Every faction gets Hastati

First of all, I love this mod.
Love it!

But I am kinda bummed out by the fact that every faction sort of gets their own "Hastati"-type unit.
This makes the Roman faction a lot harder to play, because they lose this unique type of troop selection.
And the factions you have to fight (e.g. Carthage + Greek/Mac) have Hastatii (Thoreophoroi/Thorakitai) + phalanx-pike-type units + shieldwall-hoplites..

Was this intentional?
Because after playing a lot of different factions, I feel like it was more or less a lack of inspiration and "filling the gaps" than anything else.
The Thoreophoroi you can recruit as GCS for example seem to be even stronger than the normal Hastati in a head on fight.

Apart from that, what I love most about XGM is the Aux.Barracks where you can retrain "merc-units" !!

It's not strange that they may seem similar, after all armor + shield + spear were a must in most armies.

On a second thought, I haven't played XGM in a couple years, but the Hastati were armed with a sword, not a spear, right?

Yeah but I mean the "trowing of armour-piercing pilae" before going hand-to-hand with a sword.. Just like the Thoreophoroi do.. And the Thorakitae..
There seems to be a general "armour-piercing-pilae" for everyone now, that's what I was talking about.

Well... keep in mind that Theurophoroi and Thorakitai were developed at a later time than phalanxes, for example. I think around the start of III century BCE the Theurophoroi and around half century later the Thorakitai .
The Theurophoroi were, probably, an evolution of peltasts (no armor, only the shield and a spear, and obviously javelins), while the Thorakitai were, probably, the hellenic version of the Galatian heavy warriors, these too, throwed javelins around.
The roman Hastati probably took the pilae from the Etruscans, which in turn invented it probably modifying a project of... guess who? The Celts.
The point is, around two-thirds of the infantry units at that time used some sort of javelin as "second weapon", the romans are only the most famous.

Oh, and as a note, after seeing how well the roman legions fared on the battlefield, in the II century BCE most of the big mediterranean states did create their own version of the "legionaries".
The fact is, the roman legionaries won most of the times, so their "project" was treated as the future of warfare, and it was for around... 4 or 5 centuries?

Another example. In the WW2, after seeing the German panzers flattening the France, most of the states decided that type of tanks was the future, and began producing it. Same with CAS bombers, a couple years later and, still later, aircraft carriers.
The best design is copied. Period.

Other things being equal Hastati should beat Thureophoroi in a straight up fight. Their pilae do more damage, and their swords are a more effective weapon against infantry. Likewise Principes should be somewhat better than Thorakitai. Of course things are seldom equal. If you play on higher difficulty levels, fight uphill, etc, then a unit which has a modest advantage in stats might find itself at a disadvantage.

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Originally Posted by DimeBagHo

Other things being equal Hastati should beat Thureophoroi in a straight up fight. Their pilae do more damage, and their swords are a more effective weapon against infantry. Likewise Principes should be somewhat better than Thorakitai. Of course things are seldom equal. If you play on higher difficulty levels, fight uphill, etc, then a unit which has a modest advantage in stats might find itself at a disadvantage.

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Yeah I meant on the higher difficulty levels, straight up fighting with Hastati on level ground.
Thoreophoroi hammers them. Also because the Hastati are the ones advancing, the Thoreophoroi are the first to get their javs off.