Slitherine

the issue is one of play balance rather than historical accuracy: army lists are merely a gaming concept, not a true indicator of historical military performance because battlefield performance has other factors more important that the perceived quality of the troops involved: strategic situation, tactical situation, terrain, weather, commanders, stage of the campaign, state of supply, fatigue and other intangibles (did a powder keg explode at the wrong moment ?).

In other words the context of the battle is more determinant. For instance one can decide the Scottish army of 1513 was inferior to the English's based on Flodden but it's doubtful its defeat was due to inferior quality. So yes, one can argue in terms of play balance but in terms of historical reality, it has no meaning, even more so when samples are few or in this case non existent.

If one has to design units for one battle, it would be simple enough based on the performance in that battle and knowing the exact context which are mostly not under dispute, but designing them for use over a period of time is problematic: one size-fits-all can only go that far and of course it is taken out of context (which explains why I do not believe in making scenarios where two armies start far apart as in a skirmish game, a glorified skirmish game, and the player has all the time in the world to rearrange his battleline whichever ways he sees fit).

After reading this post I just went and played a medium skirmish and was shocked how bad England is. Surely they were not this bad in real life. I know more about the English Civil War (IE: Why I bought the game) then Elizabeth but still.... this army is so pathetic that I don't think I could beat any Terico to Salvo army with it. Vs. Scottland, I think the fair thing to do is make the unarmored pike a bit more fragile and have them really take shooting damage. The lack of any sort of skirmishing or fire power units makes beating the Scott's very tough.