So the patch came out today (yay) and I downloaded it and tried out a few custom battles. I must say I am impressed with only the impressions I got from playing a dozen or so custom battles in trying various things out.
1. Phalanx units seem much more formidable, instead of pivoting their entire unit to one side to have just one section of the line coming in contact with the enemy the whole unit is more fluid and will pivot to face and push into whichever unit I had them attack.
2. Battles are still over very quickly. I guess before I stopped playing I'd been using a kill/runspeed reducer so it just shocked me when the first battle was over in 5 seconds (or less) once melee had initiated... and that was with just vanilla Gaul and Roman units up against eachother with no Cavalry.... I tried many battles, and never got one that lasted longer than 60 seconds (or even close to that).
3. I couldn't test the Battlfield AI because there's no time - it's just charge = death = end of battle. In the phalanx testing though, there was a buildup of units on one side and the AI pulled that around to flank me - so that was a good sign... unfortunately by the time that he got around my flank his entire army was routing....
4. Javs really need to be thrown immediately once in range - there's still the problem of not being able to get a volley off because the skirms will halt, wait, get ready to throw - oh no, the enemy is too close - back up and try again... etc etc.
So far, I like - but I won't be able to play it without more modification. There's no point to a good Battlefield AI if it's nullified by the speed of battles.
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