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

[Geticus]

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What you failed to realize in my previous post was that the balance referred to is, literally, historical balance...

Vanilla portrayed them very fictionally and, hence, very unbalanced historically... Why were numidians so un-unique?... Why were Gaulish infantry so fragile?...

These are things that are a result of the fact that the unit rosters were totally not made to be historically balanced, but rather for entertainment balance: Carthage with Elephants, Romans with Everything, Greeks with Pikes, Easterns with Cataphracts, Barbarians withh Druids/Berserkers, etc., etc...

So, it is natural for you to feel that your faction has certain disadvantages and, hence it is unbalanced. But this can only be felt if you take, as you said, a very subjective approach. Why not try and play other factions to the same degree as you do as Gauls or Germans? If others also have relative disadvantages, why would that not be considered balanced? What would be unhistorical about trade not being good above the Po under the Gauls and Germans... trade has never, ever been good without the seed of civilization!... Isn't that the mark of the barbarians?... profiting from plunder??...

Yes I agree to some extent that Vanilla RTW unit statistics and design were partly created for fun factor, while EB is a more serious effort to shrug off the effects of Helleno-Roman misobarbarism and reflect that around 270 there were many strong martial cultures and the future was uncertain. As for Roman troops in EB, well on the one their advantages to me are obvious, and having played the Celtic factions a great deal, playing the Romans would be almost the same thing, its all swordsmen armies, the Romans are just tougher and have better javelin volleys, while their melee impact is weaker. And that is the other reason I won't play them, when I send swordsmen charging on the flank, I want to see a lot of bodies dropping but the Romans with their inferior lethality just don't satisfy me. I've played Getai and ran falxmen too much, the 0.13 lethality gladius just don't cut it. 0.225 is about as low as I want to go. Now in reality I think the 0.13 Roman principes lethality is a statistical nerf, designed for game balance issues, and in reality Roman principes were some of the more lethal regular infantry in the world at that time. 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. 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. That's my take anyways.
But I won't play Romans simply because the 0.13 bores me, that and the Polybian principes are just too good in that 0.13 boring way.
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.

If you had access to a vault of EB MP replays could you make a (relatively?) reliable and accurate assessment of whether in fact MP does represent medieval Asiatic steppe warfare? (Because I do realize the power of heavy cavalry in the RTW engine by way of EB statting).

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. I did see one replay about a month ago with a good Sarmatian army with Sarmatian nobles, Roxalani lights, mass HA levy spam and Skythian nobles in reserve, maybe it was you playing I'm not sure but the Sarmatians crushed a pretty tight KH infantry box in guard mode. I'd be curious to see it done at 40K with some Sarmatian warlords, or Saka bodyguards (not the FM type but the regular hetairoi lance/axe type). But its not too complex really, the main thing would be crescent formations rather than rectangles, doing simultaneous HA sweeps of both flanks and rear, firing concentrically when possible, skirmishing and riding down stray troops, and punctuated by a decisive heavy cavalry charge.