OMG - Super Heavy ..erm...slaves?

[SwissBarbar]

In my Roman campaign the city of Petra has rebelled back to the Ptolemaioi. Well, the citizens seem to be freaky badasses. Have a look at this cool enemy army:



Gold Chevron slaves, with the most modern armour and weapons there are. Missile-Attack 11 (!) And the slingers are insane too. I'll have to starve them out.

[Macilrille]

Nah they are easily beat in open battle. I meet them all the time.

It is a hardcoded leftover from Vanilla that Rebels get gold and silver. I was informed when I inquired a few months ago that it cannot be changed.

Edited to add, a hint- Cretan Archers...

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

It would be nice if we could program EB to give us four times as many slave units, instead of making them four times more powerful with gold experience chevrons and gold weapons and armour.

But we can't. So we'll just have to imagine that there are four times as many slaves as what we're actually seeing on the battlefield.

Imagine that instead of 166 'superhero' slaves in each slave unit in the above example, there are really 664 'crap' slaves in each unit. So for 15 units, that's 9,960 slaves. (Assuming the two units we can't see in the screenshot are slaves as well.)

Plus the rest of the army, another 566 troops. Imagine these 5 'gold' units have four times as many men too (but no chevrons and no upgrades), so there are really 2,264 of them.

And since each man on huge unit size in EB represents 10 men in 'real life', there are actually 99,600 crap slaves and 22,640 ordinary soldiers in this army! 122,240 men in total!

Imagine that this army, instead of being so good, is actually just very, very big. Like the Persian army at the battle of Gaugamela, for example. Basically, every able-bodied man in the province is up in arms!

A Roman full stack would be about 28,000 men in reality. Imagine your Roman legionaries aren't really outclassed by these pathetic slaves - just very badly outnumbered....by over 4 to 1.

[ARCHIPPOS]

Normaly you'ld be in trouble but i see that you're besieging a city with stone walls.Just get a couple of super heavy elite cohort on the walls and slaughter them slingers in droves. Then the stupid AI will just march his slave zergtroops beneath the walls, gates and towers (which will now be yours).In 10 minutes time they'll be decimated by arrow fire.Then all you'll have to do is take the city center.I'ld recommend posting pics of the massacred masses with "resistance is futile" written underneath

[Macilrille]

Normaly you'ld be in trouble but i see that you're besieging a city with stone walls.Just get a couple of super heavy elite cohort on the walls and slaughter them slingers in droves. Then the stupid AI will just march his slave zergtroops beneath the walls, gates and towers (which will now be yours).In 10 minutes time they'll be decimated by arrow fire.Then all you'll have to do is take the city center.I'ld recommend posting pics of the massacred masses with "resistance is futile" written underneath

Ha ha ha ha :-D

I do not think SB plays as Roman though, but indeed any heavy elite inf will do. I failed to notice it was a town, in open battle Cretans just mow them down. I would back up my heavy infantry with some good archers though, not letting the towers do all your work.

[SwissBarbar]

Well, I picked the coward-solution. I starved them out and killed the poor rest in the final sally *GGG* I had some heavy Sabean-Fullstacks to fight, so - strategically - I could not afford too heavy losses

[bovi]

You cannot see the full stats from that picture, you need to go to the source (export_descr_units).

Any missile attack has no bonus from experience, only from weapon quality bonus, so in this case it's at 3, despite what the screen says. They also have a very short effective range (thrown stone) with skirmish mode, meaning they rarely get to use their missile weapon at all unless you ignore them. The attack rating and melee defence does get a bonus from experience, however their extremely low lethality means they are still no threat to any regular soldier. When testing their stats, I attacked a garrison of 5 such units with a single sword+shield unit (can't recall which) and only barely lost the battle, killing more than four times the number of men lost even though they surrounded my unit from the start. They are suitably useless.

[athanaric]

When testing their stats, I attacked a garrison of 5 such units with a single sword+shield unit (can't recall which) and only barely lost the battle, killing more than four times the number of men lost even though they surrounded my unit from the start. They are suitably useless.

I once had a single unit of Khûveshavagân bodyguards ride over a whole army of Apeleutheroi... well, they were assisted by others, but still. Makes for an impressive kill ratio.

[Intranetusa]

You cannot see the full stats from that picture, you need to go to the source (export_descr_units).

Any missile attack has no bonus from experience, only from weapon quality bonus, so in this case it's at 3, despite what the screen says. They also have a very short effective range (thrown stone) with skirmish mode, meaning they rarely get to use their missile weapon at all unless you ignore them. The attack rating and melee defence does get a bonus from experience, however their extremely low lethality means they are still no threat to any regular soldier. When testing their stats, I attacked a garrison of 5 such units with a single sword+shield unit (can't recall which) and only barely lost the battle, killing more than four times the number of men lost even though they surrounded my unit from the start. They are suitably useless.

Why do slaves cost money to upkeep? And a hefty sum at that. You'd think these people who rebeled to whatever nation would be working for free...

[ARCHIPPOS]

Why do slaves cost money to upkeep? And a hefty sum at that. You'd think these people who rebeled to whatever nation would be working for free...

Because in ancient societies slaves assumed a vital role in the productive proccess. Slave workforce was heavily used in agriculture, small and medium scale industry, mineworks etc,etc,etc. So freeing all those slaves (iplementing them into an army) largely diminishes the productive base of an economy...because the guys who used to create profit and wealth are now busy throwing stones and pretending to be soldiers. Hence their extremely elevated upkeep...

[A Very Super Market]

Also, it was to convince the AI not to rely on them (Although I think that was an earlier release of EB).

[Ludens]

Also, it was to convince the AI not to rely on them (Although I think that was an earlier release of EB).

Actually, it is a hint for the player to disband them. The A.I. does not seem aware of upkeep. Apeleutheroi were added as an easier workaround for the rebellion CTD. This had the added advantage that the spawned rebel stack mostly consisted of worthless units, even when given absurd upgrades. However, the player should not use them as garrisons, so they got a hefty upkeep to encourage immediate disbanding.

[the man with no name]

I once had a single unit of Khûveshavagân bodyguards ride over a whole army of Apeleutheroi... well, they were assisted by others, but still. Makes for an impressive kill ratio.

I did the same thing to a full stack of slaves with only 2 carthaginian bodguards taking 10 casualties, vs like 1500 casualties, and took the city too.

[Alexokrat]

i got those strong slaves in my ongoing saba campaign, while Bostra was rebelling to my side, the city makes no profit so I decided to raid the ptolemaic city Hierosolyma with them and i destroyed quite a big army, so their had a use for me ^^

[athanaric]

i got those strong slaves in my ongoing saba campaign, while Bostra was rebelling to my side, the city makes no profit so I decided to raid the ptolemaic city Hierosolyma with them and i destroyed quite a big army, so their had a use for me ^^

Yes, that's the smartest thing to do early on. Those rebellious cities just cause the AS and Ptolies to ally against you...

[Cute Wolf]

Yes, that's the smartest thing to do early on. Those rebellious cities just cause the AS and Ptolies to ally against you...

LOL!!! Seconded!!!
He should have been in super big trouble now...