Re: Faction with decent infantry (besides Romans)?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Akka
I played Greece with the "large units" settings, which means 80 people per unit, and I was always surprised to see others complaining about them, because I found they were incredibly powerful.
So, well, perhaps that it's, in fact, that ^^
No, I play on the large setting as well, and when hoplites only had 80 men, they definately were not quite up to the task.
Don't get me wrong, they aren't hopeless. But they aren't nearly as good as they should be, considering that the Phalanx is the bread and butter of the Greeks. All the problems of the Phalanx (and they are legion) are especially painful for the Greeks, because that's what they have to rely on.
Now in my game, Greek phalanxes have 120 men. They're much more dangerous. In fact, possibly too dangerous. I'm thinking about setting the base size down to 50, at least for the armored and Spartan variety. But I consider it a big step up from what it was.
Re: Faction with decent infantry (besides Romans)?
Hu, well, then I can't really understand the complaint.
'cause I always felt the phalanxes were killer...
Re: Faction with decent infantry (besides Romans)?
I had no problems with the Greeks once I figured out how to use the Phalanx troops - then it was cake against almost all units. On Large Settings. It made me very angry for a while though.
Re: Faction with decent infantry (besides Romans)?
I personally think Thrace is scary. They have phalanx units, they have falx and they have the uber dreaded bastarnae. Those guys are simply put nasty. This is a combination of units nobody else can really match. Your phalanx presents a front very few factions can safely engage head to head, and the few factions that CAN do this, have no answer to your bastarnae which will just chew them to pieces once on a flank. You also cover your phalanx weaknesses with the bastarnae, anyone who tries to flank your phalangites are going to end up with a whole lot of bastarnae up in them ;p
Re: Faction with decent infantry (besides Romans)?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Akka
Hu, well, then I can't really understand the complaint.
'cause I always felt the phalanxes were killer...
Not really, super easy to flank for the smaller types. They disorder easily as well, and they are slow in phalanx. I couldn't get sacred band through any defended holes in the wall on VH. And I had one that did succumb to a heavy cav frontal charge despite having a poeni phalanx next to them also taking the charge. Some of this was VH, but my cav were not having trouble on VH...so the conclusion was obvious.
I play on "large" unit sizes so the smaller phalanx units are 80 man, while larger are 120. The issue is relative scale. The small phalanx has lower frontage than other units. From what I can tell historically phalanx units operated more as a wing (left, right, etc.) That is difficult to do in RTW until you spend a lot of time learning the quirks of carefully controlling your phalanx, and the AI can't do it at all--it just isn't programmed that way.
It would be interesting if CA could allow you to group up to X number of phalanx units into a sort of continuous wing (and the AI would need the same ability.) It wouldn't be easy to program, because it would still need to be subject to being split through losses, charges, disorder or terrain. You wouldn't want it to be overdone and be a super unit. On the other hand, they would still have considerable vulnerabilities such as the risk of being flanked, and turning them as a group would be very difficult since they would have to slowly wheel. It could also be made slow to pull a unit out of this formation. This would better reflect phalanx warfare.
Of course, I had also hoped that the Roman AI and player formations could be set up to do standard pre-Marian legion formation attacks as well. Sort of an automatic mode where the player could intervene to deal with specific threats while his/her army carried out traditional Roman velite...hastati...principes...and even triarii attacks against a the main body. Manipular line extension and all that. Then again, you need something that resembles a normal legion to make the force disposition reasonable, and the training set up doesn't allow you to buy/build a whole legion at once. Also, you need slower kill rates to make the battle fatigue and line swapping a factor.
In summary, I was hoping for something that took the fundamental control of historical armies to the next level. I was hoping that you could give control of sections of your army to the AI and expect it to do a competent (if not stellar) job of performing its assigned task.
Re: Faction with decent infantry (besides Romans)?
Well, sorry Red Harvest, but you playing in VH invalidate the complains you could have about the phalanxes.
Of course that the cavalry isn't as affected by the VH mode than phalanxes : cavalry is for charges and attack, and they bring the fight to the enemy. As such, the AI having a +7 bonus to attack, doesn't change much : it's the AI which is being charged.
But for phalanxes, which have to defend against charge, the +7 in attack DOES make a world of difference.
Re: Faction with decent infantry (besides Romans)?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Akka
Well, sorry Red Harvest, but you playing in VH invalidate the complains you could have about the phalanxes.
Of course that the cavalry isn't as affected by the VH mode than phalanxes : cavalry is for charges and attack, and they bring the fight to the enemy. As such, the AI having a +7 bonus to attack, doesn't change much : it's the AI which is being charged.
But for phalanxes, which have to defend against charge, the +7 in attack DOES make a world of difference.
Nope, not invalidated in the least. My cav aren't getting +7 when I'm using them to mop the floor with phalangites.
The relative unit size is having a big impact for phalanx units facing other infantry, VH or not. I did a fair bit of testing in the demo at medium and saw the exacty same problem with plalanx unit size, and commented on it at the time.
