EB with BI

[mAIOR]

Yeah I got one of those playing as Lusitans in 1.5. Carthage dropped an army in his africal possessions. Not that it mattered tough.

Cheers...

[Tretii]

That's the first time I hear anyone gets naval invasions in 1.5. Anyway, personally I think it's worth installing BI, cos AI is improved. It might even get a little challenging at times. Try it, especially now, with funky converter which allows you to skip all this tedious work adjusting EB to BI.

[Lysander13]

You guys must be lucky because i never was on the wrong end of a naval invasion playing EB with 1.5. It got to the point that i never even concerned myself with it. As soon as i started using BI the difference is completely apparant. Now i actually have to pay attention to possible seaborne invasions from my enemies. This is assuming of course that you play as a faction with provinces that lends itself to naval incursions. Definately worth it if only for the threat of a more active AI as far as naval invasions go; but also with a BI enabled edu you can use cool unit formations like Shield Wall as was mentioned, not to mention swimming units that the AI will use as well and a few other unit formations that are available to the player.

[Xehh II]

What do swimming units do? Do they act like boats?

[Cash Staks]

What do swimming units do? Do they act like boats?

I haven't played with BI(I have BI but I'm just far too lazy to do anthing about it), but I think swimming units can swim across rivers. You know, they don't need a bridge or the shallow water they can walk, erm... swim across. So if this is true, I guess you could stall another army on a bridge and swim some other units across downriver and have a nice little flanking manuever. I personally would rather keep all my units at the bridge.

I could be wrong on all this though...

[jhhowell]

I haven't played with BI(I have BI but I'm just far too lazy to do anthing about it), but I think swimming units can swim across rivers. You know, they don't need a bridge or the shallow water they can walk, erm... swim across. So if this is true, I guess you could stall another army on a bridge and swim some other units across downriver and have a nice little flanking manuever. I personally would rather keep all my units at the bridge.

I could be wrong on all this though...

That's correct, though they're not as useful as that sounds. The problem is that units with the "swim" ability for all practical purposes cannot use bridges at all (I suspect one could carefully set them to a narrow formation and micromanage them over a bridge, but that defeats the purpose - the whole point of a bridge is to cross swiftly). Also, as you'd expect swimming is incredibly tiring. I believe Exhausted = death in the water, swimmers repulsed in a crossing won't reach their own side of the river in most cases before drowning due to exhaustion.

In theory they can be useful as described, make an unopposed crossing far from the bridge, rest for a good long time, then start the bridge bloodbath while bringing in your swimmer force as flankers. In practice I would have deleted the ability from my ERE light cavalry if I'd known how at the time, in order to allow those guys to charge across the bridge at the end of the battle and slaughter routing Huns. I have no idea whether any EB-BI units are better off with the swim ability than without.

[Conqueror]

Swimming allows light units to cross the river (during a bridge/ford battle) at any point. Mostly this means that if you're defending a bridge, you won't be able to just concentrate all your units on one end; you'll need to station some of your troops along the riverbanks to guard against swimmers. Otherwise they will be able to flank your defenders.

Countering swimming units is easy though, as it takes them a while to get across, they'll be very vulnerable to missile fire while in the water, and they will be tired/exhausted by the time they hit the opposite bank. And then there's the fact that they'd be emerging from the water in a disorderly formation and attacking uphill.

[bovi]

Also, once they break due to exhaustion from swimming, they'll perish as they try to swim back over the river. Outstanding. A "feature" that should have been postponed until they got it right.