Unit Size & Ancillary System

[Karamazovmm]

Haven't see anything related to this, and so I got these doubts:

1-) What's the best unit size to play (I have noticed that cavalry in the huge settings is unstoppable)

2-)Does the ancillary system works? I know there is the bug about the impostor trait, but the rest of it works? I remember playing romani and doing what could be considered a roleplaying with my characters, and as it turns out ALL of them got really nasty traits, no matter if you had them educated in Roma or Sparta. In another game when I played makedonia, and was running for my life, some of those characters got really great. It was like playing M2TW with a badass general, they ran for their lives.

If somebody asks this the mod that changed my opinion about mods (well not all of them), this is the single reason why I still like and play RTW, and yes you can assume that I consider it great, although you would be wrong, 'cause this is awasome

[Raygereio]

1) I play on large and both my computer and I are happy about that.
Actually I found cavalry to be more devastating on smaller settings, on especialy huge the infantrygroups have more men to 'absorb' (read: get run over by) the charge and don't rout as quickly.
Personally if your computer can handle it; try huge, if only for the epic-big-army feel.

2) The imposter-bug; I assume you're referring to the whole "All my FM's get the allied general-trait!" thing? That's caused by the fact that EB1.2 is not save game compatible with previous versions.
Well, that and people not reading properly as this information is given right here.

[Karamazovmm]

Well, I must have been confused about the unit sizes, but in vanilla and in EB I was pretty under the impression that the cavalry was unstoppable in huge settings (remembering the slaughter that was one battle with catanks)

And now they we're all new campaigns started with 1.2, and yes I read that thread. the know impostor bug was somewhere here in this forum, as in if you by accident put your FM or general in settlement different than it was supposed to, you would get the impostor trait, however if you put him to govern in the right settlements you couldn't put to use his bonuses (concerning the type of province he was ruling), and so if you made one mistake, well you kind off lost him for governing something.

[Mediolanicus]

1) EB has other units and another unit balance than vanilla, that's one of the things that make in a total conversion mod after all. Cavalry is weak and drops like flies when you use it like in vanilla. When you know what to do, cavalry wins every battle in EB.

2) Of course the traits and ancilliaries work. Some seem to encouter a bug with the imposter, but that seems to be caused by something they did, since must of us don't get that problem.
Again, things have changes in EB. You shouldn't keep your generals doing one thing all the time, you shouldn't put them too long in one city, nor too long on campaign. Keeping them in a city during winter months - or arid summers - and not force marching them every turn also reduces bad traits. And of course, you'll have to accept the fact that nobody is perfect, and most are far from perfect.

[team_kramnik]

1) Huge, nothing has a better atmosphere than forests battles with general cam and both sides using 8000+ soldiers. Regarding cav if it has a horse and a lance just don't use it. There is no other way to neutralise the cavalry-charge. Actually also don't use horsearchers, phalangites and slingers. The AI simply can't handle them. And if you think huge gives you too many soldiers just use a half-stack. I once rebuild the Macedonian Army of Alexander the Great on large setting. It just felt a bit dull as my right wing always wiped out the enemy before the other parts even made contact. On large if you charge a unit from different sides it nearly always routs. More mass on huge gives the AI more staying power.

2) Could just be historical...
Anyway I've made the exact opposite experiance than Mediolanicus. the way to get a great general is simply winning lots of battles. As with roleplaying Roman commanders always change they're not getting very good.

[Lysimachos]

As with roleplaying Roman commanders always change they're not getting very good.

Which is kind of historical, too, as they didn't have as many remarkable generals as one could come to think, considering their military successes. It also has been in the interest of the senate to prevent individual men from becoming too popular and thus powerful. Rightly so, as proven by the history of the late republic...

[Ca Putt]

size is up to you, all units have more destructive power when in larger numbers- Archers fire more arrows and are more likely to hit on huge, infantry can absorb more casualties...

I personally play on huge, mostly du to an expierience I had In Vanilla,(on ´normal) when I charged a unit equites into a unit of those screeching women: "CHAAAARGE!" while they charged I issued an order to my infantry to reselect them when they have arrived, but alas stupid me I failed to select them in time,"so you charged them now get out before they slaughter you , get out, GET ou...gh their all dead :/, oh well prepare for the next charge" the women did not rout they were all dead on first impact :/

[Lanceari]

I play in huge size only.

Historically, a Roman Marian Cohort would have a paper strength of 480 men. Formed 4 men deep, you would have 120 men to the side. Battle lines were very long and thin. A Marian legion would typically put 4 cohorts in the front line (almost 2,000 men) yet, this first line was almost four men deep.

The only way you can get close to representing this extremely long and thin lines is by sticking to huge unit sizes.

[IrishHitman]

Personally if your computer can handle it; try huge, if only for the epic-big-army feel..

Please remember, if you do play on Huge, watch your town populations closely!
If you need too many troops and only have one or two towns to recruit from, those cities will be depleted of population pretty fast.

There are a good few solutions to the problem of population on huge.
Either you invest in more towns and spread your recruitment areas out, you can recruit cheap units in outer towns and then disband them in your recruitment towns to boost your population, or you can bolster your armies with mercenaries more often.

[moonburn]

huge for population control

management of cities is a must for many factions and on huge when you screw up if does make a big impact wich can enhance your game experience far better

[Kevin]

On a side note: Does anyone play EB on the HIGHEST settings with High Unit Sizes? If so, what is your computer specs?

[A Very Super Market]

I can certainly manage it, but I choose not to because I usually have tons of other stuff running in the background. I also played windowed at 1024x768, because it gets warped on anything more.

Nvidiea 9500
Dual-core 2.6
4Gb RAM.

[Kevin]

How's it look?

[seienchin]

Ive never met anybody who could do that, for one single reason:
No multicore support. All the singlecore PCs of ROmes time were to weak to get the highest settings with huge units and all new computers have enough graphical power, but the processing power isnt use well. I actually can run Medivial2 exactly with the same power as Rome. So I have both on the highest settings, but on huge unit size I cant let it run faster than 2times speed and bridge battles tend to get as slow as it gets... Maybe 15fps. Same problem with all my friends computer except for the one who has still a single core... But his graphic card sucks.
Well anyway. Maybe with a 3.2 quadrocoe processor I try it again with the bridge battles and 4 times speed^^

PS:
Anybody who thinks the cavallery in EB works different than Vanilla should play vanilla again.
The only difference in EB is, that cavallery doesnt kill as many people in melee as before, but on the other hand it doesnt die as fast.
It really annoys, when your elite phalanxs formation breaks becaus of a frontal atack of medium cavallery... Allthough nobody gets killed. They just push into the units. But anyway atacking the flanks of the enemy battle line (Even from the front) with 3 cavallery units properly charging routs the enemy in EB too. Just the same as in Vanilla

[Cute Wolf]

On a side note: Does anyone play EB on the HIGHEST settings with High Unit Sizes? If so, what is your computer specs?

I once do in my lab's server..... when I was the admin...
But now, the new admin has re-format the comp and change the OS to Linux, so, I think I couldn't play that anymore.

Using 1600 x 1200 resolution

Specs: (forget the exact name)
Intel Dual Core (or somewhat for server) 2.8 Ghz
RAM 16 GB
VGA ATI Radeon 2 Gb
HDD more than 1400 Gb

Playing EB with "medium" settings and things got too fast.... I once play a Romaioi (oops...) campaign on this comp, and each turn is only 1 or 2 seconds... and each battle is just faster.... (no lag when my armies march). Just really awesome (the EB graphics, not the Romans)

[A Very Super Market]

Strange. I ran it fine. I never did try a large 20 unit Pantodapoi spam-fest though, and only ever played a few 10 unit battles though.

[Apázlinemjó]

I play on laptop,

AMD Athlon dual-core 1,9 GHz
RAM 4 GB
Ati HD 3200

It works fine on high settings (without antialiasing) with large unit size. Though it begins to lag around ~5000 soldiers.

I've checked a few sites for info about my VGA and if I could raise the clock signal I would get a +40% better perfomance with it. However the manufacturer restricted the modding on laptops... so .

[Kevin]

woah you should post a screenshot, my computer plays on medium settings on large