Quote Originally Posted by Dayve
Apart from all the obvious ones that have been mentioned in the thread already, i think the early Roman Hastati are horrible at everything. Firstly, you are surrounded by well established enemies. Northern rebels have Gaestae which simply eat them for breakfast, Epirotes have phalangites and Carthage has awesome cavalry and after about 20 turns or so will start pumping out Iberian assault infantry in Lilybeo (at least in my current game they do anyway) and these will chew hastati up.

Aside from that, meager javelin skirmishers will cause HEAVY casualties even if hit from the front, despite their large shields, and if they get charged by heavy cavalry, even from the front, you can say goodbye to that unit... Slingers rip them up hard too.

If it weren't for me being superior to the AI, they would steamroll my first line of Hastati everytime. As it is now, i can usually win a battle with about 30% hastati casualties, but if you leave them fighting for more than 3 minutes without routing the enemy then i usually take around 50-70% casualties.

And lastly, due to it being impossible to gain even 1 command star unless you fight against odds of like 5-1 against you, they route quite often too because my generals usually have 0 command experience, and if my bank balance goes over 1 dinari when i end turn my generals all become connesseurs which give them -2 command also. Not to mention the fact they all have the gloomy trait too which i just can't seem to stop them from getting.

Yeah, add all this up and hastati are crap. I wouldn't be using them if i didn't enjoy playing accurate to history.
interesting conclusion, to counter the cavalry tell them to go to defensive formation and they will destroy cavalry after the initial charge, taking only a few casualties, my hastati do an extremely good job for me and im proud of each and every one of them

surely you can find another infantry that is worse then the amazing hastati? ah well though we all are entitled to our own opinions