After thinking about it I realized that it would be very impractical to buff the advisor units. It's a fact that most of them end up being outclassed by leveled up normal units. Some like the Desert cavalry aren't even that interesting.
That being said I feel like some really cool unit designs are kind of wasted because of they were advisor units. Do you think that some of these unit concepts might end up being reused or built upon in the future?
There's both current unit overlap (Armored Elephants and War Elephants, Celtic Longbowman and reg Bowman) as well as a bit of balancing issues (Gaesatae, for instance, are incredibly powerful due to both their high speed and their tremendous poison damage over time, with their range being the only pitfall. If you could gear them and slap +range gear on them, they'd probably become the most powerful damage unit in the game)
This doesn't even mention the huge effort it would take to rebalance 4 civs around the new units and for likely little payout.
Celts - War Chariots and Carpentoms fulfill nearly the same role. Horseman and Headhunters both also fill similar roles, just that Headhunters are more raiding and Horseman are, of course, anti calv. Bowman/Longbowman, again, same role. Leaving just the Gaesatae, and I already mentioned how problematic their poison is.
Egyptian - All 3 Desert units are basically "Anti-Ranged without Ranged bonus" - Swordsman are fast with pierce armor, Calv are beefy with pierc armor, and Bowman have pierce armor. While Egypt DOES lack a 1 cost good ranged unit (Slingers are, well, slingers), Desert Archer aren't what they are looking for. And, of course, Armored Elephants are nearly the same as War Elephant Champions.
Persia - Again tremendous amount of overlap - Bowman/Royal Archer, Scythian Mounted Archer/Mounted Archer, Kardaka/Immortals, Royal Guard/Spearman, and in each of these cases the Advisor unit is just a worst version of the reg unit (Royal Archers have loer ranged, Scythian Mounted Archer has no bonus damage, just pierce armor, Kardaka's don't have the ranged attack, and Royal Guards are slow as fuck). The ONLY interesting unit is the Scythed Chariot, as Persia doesn't have a Chariot option (Fast high damage expensive ranged unit)
Greeks - Actually has the best advisor units with least amount of overlap. Phalynx has the highest range for a melee unit, so they have a use despite their slowness. Soma's are incredibly tanky, which would make them a viable alternative to Hoplites as a frontline tank. Pez are fast raiding infantry that are good against infantry. Hetaroi are basically Hippokons that have bonuses vs Buildings/Siege, and finally Heliopolis are essentially Persian War Wagons but also good vs buildings.
So overall out of 4 civs, only Greeks have interesting units that you would maybe use instead of what you already got. And of course there's the huge rebalancing on the PvP side of things required. It's really just inefficient in terms of development time - Better to just leave the units alone for ppl gearing up, since the epic advisors tend to be cheap, and the Champion version of Headhunters, Kardaka, Armored Elephants, and several of the Greek unit are strong until you hit the late game.
