Mr Internet, your proposed changes sound good

[rorarii]

I just read your proposals in the now closed thread, and like them alot. To make the game more accurate would be great for us wargamers but unfortunately for CA, now Sega, it's all about making money. Selling to 8 year olds for a slaughter-fest. TW might have started to create a accurate wargaming engine, which it achieved to a great extent, but there are still aspects that won't be fixed as it interferes with game play, simplicity, or no $$$ return value. You can argue until your blue in the face, they won't get fixed.

The aspect of the engine that can be modded, have been and great mods have been produced, but there's a limit! Some modders have decided to abandon the TW engine and go elsewhere .. good luck to them, hope they understand the complexity involved and can go beyond what CA have achieved. Time will tell.

As to your points about soldier stances, from memory roman legionaries were taught to be aggressive, even on the defensive, as they were mostly always outnumbered by attacking foes. Pilums then shield pushed forward, step forward, gladius in the guts. This step forward was designed to stop enemy momentum and transfer it back to the cohort.

In regards to attacking units trying to break up enemy units, yes, I actually changed the unit spacing of my Hastati to 2M (file) to remove the defensive aspects and make them attackers. The extra spacing actually achieves this to a certain extent, the Hastati unit collapses when units meet, and like a fluid, looks for gaps and open flanks in the enemy unit. Needless to say, Hastati must attack, they make poor defenders.

[Lovasìjász]

I agree, but in this forum, we're talking about medieval 2 game not Rome total war.
I know, that the hastati/legionaire was just an example, but medieval combat was a lot different.
Light infantry got mixed in quick with enemy light infantry (the BraveHeart movie showed it pretty good), into a giant mass killing field and everyone was fighting. Light infantry as well as probably heavy infantry was less likely to hold any formation after they were set loose and the only tight formation of I could think of were the pole-men, filling in the role of protection against cavalr charges.

I think M2TW still faced many problems, that RTW was plagued with, since it was pretty much the same engine with a bit of updating. I think, the most rants I have seen posted were about either the charging and the fighting, which were reported early on, by members, after the release.

Hopefully other companies jump on the bandwagon after the success of M2TW and RTW sale-wise. It never hurts to have a competition instead of one Monopolizing on the idea.

[The Internet]

It's good to know that someone is listening. I do understand how the Roman way of fighting worked and i do understand that medieval warfare was a lot different but that post really was my way of trying to get everything i was thinking into a coherent post (almost worked too) but my main point was about the new engine, it could be a lot better than it is now and no matter what the next era is set in, if the game has the same engine as it does now and doesn't update it i don't see how it's going to improve on anything major on top of what we have now.