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

I'm aware these guys were actually tough but when an entire army has surrounded one unit of Triarii, they are in basic terms, fucked... youre not going to survive unless youre covered in really thick plate armor, which the triarii aren't.

From what I know of the history of the Roman military is that the hellanic equipment and phalanx formation fighting basically was fell out of use with the romans because of Brennos and his army capturing the city of rome and holding it for ransom.

But if the triarii were as tough historically as they are in this modification there would have been no reason for the Romans to have changed what clearly works with flying colours.

I think the Triarii are a beautiful unit, they are a wonderful unit to fight with because they basically batter everything into submission but in certain battles where I a fairly significant force of guys who are carefully placed so as to create a trap for units of trairii so that they can be surrounded and have their formations bust up, suddenly rout because of a stubborn yet tiny force of Triarii, I get quite frustrated.

Maybe hard mode has a glitch or something but these guys are just extremely tough even the Geaste had difficulties fighting the Triarii when I captured the City of Rome.

Has anyone else experienced this or is there a historically valid counter argument to what I've said? if the Triarii were really this completely elite unstoppable force, then fair enough, but something just doesn't seem right about it.

Yes they are too tough, and i'm (almost) sure that i have read (irregular verb?) that they will be tuned down in newer versions (it was possible a post of QwertyMIDX)

Yeah, I don't know if I mentioned it in a public forum but they'll definatly be toned down in the next build. Playing hard battle difficultly will always mess with the way units perform though.

Would it be better to keep the stats as they are, but to instead reduce the unit number?

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Originally Posted by abou

Would it be better to keep the stats as they are, but to instead reduce the unit number?

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The unit isnt that big to begin with and they are almost invulnerable to missile fire which isnt quite right.

Well... They are full armour and with a large shield, fighting in a phalanx formation... They're like the equivelant of an elite, heavily armoured Greek phalanx unit of a few decades earlier... Kinda...

But then again EB has said that this mod is best played on VH/M... If you want to play on hard and make things really imbalanced then go ahead. I never had too much of a problem with them on medium, but i never fought against them. I will say however i lost many battles when it came to my triarii... So they're not all that tough.

If you don't mind me asking, toned down in what way? Attack, armor, defensive skill, what?

A number of things, I'll post their new stats and an explination of what I changed in the stat system later today.

Also these guys are massively experienced. They've been hastati and principes before they became triarii... And lets face it the Romans were constantly fighting all through their history, as was ever nation i think...

Here are some new stats to try:

Code:

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type                    roman triarii early
dictionary              roman_triarii_early      ; Triarii
category                infantry
class                  spearmen
voice_type              Medium_1
soldier                roman_infantry_triariiearly, 40, 0, 1.28
officer                roman_officer_early_centurion
officer                roman_officer_early_standard
mount_effect            horse +3, camel +3, elephant -1
attributes              sea_faring, hide_forest, can_sap
formation              1, 1.2, 2, 2.4, 4, square, phalanx
stat_health            1, 0
stat_pri                13, 14, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, spear, 0 ,0.15
stat_pri_attr          spear
stat_sec                8, 24, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, sword, 0 ,0.1
stat_sec_attr          no
stat_pri_armour        12, 6, 5, metal
stat_sec_armour        0, 0, flesh
stat_heat              4
stat_ground            2, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental            14, disciplined, highly_trained
stat_charge_dist        30
stat_fire_delay        0
stat_food              60, 300
stat_cost              1, 1992, 473, 30, 40, 1992

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The proposed triari stats look good to me, Qwerty! :2thumbsup: Still better than principes but less godlike.

I may have got it wrong, but do the stats leave the early triarii still marginally better than late triarii? It would be unfortunate for gameplay reasons if that were true - nobody likes an upgrade that turns out to be a downgrade. An ahistorical fudge factor for the late triarii may be justified (rather like what CA did in MTW to make the feudal=>chivalric upgrade pay off for knights and MAA).

They're a very different unit, I don't think comparing them that way really works.

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Originally Posted by econ21

The proposed triari stats look good to me, Qwerty! :2thumbsup: Still better than principes but less godlike.

I may have got it wrong, but do the stats leave the early triarii still marginally better than late triarii? It would be unfortunate for gameplay reasons if that were true - nobody likes an upgrade that turns out to be a downgrade. An ahistorical fudge factor for the late triarii may be justified (rather like what CA did in MTW to make the feudal=>chivalric upgrade pay off for knights and MAA).

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The slightly worse triarii are balanced off by the better hastati and principes. I think it's fine, otherwise there would be no point in building a Camillan army in custom or multiplayer battles.

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Originally Posted by Kralizec

The slightly worse triarii are balanced off by the better hastati and principes. I think it's fine, otherwise there would be no point in building a Camillan army in custom or multiplayer battles.

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Are you kidding? Do you honestly think people are going to use camilian armies in multiplayer? HAH! Fool! If anybody plays multiplayer and they play as the Romans, they will make armies of the best Roman infantry and best cavalry, like in vanilla where they use nothing but urban cohorts and urban cavalry... :shame:

But i think people will just play as eastern factions and use horse archers and cataphracts like they did in vanilla... Losers.

I played multiplayer about 10 times, and each time i faced nothing but armies of elephants and sacred band infantry, cataphracts and horse archers, urban cohorts and praetorian cavalry, egyptian pharaos guards and pharaos archers... People do not want realism when they play multiplayer... They want to win, and they use the most powerful units they can afford.

Even the forumites used armies of cretan archers and spartan hoplites, urban cohorts and archer auxilia.

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Originally Posted by Dayve

Well... They are full armour and with a large shield, fighting in a phalanx formation... They're like the equivelant of an elite, heavily armoured Greek phalanx unit of a few decades earlier... Kinda...

But then again EB has said that this mod is best played on VH/M... If you want to play on hard and make things really imbalanced then go ahead. I never had too much of a problem with them on medium, but i never fought against them. I will say however i lost many battles when it came to my triarii... So they're not all that tough.

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I was under the impression that the difficulty settings only effected the AI, I didn't know they actually just made everyone impossibly hard, that said its kind of cool that I captured the city of Rome fairly quickly on hard mode despite the high proportion of Triarii in the Roman army.

Will medium settings be a challenging experience? or well say a more realistic experience?

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Originally Posted by the_handsome_viking

I was under the impression that the difficulty settings only effected the AI, I didn't know they actually just made everyone impossibly hard, that said its kind of cool that I captured the city of Rome fairly quickly on hard mode despite the high proportion of Triarii in the Roman army.

Will medium settings be a challenging experience? or well say a more realistic experience?

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Vh campaign difficulty does make the AI more aggressive on the campaign. VH battle difficulty just gives the AI units stats bonuses and does not give any bonus to AI difficulty. It is recommended you play on VH/M.

Foot

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Originally Posted by Dayve

Are you kidding? Do you honestly think people are going to use camilian armies in multiplayer? HAH! Fool! If anybody plays multiplayer and they play as the Romans, they will make armies of the best Roman infantry and best cavalry, like in vanilla where they use nothing but urban cohorts and urban cavalry... :shame:

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Calm down Dayve and stop being so rude and narrow minded playing 10 pick up games hardly makes you an expert on multiplayer practices plenty of people try to recreate ancient battles with whats available (EB will make that even more possible) others introduce rules that restrict certain unit types horse archers for example.

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Originally Posted by Kralizec

The slightly worse triarii are balanced off by the better hastati and principes. I think it's fine, otherwise there would be no point in building a Camillan army in custom or multiplayer battles.

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I don't know if QwertyMIDX was saying that the late Triarii would be worse than the early Triarii just the comparing that stats directly doesn't really work because of the differences in formation more specifically the way the phalanx formation works in RTW.

Sorry if what i said sounded rude - Didn't mean it to.

But seriously... Go and play a MP battle in vanilla and see if everybody isn't using the most leet units they can afford...

You can apply house rules agreed by both parties to multiplayer battles. Essentially, you can develop "army lists" as it is routinely done for miniature rule sets. Those lists include all units that may form part of a certain army and specify a maxima and minima for each of them and details such as "if you take Unit X then you can't take Unit Y" or "If you take n units of Unit X then you must take m units of Unit Y". I have not played much multiplayer, but I have done that. I was member of a clan where we developed several of those lists and we were even contemplating organizing a competition allowing armies composed using the agreed army lists. I found the battles played using the armies developed in that way quite enjoyable.

For example, here's what we used for the Seleukids. It has been a while since I've seen anything vanilla, so some unit names might be wrong. (this was for vanilla RTW units and a slightly tailored EDU.txt, mostly ownership changes. With EB you should already have all or most adequate faction units available)

Seleukid Royal Army

-General Guard (armoured): 2 units
(Represents the Royal Agema and the Royal Hetairoi, both 1000-strong units typically present in a Seleukid Royal Army)

-Argyraspids: 2 units
(Seleukid Royal Guard. Its number in the great battles seems to have been fixed at 10.000)

-Phalanx Pikemen (can't remember if this was the right name...) : 3-5 units

-Militia Cavalry : 1-2 units
(Represents several types of light cavalry such as Tarentines, Eastern light cavalry, Greek citizen cavalry, etc...)

-Cataphracts: 0-3 units
-Hetairoi: 0-3 units
NOTE: Military settler cavalry. The total of Cataphracts and Hetairoi must not be lower than 1 or greater than 3.

-Elephants- 1-3 units

-Eastern Infantry (level 0)- 1-4 units
-Eastern Infantry (Level 1)- 0-1 units
NOTA: Eastern Infantry total cannot be greater than 4.

-Hillmen (level 0): 0-1 units
-Hillmen (level 1): 0-1 units
NOTA: Hillmen total must be at least 1

-Peltasts: 0-1 units
-Eastern Skirmishers: 0-2 units
NOTA: The total of Peltasts plus Eastern Skirmishers must be at least 1.

-Cretan Archers: 1 unit

-Heavy peltasts (level 1): 0-1 units
-Hoplites: 0-1 units
Note: (they represent Greek mercenaries, armed either in Thureophoroi or classical hoplite styles)

-Slingers: 0-3 units
-Bowmen: 0-3 units
Note: The total of Slingers and Archers must be at least 1

-Horse Archers: 0-1 units
Note: 1200 Dahae horse archers were fielded at the battle of Magnesia

-Camel Archers: 0-1 units
Note: fielded at Magnesia as well.

-Scythed Chariots: 0-2 units

-Galatian Contingent:

-Barbarian Light Cavalry: 0-1 units
-Swordsmen: 1-2 units
-Chosen Swordsmen: 0-1
-Warband: 0-1
Note: In 2 vs. 2 and larger battles Galatians are only available if none of the allied armies is Gaulish.

Sounds good. Maybe a few of us can agree on some rules and play a game sometime.

In vanilla in multiplayer, there was no variety in peoples armies. It was the same over and over, people would use 100% leet units, and no lesser units. Like when playing as the Greeks... Nobody ever used militia hoplites or hoplites, it was always armoured or Spartan hoplites... Nobody ever used normal elephants... It was always cataphract elephants... Nobody wanted a good, realistic battle... They just wanted to win.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dayve

Sounds good. Maybe a few of us can agree on some rules and play a game sometime.

In vanilla in multiplayer, there was no variety in peoples armies. It was the same over and over, people would use 100% leet units, and no lesser units. Like when playing as the Greeks... Nobody ever used militia hoplites or hoplites, it was always armoured or Spartan hoplites... Nobody ever used normal elephants... It was always cataphract elephants... Nobody wanted a good, realistic battle... They just wanted to win.

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Just another reason there should be multiplayer campaigns :charge: :2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by Foot

Vh campaign difficulty does make the AI more aggressive on the campaign. VH battle difficulty just gives the AI units stats bonuses and does not give any bonus to AI difficulty. It is recommended you play on VH/M.

Foot

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M = Medium I assume right?

Ok well I'm going to have to start a new campaign, which is fair enough.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dayve

Sorry if what i said sounded rude - Didn't mean it to.

But seriously... Go and play a MP battle in vanilla and see if everybody isn't using the most leet units they can afford...

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I play online quite a lot and I've won some pretty epic victories against factions like the Romans, Armenians and the Selucids with the Germanic tribes.

If you want to make super units unattainable just make a server and lower the money.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by the_handsome_viking

M = Medium I assume right?

Ok well I'm going to have to start a new campaign, which is fair enough.

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You should try a few custom battles first just to see what everything is like I find hard battle difficulty is a good compromise helps the AI but the enemy will still break and run when they should (unless they have a military genius commanding them) but is up to you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Descent

You should try a few custom battles first just to see what everything is like I find hard battle difficulty is a good compromise helps the AI but the enemy will still break and run when they should (unless they have a military genius commanding them) but is up to you.

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I originally tried that in the custom battles section to see what the difficulty levels were.

Any conformation about the truth behind what the difficutly settings actually effect would be really great.

VH gives something like +10 to morale and attack for enemy units. So I guess Hard would give +5 to the same. Don't quote me on those figures, but they definately get a bonus to morale and I'm pretty sure about the bonus for attack as well.

Foot

I think it's +7 and +3.

In 1.2 custom battles give those bonuses to the human as well, though. I hope that 1.5 fixed this as well as made the bonuses moddable, I don't know.

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Originally Posted by Kralizec

In 1.2 custom battles give those bonuses to the human as well, though. I hope that 1.5 fixed this as well as made the bonuses moddable, I don't know.

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AFAIK, fixed but not moddable.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by QwertyMIDX

Here are some new stats to try:

Code:

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type                    roman triarii early
dictionary              roman_triarii_early      ; Triarii
category                infantry
class                  spearmen
voice_type              Medium_1
soldier                roman_infantry_triariiearly, 40, 0, 1.28
officer                roman_officer_early_centurion
officer                roman_officer_early_standard
mount_effect            horse +3, camel +3, elephant -1
attributes              sea_faring, hide_forest, can_sap
formation              1, 1.2, 2, 2.4, 4, square, phalanx
stat_health            1, 0
stat_pri                13, 14, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, spear, 0 ,0.15
stat_pri_attr          spear
stat_sec                8, 24, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, sword, 0 ,0.1
stat_sec_attr          no
stat_pri_armour        12, 6, 5, metal
stat_sec_armour        0, 0, flesh
stat_heat              4
stat_ground            2, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental            14, disciplined, highly_trained
stat_charge_dist        30
stat_fire_delay        0
stat_food              60, 300
stat_cost              1, 1992, 473, 30, 40, 1992

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BTW there are mistakes in this new entry which the game won't accept qwerty: you need to change these lines
officer roman_officer_early_centurion
officer roman_officer_early_standard
to this
officer officer_roman_early_centurion
officer roman_early_standard

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.