Similarities between Civilizations that lacks Bloodlines or Plate Barding Armor

All civilization that doesn’t have a bonus for Cavalry and also lack Bloodlines or Plate Barding Armor (Except Britons), have a spearman line bonus. A lot of them also have some defensive bonuses.

Edit: I forgot Goths. They also have a discount on spearman line.

Is this just a coincidence? Or this is a careful design? Point to be noted, Bengalis despite having both bloodlines and plate barding armor, actually have very bad cavalry. And instead of having a spearman line bonus, they have a monk bonus. And in reverse, Byzantines have very good cavalry. So, the design idea is not giving spearman line bonus to civ with bad cavalry. Maybe this is a coincidence after all?

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Err on careful design, but I think it’s even simpler than “give civs without cav a good spear to deal with cav” I think it’s actually just “Make sure the tech tree is reasonably filled with options.” I think you’ll generally find that civs without strong cavalry will find strong bonuses in the other fields to compensate, much like how the Spanish have strong cavalry and monks because they never get a Crossbow.

I think they’re particularly careful about providing answers to cavalry because mobility can be polarizing.

There’s going to be some variability as to the strength of the answers they provide a civ to Cavalry, just because there’s gotta be some civs with weaknesses in that regard, and you’ll be able to pick them out. Just look at the Meso civs. One gets a Kamayuk (and a Halb), one gets a fully upgraded Halb, one gets a pike with extra attack.

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I think it is a combination of both. The civs listed here are a variety of civs with no relation to each other in game play.

In general poor cavalry in imp means you need better defense against enemy cavalry and additional benefit to some other military unit(s).

Yeah. Very good analysis. I think this explains the similarities.

Mmm, I think it means if a civ is non-cavalry civ then it might be an infantry civ?

There are an an archer civ, a monk+gunpowder civ and a couple of defensive civs.

Can this be the reason for locking Flemish militia behind UT? Burgundians have strong cav.

Yes. same apply to civ with fully upgraded Siege Ram cannot have combat bonus Halberdier

Pretty weird way to put a statement which is just randomly true. Celts have bonus for both but surely you can discredit extra speed as it is not combat bonus. Ethiopians have bonus for both but free pikeman upgrade is not a permanent bonus. And lastly Vikings missing halberdier.

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Yes that is the point. Civ with strong combat power halberdier like Japanese faster attack speed or Bohemians have extra bonus cannot have fully upgraded Siege Ram. Celts halberdier is a joke that Lithuanians which is not a Infantry civ have fast moving halberdier which is even faster than Celts.

My argument is that yes I agree this is a careful design.

Sometime they make an exception but with a huge draw back. For example only one civ have fully upgrade HCA and Paladin but the draw back is Magyars have zero eco bonus among all 45 civs

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I see. So preventing Halb+Ram push being too strong to handle. Although I’d say Celts having bonus for both does make the push very very strong.

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