Quote Originally Posted by Nihilist
Cantabrian circle is not uncounterable individually, it's in numbers that the problem arises, as you get into the situation that archers are ineffective against them, skirmishing cav gets shot and killed and infantry is useless. Individually, you can just disrupt the cantabrian with cavalry and shoot with archers, but this just doesn't work when you have many horse archers... It's one of many balance issues I just wish would actually get noticed by CA, but lets not go there...
CA is well aware of the balance issues, but, as MikeB said, it's not economically feasible for them to patch the game many times. The remaining balance issues would require several more patches to iron out, but I expect the next patch to be the last from CA for RTW/BI. Back during MTW days, LongJohn said he felt balancing to approximately 25% was pretty good. My contention since STW days has been that multiplayer total war needs to be balanced to within 10% for the gameplay to reach its potential. This is something that will never happen if CA's position is that 25% is good enough.

Some players here may not realize what happens when a playing community sticks around and plays a game for a long time. What happens is that the difference in skill among the players diminishes as they learn from one another. As a result, over time the weak factions and weak armies become unplayable, and the gameplay converges to a narrower focus depending on the imbalance. The greater the imbalance the narrower the focus. In the end, you have to use factions and armies that work, and at that point you decide if the gameplay is still interesting enough to keep you playing.