Anyone knowledgeable care to comment about the statistical representation of Roman armour in RTW? It seems from the stats that the Romans have the most powerful units, in large part because they get very high armour values later on in the tech tree. I wonder - how much of an advantage did the Romans have in terms of armour over their enemies and how much did it improve from 270BC to 17AD?

My impression is that the Romans did have a big advantage in terms of armour over "barbarians" like the Gauls - but it is less clear compared to the say Greeks. Roman armour does not seem that impressive per se - the arms and legs seem fairly exposed, although perhaps the large shields offset that to a degree.

I am not sure how much Roman armour improved over time - were the early Imperial legions that much better armoured than the Hastati etc in the Punic Wars? I understand the need for upgrades in terms of gameplay, but it seems less plausible than the chain => plate upgrade modelled in MTW.

Anyone got any thoughts on this?