Seleucids got it all

[Colovion]

i know something like this has been disscussed before but I wanted to bring it up to point something out. Name all the strengths of the civilized factions, then asked what is it of those factions that the seleucids don't have. Hopolites (and three different kinds no less), elephants (All three types), chariots, legionaries, COMPANION CAV, Militia Cav (which are almost the exact same thing as Numidian mercinaries) and Cataphracts. Rome has been compltely jipped on alot of this stuff, and the roman units are far weaker than expected. WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?

Yeah Selucids pwn - they have every fricking thing other factions have! I mean..... SERIOUSL!!HIOP

Maybe they'll hassve some kinf of loyalty penalty wehere theer have super disloyal generals

[econ21]

Yup, I noticed the strength of the Seleucids. As an SP player, I don't see any reason for the factions to be balanced. One of the fun things about the MTW game is the variety of unit line ups and strategic positions - choosing certain factions is like varying the difficulty level. If the Seleucids had that line up historically, fine. But I agree it is hard to detect any weakness there.

I've always thought that it may be hard for TW to capture the strength of the Roman army, with its emphasis on the legionnaire. They risk resembling the Almohads in Total War - good sword armed infantry and little else.

Your other post about getting the double punch of the legionnaires is important point though.

[Scipio]

I must agree with Simon, although I think it should be balanced in a way. I feel that their should be weaker and stronger factions but not to the point that it is impossibleto beat the strong ones, just alot harder.

[JeromeGrasdyke]

A lot of the units you mention are further up the tech tree, and so compete with relatively tough roman units like the Principes and Triarii. The Roman weakness in terms of elephants is compensated by earlier access to siege artillery - ballistae and scorpions in particular, which have one-shot kills on most things on the battlefield, although they're a bit ponderous to use. But even so, the Roman factions are really on an even footing with the Greeks, Macedonians and Seleucids prior to the Marius event.

When Marius does come along and the Legionary units become available, Roman infantry starts to kick ass. They're not what you'd call one-sided though - there are decent missile and cavalry units available, although to get top quality in those departments you'll have to hire mercenaries in the right places, as you might expect looking at historical events.

Interestingly the Seleucids are one of the tougher factions to play at the start, because they are in contact with quite a few other factions and they hold some very desireable territory.

[Oleander Ardens]

Thanks for the info Jerome

As far as I've seen there are some gamplay-wise very promising units beside the "mulii Mariani", especially the Aux Cav looks very good. I love javelin-throwing medium cavalry and they promise to be good indeed...

Infact all the Aux. range seems to support the Legions pretty well gameplay-wise; Artillery should help to increase the firepower of Rome, and some well-chosen mercs could give you some great options...

Cheers

OA

[Steppe Merc]

Yeah the Selcuids will probably be like the Germans in MTW, everyone attacking them at once. And all there units will probably be lesser versions, like their cataphracts are weaker than Parthians, their Companions worse than Macedonia, etc.

[ah_dut]

well i think the selucids well be the jack of all trades and master of none so i may well like them a lot.

[Red Harvest]

Thanks for the info, Jerome.

Can you give us any insight on how Roman armies will be raised in different periods? Is it standard TW style or something novel: for instance, might you be able to raise an entire legion "at once" but over several turns? I could see this making some sense, so that we end up having balanced Roman style armies, with other auxilaries trained or hired separately (to get some archer support, or cavalry, etc.) Otherwise the tendency would to be build all triarii (or hastati, etc.) based armies. Individually the triarii could make for an interesting unit to train...since perhaps they should be produced only from veteran principes or something like that--maybe a principes unit that has been around for X turns could be retrained...or you could move troops from a veteran principes to a partial triarii to fill out the units. Same could be true for velites to hastati, and hastati to principes. It would make for an interesting way of "promoting" individuals in an historical sense.