Europa Barbarorum 2.08e is released!

[QuintusSertorius]

Firstly, thank you for the detailed feedback. It's always good to have, especially from people new to EBII.

Some more general observations:
Units have a lot of trouble killing each other. My first battle was quite a shock when I (as Saba) tried to storm a rebel settlement and the battle ended in a draw because defenders weren't dying fast enough, and this is with lightly armoured Arabian units. In several battles I've see a general surrounded lose all his bodyguards and proceed to fight alone against hundreds of men for minutes, being knocked down dozens of times in the process. It just looks silly. I realise that historically armies didn't slaughter each other in ten minutes, but it's just pointlessly time-consuming and, honestly, a bit boring for battles to drag on like this. Please make casualties happen faster.

Something you have to understand regarding kill rates is the huge amount of compromise involved from a number of different angles. In the RTW engine, every unit has it's own lethality setting allowing a lot of granularity. In their infinite wisdom, in M2TW, CA chose to abstract this down to a single number. For every kind of unit. There is just one number for melee kill rates, push it too high and cavalry charges become ridiculously overpowered. Too low and not only does melee take a long time, but cohesion suffers (because of course it's logical to tie cohesion to kill rates...). We've gone for a balance of cohesion, stable battle pace and not too overpowered cavalry charges.

You don't win battles in EBII by killing the other guys quickly. That's by design. As far as we know most kills in ancient battles tended to happen during a rout, not in the contested part. You win by breaking their morale. It means rather than insta-routs ending battles lasting a few minutes where most of the facets about a unit don't actually matter, instead stamina and morale come into play. Units with low stamina get tired - which impacts their morale. Units with low morale break earlier. You generally win by flanking and cavalry charges to the rear are especially effective - even with lighter units. It means you can actually change tactics, respond to crises, and have to deal with issues like shoring up wavering units, or having your general have to go off and rally those who have broken. Because they do often return to the fight if the battle isn't lost. With faster kills, that wouldn't happen either.

Sieges have completely borked pathfinding, they're not representative of proper field battles. That will improve in the autumn release, because settlements have been completely redone. Including removing the impassable (but empty) spaces that are "reserved" for future construction. That should assist in being able to flank during sieges.

Otherwise if it's too slow - turn the speed up.

levied Toxotai, Persian archers and Cretans all have the same missile attack value. I realise there are limits to how granular you can make it, but generic Greek archers being as accurate and deadly as the most famous mercenary archers and the bowmen of a renowned archery nation feels wrong. It also means there's little point in hiring the more expensive Cretans.

They might have the same attack value, but they use a different projectile with different ranges (and different amounts of ammo). Kretans and Persians can stand outside Toxotai's range and decimate them, especially because the latter are unarmoured. Kretans have armour which means any return fire from the Toxotai is much less effective, and they can actually fight in melee. What you pay for with Kretans is not only a Greek archer with an eastern archer's range, but a unit who turn into medium infantry when they've expended their ammunition. When you're only using one archer unit in your army, they're a much more efficient choice than Toxotai.

Toxotai are not as accurate or as deadly; and indeed a coming change will make levy archers unable to fire synchronised volleys, which will make the distinction even clearer.

Western Tribal culture fades noticeably in Galatia. It looks possible that Celtic units will become unavailable there by around 220BCE. Maybe the unique building in Ankyra (the Galatian meeting forest) could have some cultural conversion to Western Tribal?

Conversion mechanics are mostly working as intended now; the biggest impacts are the governor you choose and any conversion-impacting buildings. As Pontos if you install any of their more sophisticated governments, you will get conversion to Eastern Imperial. If you have an influential governor and build Native Colonies, that will happen even faster. However, aside from Allied Governments, the level of Western Tribal shouldn't make any difference to the units available there.

Misthophoroi Hoplitai are the unarmoured Hoplitai Haploi kind, even though their unit card shows body armour shouldn't professional mercenary hoplites be the better equipped flavour of hoplite anyway?

We've changed the concept of the unit, but we don't have a new card (or indeed a new model) for them yet. They're professionals in the ekdromoi (light hoplite) mould which is more flexible and better-suited to mercenary work (most of which was patrolling and raiding) than the much more heavily-armoured regular Hoplitai.