Balancing 1 v 1 games

This is from a post of mine at .com. In the one vs one ladder matches most of the higher ranked players take almost exclusively Roman armies and play with between 8 to 11 archer auxilia. With Egypt the problem is desert cav, which will hopefully be fixed in the patch since its a question of reducing the unit to 27 from 40.

What I wanted to do was to try and encourage more diversity in faction choice, and of tactics. After all if both players take 10 archers, an archer duel prior to melee becomes the norm.

Can I suggest everyone consider this;

(a) The four Roman factions and Egypt are by agreement before a 1 v 1 match limited to a maximum of 4 of any single type of unit. Thus the better Roman players could have 4 archer auxilia, and 4 archers, for a total missile troop of 8. Eygpt players would possibly take 4 bowman, 4 pharohs bowman, 4 desert cav, and then the rest of the makeup would be more interesting.

(b) all other factions on a maximum of 9 of any single type of unit.

At the present moment most competent ladder players take Rome for the combination of archer auxilia and urban cohorts. I would suggest trying to impose the above limits might mean fewer archer battles, and players exploring other factions.

Armenia, Parthia, and Scythia might still have armies virtually all archer & horse archer, with a few melee cavalry thrown in but then (a) their ordinary infantry is weak, and (b) historically thats what their armies looked like.

Obviously 4max & 9max are my early thoughts for a voluntary online rule.

Please comment.

The original post is in this thread;

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...icID=547.topic