Could the new Royal Heirs mechanic be the solution for the Spear line?

It’s actually not a straight-up buff. It’s a tweak, that has a lot of implications. Like if you play a heavy feudal agression and the opponent is going fast for castle, you can research that tech and you spears perform better against knights.
At the same time the sheer damage output of halbs against cavalry can be tuned down , which allows for more counterplay against halb spams. And a lot of other things.

For me it is. After that the protection of archers against knigths and then ofc also as composition partner for siege. But in that order. Atm it feels cause they lack against the mobility of cavalry they mostly serve as the last one as comp partner for siege. And I would like to switch that up a bit.
Mostly also because we see more opting for other options agaist knigtht raids like mentioned more TCs more close together. And I think that isn’t a good sign, when the counter unit falls behind that much against “strategic options” which don’t require “commitment”.

There I completely agree. I think more tactical options against Knights could solve a lot in the midgame. Knights already have way, way too less downsides to them and it wouldn’t hur the game to have at least one more tactical option, available to all civs (sorry camels).

Though it looks like devs don’t like buildings to do that, so we need some different approach.

That’s my point. You just buff them without any tweak and it will still be balanced imo.

Don’t think so. Halbs are already the best trash units, no need to buff them further.

We alread see a lot of CA, Arb or HC additons in trash wars to deal with the halbs. I don’t think we need more of that tbh.

I should have specified only Pikeman.