Post basic things here

[Ranika]

I personally think that Gaestae (naked guys) are too powerful... I know that historically they might have spent 3 quarters of their life preparing to spill the blood of their enemies, and might be fierce and ferocious and unable to feel fear or give mercy and all that stuff... But that doesn't make up for the fact that they're wearing no armour...

These guys can be peppered with javelins, surrounded and exhausted, but still fight on... And not only do they fight on, they take 3 quarters of each unit of men fighting against them with them... And gods help you if you're attacking a city and they're defending the gate... Maybe their stats should be reduced just a tiny bit? Or maybe not, whatever everyone else things.

Long have I anticipated this complaint.

Sorry to disappoint, but this is really how they were. They were not just strong big guys who fought naked. They were on a ton of drugs. Read their description. The Romans said they would rip javelins out of their bodies and throw them back. They were recorded by Greeks as walking away from a fight with huge, definitely mortal wounds. The Gaesatae are invariably one of the single strongest units in the game, and they should be. No civilization that ever fought them found them anything less than inhumanly terrifying. In game terms, they are also expensive as all bejeezus, and should be, as they were mercenaries of sorts, but didn't fight for anyone but Gauls and occassionally Carthage.

However, they are (to explain the morale) too whacked on drugs to know when to run away, or feel any pain. And drugs can allow people to walk with arrows or javelins through their body (I compare this to modern PCP; read accounts of shootouts with a PCP addict). As such, they also can't feel pain for overuse of muscles or overextending themselves, so they can be far stronger than their already massive bodies would normally allow. They are the closest thing to a genuine fantasy unit in the game, and the creepy thing is that they were real.

That said, they aren't invincible. Attacking them with infantry is suicide. They eat infantry like it's nothing; that's the point of the unit. Missiles won't do too well, but you can soften them up real well with a ton of javelins. However, cavalry can do the trick. Try to hit their flanks with heavy cavalry or similar. Even their immense morale will begin to lower rapidly, and you can rout them. However, only rout them. Do not try to surround them, because then they try to fight their way out (fight-to-the-death), and the sheer cost in soldiers killed will be enormous. Plus they lower infantry morale, so you don't want to keep tagging around them if there are other enemies to fight.

In conclusion; the Gaesatae aren't over-powered. If they're causing you massive casualties or don't seem to die, or seem invincible, that's the idea, because that's really how they appeared to be in the ancient world.