4 max rule

[AyraWinla]

(Edit: I both type too slow and way too much... This whole text chapter is summarized in about 3 phrase by the 2nd poster. So congratulation to the more concise poster )

People finally starts to realize the strength of Scythia and the Head Hunting Maidens..? :) I remember when I used to get laughed at for taking scythians or a mainly female army, until they left cursing after a loss anyway. Good Scythia players are still awfully rare from what I see though.

Err, back on topic. On average, I agree with you. I think it would make for a better game.

There are only 2 points I don't like about this, though, from a completely selfish point of view.

The 2 elements of my Scythian army that wouldn't fit that rule are 6 Head Hunting Maidens, and 6 Scythian Noblewomen. That could easily be changed to 4 Maiden/2 Noble and 4 Noblewomen/2 Noble archers to keep about the same effectiveness. The thing is that I want a mainly female army: Only the Scythians can do that, and they still have only 2 unit types, both being cavalry. Keeping that in mind, an all-female army would be cheap beyond belief (20 cavalry army consisting of 12 maidens and 8 noblewomen for example, which would be just too annoying and cruel against my opponents), so I simply made my cavalry forces female, and my foot soldiers the standard units, tweaked until it worked very well without being too annoying for the enemy. If there were other female units to pick from in Scythia (Even if they weren't as good, I'd still be happy), I wouldn't mind the 4-of-a-kind rule at all. With that rule currently, I can't make a mostly-female army in any way... Of course I will play by any rules the host set, and even then I can keep a virtually identical army, except for 1 point that is important to me: having a female army. I'll admit that this whole point is absolutely selfish though

The second point is factions with a very small unit roster. I play Thrace occasionally, and a 4-of-a-kind rule would be absolutely crippling for them. They are mainly a phalanx nation with a single type of reasonable pikemen (Still below Silver/Bronze shield pikemen and sacred band). They have Greek Cavalry and Vanila archers except that: nothing that is good enough to make much of a stand against romans or egyptians. Using only 4 Phalanx Pikemen is pretty much suicide with them: Their only real strength is a union of Phalanx Pikemen supported by the superb Basternae. 4 Basternae is certainly enough: 4 pikemen is not. Pontus can for example have 4 Bronze Shield and 4 Phalanx Pikemen for a good, 8 units phalanx foundation and have 12 "supporting" units. Thrace can't with a 4-of-a-kind rule, since without Phalanx, they have very little left.


To resume, my Scythia army easily beat any 20 similar units (Like 20 cataphrac/cataphrac archers, or 20 egyptian archer chariots), but it makes for a 3 minute, boring game. My other armies (Thrace and especially Briton) gets absolutely slaughtered in seconds against those. In both cases, even if I win in 1 case, it's definitively no fun.

The basis of the rule is great I think, but it actually hurts the weaker factions more than the already strong ones. If you want to have an elite Roman infantry core for example, you have Urban, Praetorian, First and Legionary to have as many strong infantry as you want. A roman army would be nearly unaffected, while a Thrace army would be nearly unbuildable.

I see the reason for the rule: Having interesting fights between realistic armies and it's something I'd love to have more often too... But because of unit roster, it's really too constraining for some factions I think. If every faction had a large unit roster like the Romans, Seleucid, Egyptians, Pontus, Germans and the like, the rule would be perfect. I'll admit I don't see any way to make a simple rule that would make for fun battles without crippling some factions though..