Is it just me or are the Triarii unrealistically tough to fight?

Thanks, I probably copied the base from an internal build rather than the one we released. Sorry.

Playing the Carthies on M/M, I found the Early Triarii more annoying (mainly because there tended to be lots of them to the point of unbalanced army line-up, making for some tedious maneuvering to get them out of formation) than nasty. Pinning them from the front with Liby-Phoenicians and hitting their flanks with Caetratii, Iberian Assaults, Samnite Heavies or Gaestatae (depending on what was available) and first subjecting them to all the AP javelins in immediate vicinity worked well enough. Actually surrounding them isn't too smart, as the blighters will then Fight To The Death. Leave them room to run, and even the Numidians can hunt them down like the running dog scum that they are (although something with AP tends to do it rather faster).

hmm as the romani, i have 3 units of pre-polybian trarii in one full stack of my army, and they do get a beating, kind of. i usually in a really tough battle can loose 60 men in each unit. the pricipie's getting down to 90/80 men each.

mind this is with elephants, i think they are well balanced

It depends what you’re fighting. If you’re against pikes then Triarii will take a beating.

Size Matters(tm) ~D
Speaking of that, Misathropoi Phalangitai were even better at pinning them. Especially as they didn't need to be dragged to western Sicily for replenishing.
...
...now that I think about it, the army I had beating on the Romani in Italy was eventually made up almost entirely of the locally recruited troops and local mercs... There just wasn't much point in using the Africans, save for the Elites as a sort of super-reserve. Those assorted Greeks seemed to do well enough against those 70% Triarii stacks.

Which reads as "the AI can't steer phalanzes right", really.