Quote Originally Posted by Nelson View Post
Yeah, I pretty much agree with all of this. From Shogun onward CA has been determined to make us tech up to get what was already available at the campaign start date. In Rome, by the time you can build triarii you are almost to Marius despite the obvious historical existence of the entire manipular legion when the game begins. Ah well. This may be how they choose to balance the factions.
The factions don't really need balancing too much, as they all have near indentical unit rosters.

Giving facions first rates at the start would invalidate the naval tech tree, because a lot of it needs to be researched to build them. And then of course there's the fact you need a top-level shipyard as well.

It's irritating, but I can understand where CA is coming from. Teching up gives you a sense of progress and accomplishment which would be missing if all the tech was available from the start.

It's one of those tricky realism vs. gameplay issues .