifiers to make other troops useful.  Make cities always be classified as buildings, not just during the capture/raze attempt.  Increase the terrain modifiers from 30 to 50% in the extreme cases (both on offense and defense).  Increase the wall bonus from 115% to 215% or higher.  Increase the T1 and T2 spearmen training speed to match their upkeep.

Your idea regarding altering spear recruitment speed is fine, I do not see why a standard wall bonus should be increased, but I do like the previous idea of adding to the wall in another way.  Although I would rather see optional upgrades rather than another tier.

Changing the terrain of all cities to buildings or some unique 'city' terrain will only remove all reason for building on any squares other than the food boosting ones and therefore limit the game even further, you started to post claiming you wanted to add strategy to this game, yet all your ideas will reduce game strategy.

I am not against ideas for making seiges slightly more defensible, even though they are much easier to defend now than before, but I do stand against ideas that merely make this game more and more mechanical.

You also get a 12:9 gph death ratio when attacking archers on a large mountain with cavalry, but it barely gets better at 11.4:9 gph death ratio when attacking archers on a large mountain with archers.  When the cavalry can get there twice as fast, once again there is rarely a point to attack it with archers.  Those are the two most extreme cases, in small forests and mountains the favor swings even more in favor of cavalry.  So we can see that cavalry are the absolute best attacking force on plains, small hills, large hills, small forests, small mountains, large forests.  How is that not imbalanced?  Shouldn't swordsmen be best at more than just attacking buildings?  Shouldn't archers be best at attacking more than just large mountains?

A: Do you routinely keep a large force of overall less-effective troops on hand just in case an enemy places a siege camp in a location where it will be marginally more efficient to attack with these instead of cavalry?  The fact that these units are cheaper and faster to produce doesn't count for much if you don't have them waiting when the siege camp arrives, because you still can't produce enough of them in time to turn the tide.

B:  Having everyone produce multiple troop types and studying the map looking for the best place to set a siege camp in order to nullify an opponent's likely counterattack based on the troops you have available and what you know of their army would actually require a good bit of strategy.  Piling a mass of archers and pikemen an any adjacent square that isn't plains and waiting to see how much cav they hit you with?  Not so much.  Right now basic siege strategy is to arrange a precisely timed arrival of as many defensive troops as you can muster on a square minutes before the siege camp arrives so the enemy doesn't have time to coordinate a counter-operation to kill the first arrivals and control the site before the catapults arrive.  You pretty much know that the counterattack is going to be cav based because this is what most people build in mass and because when the victim calls for help cavalry is going to get there first.  Everyone is already producing the same troops, and that makes this more a game of massing the greatest number of those troops and finessing your sovereignty to rebuild them faster than the other guy.

C: The only optional upgrade that would make much sense would be to make the wall more powerful against attack.  You can have options to make walls more effective against one troop type or another, but since 80% of attacks are going to be cavalry the choice would be rather self-evident.

D:  I don't see how making all cities an Urban terrain type will " remove all reason for building on any squares other than the food boosting ones".  If you look around, the vast majority of effective players have all their cities on a 7-food plains tile.  The cities they don't have on 7-food plains are on those 7-food large forest tiles you have in the jungle.  Or, if they are new enough, they may have done the Exodus/Tenaril's trick and managed to manufacture a 7-food mountain somewhere.