My first thoughts about EB

[abou]

I find weaker missle units such as slingers good for pinning an enemy and then flanking with heavier infantry or cavalry. If they turn they take fire on the flanks or the rear which damages morale or they get struck by the flanking units.

[Dayve]

In my Makedonian campaign i can recruit archers and slingers with 2 experience chevrons, making toxotai have 4 attack and slingers 5... They're kind of effective when used against infantry, but against hoplites they suck... However i have a rebel killing army made up of ten units of 5 missile attack slingers, you should see it when they all fire at once... Usually drops 20 men instantly, but against hoplites they will kill only 5, against the better hoplites (Iphrikates) then they might kill 1 if all 10 fire at the same time...

I don't care if this army is unrealistic, the amount of rebel popups i get is unrealistic, 3 per turn even though my cities are all green happy face... Screw that... Watching 10 units of slingers firing all at the same time is beautiful.

[econ21]

I personally like the balancing of cavalry and missiles in EB - I think it is both realistic and good for gameplay. If you are used to playing vanilla RTW, you might almost want to dispense with heavy infantry altogether - missiles can mow down the enemy and a few good cavalry can chain rout whole armies. EB restores heavy infantry to its historical primacy in ancient battles and makes you work harder for victory against the AI. With EBs balancing I can almost see why ancient armies like the Romans and Greeks had relatively small proportions of missiles and cavalry.

Maybe missiles and cavalry should be a little more powerful, I don't know. I'm happy with the balancing in a variety of games (EB, RTR, even BI seems not too far out).

But nonetheless, I do know I still want to use missiles and cavalry in EB. Missiles give you the chance to hurt the enemy without getting hurt back - and they are particularly good against unarmoured troops such as many skirmishers that are hard to kill otherwise. A cavalry charge to the rear of an engaged unit is perhaps the easiest and surest key to winning a battle.

[Cheexsta]

1) Why Macedonians start with such a bad economy? It's like -10000/turn... Clearly my options were either disband most of my army or become over aggressive... I ve choosed the second and in turn 1 i charged to Spata, Athens & Ambrakia (it took me 3 Heroic Battles to kill Pyros)... anyway it took me about 20 or so turns till cash was flowing into my treasury. From what i know Macedonians should not have such a bad economy... right? At least they should have one city above 6000...

It makes the game, you know, harder...

Besides, Makedon at this stage was still recovering from the Gallic invasion of Greece in 279BC (at least, I'd imagine that they're still recovering at this time), hence why most of their armies are basically levies and such.

When starting out as Makedon, I find the best thing to do is disband all of your useless troops. Things like Hetairoi on Mytilene and such. Just disband pretty much all of your cavalry except for those you need in your armies (about 2 units per stack is enough early on). That won't be enough to get you out of the red; in fact, by the time you take the rest of Greece, you can expect to be a good 20,000 or more in debt, but once you have the mainland and the surrounding islands (Crete and Rhodes) you'll start to pull in a ton of money fairly quickly and you can eventually replace your army with phalangites and such.

2) Missile troops & cavarly don't seem to be effective (at least on my compter... even though I have a clean install + of RTW w patch 1.2 & EB without altering anything else)

Western archers sucked at this point in history.

There were cases were archers (Toxotai) emptied all their ammo onto a unit of rebel Taxeis Hoplites only to kill one man (i highly doubt that this is realistic)... even worse image two Toxotai and two peltasts (the good ones) empting all their ammo one a unit of Taxeis Hoplites (the peltasts were firing from the flank of the enemy) only to kill 10!?

That's why you hit the enemy's flanks, rather than the front where that big shield is.

And cavalry does not kill units... it only break morale when you flank the enemy... Cavalry was actually so bad that Etairoi (Fresh) alone could not take care a unit of peltast (Tired) or a charge of Etairoi onto a unit Taxeis Hoplites from behind, who were fighting my infantry, could only kill only 5 men! I am sorry but it does not make sense, a charging heavy cavarly can inflicte far more damage only from the momemtum it has...

Always use cavalry en-masse or not at all. One unit of Hetairoi isn't going to do much, but two or three units will (especially in a "triangle of death" - surround the enemy, hit the rear with one before charging with the other two units, bound to break most enemy units very easily). If that gets too expensive, just use Hippeis Thessalikoi, they're like mini-Hetairoi.

3) Even with all the above obstacles i have manage to form a small empire consisting 20 provences with a lot of vistories... but my most skilled generals during the whole game was Antigonos with 3 stars (but quickly reduced to 1 as he was getting older), and X (i dont recall his name) 1 star after coming victorius in many battles (most of the time were tough battles like 4:1 or 2:1 against me)

It is intended to be extremely hard to gain command stars. Don't be surprised if your best general has only 4 stars at most. Again, the aim is to make the game much harder for the player, since the AI is quite retarded.

There you go, I think that addresses all of your points.

[Dayve]

You shouldn't be using cavalry to charge at anything that is even remotely capable of fighting in hand to hand combat unless it is already engaged anyway, and then you should wait until it is shaked before charging, steady at the very least... Although for a factions elite troops steady is too early because they will simply turn and start to fight back.

Things you can charge at with cavalry to get rid of them from the field are archers, (not the ones armed with spears for melee fighting obviously) slingers and peltasts like velites and akontistai... But remember that some peltasts are armed with spears for secondary use so charging at those isn't a good idea...

Also i find that missile units are very good against enemy cavalry... Especially slingers it seems... 1 volley from 1 units isn't effective but if you have 2 units and concentrate them on the enemy cavalry they will hurt it badly... Not that enemy cavalry is a problem since the AI has no idea what to do with it...