And pound for pound Azaps do massively more damage to light cav than skirms. Ottomans would be just fine with Abus relegated to a generalist skirm that’s not so good against light cav.
I considered it, but ultimately I didn’t want to buff them against heavy cav.
Lots of it is flavour and improving underpowered cards rather than strictly balance. Some highlights:
Cows are now available by default in age 3 but are more expensive. Ranching reduces their cost.
Grenade Launchers is now an age 4 tech enabled via Advanced Arsenal. The card now grants the veteran upgrade. Civs without Grenadiers still need the card to enable them. This does affect Soldados so further adjustments to Mexico and Spain will be needed.
Rebalanced and renamed Line Infantry and Royal Huntsmen. Royal Huntsmen no longer “upgrade” to Royal Hunters.
Russia now has 1 big starting crate. This actually helps by a surprising amount.
Finally got done with the next update. Changes are mostly focused on mercenaries. Age 5 Mercenary Contractor increases their cost slightly. Most instances of mercenaries enabled in production buildings are instead enabled in a standalone Mercenary Camp building. Asians now have better mercenary upgrades. All civs have a technology to replace their mercenary roster with new ones. Overview of changes is below: