Is EB 1.2 the most sophisticated turn based computer strategy wargame to this date?

[SlickNicaG69]

The Celts, in a more realistic system, would have statistical variance within cohorts, not all would be equally well armed, and the heroes would surpass most anything individually that the Romans could field.

Yes, you too are right, but in the virtual reality system of a videogame, such discrepencies must be overlooked directly, and be indirectly assessed by the law of averages no? In other words, we must look at each unit as a whole rather than as a multitude of pieces.

However, the point you raise sheds light on the preventable descrepencies in the game that cause historical unbalance. The fact is that the typical gallic swordsman (such as the Southern or Northern) were quite under-equipped when compared to legionnaries in every sense. They had smaller, more brittle shields. They had pointless, heavy swords ideal only for slashing and quite unreliable (in Polybius' histories, he even describes during the Celtic War before the Hannibalic how Gallic swordsmen would be required to back off and straighten their swords with their legs! because sometimes the only way to be able to kill with such a sword was by sheer blunt trauma, not slashing or gashing.

Also, keep in mind that certain technicalities of history, such as the fact that most barbarian armies primarily consisted of those lowly soldiers, should not be considered when attempting to set certain stat values... Just because the Gauls could never develop a socio-economic system where they would be able to afford the maintenance of a real professional army (Neitos), doesn't mean such things should not be allowed to be generated in the game, whether sp or mp. I hear many times how Neitos, in real life, only consisted of an elite squad, not a whole force (as players usually get 6-8 of these units in a typical mp game), but that is fine within the confines of a videogame.

And charioteer warriors could dismount and fight on foot with broad bladed longspears with something on the order of a 20 attack and 0.3 lethality.

What you are asking for here is... RTW: EB... 2050!!!

As for profitting from plunder, the Romans were just as good at that as any "barbarians". One of the Roman axioms, often repeated in Livy, is that the Romans considered nothing to be more properly their own, than that which they siezed by arms during war.

Yes, this is very true, but as you also failed to recognize in my statement was that it was the barbarian way to profit by plunder. Although the Romans also did, they much more profitted from conquest, colonization, and, ultimately, the establishment and proliferation of modern civilization!

Well I have watched quite a lot of EB replays, especially the tournament posts from ASM's tourney last year and a fair amount from your tourney this year, and no one really does the crescent formation IIRC, and few people if any sweep both right and left flank simultaneously. Most people tend to use rectangular formations, or amorphous masses and overlapping Cantabrian circles, often shooting from the front rather than flank and rear.

Tell me, Geticus, apart from Hannibal, who else in history ever used the crescent defense formation deliberately?