Hmm, several points on which to catch up.

1. Alexandrian stele of the thorakites - the soldier, an Epeirote, is shown in a classic dueling style known (perhaps) best from a number of south italian tombs that show duelers in armor with cloaks and javelins, and only rarely with shields. The stele fits far better with the duel theme than with a warfare theme, and I don't think we'd assume that the duelers from the Paestum tombs lacked shields if they wanted them.

2. Light thureophoroi - we're actually showing a sort of continuum, but its still up for some changes. For example, we've already implemented and previewed the euzonoi, an unarmored unit (save for a few helmets) equipped with thureoi and javelins. But we also know that there are a couple of depictions of thureophoroi in tube-and-yoke corselets, several in possible flexible leather garments, others in chain mail, and others in full muscled cuirasses. Now, we've been considering several ways of working through these things. From a Ptolemaic perspective, I see quite a few different outlays of gear, based on the full range of sources at my disposal. The Sidon stelai seem consistent with mercenary troops outfitted for mobile roles, carrying equipment bestowed by the king and packed off for campaign. We should differentiate these from the standing army troops recruited in Egypt itself (also--confusingly--called misthophoroi some of the time) who were from landed or (for lack of a better term at the moment) "small business" backgrounds, who, by nature of the period of their service and proximity to markets, had greater opportunity to diversify their equipment by purchasing, from their own funds or from their stipend, a different helmet or piece of armor. There are also equipment differences--we see 3 types of weapons pretty frequently, but as I'm sure you know, there are only 2 weapons allowed in-game. I have to leave in a minute actually, but it boils down to this: the gap between full thorakitai and euzonoi was too large, and we didn't feel comfortable lumping every type of armor ever shown worn by a soldier carrying a thureos into a single unit, so the thureophoroi are meant to bridge that gap. As I've said, they'll not, at release, wear as much armor. 30-60% (debated) will wear some form of lighter armor, and all will have helmets.

3. Greaves - That's actually due for change. You'll notice that the bodies of the thureophoroi are the same as those of the hoplitai. The thureophoroi will wear a variety of boots, so bear with us. I think there are actually also a few helmet changes for the thureophoroi that haven't been put into place, even though the model changes have already been prepared. It takes some work, and we've been doing a lot of work on a lot of other cultures. These things will get sorted out when we get back around to the Hellenes.