javelin V phalanx

[Tellos Athenaios]

Not quite: there is a clear difference between hitting someone in the back; hitting someone at the shielded side; hitting someone in the unprotected side... Anyone who's been using missiles a lot will have noticed this.

[Charge]

Yes, but I mean face, arms, legs... They all covered by armor from all sides, + from left and twice from front... If arrow hits armor there is no problem, but it cannot hit in face, which is instant death, or arms, legs, so he cannot continue fighting. Currently it seems that all men are like cataphracts, just packed in armour ))

[Tellos Athenaios]

No not really. Perhaps you should experiment a bit with different difficulty settings (if you didn't use M battles that is) and perhaps experimenting with multiple missile troops; slingers would yield better results?

All I can say is that on M battle difficulty the archers + slingers combination can be really devastating.

[QwertyMIDX]

Charge, everytime a man is goes down it means he was most likely hit in an unprotected spot. The way the stats work (roll to hit, roll attack against armor, roll for leathlity) are just abstractions but even in the abstract what do you think it means when the armor roll yields a success for the attacker? The vast majority should be thought to represent a hit on an unprotected spot rather than the penetration of armor. The fact that more lightly armored troops have lower armor values is a result of more unprotected areas as well as armor thats easier to penetrate (in fact linothorax was harder to penetrate with an arrow than chain mail, although the padding under the chain mail might have evened the odds so what).

[Oleander Ardens]

In fact linothorax was harder to penetrate with an arrow than chain mail, although the padding under the chain mail might have evened the odds so what).

Depends what type of arrowhead gets used

But anyway EB has found a good compromise considering all the game restrictions. Large area coverage is most important for armor to be of use against massed archery as the Kataphraktoi and other steppe warriors have shown us.

Javelins should be well suited to penetrate thanks to their momentum, but there are of course various types of spearheads and various sizes so it is hard to generalize. On could argue for example that the framae a dual-use spear, being long, heavy and fitted with a slender spearhead would fall into the same class as the pilum as far as penetratin is concerned. But EB balances this by given the germanic warriors a markedly higher attack.

Cheers
OA