queries???

hi all, 1st, great work on eb1.2, seriously good... not sure if these have been asked, so please dont be offened or shout..:inquisitive:

after a serrious week long (12hrs a day) session on eb1.2, following on the back of a week long session on deus lo vault (no work for 3 weeks now) i have several observations and i guess a few questions that i would like to ask..

after doing a few very long campaigns on eb,it dawned on me that every settlement i captured started going down the same route as the settlement before it.. there seemed to be no indivaluality in the differant settlements.. no reason to pursue a differant path of building the infrustructre.. (apart from the factions with reforms) but then they also ended up being the same.. every settlement being a over populated clone of the one before it dictating to me wot buildings i had to build in order to just keep everyone happy.. i installed the city mod which did help with the population side. (good work and highly recommened). is this something the team can work on?

also the balancing of units seems to have made certain units of differant cultures basically the same,but with differant skins. They also seem to have lost their indivaluality. not in looks but in performance, ie- the macs heavy caverly i thought would be considerably better than most,as would be the steppe's heavy caverly. (that is just an example). and not just with higher morale..
now i realise that the balancing was required, but it strikes me that all of the differant factions heavy troops nearly have the same stats.. do you think this is a true represention
(this is a guess, you guys are the history buffs,so no probs if you tell me iam being thick):yes:
but i would like to see a definative differance in unit stats, and abilities, specially in the factions true elites..
example-
i would not want to face a half stack of (say) greek spartans with a half stack of mac elite guards, even tou they are both elites, surely the spartans would hammer them, unless fully supported by caverly, then it would be a reverse hammering.
now i found this over balancing of units true in deus lo vault also,and while it may be sometimes needed it surely takes away the accurate portrail of factions and their troops?

I wouldn't be so sure about the Spartan superiority. Take for example the battle of the champions: 300 picked Spartans vs. 300 picked Argives. End result: 2 Argives left standing and 1 Spartan. Or take the battle of Leuctra. Elite units could very well take on elite Spartans, it was just that the average Spartan was far better trained than the average hoplite. I don't think it is a coincidence that Sparta loses her aura of invincibility when other city states start developing professional armies too. Furthermore, by the time of EB the Spartans weren't exactly what they had been.

It is the same with the legionaries too: Roman elite units weren't that uber; they won battles because they could field large numbers of good-but-not-exceptional heavy infantry.

I agree that city development is a bit boring in EB, though. I hope to see more diversity here in EB2.

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I agree that city development is a bit boring in EB, though. I hope to see more diversity here in EB2.

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There are quite some changes planned to make settlements and regions more unique. One of these has recently been previewed, as to the other changes well... I don't want Foot to kill me so err... I'll just say that there are quite a lot of additional features. I bet some will be presented in previews at some date when they're ready and I err... Yeah.

i am no historian, nor do i indeed no enough to really quibble, in truth its eb itself that is brushing up my history knowledge, so i take wot you say as correct... but it does seem strange that all units are balanced equally.. would it not make the game more diverse if units were actully set apart from each other, then tactics and army composition would then play a larger part?? also, did the roman army not have archers?? its seems bizarre that one of the worlds formidable war machines would not have used and trained its own archers?

Not quite. On one hand you want to portray differences between units, but on the other hand a lot of units simply wear the same kind of stuff: within the limits of the game engine greaves are greaves, and what decoration is added to the greaves doesn't really matter for the stats... So things like armour values end up the same/similar for similar units: that is the essence of `balanced' stats, same/similar units perform the same/similar.

Still there is a lot of difference in cost, availability (which will play a bigger role in M2TW) and actual performance across the board: there are very few heavy cavalry who can match Hetairoi for instance. Then again, Hetairoi cost a ton or two.

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Originally Posted by jamee

i am no historian, nor do i indeed no enough to really quibble, in truth its eb itself that is brushing up my history knowledge, so i take wot you say as correct... but it does seem strange that all units are balanced equally.. would it not make the game more diverse if units were actully set apart from each other, then tactics and army composition would then play a larger part?? also, did the roman army not have archers?? its seems bizarre that one of the worlds formidable war machines would not have used and trained its own archers?

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Could you give examples of units being balanced equally? Yes, many factions share units or have similar unit types, but I wouldn't say there is a lack of diversity or tactics. The differences are just more subtle than they are in most mods, because the team feels this is more historical. Unit balancing was based on their equipment and training, in as far as can be reconstructed.

During the classical age there wasn't a tradition of archery in western Europe. The wet climate of western Europe doesn't lend itself for the composite bow, and the simple self bow used for hunting doesn't pack much punch. Good archers were therefore hard to find, so if a warlord wanted good ranged troops he would generally recruit slingers. The Romans did employ archers, but they mostly got them from places where there was a tradition of archery, like Crete, Syria or Scythia. In the mod, you can recruit Cretan archers in most parts of the Greek world, while Syrian archers become available in the East once you hit the Marian reforms.

The romans get an archer unit when they get to the imperial reforms as well.

ludens, as an example the following unit can be trained by several factions. the 'phalangitais'
but this unit has the same stats no matter wot faction trains it.. it could be contrived that this unit is massed produced in one large factory then shipped out to all the differant factions.. unrealisitic!!

my point is- all factions would not have the same training methods or the same ability to produce armour and weapons of the same standard. just because they employ the same troops would not mean they are the same standards... so surely the stats would represent this..

would it take to much work to effectively portray this in the game??

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Originally Posted by jamee

ludens, as an example the following unit can be trained by several factions. the 'phalangitais'
but this unit has the same stats no matter wot faction trains it.. it could be contrived that this unit is massed produced in one large factory then shipped out to all the differant factions.. unrealisitic!

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Actually, yes, they would have been trained identically and given pretty much the same equipment, so they have the same stats! The Ptolemeans did not equip or train their phalangites in a significantly different way from the Epirotes or Bactrians. They all derived their military doctrines from Phillip II's army, after all.

I can see where you are coming from, though. There would have been some variation in quality, but I think it was tied to time and place rather than faction. The factions mostly used the same techniques, after all.

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Originally Posted by jamee

would it take to much work to effectively portray this in the game??

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Not to mention that 1 set of stats = 1 unit in the EDU and there are only 500 slots to be had. So if we did that in EB 1, we'd've spent 30 units (6 elites, 7 pezhetairoi, 1 mercs, 6 kleruchs, 10 assorted) right on sarissa-wielding units alone?

hmmmmmmmmm... shame about the unit slots.. :thumbsdown: i guess that ties your hands alot..
anyways,thanks for the replys clearing up my queries..
i look forwards to the game.. :yes: