Faction strengths?

[WinsingtonIII]

Oh, for my part I did not think you implied Kinsmen are bad only that with all this "Kinsmen are not Cataphracts" talk it sounded as if they were a bad cavalry unit. I did not want to let it stand there like that^^ I too find them a very usefull unit :)

on Pontos: imo they have the doctrine: Cheap and (relatively) weak Elite units. Their Elite Phalanx is more compareable to the Pezhetairoi than Agyraspidai, still they are not a bad unit, just not as strong as other Elites, same goes for kinsmen.

I totally understand, and I'm actually in agreement with you on both of these points. Realistically I think Pontos suffers more from their ridiculously difficult starting position more than from their roster. But it is true that their elites are not up to the quality of the elites of other factions, and this does not help matters, especially when the AS sends ahistorical Agyraspidai spam full-stacks your way. Not that you would really have enough money as Pontos to effectively counter this anyways early on even if you had access to Agyrapsidai yourself.