My first thoughts about EB

[Shorebreak]

With EBs balancing I can almost see why ancient armies like the Romans and Greeks had relatively small proportions of missiles and cavalry.

Although the Romans deployed few archers, it was not due to their ineffectiveness... The Romans were plain poor at archery, as well as fighting on horseback. This is why we see them employ mercenaries in these areas time after time, with the most famous example being Numidian cavalry at Zama. On the other hand, later Greek armies were particularly known for their cavalry, especially horsemen from the Aetolian League, which were said to be the best in the region (I'll have to check Polybius on that). Rome may have lost the 2nd Macedonian war had it not been for their help. With these facts in mind, it seems that EB infantry was given primacy to force historical deployments, not to provide an accurate portrayal of true combined arms tactics.

Although I am very new to EB, I also think the current balance is a bit skewed, since it doesn’t accurately portray the effect of combined arms on the battlefield. Archers are a key part of any balanced army, as they functioned as artillery with both direct and indirect capabilities. Look at Crassus' fate as a prime example of their effect on heavy infantry. Perhaps a purchasable upgrade to archers bow strength during the course of a campaign would help with this, as archers would initially be weak and fail to penetrate anything, but gain strength (in the form of penetrating power) as time goes by. Perhaps add the modern concept of suppression into the mix as well. In the end, we should see similar results to that of early English battles against the Scotts (One was Falkirk, although I forget the other two battle names, sorry!), where heavy infantry was herded via arrow fire into a particular fighting area, engaged with infantry and then flanked with cavalry.

As to cavalry, i belive the formation of the opposing infantry should be the deciding factor, not their armaments. A horse is simply not going to charge into a solid wall of anything, more so if they are armed with massive spears. Yet even hoplites should be vulerable to a cavalry charge if they are not in formation; a problem which persists in both the vanilla version and EB.

While I dont know if these two tweaks are feesible, I think these they would cause the game to portray combined arms tactics more accurately on the battlefield.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Greetings shorebreak. Always happy to welcome more folks in here who are interested in EB.

You won't find one of my Hellenic armies without some archers and slingers, but I know better than to use them where they won't be of any use. That's why everyone hates those Eranshr Aristabara units - good bows and spears on the flanks are just nasty.

[QwertyMIDX]

No one said that Greek cavalry was bad, just that it made up a small percentage of Greek armies, which it did. Infantry troops were the vast majority in every greek army, even ones (basically all the armies after the classical period) in which cavalry was usally the key to victory.

Also, you can decimate a heavy infantry army with eastern horse archers, who use composite bows (rather than the selfbow common in the west) and are stated to reflect this. In fact any unit with some sort of composite bow (including the Cretans when they show up) is much better at taking down heavy infantry than the selfbow units of the west.

As to making formations more important, there's really not a thing we can do stats wise to make this work any better.

[Elthore]

Formation density does greatly affect cav vs inf battles i find.
I just fought a battle where there were a couple of tough pezhetairoi pinned by weaker pontic phalangai. I charged the back of each pezherairoi with kappadocian and leuce epos cavarly (4 cav vs 2 inf). Then halfway during their charge the pikes faced the cav and started hurting the cav badly, at this point, I ordered the phalangai to break formation and charge the enemy pikes. With 3 units pushing on each pike, they all broke formation and no longer pointed their spears at my cav and were cut down much quicker.

[QwertyMIDX]

Oh yes, formation density definatly matters, but there's not anything I do stat-wise to make it matter more or less or in a different way. I was saying I can't really adjust it.