Research: Fixes for bugs in the unit file

[Kraxis]

Small Pontic Pikemen
There's been some good stat analysis, and while that's not the be-all and end-all I feel pretty comfortable with the smaller unit size.

@ Kraxis, what are your thoughts in light of the previous posts?

Interestingly the pontic pikes are given the skin called east_hoplite, that added to the point that they have a shield bonus of 5 and a smaller size that does not fit the normal pike size, but rather the hoplite size, makes me believe it was intended to be a hoplite from the get go. At some point various devs and designers went their seperate ways. We have already seen the results of that with the Desert Axemen.
If it is because of the smaller population for a greek heritage I think we are taking a very wrong road. First of all there lived lots and lots of greek people in the old colonies, often themselves quite large cities. Plenty of population for a phalanx of pikes.
Second, this should also apply to the Seleucid Empire. There were macedonian and greek colonists but they were not enough to supply the empire with its needs (and they were great).

So I agree that the pontic pikes are intentionally made this way, but only due to several people pulling them each way and never getting the full control of the unit.

Large Desert Cavalry
I note the point about the Scythian noblewomen, but I would consider that it would be far more likely that a rogue 40 could find its way in there, rather than an 18.

But equally, their higher cost over the Nubian cavalry must contribute to something if they should be the same size as other cavalry units.

I think where it's not clear if it's a bug or not we have to err on the side of caution and leave the game as is.

Indeed... We have already seen one case of a person mixing up Desert Cavalry and Desert Axemen. I find it very possible that he is not the first case. And 40 is after all the size of the Desert Axemen.
Also it is the normal practice that the devs work at different jobs. So some create the unit, some give it stats and some balance the units with costs at some point (hopefully after some balancetesting). So if a dev in the stat department by accident made the Desert Cavalry bigger the next guy in the cost department wouldn't know something odd was up, so he would just give them a 'correct' cost. This of course applies to the pontic pikes as well.

About the immitation legionaries.
None of them were really made post-Marius. The Seleucids fell long before Marius was even a grown man. Numidia had become more of a special province and Armenia had been noticing the Roman advance against the Seleucids.
But given the Silver Shields are made to look like Legionary Cohorts I think it is far too much work to make them into a less able unit (would need another skin). Also this way they become a nice special unit. The Armenian and Numidian legionaries fit well enough and thus I see no need to change their recruitment.
Also we should not put too much emphasis on the name 'Legionaries'. While the later Roman infantry was called that they were also called that prior to Marius. They just had a specific name that told people where they stood in the line (there is a logic to the names). Hastati, Principes and Triarii existed long after Marius had died, but by then in name only. As the allied infantry was arrayed in cohorts rather than legions it was only the Roman troops that could be called legionaries, and since they were now all the same it made sense to be calling them legioanries rather than Hastati, Principes and Triarii (those terms were most likely relegated to a strictly military parlor at high command when discussing tactics and strategy).