Quote Originally Posted by Woreczko View Post
Small radius has one serious drawback. It makes men more resistant to missiles (as they are harder to hit). Units with 0.2 radius will be on average 2 times as hard to hit as "normal" soldiers. On the other hand, you cannot make everyone to have 0.2 radius, because it will make all units fight in an effective shieldwall.
Point taken, we need to test how different values for radius affect unit ability in melee. And try units one on one in custom. I started with .2 because I'm not sure what the range of acceptable values there are to use, and if .285 is any different from .3 yet. I figured guard mode could mimic phalanx for units that had the ability removed with the smaller radius since the unit's soldiers will not spread out of formation.

I played KH, Makedonia, and SPQR so far with the changed values on EB 1.2.
I set no battle-time limit on medium battle difficulty.

I will need to keep track of battle statistics to be more definitive and perform controlled tests, but from my observations, Rorarii were still vulnerable to missile and would still rout easily against better units. I did not notice any difference from the hoplites either against slingers. I've been playing RTW since it came out and EB since 1.0, I love this mod! and I try to keep up on this forum.

It would seem that formation spacing, body armor and shields would account more for ranged weapons effectiveness then the radius an individual soldier in a unit uses to attack. Slingers and archers still made an impact in the battles I fought. Personally the experience that units get seemed more of an issue in my Makedonian campaign since my SS bodyguards for my FM's were tanks in melee and were able to rout the hoplites from behind as usual when exhausted and pinned by a phalanx.

As Makedonia I was still able to defeat the classical and KH bodyguard with phalanx and cavalry tactics. The formation spacing of the units stayed the same, ekodromoi(sp) hoplites still spread and surrounded phalanxes one on one but caused enough casualities anchoring the phalanx unit for a hoplitai haploi to circle round and attack from behind.

As Romani my legions were shredded pretty good for a change by KH and not just by their FMs, but superior numbers still won the day for me.

Using ifikrates hoplites and thorakitai hoplitai with the .2 radius helped them last longer, before the .2 test they'd be the first to rout and lost more then they killed, after the .2 they fought more like classical hoplites in terms of kills, but still taking as many losses as before, more or less. Lethality is fine according to my observations. the gaulish units still kicked major butt against me same for getai.

In sum, going back to the original thread, using a smaller radius should improve efficiency for the mobile phalanxes while making them different from other spearmen that did not fight in that sort of tight formation and keeps us from using short_pike that has it's own issues.