"Ancient Warfare" in Wikipedia

[O'ETAIPOS]

Sorry guys, but this paragraph is not stupid or absurd. It is not the best piece of info either. But MOSTLY it is accurate. And it has very little to do with RTW. I will point to some examples, I bet you can find much more of them ...

{In the case that the general's advantage was more slight, he might try to rout the enemy, as fleeing troops are far less organized and easier to kill than their steadfast brethren. This can be accomplished by attacking the weak troops (skirmishers) of the enemy with strong infantry, slaughtering many of them, and thus causing them to rout*. Once one unit sees another unit routing, it is much more inclined to flee in the panic. An even greater achievement would be to break the will of the enemy general himself, (or kill him) causing him and his bodyguard to flee**, leaving his army with little choice but to follow suit. This tactic attempts to start the domino effect, resulting in the entire opposing force fleeing the field of battle. Once the entire opposing force had been routed, it was not uncommon to use cavalry to destroy as much of the routing force as possible, weakening the enemy further.}


* This happened in battle at Raphia 217BC. Yes, situation was not typical, as Antiochos III placed skirmishers and light infantry in the main battle line because he had too few phalanx troops. But rout of those light soldiers caused mass rout of Seleukid army, including elite Argyraspides.

**
1) whole army of Achemenid pretender Cyrrus disintegrated when he died. Only contingent to survive were 10000 Greek mercenaries who were able to keep formation and return home.
2) Death of Pyrrus in Argos made his army disintegrate.
3) Death of Epaminondas at Mantineia turned battle that would be decisive victory for Beotians into a draw.

Actually if I had a bit more time, I'd simply place in this paragraph quotes from Onesander's "The General" - ancient text dealing with skills needed to effectively command an army.

Domino effect/mass rout is one of the most important aspects of ancient warfare, and in this point RTW was actually quite realistic. The problem lies in AI, that was not able to keep even the most basic formations and react at least somehow close to common sense. This made battle too easy for human player, who knows the basics, and knows how to use brain instead of predefined actions.

I had seen somebody already removed this paragraph. Would you place new one based on your experience from playing EB?

In fact both RTW and mods are not much more realistic than chess game. Mods have much better figures in realistic shapes and colours, but the rules are still not much better.
One of the important things showing this fact is poor quality of horse javeliners in game. Polibius claim that Aetolians, using such cav were the best horsemen in Greece, better than Thessalians, who, according to him, fight well only in major battles and are useless in "all other cavalry operations". In fact 50 well trained Sicilian horse javeliners were able to occupy 7000 men strong Beotian army (including few hundred cavalry) for the whole day. Without losses.

If you like to read about ancient tactics, I suggest a book "The Second Punic War. A Reappraisal", Cornell T., Rankov B., Sabin P., London, 1996.