Thanks for the warm welcome all three of you. It's good to be welcomed aboard in so friendly a fashion.

@athanaric: No, it's not a problem, merely a realism query. The game's pretty fantastic and all, and I don't find anything unbalanced, merely odd.

@Vartan: Oh, I do plan to modify my own game (been doing for ages). I just want to discuss things with this community before I change anything, see the reasons behind it and so on. Basically, I want to discuss these things

@Atilus: I can see the logic behind that, but the issue I find is that phalangites are, fundamentally, very vulnerable troops. They rely on the sheer power and reach of their pikes to keep them alive and in one piece. Would it not be more realistic for them to have relatively low defence and shields statistics to reflect that their shields are smaller, much harder to use with the Sarissa and that the Sarissa is a relatively clumsy weapon and hard to defend yourself with. Whereas in EB, I would thing they are...a tad too resilient. Hoplites, having larger shields and being able to use them more effectively, really should be more resilient all-around (and less powerful).

A solution that was found in the Medieval II mods was to actually remove pike unit's secondary weapons. Has this been considered?