Quote Originally Posted by antisocialmunky View Post
Well obviously! I haven't advocated a addition of a weapon. I'm not saying swap out the secondary. People have been assuming that this is the only way to represent this aspect of balance - its not, it just shows a supreme lack of imagination. We can't map RL to a game 1-1 but we can adjust other factors to make it work out more accurately in the end.

What I'm saying is that a unit that wasn't historically rolled over by frontal charges should not be completely pwned by heavy cavalry in a game that claims to be as historically accurate as possible.
I think you have managed to completely miss my point. My point is not that we can't represent whatever Jedi mind trick we want. We can probably do exploding squirrels if we want to. My point is that if you start doing this kind of thing for one unit then you should apply the same rationale to a ton of other units.

What is so wrong with that? Honestly the whole 'we can't represent legionaires accurately versus cavalry because we can't add a third weapon' is fallacious because you can represent it in other ways like MASS, the main factor in talking about charge casualties. I've listed like 3 more options to adjust the balance in the legionaire's favor WITHOUT even talking about weapon replacement. The 'we aren't representing secondaries on other units' argument is flawed because defense a matchup against horses is on a different scale(this is a balance issue) than depicting vicious hth combat (aesthetic issue) as the spear vs infantry was decently balanced in EB +4 Attack/-4 Defense and the game can only reasonable depict hth fighting at a distance. The cataphract archer thing oyu bring up is a valid point because its similar but in normal gameplay, you don't leave horses in melee for long periods of time and the lance is usually the better anti-cav weapon anyways so the balance change is minimal.
In "normal gameplay" you make sure to have supporting troops to deal with the cataphracts too and the AP bonus of an axe + the swifter animation and higher (if not by much) attack values would come in rather more handy than a lance in close combat... Furthermore the only reason that the Thureophoroi etc. don't have a 2nd/3rd side arm is because the game either doesn't allow it or because the game can't render the effect properly: this is not so much about aesthetics as about a decision to leave out a very prominent piece of equipment... In short, as it stands our depiction of troop types like the Hoplitai and Thureophoroi is every much as, or rather a good bit more hindered by game engine limits than that of the Legionaries. And this will continue to remain so in EB 2 because pretty much the same issues with side-arm switching apply.

W.r.t suggestions such as playing around with mass; this has more effect on infantry than cavalry especially seeing that in "normal" gameplay you'd use your legionaries to break the enemy infantry first and you auxillia to hold of the cataphracts (who just so happen to be spearmen).

In Short: This is a balance and realism issue up there with hoplites not being able to do pushing and therefore completely failing on the attack. In EB1, you addressed the latter with their uberguardmodeness which was not an ideal depiction so why not make an non-ideal depiction of legionaires vs horses for balancing purposes as well if the engine limits your ability to replicate certain aspects of the game?

Besides, leaving the balance as is encourages a stereotypical depiction of heavy cavalry as being able to mount massed frontal charges effectively against fresh ordered heavy infantry since many people play Romans first. :-p
Yes: we fixed an issue of a formation not working out by default by... altering that formation? And yes, the hoplites are probably a tad stronger than that they ought to be. This goes for more units. Again, there is a fairly large overhaul required for EB 2; and w.r.t. hoplites you happen to have chosen a problem JMRC cracked for the phalanx units. I would expect that kind of model/animation/bounding-sphere witchcraft to be applied to more units to get rid of some of the older fudged solutions, btw.

If I may make myself a little clearer; for me the following 3 major points are something why I am not jumping in my chair with hands raised crying "hear, hear" when I learn about these proposals for modifications to the stat system:
  1. There seems no consensus that infantry in general and legionaries in particular are too weak against cavalry in general and cataphracts in particular. (There have been other posters telling stories of archers beating cataphracts on VH; and generally disagreeing with the notion infantry is too weak.)
  2. The perceived inadequacy refers to something not "visible in the unit itself". By this I mean that currently we don't have a heavy pilum for the legionaries as 3rd weapon and we don't depict one either in the skin. Yes, that is not because it is more accurate but because the engine wouldn't work with it; and "implying" such a "3rd side arm" by fudging other stats is a minefield of setting priorities. What is more important, an actually depicted but unused side arm or one that is not depicted and also not used? What is more important, a general purpose side arm or a special one-trick-pony one? More important tends to translate fairly trivially into more accurate: i.e. there is/are (a) reason(s) why a particular piece of equipment was chosen over others within units.
  3. There is a major reworking of the stat system due for EB2. For all we know this perceived in-adequacy of legionaries may be gone completely because of re-appraisals of arms & equipment w.r.t. stats and how M2TW-K is different from RTW; even without factoring in such a 3rd heavy pilum side arm. Promising (or demanding) to do this when it may in fact be completely counterproductive simply makes no sense to me.