Thanks for the replies everyone! I'll play as Rome since you know, it's RTW and all that :) But going for Scythia next might be fun.

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I'm still on my first EB campaign...Sweboz that seems to take forever...was a thread about midgame blues :P

Anyhow, from reading around here I've gathered that the AI bonuses for VH battles are the same as for Vanilla, but as you've probably noticed, the stats here are quite a bit higher, hence the actual advantage should be less. Thoght there is the moral issue, even with medium battles there are plenty of units that fight to the very last man even if you surround them and charge them in the rear.

That said, from the ones I've seen talking about VH, they promote scare tactics, meaning that they don't actually fight the enemy, something sturdy to pin the foe, phalanxes for example then they take their special forces:
Naked men (scare), with an eagle up their butt (morale boost + scare?, Note:Romans aren't the only ones with eagles here), fireing flaming arrows (scare), while riding camels (scare horses), that in turn are mounted on elephants (scare).
These they charge into the enemy rear for instant rout effect.

There's also the nifty HA:s if you want an easy time. 500 slingers/archers in guardmode and loose formation against a single unit of unarmoured HA in a straight on shootout (50 horsemen) will give you losses in the 80-ies or 90-ies. Pretty ridiculous, but there you have it. HA:s are extremely unbalanced, I just took it for some team-member, or several being in the HA fanclub, a party that's quite prominent in the vanilla section, so why should it be any different here? (Oh and HAs can be used quite well in charges too, unlike most of the the HAs in vanilla.)
Ok, I've only encountered the Sauomate so far, perhaps the other HA:s aren't as overpowered, but I have my doubts...a tip, when you take their cities, don't build a wall, let them come into town, because if you sally they flee and besiege you again the next turn. If you let them inside straight away though, then you can butcher them the way they deserve.

Another thing, height difference is really important in EB, much more so than I recall it being in vanilla. Higher ground truly is your friend here.

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Saka and Pahlava HAs are just as good (they also have some heavier types than the Sarmatians, and the Saka have three HA units with the same range as Kretan archers). Also the Armenian ones, but they are more expensive. And the Getai have two HA units, one of which is pretty derpy.
All of them die rather quickly, though. Cavalry in EB is of the "glass cannon" type - meaning very strong at a charge or at missile output, but vulnerable in melee. For example, one unit of Celtic levy spearmen can easily destroy a unit of Lusitanian elite skirmisher cavalry (costing four times as much) in a proper melee encounter. Definitely an improvement from Vanilla.

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Scythians are not a playable faction if I remember correctly. The Sauromatae were the tribe that came in and displaced the scythians. So one of the rebel areas (to the west?) of the Sauromatae are the scythians....or what is left of them.

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Eh, you know what I meant. Funny how the EB faction selection screen says "Nigh-on-impossible" or "Very Hard" for factions who have HAs. HAs have always ruled vs the AI in terms of cost-effectiveness and overall efficiency. In fact the only time I've seen HAs fail is when you use regular, inexperienced men versus heavy knights with 28-30 armour in Stainless Steel (a M2TW mod), but SS gives great combat bonuses to the AI (cav is faster, stronger, deals more damage, dies a lot harder etc.)

I like EB's scripting though. Having read about the Punic war and how it all started because Rome interfered with matters in Sicilly I was pleasantly surprised when Carthage declared war on me for taking a reel settlement there. Now this means they simply must die but that was sort of the plan anyway. BTW I was going to sort of object to the point of Triarii who didn't seem as the end-all, be-all of the early Roman units but then I made them charge trough the city gates and smash into the enemy lighter infantry and phalanx units, and I was pleasantly surprised to see their staying power.

Oh, and any takers for a succession game? Come on, it's fun!

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The difficulty in playing nomadic factions isn't in their unit roster, which tends to be top-notch, but their general lack of infrastructure. You can only build basic ports, level 1 mines, low level farms, etc. Thus, while you might have good units, you'll find yourself frequently outnumbered by the AI. Add to that the heavy nerfing of cavalry and missiles (And the strengthening of infantry and phalanxes) and you will find nomadic campaigns very, very difficult. The exception to this is the Pahlava, who get Persian reforms as they expand into Iran, allowing them to upgrade their settlements further and recruit a more diverse roster.

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It performed horribly for me also. But now it works fine for me on a crappy laptop. Go find your preferences file saved somewhere in an EB folder - there are two files. I can't remember which one to edit, so edit both (make backups, of course). It has some settings that don't pop up in game mode, and after playing around I was able to get a respectable mouse movement on campaign map.

Nah, don't let any of that intimidate you. I found that getting up to speed was rather fast. As a veteran, you will too.

Go VH/M (gold standard from what I understand).

You can win with anyone, but Roman units in EB (at least infantry) are awesome. All things considered, I'd say their infantry is the best in the game. Take a look at the stats vs. cost of hastatit/principi/triarii and compare with other factions starting units - it's a joke. Personally-speaking, I know I can say I annihilated with the Romans without even trying (VH/M of course). I'm sure the veterans around here would say the same.

Phalanxes are very good this game - probably the best infantry, all things considered top to bottom. Essentially unbeatable if attacked from the front (of course they must be supported).

AFAIK, Kart-hadast is a pretty awesome starting city - better than anything the Romans get I think.

As far as suggesting balance changes and what not, I found (personally-speaking) that many here don't seem to take kindly to that, or even to critique/discussion/questioning of balance or unit stats, but perhaps they just don't like me :-D

At any rate, I did some of my own balance changes, and found it was fairly easy to do once you know what you are doing. If you don't know it already, you may disover that elite and upper-tier units are not cost-effective by any means. This rubbed me the wrong way, so I modded it. Also, Casse generals (who are in celtic chariots) are incredibly sucky, so I modified that too. But others here (probably most) seem to be totally fine with the game as balanced.

I found it interesting to read all the opinions on horse archers and the horse archer factions. I guess I have a dissenting view. I've always found it ridiculously easy to fight against horse archers. Just recruit foot archers.

As far as playing with HA factions instead of against them - sure I can dominate with them just like with anyone else. But I find I have to do a lot more micro as far as surrounding units with HAs, pulling back or kiting with them continuously, retreating the ones who run out of arrows, etc. Then retreat everyone once all arrows are dry and immediately attack again, rinse, repeat. I find this tedious. I don't have to do anything like this with a more "normal" faction - I can just win the first battle straight up with no "special tactics." If I had to play against myself, one of me with a HA faction, one without, I'd much rather be the "me" that gets to choose the non-HA faction, if I'm interesting in winning that is. But if I just wanna have fun, or play a faction with units that are cool - sure, HA factions are as cool and fun as any other. That's my view, anyway.

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Aye but there is a reason why HA spam is banned in MP (CWB rules) and HA armies can pull off 0 casualty Heroic Victories with consistency. Essentially a quality HA stack can go on a never ending conquest spree. Unless it meets top quality bowmen (in vanilla things like Pharaoh's Bowmen/Sacred Band Archers. Or Longbowmen/Genoese Crossbowmen in M:T2 and its mods)

That being said I enjoy more standard armies with infantry/ranged/cav compositions instead of HA spam or Cataphact/Chariot spam etc.

Not sure about criticism, I can simply state the sources of what I have discovered and they can make up their minds. For example, the performance of Roman maniples vs. Makedonian sarissa phalanxes - military experts contemporary to the time have discussed this (Livy for example) and have even theorized Rome's answer to Alexander invading them instead of Persia. The battles vs. Phyrros also are further proof that the more flexible maniple proved decisively better then the slow, immobile phalanx.

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You are talking vanilla RTW? I never played MP with that game, I just know that in SP HAs were ridiculously easy to beat - even elite HAs. All I had to do was recruit foot archers. If he brought heavy cavalry too, I just threw in spears. So basically at that point I'm fully countering him with an army that's 10 times cheaper.

Again though, I can't speak exactly to the situation you outlined above as I didn't play MP with RTW, but it sounds like generic bowmen didn't have the ability to pierce the armor of elite HAs... is that right? So if you were a faction that didn't have access to decent bowmen, you were screwed? Did fielding a melee cavalry force that could catch the HAs help?

There are some MP types here, and they even use a modded version of the game specifically for MP. Maybe one of them could chime in on this HA question you pose. My guess though (this is just a guess) is that on an MP battle, assuming limited ammunition, you could field a very heavily armored infantry unit - perhaps a pike phalanx type - and an HA unit would run out of ammo before being able to kill you. From a Saka campaign I played I know I had to completely isolate and surround Selucid and Baktria pike phalanxes with HAs, and that wasn't enough generally (I had to come back again next battle and do the same).

My impression (I'm speaking "generically in life" here, not specifically about this forum) is that if you are liked, you can say anything you want to any group and it's fine. For instance, a hot chick in a classroom stands up and says something controversial. She is either applauded, or at the very worst politely challenged with another view. Parallel universe - fat ugly chick stands up and gives the same view to the same group of people that the hot chick did. She's shouted down and told to "sit down and shut up bitch!"

I think what I just said applies to this forum too in a generic sense, but more specifically, if you aren't the popular hot chick I just spoke of, my guess is if you just "simply stated sources of what you discovered and let folks make up their minds," that would be generally fine - provided that's all you did. Now, people might 1) challenge your view with a rational argument (unlikely, but it could happen), 2) tell you development of this game is finished and thus take balance suggestions to EB2, or 3) most likely tell you "balance is fine" or "if you want a totally balanced game go play starcraft" or "you just don't know how to use [insert unit type]" or a plethora of other things I heard. But that would be fine, because you did what you set out to do - "state sources, let people make up their own minds, blah blah." And that's all you did, and it ended.

Where it has the potential to degenerate and get nasty (at least it did for me) is if you respond back to either 1, 2, or 3. Bottom line, if it's just "state sources blah blah" that's likely to generate minimal controversy and you will probably be fine. If you are a hot popular chick, you can say anything you want and it will probably be fine.

Note that I'm not personally discouraging you from saying whatever you want, whenever you want, on whatever topic you want. I fully support that 100%, and actually enjoy reading balance critiques and suggestions and what not, especially backed-up by logical rational arguments.

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Exactly. Also the lack of factional heavy infantry, which becomes a problem when you're trying to take fortified cities - even for Pahlava, which has decent mid-tier factional infantry, it's better to bring along some foreign heavies.


That is indeed a correct observation, but it's not the way things went on this forum. Please remember that you came up with generalizing and rather aggressive statements about content and balancing of this mod, without having looked up EB's background info (e.g. the homepage) for the reasons of this setup, and without having had much experience with the combat system of this particular mod.
When I first played EB, I was once tempted to write something nasty about the scripted roving defenders in the Alpine provinces, but then I stopped myself and checked for strategic reasons that might justify such heavy scripting. And that's how things normally go here. If you discover something in game that puts you off, please reflect upon what it could mean before deciding it must be a mistake.

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I guess it's a matter of interpretation. I think that's how it went. You, and perhaps others, don't think that's how it went. That's perfectly fine - to each his own. But it's probably best not to turn this thread into a discussion of any of those threads - I'm just responding because I can't let such a characterization go unresponded to (with all due respect). Anyone who is interested can look up old threads and decide for themselves what transpired, presuming they haven't been deleted.

Not sure I agree with "generalizing." I would need more context, but even so, in and of itself I see no problem. "Generalizing" (whether I did it or not) can either be argumentatively appropriate in a given situation or not, but it's never a reason to shout down someone else's views or be rude. Probably the best response is to show why generalizing with the particular argument in question isn't logically or rationally appropriate, or is some sort of fallacy.

As to the "rather aggressive," while that's subjective (one man's "aggressive" is another man's...), if so, I don't see a problem there either. Is the only accepted way to state an opinion to do so "passively?"

I don't think it had much to do with not knowing the reasons for the setup, because people stated various reasons for the setup right there in the threads we are referring to. I simply rejected those reasons as not being good reasons (or in some cases, "not good enough" reasons).

I never initially DECIDED that something was a mistake. I ASKED (even in the title of the thread, even with a question mark to denote that it was a question) whether something was a mistake. Any "deciding" came later, after I was supplied with all the arguments and data people were able to give.

Again, I think you and I can agree it's probably best not to turn this thread into a discussion of any of those threads. Anyone who is interested can look up old threads and decide for themselves what transpired, presuming they haven't been deleted. I was simply cautioning the OP that in my experience this forum hasn't been very conducive to balance/stat discussions, although he is perfectly free to engage in such activity if he wants. I guess you'd say "it's conducive, just don't do it the way I claim nightmare did it." Fine - I guess he has two perspectives then, and can decide for himself.

Regards.

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Indeed, so let's please keep it at that.

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