Quote Originally Posted by Vuk View Post
I heard so many raves about EB, so I decided to download it and try it myself. I gotta say, truely a fantastic job of overhauling the game system, representing provnices, units, characters, etc. It really is quite a breathtaking achievement. There is one part of it where I really felt it fell flat though.
I know there are lots of fans of this mod, and I am not trying to be a jerk here, but the way battles play out is really quite unrealistic. Archers are undervalued, cavalry is almost completely useless, damage is quite off, and the AI does some random and pretty ridiculous things.
Archers are undervalued? How so? I get the impression you have limited yourself to the very western most half (possibly the Italian Peninsula even) of the campaign map? Because, and I'm saying this as an EB player here, the archers from the Eastern regions will -when deployed properly- simply trash most armies. If two people where to do battle in multiplayer and one of them would use an army with those Eastern archer types the other one would have no choice but to invest considerably in his cavalry: indeed, when you get to the East the archers are quite capable of roundly defeating most western cavalry squadrons.

Now before you rip me apart for stating my opinion, let me clarify something. I am not an ignorant noob who wants ridiculous tank cavalry that can roll everything like in RTW, and I am not clueless as to weaponry of the time. In fact, quite the opposite. Apart from having read a vast variety of sources on the subject, I have created and used my own archaic weaponry and armour. While not an expert, and not everything I have made has turned out, I none-the-less have a working knowledge of ancient equipment.
For example, let's take slingers. A good slinger could outrange the average bowman at this time, and be quite a bit more accurate.
This is what makes me think you have really limited yourself to the western bit. Oh and for the record: slingers in the west could & do outrange (as is the case in EB) most archers. But if you go to the east you'll find the nomadic composite bows are... quite potent. So potent in fact that composite bows remained the best ranged weapons: fast, accurate, and effective from horseback too. (While probably not entirely without exaggeration the Mongols did pride themselves on extraordinary range for a reason.)

There are lots of good sources that cite the accuracy and range of slingers, but the best IMO is the Bible (I leave it up to you whether to accept this as a creditable source or not). I forget in which book of the Bible it says that the slingers of Benjiman could hit a bird in flight from some (I forget exactly) very long range. I made and have used a sling (three in fact) myself, and while I remain very unskilled with it, I have gotten a taste for its power. My biggest objection with the slingers lies in the description.
Okay... However I personally do doubt that you would, as they do in movies, have sufficient time to aim very accurately under the stress of battle (you should look up the astonishing low percentage of soldiers in for instance WW2 that actually shot to kill, nevermind now the very low number which actually shot at all) much less when they are ordered to fire. It's not like "Fire! - But sir, I haven't marked my target yet!" more like "Fire! Ok, here we go - let's give it a shot..."

As for the reliability of the Bible... Well, put it this way: Biblical is a distinct term for refering to certain expressions or events. So is Homeric. See what I mean?

The description says that they fling rocks at the enemy. Most Hellenic slingers at least at this time used lead bullets, not stones. They flew faster, with more accuracy, and could cause devestating damage - easily being able to kill an armoured man without even necassarily damaging his armour.
The discription does? Yes, you are quite right that the Hellenic slingers do fling lead bullets. (I thought that it was mentioned the lead bullets are one of those military innovations which occured around the time of the famous Philip, king of Makedonia, or am I utterly confused here?) Heck, they are _statted_ as such (compare to the clay bullets of their Thracian counterparts). However...

While many peasants used smaller slings and stones to herd sheep, and often only brought that into battle, more professional slingers had more professional equipment, with hemp slings and lead bullets. I decided to have a unit of Rhodian slingers pour into a units of unshielded infantry and LO AND BEHOLD! About FIVE darned men dropped dead! WTH! They would have destroyed the entire first row and reaked havoc on the rest.
5 Men on a unit of how much? Even at 240 men it's still 1 in 48 or approximately 2% of the entire unit. Now consider that a slingers unit is what, 120 men? At any rate 1 vs 1 tests do not really work out in EB. They don't do so in RTW either. You will find, for instance, that the _scenario_ of the battle is quite influential: in EB units are more prone to the effects of circumstances (as they probably were in real life, for all we know) than they were in RTW because of the combination of stats, cost and AOR. You will find that slingers and archers are among the most effective and arguably the most cost-effective troops to campaign with. You will find that height advantages and disadvantages have markedly more effect on the performance of various missile troops compared to RTW: a few archers positioned advantageously are capable of inflicting massive losses among lightly armed enemy (infantry). Really, do play a couple of camaigns as a settled faction that has to face the nomads early on in large numbers (AS, Baktria) and you will -if anything- probably curse them archers for making your life so much harder and depleting your forces (not to mention coffers) so quickly. See how you can annihilate armies with a good mix of archers and slingers backed up by some solid heavy infantry, some tough light infantry and powerful cavalry. See how going cheap & easy on recruitment policy can backfire when faced with unexpectedly tough opponents, resulting in massive losses and/or routs.

The rather different ways in how battles play out in EB are a known first-timer nasty-surprise. However, once you get used to it apparently it isn't inherently worse than RTW: at least people who play EB a lot complain a lot less about these issues than do people who are new to it (and don't see their expectations fulfilled).