Discuss - Less Denarii = Better Battles

[Catiline]

I used to do this loads with STW. A 2000 koku battle with ashi and arq's, plus a couple of one shot only elites, battle winners if you used them right, wasted if you mucked up. Almost always had better battles...

[Crandaeolon]

Low denarii battles are usually much more interesting than 12-15k games. I think Rome has the "best" balance (=the largest number of viable units) at around 7k-8k denarii... 10k is tolerable, but with 10k you can take 10-12 of the best elite units, and that's a bit too much.

Large unit size enhances low denarii games nicely by making infantry more durable; those phalanxes that were "useless" at normal size are suddenly a formidable wall. Even though phalanxes may appear a little underwhelming in 1vs1 custom battle tests, they're very effective in practice when used as a weapon system as opposed to individual units.

some players still think they play 15000 denarii, but with less units. So they play the same army, but reduced to 6/8 units.

This is the biggest drawback IMO. It's very boring to have someone pick 6 praetorian cav, charge stupidly into a phalanx line and rout in 10 seconds. Elite units do have a chance if they're used skillfully, but spamming doesn't work that well.

[Wishazu]

i think 10k is the perfect balance, if you go all elites you`ll still have a small army and get beaten by a player who picked a more balanced force, this is my experience anyway.

[AquaLurker]

I still feel that 10k to 12.5k games are more balance and fun. Games at these amount of denarii still force the player to chose their armies properly as elite units by all means are still expensive while at the same time you can still have a balance army on the field with a good mixture of elites and ordinary troops of about all 20 units. You wouldn't have much denarii left for upgrades anyway.

Games at denarii as low as 6000 may be challenging and a refeshing way to play the game but the armies will usually be very small and the battles unimpressive.

Anyway both denarii games are still open for exploitation by spammers.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

I remember posting some rather awfull 12.5k armies with lot of elite units... Just fill lot of elite with lot of archer, and that's pretty much done.
The only ordinary troops you would see on a 10/12500 denarii game is archer. Their cheapness allows for buying elite units only beside the archer themselves.

Upgrades cost are a problem: not allowing for upgrades is one of the advantage of playing low denarii. It's yet another factor of unbalance that is not available.

If 6000 armies are small and unimpressive, it's probably because you don't adapt to the setting. I end up with 16 units on 6000 denarii... But of course I don't buy urban cohorts only!

Any arguments beside "It's fine"?

Louis,

[RabidGibbon]

I agree with Louis that the only normal units on the 10k+ battlefield are archers.

With 6k I think any army can afford to put 20 units in the field, you just have to look at the lower end of the tech tree where a big infantry unit can be dirt cheap, and downgrading to light cavalry from those super heavy uber elites will enable you to horde more precious denarii.

From the point of view of making battles look impressive, I always try to take my full allocation of 20 units, but if other players insist on not taking any unit that costs less than 700 or so denarii then of course their army will be small, but this is their own fault rather than a nessecarry by product of the cash level.

Aqua's right about all levels of the game being open to spamming though, only th other day I saw a "skirmisher spam" of all things!

[Beefy]

These days im just happy to be able to connect to a game via gayspy! GRRRRRR

but really im not bothered, either way you gain expereince