what i love about Humankind is that combat is actually deep, and good tactics and strategic planning can make a big difference in the result of battle.

however, the CS difference between units of different eras is so high that it often eclipses any strategic advantage you may even have, it kills the depth added by unit class variety since getting one unit from the next era provides so much advantage.

on average, units from the same class go up 7-9 CS per era

for instance: 

Warriors (19) -> Swordsmen (26) -> Greatswordsmen (35)

Milita Units: 13 -> 20 -> 27 -> 34 -> 43 -> 50

Halberdiers even go a whopping 10 CS points relative to pikemen!

i think ~4 (6 at MAX) is a good enough CS boost per era, which is enough of an advantage to make a noticeable difference (basically an uphill advantage), yet still does not eliminate any strategy through pure brute force.

Also, having more intermediate units for eras that dont have one of a specific class would be nice and prevents units from falling out of class; especially the classical era is really lacking in class variety, we can have composite bowmen as a ranged unit, some sort of spearmen (why there are horsemen but anti cavalry class in the classical era?), and Cataphract as heavy cavalry.

Early modern era can also use a cavalry unit like lancers; the primary melee unit for that era is the halberdiers and they are anti-cavalry for no reason other than to screw medieval era units because why else would you need an Anti-cavalry unit in an era with no cavalry?

Im thinking Lancers can be the epitome of cavalry units before they fall out of class for modern units by having both heavy and light cavalry bonuses.

All very good points. *thumbs up*

I'm not sure about CS rebalance, this bit is pretty volatile, you have 3 (1 out of Civic choice, 2 out of ideology) hidden in Civics (plus some more specific ones in Political Entitlement), another 2 in the Tenets, and then there are some more between all the LTs, not even counting the 3+ modifiers that brew out of terrain, combat situations, Veterancy et al. Sometimes it does feel like tech is the only thing that can give you a proper edge and I'm not sure I'd like to see it dulled - although, now that naval units got a touch-up, maybe land combat could be back on the menu as well.

I do agree with the need for more intermediate units, Classical is obnoxious, especially after Swordsmen got their Iron requirement removed, if you don't have EUs, you need to bench ranged and anticav for that era and spam Swordsmen (and Horsemen, if you really feel like it, but there's no particular reason to do it). Early Modern cav would come in real handy, for thematic reasons Knights sticking around but actively becoming obsolete as the era goes is interesting, but for gameplay it can be frustrating.

I'd add Modern Infantry at the tail-end of Contemporary to the list, something to not only visually fit the top-end armies better than WW2-esque Rifles, but also having some anti-armor capabilities, to keep up with all the vehicles. I used to just replace Rifles with Commandos, but after stealth rework those are much better on their own, actually working behind enemy lines (or just bothering someone you don't like but don't want to have a war against, great to do with American Commandos and their Ghost Recon-esque unit skin for flavour reasons).

i dont understand exactly what is your point to be frank.

i didnt say technology gives such a steep advantage, and especially since you can't research from the following era in this game unless you transcend/change your culture, one sudden turn can really turn the tides of the war with a +8 CS advantage coming out of no where.

my main problem with it is that this bonus is so high it kills the tactics of the game; if both players were using units from the same era, you can't fight with only one class of units, but if you get one unit from the next era, it can out power the entirety of the enemy army with total disregard of their class.

for example

ancient era spearmen have 18 CS, 26 CS against cavalry (which is supposed to be their job)

classical era horsemen are 26 CS, swordsmen are also 26 CS, which makes spearmen basically obsolete, they provide utterly 0 advantage, being completely basic in their best scenario, while swordsmen perform just as good without being -8 against non cavalry units, which yes of course classical units should be better than ancient units, the transition should be just a bit smoother. 

Dayvit78 wrote:

(Massively agree there is a missing era)

(Also agree to some minor tweaks between unit types for proper rock/paper/scissors across each era)

Do you think if, instead of a revamping the CS different between eras, that they add some small techs in the era that increase the CS. So you get to the next era, research the unit tech, but it's still not at full power until you reach a 2nd or 3rd tech? Would that help make the transition better?

From a historical perspective, what I'm trying to get at is, arquebusiers were invented but it took quite a while to figure out how best to use them and what the proper mix was with pikes. And I think this could be said for each of the unit types across eras.

how much CS do you think such techs would give?

what im worried about is that those techs would create another whole strategic shift in searching the tech tree, although their intended purpose was to solve this problem.
I think the CS change is a very simple and effective solution to this problem that gets straight to the point without risk of changing the game dynamics a lot

Well, the exact same thing as now...

Warriors (19) -> Swordsmen (22) - Swordsmen+Tech (26) -> Greatswordsmen (30) -> Greatswordsmen+Tech (35).

So it just spreads out the CS game and you don't have this massive leap just by researching one tech and upgrading with gold.