Are the Romans too Powerful?

[Noir]

I was illustrating - not attempting a proof. I have better things to do with my time, especially as it seems you don't actually disagree with me on the point.

Yes, and i actually agreed with you well before you posted the illustration, so, and following your argument, why waste your time on it at all?

That's too strong - eventually you will trap AI horse archers, and the AI will trap yours, thanks to the inability of the skirmish function to cope with map edges.

Exactly, the fact that the map edges are corners also helps to less depth and more exploits. In the older maps they were rounded in order to help avoid that.

Yes, you can do it but against horse archer armies you need a lot of foot archers (a historical Roman army with few missiles, like the one in my PBM story, will just die). The Cantabrian circle is one thing that aids horse archers against foot archers in RTW/M2TW; another is that they are not automatically outranged by foot archers (depends on the quality of the foot). I suspect there are other factors, but a foot archer vs horse archer duel in RTW/BI is more even than in STW/MTW.

Partially agreed, didn't notice the duel being more even though; i guess i shouldn't take your word for it though, since you haven't played more than one vanilla campaign?

As I said, I agree it may be overpowered, but you may be going over the top here. At least in M2TW, I think units doing the Parthian shot are much less accurate than shooting conventionally. I'd rather see a watered down (M2TW style?) Parthian shot than just having horse archers neutralised by enemy cav. Bearing in mind TW battles are compressed over real life battles, I think it models say knight vs Mongol engagements better than no Parthian shot.

Horse archers are usually fast cav and so particularly useful for pursuing other cav. I'm not convinced by the STW/MTW convention of making them slower than light cav. Good RPS, I guess - dodgy history.

Sorry, i haven't played M2 long enough to properly judge how it is implemented there. I never said that the Parthian shot is a bad idea - i said that it is a hideous implementation. Also yes since TW battles are a real life comression, the same can be said for a light cavalry/horse archer unit combination that exists as convention in STW/MTW.

In real life as you say the "HAs" and the "light cavalry" would be one and the same thing most likely. The older engine doesn't account for that but neither does really the new one - all it does is gives the HAs more self stading while they exist simultaneously with the light cavalry, that is one or the other becomes redundant? The difference IMO in the older engine there was more interesting gameplay as less things were redundant gameplay wise.

The distinction between spears and swords is also a false one in all probabilities a true unit would have used spears and swords with the spearmen in front and the swrodsmen behind, but all working as one unit.

Not known is not the same as not existing. My armchair observation is that missiles and cavalry (esp. flanking) are very valuable for their morale penalties. You see it more in realism mods where kill rates are nerfed. Frontal engagement is a waste of arrows and expensive troops - get behind them and use the horse archers to distract/disrupt, and you will get your money back.

Again move speed and kill rates are moddable.

Again moddable. And please, don't tell a veteran of multi-hour MTW/STW battles about no aftergame. The older engine was plagued by having to fight repeated battles against second and third reinforcing waves, which were predetermined once you had killed the general and smashed the first wave.

As moddable as they are (and i say this after having played RTR and EB for quite some time) they do not recreate the fine line for keeping up morale of an army, neither the fine balance between match ups and flanking meneuvers because many other parameters such as fatigue are beyond the moders' direct control, and all modders are doing are finding workarounds to "better them".

So is modding the asnwer then and should the game be sold on that basis? Because if it is why the battle engine workings are not revealed as well as the main parameters be made moddable? Let me guess: protecting CA's commercial interests and not confusing new players? So is the game as moddable as it is advertised to be?

Battle parameters are way less moddable than the game is advertised to be IMO. On top of this fatigue, ammo, morale were three different switches in the older engine, in the new engine they are only 1, in the game menu.

Yes, not known is not the same as the none existing - but then again i never said that they didn't exist i said precisely that we don't know if they do, since CA tells nothing on how the battles engine works anymore.

On top of that i talk about morale penalties that existed in the older engine to enemy units for being thretened/outnumbered by the presence of enemy units and not relative to morale penalties for being shot and by being charged by cavalry - this i observed that it existed - i also was moving move units such as peltasts and slingers from the flanks and rear to do damage.

The "aftergame" i talk about refers to 1 full stack versus 1 full stack and not in the endless reinforcements armies of MTW, that as a veteran you should know were the result of too many troops to burn due to very high profits in the campaign and maps of too large a size relative to the fatigue rates of units. In STW the fatigue rates work better as the maps are more fine-tuned to that.

That aftergame happens in MTW - not as much as it should - but more than in RTW that it never statistically does - it follows that fatigue plays a part in the game.

"Hideous"? "sell out"? Sounds like another bout of RTW bashing. I'm not sure I want to get into that argument; it's been done to death. I'm not defending the vanilla RTW game - I lost interest in playing it solo after one campaign (sorry you endured multiple hideous ones). But with modding (RTR/EB etc) it can get much closer to the MTW model than it is to a game based on "RTS principles". And it does improve on the model in a number of ways usually overlooked by the anti-RTW crowd.

Do all these "numbers of ways" that the game has been according to you improved, make the game more challening? Do they keep the tactical standard and so replayability high, asuming that you leave all the mods out? Because all i see is complains about bugs, and about how easy the game is on the campaign and in the field - hence the huge AI issue, that ironically although an issue previously it was actually more up to it. In fact some of these complains about challenge i heard them precisely from you.

Many Thanks

Noir