New Thoughts and New Questions

[Dayve]

The basic thing to remember is that, for the most part, warfare in this period is like a game of scissors-paper-rock: each troop type is good at a certain and is, in turn, poor at another. Finding what your faction is good at (i.e. the Romani who have strong infantry but fairly weak cavalry and missile troops and basically no fast light cavalry) and then base your tactical choices on exploiting those advantages and minimising those weaknesses.

If you want to make "historical legions" then you can, but it might be tricky for (and seem weird to) a beginner to artificially restrict the army's strengths. If you want to make an all-principe force and think it might work, then try it! Once you have the basic idea about how to use your chosen army you can start looking for more challenges. :)

Yeah but i've been playing since it came out... I like playing as historically accurate as i can...

And yeah peltastai can be devestating... I haven't played EB for months, i'm waiting for a more complete version, but when i did play my heavy infantry and light infantry and cavalry and... Well, anything that wasn't a phalanx unit got decimated by one volley of peltasts.

...Actually you EB guys might wanna fix that. Frontally, peltasts shouldn't be all that damaging against guys with huge shields and a coat of mail behind it... Even against hastati... Frontally they shouldn't be so effective... Only against unarmoured and with small shields...

[Trithemius]

Yeah but i've been playing since it came out... I like playing as historically accurate as i can...

Me too! I even use the quincunx for big battles. :)

Although I do have small groups of equites as "police men" chasing down rebels... I use it to train my younger family members although I am not sure how historical it really is...

And yeah peltastai can be devestating... I haven't played EB for months, i'm waiting for a more complete version, but when i did play my heavy infantry and light infantry and cavalry and... Well, anything that wasn't a phalanx unit got decimated by one volley of peltasts.

...Actually you EB guys might wanna fix that. Frontally, peltasts shouldn't be all that damaging against guys with huge shields and a coat of mail behind it... Even against hastati... Frontally they shouldn't be so effective... Only against unarmoured and with small shields...

They seem quite good in melee too; they were able to hold up against my Camillan Hastati for a while which seemed rather odd to me.

[Dayve]

Yeah i use the quincunx(sp) for every battle basically... I'm playing RTR at the moment whilst waiting for a more finished version but that particular formation is all you really need. You end up with a small-ish front line, but you space the units out so usually the enemy army will all charge at the front line, so you'll be using a small amount of men to hold up a huge amount of the enemy, at which point your second line can come around and encircle them in a U shape, whilst your cavalry can smash into their rear closing the U off and trapping everybody inside...

It doesn't always work, but most of the time it does... Especially when you are the one attacking. But if you're fighting against phalanx armies, they usually split them up and attack individual units so the grand encirclement can't take place, although you can encircle each unit individually... It's not quite as fun as seeing 1000 men encircled, fighting to the death because there is no other option and hearing that 'squelch' of a sword entering the body... But it still does the job.

So this is why the Romans had so much success really... If you use the quincunx correctly then you can react to absolutely anything the enemy can do to you... Unless of course you are massively outnumbered, but even then you can pull it off.

As for peltastai in melee... Any unit in the game can hold up against Camillan hastati... They stink.

[aleh]

The peltasts are bloody /murder/. I used the quinqux formation in all of my battles in Italy and the southern Alps. But as soon as I started seriously fighting the Epeirotes, I quickly learned to change that, else my hastati and principes would be cut down by volleys after volleys before the battle lines even met.

What I did was I completely reversed the quincux(I can never learn to spell it right). Where I placed the triarii in front(both because they are stable and won't be devastated by the peltasts), spaced out normally, with the second line occupied by the Principes. Basically, they're there for two reasons. First, to stop my phalanxes from being encircled, and secondly once the main lines have engaged to go through the holes and do just that to the engaged enemies. My hastati, I use as basically just reserves, and to turn the tide of battle once I feel it has reached, or reaching, that "critical point". The cavalry I use as cavalry-deterrents, skirmishers, to crash into the back of the enemy force once it's fully engaged, and to mop up the routing enemies. My allied forces are used as they are needed.