Slitherine

So I love the AI in this game it has some real surprises and pushes you hard, even on level 2 difficulty. Also the terrain looks great and the campaign choices are wonderful. However I wonder if the rules were written by the Imperial Roman propaganda ministry, as the Romans go through everything (except elephants) like butter. I think that generals seem to be over-powered - I had six units attacking one general at one stage, and it still took ages to die, and when it did die, it made little difference to the enemy.

I easily got through my first random Rise of Rome campaign, in which I used a Marian Roman army against Spanish Roman. This gave me the impression that as long as you used Romans, terrain was irrelevant, just point the heavy foot at something and it will win. Now I'm in a Pontic campaign and this is terrific, there's lots more variety (though still no fireworks, entire sides collapsing, and things spinning around like the good old days). I think the Cappadocian army might have had a few more heavy cavalry - though it was nice to see the Bithynian and Cappadocian army fielding lots of average troops. The Bosporan army surprised me by turning up with only cavalry, but it turned out all their infantry was hiding in the woods - fortunately too far away to make any difference. But those games seemed like training games for the main event - the first battle against the Romans. Well I thought I would take every cavalryman I could plus a few pikes and warbands. I soon had the cavalry swarming around the flank of the Romans but they would charge in then bounce off, no matter eventually although the Romans walked all over my non-pike infantry the game was a decisive defeat for the Romans.

The current battle was/is quite different. There was a big steep hill in my deployment area and a river running down the right flank of it, so I though I would see what happened if I tried to defend the hill with lots of thureophoroi and Thracians, with the cavalry holding the rest of the field. Wow the AI is fantastic, it noticed a river crossing and made a feint towards the river so I had to send troops to guard the river crossing behind my hill - but then the AI changed its mind so my troops at the river crossing were left with nothing to do! Also completely unexpected was a flank march on the other flank. The front of the hill was lined with slingers and archers who shot away any light troops that approached them but the superb AI moved to go around the hill and headed for my cavalry. That cavalry was a line of superior/elite armoured lancers and cataphracts that filled the clear terrain on the left of the hill - normally that would terrify Roman infantry. What happened? They rumbled forward and bounced off, fragmented or similar, even the cataphract general. I think if you can't charge Republican Roman infantry in the open with lancers and hope to win there's something seriously wrong, unless you work for the Roman propaganda ministry. Only flank charges seem to stick. How are you supposed to beat Roman infantry if you can't change them in the open with heavy lancers???

Now that the game has been out for a little while it's interesting to see the differing, and conflicting, experiences of the balance (or otherwise) of different armies.
I have won as the Romans. I've also defeated them playing as Carthage and Macedon. And after playing against German Foot Tribes with Roman, and finding the Romans unable to win, I played as Germans and absolutely crushed the Romans (although it was pretty boring). So I don't believe they're overpowered, although they're pretty reliable.

Even with ideal play armies fare well against particular styles of opponent, and fail against another. It's all a bit rock-paper-scissors.

Romans seem about right to me.
I have beaten them as Carthage (several times) and Gaul and have been beaten as the Romans by Samnites.
They are deadly in a walk up fight but that's the way it was.

vakarr wrote: I think if you can't charge Republican Roman infantry in the open with lancers and hope to win there's something seriously wrong

You can hope to win, but usually you won't. That is historical.

Throughout history steady infantry were usually able to repel heavy lancers - even in the heyday of the Medieval knight. And you don't get much steadier than Romans.

OP, Know anything about the Caesar/Pompey meeting at Pharsalus? I daresay Pompey was no less astonished than you that his cavalry was routed because of a relative few Legionnaires in conjunction with Caesar's sparse cavalry contingent.

If you attend to the basics in tactics you will find that the results are pretty historical in this game. Engage the Legion from the front and THEN charge the flanks, if you want a more satisfactory result. Don't expect a straight-up charge to crack the morale of most regular units and particularly don't expect cavalry to stand and melee with heavy foot.

I've seen my fresh Legions take a warband's charge and suffer 5 times the casualties and get pushed back without losing cohesion. Hit that same unit in the flank, too, and it suffers immediate disruption. Even raw Legionnaires will stand up to a frontal charge. Heck, even Javelinmen can do so.

Lure a Legion into rough ground and it suffers from disorder before the fight even starts. Use your cavalry to run off his missile troops and pelt his line with your missile troops. Terrain and tactics wins a lot of battles

vakarr wrote: That cavalry was a line of superior/elite armoured lancers and cataphracts that filled the clear terrain on the left of the hill - normally that would terrify Roman infantry. What happened? They rumbled forward and bounced off, fragmented or similar, even the cataphract general. I think if you can't charge Republican Roman infantry in the open with lancers and hope to win there's something seriously wrong, unless you work for the Roman propaganda ministry. Only flank charges seem to stick. How are you supposed to beat Roman infantry if you can't change them in the open with heavy lancers???

As the developer pointed out, history does favour heavy infantry vs shock cavalry assuming the infantry do not panic.

Lancers should never charge heavy foot unless they are disordered or fragmented or otherwise indisposed with an open flank. In your situation the better course of action would be to just turn your cavalry around and find the softer part of their army to kill. If insist on fighting Lancer vs heavy foot, the better choice actually is to sit your Lancer line in front of the Roman line and not attack and use ZoCs to pin their best troops from moving while you defeat the rest of the army. Most heavy infantry lose their insanely high Impact PoAs if they are charging shock cavalry but retain it if charged by shock cavalry. By not charging and simply sitting in front of him, you force the infantry to make the risky move of engaging and potentially losing the impact round of combat and risk disorder or fragmentation if they want to fight.

I think there's a difference between Roman infantry who have never been charged by lancers and only have a short javelin to defend themselves and other infantry armed with pikes or longspears or who were otherwise prepared to face a cavalry charge. Also I'm not talking about any old heavy cavalry but cataphract lancers. Anyway despite seeing Thureophoroi charge downhill into ordinary medium javelinmen and being immediately repulsed fragmented (I suppose because the Thureophoroi were disordered by terrain but the javelinmen were not) I managed to win the battle, (partly due to an heroic general who was with the Dacian falxmen) as the AI took too many troops away from the hill so I was able to defeat what was at the bottom of the hill and come around in his rear. The Romans suffered the worst losses yet, at 60% or so, although my losses were also the highest of the battles so far.

Here's a bonus for anybody who has read this far: Archaeologists think they have found the site of Alexander and Lysimachos's Thracian palace/home and production site for the army http://archaeologyinbulgaria.com/2017/1 ... -bulgaria/

I thought balance might be better than that of FOG1, especially since the superior swordsman ability of legions that made mincemeat of every other nation's swordsmen thankfully is gone. And I will give the edge to disciplined heavy infantry versus lancers. I don't even think polearms are required (for example, fryd and huscarl shield wall of the Saxon's versus Norman knights, as long as the infantry are in order the charges should be not cost effective).

In the great battles series (great battles of Alex, Caesar, Hannibal), I recall the manual or in game help chiding the player to use cavalry as faster infantry, not as tanks, owing to lack of stirrups (no couched lances).

In game wise, cavalry has a lower force concentration compared to infantry, so frontal engagements are bad if you don't have other POA against them since the extra men will make their weight known in melee, so if your charge doesn't cause disorder soon it probably means the melee will go poorly. That idea of ZOCing the infantry with lancers has great merit and what I would go with.

Roman's do get great cost effective cohorts, beating the larger numbered heavy infantry units because the extra men do very little beyond max cohort size.

As for the Thureophoroi versus javelinmen, off the top of my head that is not a great engagement. Theuropoi are medium offensive spear, javelinmen are medium light spear, and both get same POA versus each other in impact combat. The only main advantage you have is a small height bonus, which is enough that the dice can go the other way badly, like you experienced.

Thureophoroi do not suffer disorder in rough, being medium foot. They are offensive spear and get +100 on impact, same as the javelinmens light spear. However, The javelin men get nothing for the melee, while the thureophoroi get +100. Basically, you got unlucky on impact before you could roll over them in melee.

Must confess, my own experience with the Roman's suggests they are about right. I have see off Italian hill tribes with ease, but some later enemies simply refuse to die/lose.

I have over-powered the Romans lots of times. Mainly by sneaking up behind them with my chariots and gee-gees.