Quote Originally Posted by Jochi Khan
Sadly, this is still the case.
Until your on the battlefield you are not aware of the opponents selection and then its too late.
Most players will try to find an army which gives them an advantage, and that means you are going to see a lot of unbalanced armies. The game is supposedly designed so there are counterarmies to every army. It's not designed so that a perfectly balanced army beats all unbalanced armies. So, a certain amount of guesswork is involved when purchasing an army which you hope tilts the advantage back in your favor. If you play the same people more than once, you get better at anticipating what kind of army they'll buy. There is another whole level of strategy involved between players who have played each other many times. If you become too predictable it's a disadvange.

Of course for it to work like that, every army has to have a counterarmy. I would say the 10 heavy cav wedge has to be stoppable by a 5 phalanx block or else you aren't going to have a diverse game because a cav unit can run around a phalanx unit faster than the phalanx can turn to face the cav. You have to be able to field 2 superior phalanx units for each heavy cav that you face at a combined cost which is not more than the cost of each heavy cav unit. That's the minimum requirement, and commits you to 20 phalanx units when facing 10 heavy cav. It goes without saying that you can't play at a money level that allows the purchase of more than 10 heavy cav. That would seem to be about 10k since a cataphract costs 940 denari.