So, I was thinking about the Roman unit roster in EB1 and vanilla and how it advances throughout the game similar to how it would in reality, when I noticed that few of the other factions advance in quite as thorough a manner (with exceptions being mainly the Hellenic factions and a few other factions like Saka, oddly). Now, I know there are tech trees and also reforms for most factions, but what I'm not sure about is if these factions are advancing at a rate proper to their hypothetical dominance. I also know that there are definitely attempts in EB to show how a faction's hypothetical dominance would play out through regional units; however, it doesn't seem like these are always enough.

To put it another way: we know that Rome achieved dominance throughout the Mediterranean and so we pretty well know what their soldiers looked like at height of the Roman empire and during its stages; however, in games like RTW, otherwise smaller, less successful factions can raise to the same height of dominance, but so often their units and advancements are not depicted as going through similar motions, and understandably so, for we do not have the same direct historical measuring stick that we do with the Romans. For example: the Aedui going through the Time of Soldiers reforms and getting different units is one thing, but even if they go on to conquer all the lands the Romans did and hold those lands, they do not experience quite the kind of unit shift one might expect of a far-reaching empire.

I don't know... maybe factions could receive an additional reform once they reach a certain huge size in order to simulate the hypothetical changes that one would expect be brought on by the wealth and power of a large empire that may not have existed?