Slitherine

The Arab and Nabataean armies each have Javelinmen troops. They are both medium foot, Protected, Light Spear and both cost 30 points. They are exactly the same except for one key difference - Nabataean quality is Below Average, while Arab is Above Average. So why are they the same points cost?

My guess is that it has to do with army doctrine and those units uses. The Arab Javelin men were more common troops regularly used in battle. The Nabataean Javelin men being more rare in their army were not. This would cause the Nabataen Javelin troops to be more "expensive" for the player using that army. I think the FOG books might have detail on these units.

the_iron_duke wrote:The Arab and Nabataean armies each have Javelinmen troops. They are both medium foot, Protected, Light Spear and both cost 30 points. They are exactly the same except for one key difference - Nabataean quality is Below Average, while Arab is Above Average. So why are they the same points cost?

My guess is that you have played Odenathus's Philippi scenario which bumps the difficulty up to 6. You have to turn it down again in Settings. (There is a warning in the intro).

The base units are in fact identical, but difficulty level 6 adjusts the quality of each side.

rbodleyscott wrote: My guess is that you have played Odenathus's Philippi scenario which bumps the difficulty up to 6. You have to turn it down again in Settings. (There is a warning in the intro).

The base units are in fact identical, but difficulty level 6 adjusts the quality of each side.

This is in "Custom Battle", not a scenario.

the_iron_duke wrote:

rbodleyscott wrote: My guess is that you have played Odenathus's Philippi scenario which bumps the difficulty up to 6. You have to turn it down again in Settings. (There is a warning in the intro).

The base units are in fact identical, but difficulty level 6 adjusts the quality of each side.

This is in "Custom Battle", not a scenario.

That does not matter. If you have opened the Phillipi scenario it changes your difficulty setting to Deity for all battles (Custom, Scenarios, Campaigns, the whole lot!). Check your Difficulty level in Settings, and if it has been moved to Deity, change it back to your normal playing level.

The same thing happened to me yesterday, it really confused me until Richard suggested that I might have opened the Phillipi scenario.

I've not opened any scenarios. I see that the troop quality changes with difficulty setting, and the relative quality of the Arab and Nabataean javelinmen is reversed if I swap difficulty setting between highest and lowest. I thought difficulty level only affected points total and not troop quality?

the_iron_duke wrote:I've not opened any scenarios. I see that the troop quality changes with difficulty setting, and the relative quality of the Arab and Nabataean javelinmen is reversed if I swap difficulty setting between highest and lowest. I thought difficulty level only affected points total and not troop quality?

The bottom difficulty level is "Centurion", that gives the same points totals as "Tribune" difficulty, but it also skews the troop quality in favour of the player. So for instance an "Average" unit on the players side is bumped up to "Above Average". An "Average" unit on the AI side will be downgraded to "Below Average".

The second level is "Tribune", that just gives the player more points to spend on units.

The third level is "Legate", that is the normal level.

The fourth level is "Governor", that gives the player slightly less points.

The fifth level is "Emperor", that gives the player even less points to spend.

The top level is "Deity", that gives the player the same points as "Emperor" level, but also skews the troop quality in favour of the AI. So an "Average" AI unit becomes "Above Average", and the same unit on the players side becomes "Below Average".

I hope that explains it clearly. Apologies to Richard, if I have made any slight error in the above explanation, but I think that covers basically how it works.

Thanks. So to see armies in "Custom Battle" as they would appear in a Multiplayer game, the difficulty should be on anything except Deity level (although the points totals would need to be both adjusted to see potential army size)?

the_iron_duke wrote:I've not opened any scenarios. I see that the troop quality changes with difficulty setting, and the relative quality of the Arab and Nabataean javelinmen is reversed if I swap difficulty setting between highest and lowest. I thought difficulty level only affected points total and not troop quality?

It does, except on the highest and lowest levels.

the_iron_duke wrote:Thanks. So to see armies in "Custom Battle" as they would appear in a Multiplayer game, the difficulty should be on anything except Deity level (although the points totals would need to be both adjusted to see potential army size)?

Anything except Centurion or Deity level yes.

Potentially, you could add a mouseover tooltip to the difficulty settings to explain what each of them actually does. The other parameters in the Settings & Preferences page have mouseover tooltips.

the_iron_duke wrote:Potentially, you could add a mouseover tooltip to the difficulty settings to explain what each of them actually does. The other parameters in the Settings & Preferences page have mouseover tooltips.

I guess so, yes.