Quote Originally Posted by vollorix View Post
The armour of the most units might be as realistic as possible concerning the actual situation in the time frame of EB, but there are two things which make this "realism" quite unrealistic game wise:
1. The armour is the primary value which is considered in autocalc, and therefore the disadvantage of unarmoured units is quite obvious.
2. The defence skill doesn´t not have an overall protection like armour does; on the battlemap this simply leads to unbalanced results.
One can´t make it perfect due to the limited RTW engine, and every one has his own view on different things, but the main goal of EB, to realisticly represent ( in game: on the campaign/battle map ) leads to very undesired results ( one simple example: Lusos rampaging their way through Gaul; their lowest levy unit has an armour value of "4" ( iberi milites, 240 men ), while the best armoured gaulic swordmen have a value of "5" ( Bataroas, 200 men ).
I, for my part, think that there is a descrepancy between the historical realismus, and the ingame situation. And i don´t want to start talking about "Triari spam" of the Romans ( "14" armour value, meaning "game over" for any barbarian faction ). As much as i love EB, and appriciate the hard and dedicated work of all team members who have been involved in making this modification possible, i wonder why there were never made needed fixes for the balancing the factions ( not everyone can mode even the EDU, but moding EDB with the complicated EB system is quite difficult ).
I hope, in EB II the approach will be more sofisticated concerning the unit balancing.
I wouldn't be surprised if there is artificial historicity-based unit stat imbalancing the same way there is historicity-based unit cost imbalancing. Notice how several people here mentioned that the Reformata's higher costs relative to the Principes are not explained fully through stats but through external, historical factors. (An interesting point to pick here would be: how exactly are these historical factors quantified when deciding costs.)

On the same token, I can anticipate unit stat imbalancing. Just like you can adjust unit costs for historical reasons, you might do just the same for unit stats. Subsequently, you might have certain regions with higher defense skill, or artificially higher armor, to counteract the fact that some of the more urbanized factions had heavily armored units. You are bound to have unintended consequences on the campaign map, as well as the battle map. The AI, after all, isn't going to roleplay on the campaign map like a human player might. This delicate (im)balance between what the historical realism and the gameplay balancing is nothing new in modding, and I expect it to be a hot and prevalent issue for years to come. I must note, though, that with a more complex engine with more possibilities and features for the modder, comes a better shot of juggling the two issues in a more pleasant fashion, so to speak.