Urban and Praetorian cohort mess....

[GottMitUns]

Seems once you can recruit stacks of these units, you are unbeatable to non-roman factions. The severe imbalance is a little irritating and makes battles hardly competitive. I am finding that 3 units heavy onagers, 7 units praetorian cohorts and three units urban cohorts is invincible. Just bomb the enemy army until all of their units are well under stregnth and then tramp them into the ground with the cohorts.

History has praetorian cohorts as imperial gaurds and generals body guards only.
For the sake of balance in the game, if not historical accuracy, it seems such super units should be pretty rare. Given that these are "picked men", it would be alot more balanced if you could only have one praetorian cohort recruited with every 5-10 legionary cohorts in the field. Likewise one urban cohort (forget history with them) for every 5-10 praetorians. The uber units being composed of the best men of existing lesser units.

[Somebody Else]

You can always restrict yourself to only training a few of those units... No-one says you have to only use those.

[knoddy]

just because the ai cant beat u with that mix doesnt mean that ur army is invincible, if u played online against another human, or played as a non roman faction, u would find ways to beat an army of such composition.

Also remember that unless playing on hard, u will be getting an attack bonous in battles as well as moral and other bonouses. having completed the game with several Non roman factions, u will find there is always ways to beat the romans. Quite a few of the elite units for different factions can compete with both urban and praetorian. hell my phalanx pikemen can defend off praetorian on a good day. and Ive seen heavy cavalry used quite effectivly to break cohorts.

however i will agree that agianst the AI, the romans have a distinct advantage, for me it takes some of the fun outta the game, cos ive never seen a game where the romans havent prospered, indeed the only games where the roman factions didnt flourish were when i played greece, and macedon and took italy very early on to get rid of the pesky romans :D

my advice would be to either play as a non roman faction and see how ya go, or if it still doesnt seem hard enough for ya, crank up the battle difficulty, or as previously suggested dont recruit as many of those sorts of men.

Cheers Knoddy

[GottMitUns]

You can always restrict yourself to only training a few of those units... No-one says you have to only use those.

True but part of the fun is using the best units available.

[GottMitUns]

just because the ai cant beat u with that mix doesnt mean that ur army is invincible, if u played online against another human, or played as a non roman faction, u would find ways to beat an army of such composition.

Also remember that unless playing on hard, u will be getting an attack bonous in battles as well as moral and other bonouses. having completed the game with several Non roman factions, u will find there is always ways to beat the romans. Quite a few of the elite units for different factions can compete with both urban and praetorian. hell my phalanx pikemen can defend off praetorian on a good day. and Ive seen heavy cavalry used quite effectivly to break cohorts.

however i will agree that agianst the AI, the romans have a distinct advantage, for me it takes some of the fun outta the game, cos ive never seen a game where the romans havent prospered, indeed the only games where the roman factions didnt flourish were when i played greece, and macedon and took italy very early on to get rid of the pesky romans :D

my advice would be to either play as a non roman faction and see how ya go, or if it still doesnt seem hard enough for ya, crank up the battle difficulty, or as previously suggested dont recruit as many of those sorts of men.

Cheers Knoddy

I totaly meant the single player campaign, not multiplayer. I play the game on hard. Taking some of the fun out of the game is what I meant. First campaign, I can only play the roman factions or I would definitely had played the germans. I offered the comments as a kind of critique. The game is still awesome, a classic imo.

[professorspatula]

I removed Urban Cohorts and restricted Praetorians to Italy only (and/or top tier barracks). Legionaries are already incredibly powerful and usually destroy other units without too much trouble without requiring uber-powerful versions of them. And because the AI Roman factions love to produce Praetorians and Urbans that take 2 turns to train (especially the Brutii), they can instead churn out 2 legionary units in the same time. This helps them create bigger armies for the civil war, as I found once you beat a couple of stacks of Praetorians/Urbans, the AI is too slow to replace them.