corrected spartan stamina

[Prince of Judah]

All this edu does is change Spartan hoplites from hardy to very hardy. I've not changed anything else.

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

They are alrady OP.

[Bull3pr00f de Bodemloze]

Yeah, they're going to get toned down in RoPIII

Thank god for "only recruitable in Sparta"

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

Thank Ahura Mazda

[Prince of Judah]

they are currently underpowered if you want ROP to be historical. A player shouldn't have too much trouble fighting greek states because Persia will have far greater resources. Not to mention the fact that human I > A I.

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

Underpowered????

THEY ARE IMPERVIOUS TO ANY NON-HOPLITES!!!

GREEKS WIPE EVERYTHING OUT, SO WHEN YOU FINALLY EMERGE VICTORIOUS OVER THE BABYLONIANS AND MEDES, THEY JUST EVERYTHING UP.

[Prince of Judah]

historically they did just that. anyway. please respond to my pm.

[Prince of Judah]

1v1 immortals and spartan hipowhatever results in a spartan victory but with significant casualties.

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

The greeks did NOT conquer the Middle east. In real life they lost open field battles to the persians. Chokepoints - not fair.
Immortals should beat every hoplite except spartiatai hippeis and with spartiatai it should be more or less equal. More to the spartan, OFC.

[Bull3pr00f de Bodemloze]

Note: I agree with Cocroach here. Remember that it weren't the Greeks that conquered the Middle East. It were Macedonians (I'm purely talking in military formation and fighting style-sense here; whether Macedonians were Greeks or not I'm leaving out). Hoplite warfare was vastly inferior to a Macedonian phalanx, which could beat any army it opposes when used correctly.

Yes, even the legions of Rome. The phalanx that fought against Rome was not the same kind of phalanx that fought against the Persians. Would he be able to, Alexander would probably turn around in his grave if he knew how his successors handled his formation.

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

Alexander would probably turn around in his grave if he knew how his successors handled his formation.

I am pretty sure he did a big air 360.

[Prince of Judah]

you're absolutely right bullet. But hoplites are superior to all persian infantry, not because they are "better" but because Persian tactics and equipment are incompatible with greek warfare. an armored immortal still has a shorter spear, and a wicker shield. On an open plain, persians have a very high chance of pwning the greeks since greeks at the time employed very few cavalry. but hoplites should not be toned down for the reasons I just stated. If you extrapolate to Rome vs Parthia and Sassanid Iran, Rome won far more battles than it lost. It wasn't until the WRE became useless that the balance of power between the ERE became more or less even. Carrae is no exception either, since they won because they had an unending supply line of arrows, not because they used better tactics.

[Bull3pr00f de Bodemloze]

That's still better tactics, since military logistics can be deemed part of tactics. The Romans didn't bring enough cavalry would be a valid argument, too. Logistics as well, but also tactical.

The problem with every large empire is that they think they're the best and stop thinking rational. The Persians started out as brilliant tacticians, but later dropped this because they were "invincible anyway".
Persians would very well be on par with the Spartans, btw. Especially since the Persians had a mass of archers and could simply surround the smaller Spartan armies. Pepper them with arrows and send in the lightly-armoured and agile Immortals (who were with 10000, which is basically the complete Spartan army. Also take note of the fact that they're probably equally skilled in melee combat as the Spartans) = lots of dead Spartans.
Sassanid Persia is a different case. Although I don't think you should look at the amount of battles won/lost but at the amount of territory conquered by any party.

Which at the end is none, really. Arabs had to interfere

At the end of the day, it's always tactics

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

Rome won far more battles than it lost

False. The w/l ratio was in favour of the persians. ~1.35:1

The persians were outnumbered most of the time, but far more trained. The deylami could compare wtih praesentalis armies, the savaran easily pwned anything romans had up to 1:2 numbers in favour of the romans. Just that the savaran were so few - only top aryan nobles were allowed to join.

Many of the roman victories were strategic flanking manouvers around the main forces, attacking 3rd rate garrison forces.



As for the immortals v spartans:

The immortals were just as trained, just as disciplined, almost as heavy, much more versatile.
The immortals used not the Spara wicker shield, but the heavy Dypolon close combat shield.
They wore relatively light, but very strong iron scale armour, that would protect from any thing except a direct 90 degree lance trust just as good/better than a cuirass. Plus you can do more with it.

[Prince of Judah]

I am only talking about hoplite units. not greek armies of the alexander period. For the most part Persia would win vs Greek armies.I am just trying to convince the developers not to nerf hoplites in v 3. I don't think it is necessary.

Please send me the source of that ratio, I have not really used internet sources. All the data from my Pm's is from my library.

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

This is off-topic.

That source is the whole internet + my library (One of the best secondary sources is "Shadows in the desert: ancient persia at war", that has fonderfuly cited every single statement). By reading the campaign descriptions by various sources I calculated the average roman/sassanid victories, and found out sassanid cav spam very often emerged decisevily victorious over the romans.

Most of these were just defensive actions in the Caucasus, defeating medium sized roman invasion forces.

A huge increase is given by the relatively many MAJOR battles (more than 20'000 men on each side) and many more minor during the Khosrow II's conquest of the ERE.

[Prince of Judah]

ahh. Well the problem is no one source lists all the battles. Plus skirmishes that are not found in any text but did happen. The internet sources that are semi reliable are few and far between. There are plenty of websites with accurate information but without a way to substantiate it. I like Jstor, but it costs to use it. I only am able to use it and other professional databases because my college pays for access to it.

[Prince of Judah]

Shadows in the Desert is enormously biased. It is a good read. But you should treat it with caution. Please read this review.
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2008/2008-09-62.html

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

ahh. Well the problem is no one source lists all the battles. Plus skirmishes that are not found in any text but did happen. The internet sources that are semi reliable are few and far between. There are plenty of websites with accurate information but without a way to substantiate it. I like Jstor, but it costs to use it. I only am able to use it and other professional databases because my college pays for access to it.

That's why you read all the sources you can find.

[Bull3pr00f de Bodemloze]

Sorry; hoplites are going to be nerfed anyway. The AI handles them as steamrolling idiots that pwn anything and the player mostly does the same. Nerfing them is more for gameplay reasons than anything else; the discussion whether Persians could pwn hoplites can go on forever, as nobody's really sure how both formations actually fought. The problem is that hoplites could probably beat Persian had they had even-sized armies. But they didn't. The Greek factions represent city-states, not whole nations, and thus wouldn't be able to get more than some few thousand men into battle, while the Persians could get tens/hundreds of thousands (numbers aren't very clear). We want to reflect this in-game.