Originally Posted by
micromegas
I wanted to ask people their opinion about the rules that are typical for multiplayer games.
The standard rules seem to be:
- No artillery
- No elephants
- Max 6 of the same unit
- Max 8 Cavalry
- Max 2 Horse Archers (HA counts as cav too)
- Max 2 Bezerkers
Now I understand that the whole point of the rules is to make a level playing field and discourage cheap or unfair tactics. But I don’t agree with the rules for a couple of reasons:
1.) They discourage certain style of play while encouraging other types. For example, with those rules it makes the most sense to pick the Romans and get yourself a praetorian army (urbans + cav). All other things being equal (skill, money, terrain etc.) that army will destroy just about anything. I only know one way of beating this army and you basically have to take out the praet cav first and then surround the infantry. You can do this with either lots of cavalry to overwhelm them, with elephants, or chariots. These rules disqualify two of those methods. I think the praetorian units have an obvious advantage for the cost so if you’re going to limit certain units, they should be limited as well.
2.) A lot of players will stack up on archers, historically this time period was ruled by infantry and cavalry melee’s (one more than the other depending on the faction) and skirmishers, while present, typically didn’t have a defining role in battles. So if you’re going to limit cavalry and other types of units you should limit archers as well.
3.) I don’t think anyone that breaks those rules will necessarily have an advantage. What I mean is elephants are not always a good option because they cost so much and can easily be routed with some well placed skirmishers. I’m not a big fan of artillery but I haven’t seen it make or break a battle yet and it costs a lot too. I once played with no rules where a guy picked an army of bezerkers and he got routed pretty quickly. So it makes since for people to have a variety of units anyway, in the no rules games that I’ve played no one has had an unfair advantage.
4.) The final reason is because some factions have strengths that those rules do not allow for (ie: Carthage with the elephants, Germany with zerks, Armenia and Parthia with cavalry) which makes them not playable and takes away from the variety of the game. Also, this takes away from the historical flavor of the game.