The Battle of Cannae - 216 BC

**TWFanatic** · 09-12-2007, 17:36

Thank you for your comments, though I would have appreciated if you played the battle first, the reasons for which you may have seen if you did so.

- experience is way too high. I've limited myself to 3 chevrons at the most. In some cases I have increased armor, but that is in phalanx vs phalanx battles where the RTW engine could use a little work. And historically, the vast majority of the Roman units would have no experience at all since they were fresh levies.

I originally had experience for all the units low - 2-3 for the Carthaginian units and only one for Roman units (none for allied units) with the exception of the bodyguards, which had higher exp. I quickly realized that the battle was far too easy for Carthage and that the melee time was too short, so for the sake of gameplay and realism I increased experience of all units.

- also, you can't have units that have a higher number of soldiers than are available in the huge setting. As a result, almost all of your Roman units will be drastically smaller than how you made them.

If this was so, I was not aware of it, everything seemed normal to me. I'll go check after I eat lunch.

- if you want to see portraits and actual generals on the field rather than captains, you can go into the descr_battle and where it says "general" next to the name, replace that with "named character".

Thank you for that, I will remember it for next time.

**abou** · 09-12-2007, 17:40

Do the units actually appear that big in battle? The unit cards when you are choosing armies may show it that big, but in battle they will be reduced.

Plus, I get a CTD when I try to play it.

**TWFanatic** · 09-12-2007, 18:49

Well, I figured it out. You were right! I edited my EDU file to give principes and hastati unit sizes of 60 (240 large) and triarii 30 (120 on large) to reflect historical maniple sizes. That's why they showed themselves at full strength for me. I tried the battle with the vanilla EDU file and the hastati and principes units were 160 strong.

The battle of Cannae simply can't be represented on a 25:1 scale. You were right. I shouldve listened, now I've spent countless hours of time - all for naught. And it looked so good...

That's it for me with historical battles...

*download removed*

**abou** · 09-12-2007, 18:59

Pft, don't give up. If I sounded harsh it is because I'm not going to treat you as a child. I'm going to tell you what you did right, what you did wrong, and how to fix it.

Try two Roman armies instead and just have the Carthaginians alone be playable.

**TWFanatic** · 09-12-2007, 19:24

Nah I'm glad for the comments/suggestions, I need them.

I just didn't want to waist more time only to get let down again...

Two armies eh? I can't believe I haven't thought of that before. That way, I can have one under the command of Paullus and one under Varro. I'll try that.

cheers

**Geoffrey S** · 09-13-2007, 14:49

Originally Posted by TWFanatic

Nah I'm glad for the comments/suggestions, I need them.

I just didn't want to waist more time only to get let down again...

Hey, just remember that it's never wasted time if you learn from your mistakes and don't repeat them!

Edit: and by the looks of things, you've only really been working on this for the last few days. Bear in mind that most of these battles, if done properly with scripting, take quite a lot longer to be made perfect. There's still plenty of time.

**Eduorius** · 09-13-2007, 15:10

Giving my suggestion here. Havent played your Cannae, but well...

For a 1:25 scale the Romans must be

48 Velites
48 Hastati
48 Princepes
24 Triarii

If you multiply them by 25 and add them all that gives you a total of 5K for a Polybian legion.

Now what I mostly do for Roman armies is that instead of using 16 stacks for the infantry in a Consular Army, what I do is that I make the Velites of Allied Legion 1 and Legion1 merge together as I do with the ones in Legion 2 and Allied Legion 2.

What you get is similar to this.

.....................velites(96)..............................velites(96)..............
............hastati(48).............hastati(48)............hastati(48).............hastati(48)
princepes(48).........princepes(48).........princepes(48).........princepes(48)
..............triarii(24)................triarii(24)...............triarii(24)...............triarii (24)

Now if you are one of those that believe that the Triarii were not present in Cannae that battle stack is even easier and since this units are so small you can double the unit size of all the infantry to represent the 2 Consular armies present. Cavalry will not be a problem.