Originally posted by Stuperman
lesser attack maybe, but I doubt defensive skill, roman training would have kept that high. Roman diets would probably have been better than 'barbarian' diets too.
Disagree on this one. The Romans didn't necessarily excel on an individual basis over others. Their main attribute was fighting with high morale and discipline. There were other ways to instill this in game as i said, for example a legion unit could get rank bonuses when keeping the formation.

The diet playing a part in strength linearly i find very debatable.

Originally posted by Stuperman

Seleukids, Egypt, can both beat the romans, I think Makedonia could too if they were farther away from rome geographically, whicch would give them time to develop.
In fact anyone can beat the Romans regularly, i have done so with every faction, even with Numidia and Gaul in the hoghest difficulties and much more easily (almost for fun) with the theoretically "weak" Carthage. As Carthage for example i was very depressed when i realised in one of my first campaigns that 4 units of elephants charging head-on will win you the campaign. I used 3 round shield cavalries to scoop up routing enemy units. It worked every time and i left the campaign after 6 battles like this and never played like that since.

The fact that others can beat the Romans doesn't mean that factions and their rosters are balanced. The game is full of exploits that unbalance it all around in the campaign and in the field.

Originally posted by Stuperman
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpo...3&postcount=14

that's what I thought too.
You mean? All i see that is there is that phalanxes will beat the legion when engaging head-on and lose if they are attacked from the flanks. I agree on this as i said before, however i repeat that in the field it doesn't happen exactly like this - even the AI when playing the Romans tries to flank, sometimes succesfully. I also did similar tests for some home modding i did long time ago now.

Originally posted by Stuperman
I like RTR platinum 1.8, Metro and navel mod is really nice cause many cities have no walls. Gave EB a try, but at that time there were very few unit cards and I found it too annoying to play, finding the correct group of units when they all look the same at the bottom is not fun.
Metro and naval mod is really good for having no walls as you say and for the incomes in provinces that are linked with the little villages. I took it in fact one step further and moded out the machine gun towers - so even the cities with walls would be interesting battles. Just before an assault in them i added to their garrison militias and archers instead for the AI to use in the walls with a cheat.

Eb is much better since the latest version was released sometime before Xmas. I reccomend it to anyone who plays RTW SP.

Originally posted by Stuperman
AI tactics leave a lot to be desired, I agree there, I'm not sure what you mean about the moral thing, I find it way too low in the regular game, RTR:PE on hard is about right for me. IIRC in RTR:PE hard gives +3moral and attack and VH gives +7 to both.
The TW AI is probably in RTW as competitive it was in MTW and that is not bad at all in fact. What killed it was the taking out of the blobbing penalty, and as Cambyses II says the higher movements and higher kill rates and chain routes and super overpowered charges and unbalanced unit stats.

If you ever try MTW, try the Samurai Warlords mod that goes for balanced armies in the campaign - the AI is a very hard opponent there without uber units or campaign beefings - it might pleasantly surprise you how much actually. This cannot manifest in RTW though because of the gross imbalances IMO and the way the engine works.

Originally posted by Stuperman
And all factions can recruits thier own troops from any barracks. For example I can recruit hastii from a barabrian or greek barracks if I have recently taken the settlement and haven't built a roman one yet. The lack of AOR is regretable, but is a gameplay issue, infact I think roman citizenship (and thus military service) barely extended beyond Italy until the reforms of Marius
Agreed, the problem is way more general as you describe - most mods took good care of this as you mention.

Many Thanks

Noir