Quote Originally Posted by TinCow
It could very well be that the game lacks the proper number of troops for traditional Roman tactics to work. However, shouldn't the armies be 'scaled' to remove this problem already? In my experience there are two major problems so far as the Romans in the demo are concerned. First, the Velites don't seem to be very effective since their range is so short that charging 'barbarians' are upon them very quickly. A similar problem is also encuntered with the Hastati who, in my experience, do not seem to either use their pilia very effectively or sometimes at all. Second, the lines seem to be very easily flanked. While this can certainly be countered with the Triarii, it still usually results in heavy casualties to the front lines which could pose some serious problems for an extended campaign.

The first problem could be fixed with modding/patching but the second seems more inherent in the engine.
The skirmish problems are big, and pila use is not right yet either. However, I can defend CA on the demo battle with respect to the velites. They said they scripted the velites to withdraw easily and be ineffective for the battle. The reason was that in the real battle it was a drizzling rain and very cold. The velites had depleted quite a bit of their javelins skirmishing with the Numidians before the battle. They used a string release or something like that and apparently many had become unusable from multiple river crossings and the rain. (The Trebia was in multiple branches at the time--not a single crossing.) So playing the demo battle with script is not a fair measure of the velites. The carthaginian skirmishers have NO excuse!

Hopefully the scaling will be logical. I've done tests with 60 man triarri vs. 100 man Hastati--it is a roughly even fight. That is about the right relative scale. I hope the Roman unit production is more akin to producing a whole legion (rather than just ordering units.) That would be interesting since it could take awhile, but you get a full legion. It would help the AI form logical armies as well...(remember the all ballista and peasant armies from the early days of MTW, LOL!) Legions could also be two units of each type or more as well.