Satyr Hoplite/Steel Hoplites and Centaur Steel Cataphracts seem to be overpriced upgrades for what they offer. The only difference between a Satyr Warrior and a Hoplite is that he loses forest stealth (arguably important) and gain 1 armor. To steel, one more.

Meanwhile, Centaur Warrior to Bronze Cataphract not only gets armor, but also a lance charge, making it a far more impressive upgrade because he actually got a brand new tool. However, steel, once more, just 1 armor.

My suggestion: give Bronze Hoplite +1 health and Steel +2. Give the Steel Cataphract +1 or +2 health. After all, you would expect a slightly more impressive survivability bonus from a complete bronze panoply than a mere 1 armor, so if even more armor can cause balance problems (it probably will), go and give them a bit of health to illustrate better survivability. Same principle applies to steel.

Also, a less gameplay/practical suggestion, a Centaur arms instructor that trains your troops and perhaps could serve as smithy for all troops (still limited to location, capping at bronze). Inspired by Chiron, with the whole ferrying troops to a place and then slowly upgrading them gimmick, a general smithy/weapons instructor could be really handy.

Nice! That seems like a good suggestion if the differences between upgraded units are that underwhelming.

Found what I think is a bug with the new Centaur commander. I was ferrying untrained centaurs and and found he has the remarkable ability to trans their gender. It seems centaurs are valid targets for the Centaur Cataphracts and the Centauride Cataphracts rituals.

You are correct! Thank you very much for catching and flagging. Must have been moving a little too quickly with the copy pasting. Steel Cataphract ritual has a similar issue too. Both will be fixed in next update.

This is one race whose early turns are still terribly punishing.

They do have a lv. 2 caster to compensate for their teeny tiny starting army. But it's difficult to field your dryad and one rank of basic satrys without risking a game-ending caster death. One lucky moose or archer can easily ruin your run on turn 2.

They also have access to freespawns right away! But relying on a single grove's freespawns to open up new possibilities is pretty impractical.

If you like the feel current setup, raising the starting army from 5 warriors and 5 javelinists to 7 and 7 would be a small change that still leaves them with one of the weaker starting armies.

If you feel like they could use a serious buff, I would consider replacing some of the starting troops with centaurs, and replacing the satyr commander with a Centaur commander or even a Hierophantide.

This has been a very recent topic of discussion in the discord with some folks going to great lengths to run long tests and crunch the numbers of what the spawn rates actually are, and with other balance/overhaul mods adding in very generous increases to the spawn rates with I think some going as high as doubling all spawns across the board.

I was planning on giving a +1 to the spawn rates of the "bronze armored" commanders and removing the spawn boost from the "steel armored" commanders to further specialize their roles. I do think that a modest increase in the starting army is a good measure that can help smooth out the difficulty of the early game that won't later scale up. I'll test an increase to Satyrs or swapping in a few centaurides. I'm hesitant to go as far as including a centaur/minotaur commander from the get go, as I think "unlocking" those 2 races in the early-mid game is a fun progression.

A couple of notes on the capricorn stuff:

Sacred Pool: currently hydromancy. But consider if Mysticism wouldn't fit better?

Oceanus Disciple becomes Aquatic Oceanus Disciple on water. What if this form gets Hydromancy 2--or perhaps Hydro1/Forest 1. Deepen his niche.

While I do find that Hydromancy can tend to be a bit overused due to it being the defacto school for anything aquatic themed, I'll need to double check the Mysticism list as it might lean a bit too "anti-undead".

As long as there isn't weirdness caused by learning/unlearning the school this seems like a nice nuance to add.

I have been playing the class a lot lately. Funny seeing my first comment is 2 years old. Time flies.

I find upgrading satyrs a bit of a waste of time, and unlike last time, I don't think I have a good solution for it. The reason is that with as much as Centaur Commander and a Keeper you can get enough centaurs and minotaurs that probably offer more value than twice the number of satyrs, which is what they cost.

Satyrs are not bad troops, and all their upgrades in a vacuum are good. It's just that (upgraded) minotaurs and centaurs are so good that it feels like a waste of opportunity to upgrade satyrs at all, and you're better off using them raw as decent chaff.

Interestingly that makes capricorns pretty nice better baseline they have spears so they're even better chaff than satyrs.

Only solution I could come up would be to reduce spawn of minotaurs and centaurs but I don't think anyone wants a nerf for this class. Perhaps experiment with changing satyr upgrade to 10 figure for 40 gold and 16/32 iron so you can get more of them faster slighter cheaper?