Strategy Guide - Rome 2 DEI

[Basilius]

Okay, EAD time:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://i.imgur.com/htkRwU7.png

On the surface melee damage is a better than melee attack, but again there are complications. For one, this was again versus a Hoplite, and against units with lower armor/melee defense the values may change. Second, there may be a point where a minimum value of melee attack boosts the relative value of melee damage (or vice versa), but these graphs do not support that hypothesis. It looks like both stats provide pretty linear increases in EAD (contrasting with the exponential increases in EHP).

In sum, both Kam's and Garbad's claims about stat weights for infantry are supported by these graphs. Considering defense beats offense in stat distribution, it further highlights the necessity for flanking, charges, and missile support. I will examine those later as well.

[Basilius]

Okay, more theory-crafting.

At the moment I'm looking at Hellenic rosters for simplicity, and I'm trying to understand unit strength by purely looking at stat allocations (and not in-game verification.) For example, a basic Greek Hoplite seems to have very little advantage over a Peltast. While the latter is advertised as "light infantry" it has the same amount of armor with only 7 less Mle Def (negligible), better stamina, the ability to throw javelins for tons of damage, the same Mle dmg, and costs less to recruit with less upkeep. The only advantage Hoplites seem to have over them is charging/receiving charges. And considering it's not listed, is it still correct to assume Hoplites have a bonus to cavalry, being spearmen 'n all?

Indeed these stats bore out in-game. During a custom battle, Peltasts were able to defeat Hoplite units 3/3 times, and by a large margin. After a volley or two of spear-throws the two units clashed, and the lack of Peltast formation allowed them to wrap around the Hoplites and defeat them easily.

I understand this game is not balanced around 1 to 1 custom battles, but I'm looking for intuitive signs that would explain why Hoplites would be more appropriate in a given situation than Peltasts, when their stat distribution is very odd at first glance. Unless of course I'm missing something basic.

(Also, and I think KAM is aware of this, but the Hoplite and Peltast unit speeds were about the same. Even when exhausted, the former could chase the latter around the battlefield no problem.)

[Furgon]

Anything less than a 15 armor basic sword unit is literally not worth having.

Not necessarily, there are few examples of levy class units with the size of 300, compared to the usual 200: phrygian spearmen, korinthian hoplites. Those can rule your early game battlefield and later can serve as the first line infantry. Each one will suck dry couple of skirmishers of the javelins.

Out-economizing is a good point. But one of the philosophical stances of the guide is to play in the "spirit of the game."

It's a really tired argument. For more than 2 years all we hear is how vanilla R2 is weak as a game. Won't argue with that, but then people exploit poor game design features and lament that the AI offers no challenge. When the easiest way to get challenge is, on the contrary, limit and restrict yourself.

I only play on autoresolve

This reminds me of an old topic for R2 or EB titled "Happy Bees" or something like that. Author owned the map on hardest difficulty using only Eastern Spearmen (acid yellow uniform, hence the name). The weird part - he wasn't using autoresolve most of the time.

The only advantage Hoplites seem to have over them is charging/receiving charges.
Indeed these stats bore out in-game. During a custom battle, Peltasts were able to defeat Hoplite units 3/3 times, and by a large margin. the lack of Peltast formation allowed them to wrap around the Hoplites and defeat them easily.

These two factors you pointed is what makes the whole difference I think. Loose formation makes Peltasts highly susceptible to enemy charges, especially those of the cavalry. This is the reason why they can't fulfill the role of line infantry and are used as support, albeit very capable in prolonged melee.

[Basilius]

So, I have not made much progress over the past year. I think it's clear I'll need the community's assistance. Here is a Google Doc anyone can edit and contribute to. Hopefully, with the larger forum assisting, we can create an impressive Rome 2: DEI guide for all newcomers:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

I would love to have users offer their guides, already written. For example, Dresden wrote a magnificent diplomacy guide recently that I would love to paste in, with his permission. As well as the FAQ stuff in the forum.

[Dresden]

Yes feel free to use any of my guides.

[Principe Alessandro]

Sometimes I should pay more attention to threads like this, I realized that having an army with only four Chalkaspides isn't at all a good thing when the Romans field at least 5 triarii plus some princeps, thureophoroi and peltastai aren't at all up to the task of holding back the best roman infantry even if they are much more flexible.

[geala]

Maybe it's better to write opinions here to discuss instead of anybody editing the linked file? Or how is it meant?

First, I'm not a very gifted or tough player, so beware. I always play battles on Normal and I mostly have some experience with Greek factions. Some remarks:

To pikes: it's a bit negative perhaps to assign them a "niche role only" and can lead to misunderstandings. The "niche role" is holding the main battle line and this is an important task for any infantry based army. If it is difficult to hold, like for some barbarians, then battles become more dangerous and frantic.

Frankly said, nothing can beat an army with pikemen in the hands of the player. Roman elite infantry can over the time reduce and sometimes rout pikes, two-handed infantry can deal a lot of damage to them, same for peltasts. But even with the not-so-good AOR pikes that seldomly led to a battle lost. Because you can reduce two-handed units fast enough with your own ranged, can stand some javelin fire and defeat Roman heavy infantry with flanking before they can defeat your pike line.

I recently defeated a legion with 8 veteran legionaries and 5 late triarii and a weak garrison with an army of AOR Units, with the six recruitable AOR Macedon pikemen as core (atm I Play a custom faction with low armor units without pikemen as core troops, so I have to use AOR). Ok, I used the hilly terrain to my advantage and was the defender, the latter a big Advantage for pike use.

Macedon and Epirus core pike units are better than the AOR of course, especially in morale. Although I lose battles sometimes partly because of the house-rule composition armies I use, I cannot remember one battle, against what odds ever, that I have lost with my standard first rate assault army with pikemen at the core. My usual composition as Macedon/Epirus is: general on horse, 8 pikes, 2 hoplites for the flanks (later 2 thorakitai spears), 2 heavy sword melee, 2 peltasts, 2 archers (Cretan merc or AOR if possible), 1 skirmisher cavalry, 1 heavy aspis cavalry and 1 artillery. I use 1 elephant instead of the heavy melee sometimes.

[Principe Alessandro]

Yeah pikes are awesome but isn't too much fielding 8 of them? Lately I am fielding 6 pike units with tarentine pantodapoi at their flanks, I completely avoid to recruit archers and slingers because I find them ineffective against the armored and shielded roman infantry, instead I recruit Agranians and Illyrians axemen as my main assault forces, even my only two ranged units the agranian peltasts have axes as melee weapons.

For the rest 1 elephant unit escorted by two ekdromoi hoplites to protect it from skirmishers and just my general for the cavalry.

[hoho96]

I've added my 2 cents to the guide^^

I'll also add some of my relevant posts from the gameplay board.

[Vladdy Daddy]

Maybe it's better to write opinions here to discuss instead of anybody editing the linked file? Or how is it meant?

First, I'm not a very gifted or tough player, so beware. I always play battles on Normal and I mostly have some experience with Greek factions. Some remarks:

To pikes: it's a bit negative perhaps to assign them a "niche role only" and can lead to misunderstandings. The "niche role" is holding the main battle line and this is an important task for any infantry based army. If it is difficult to hold, like for some barbarians, then battles become more dangerous and frantic.

Frankly said, nothing can beat an army with pikemen in the hands of the player. Roman elite infantry can over the time reduce and sometimes rout pikes, two-handed infantry can deal a lot of damage to them, same for peltasts. But even with the not-so-good AOR pikes that seldomly led to a battle lost. Because you can reduce two-handed units fast enough with your own ranged, can stand some javelin fire and defeat Roman heavy infantry with flanking before they can defeat your pike line.

I recently defeated a legion with 8 veteran legionaries and 5 late triarii and a weak garrison with an army of AOR Units, with the six recruitable AOR Macedon pikemen as core (atm I Play a custom faction with low armor units without pikemen as core troops, so I have to use AOR). Ok, I used the hilly terrain to my advantage and was the defender, the latter a big Advantage for pike use.

Macedon and Epirus core pike units are better than the AOR of course, especially in morale. Although I lose battles sometimes partly because of the house-rule composition armies I use, I cannot remember one battle, against what odds ever, that I have lost with my standard first rate assault army with pikemen at the core. My usual composition as Macedon/Epirus is: general on horse, 8 pikes, 2 hoplites for the flanks (later 2 thorakitai spears), 2 heavy sword melee, 2 peltasts, 2 archers (Cretan merc or AOR if possible), 1 skirmisher cavalry, 1 heavy aspis cavalry and 1 artillery. I use 1 elephant instead of the heavy melee sometimes.

Way too many pikes, dude. Why are you sacrificing mobility, when 4 or 5 units of pikes are more than enough to hold a battle line? And, most important, what do you do in sieges? Because pikes are kinda useless when taking walls, towers and such. And if you have so many pikes, don't you think that hoplites are a little redundant? Please take my humble advice: use 4 or 5 pikemen, train 2 or 3 archer units (the best ones you can recruit), have 2 or 3 cavalry units (the best you can afford), 1 ballista/stone thrower ( to make the enemy attack you and have a slight edge in sieges) and fill the rest of your army with thureos or, even better, thorax swordsmen and heavy armored peltasts for mobility, flanking and sieges. If you need more archer power, you can recruit 2 units of horse archers and you're set to face any army. The elephants and chariots are useless, so don't bother.

[geala]

4 or 5 pikes is too few, your casualty rate mostly much higher with this setting. I use 8 pikes (and 2 spear units for the flanks) because I don't use thin lines. It looks silly and is of course not historically valid. Even with 10 units in the line I often get outflanked by the AI. Hoplites I use because of the historical aspect (say Hypaspists), because they are top units in phalanx and out and because they are not as effected by flanking as the pikes.

Mobility is not that important for a pike army with artillery. The enemy comes to you. If not it is easy to move the pike line and pin the enemy.

For flanking you don't need many units, especially if you have elephants or cavalry. Historically most flanking was on the right wing but in TW I mainly flank from the left and hold the right because of the way shields work.

In sieges you can use pikemen and hoplites also out of phalanx. It works relatively well. Perhaps too well.

Archers you need against high-damage-low-armor units and especially against wooden towers in sieges.


For the guide, to artillery:

I will restrict myself a bit because I changed the DeI settings to make field artillery less weak and avoid the king-of-battlefield role that siege artillery has. BTW siege artillery in DeI vanilla is far from immobile on the battlefield, it is more like a self-propelled howitzer.

Artillery:
- Stone throwing artillery is useful in sieges to breach walls and knock out towers. Without traits or research the ammo of one ballista is usually able to destroy two wall fragments or one fragment and a tower. Ammo should not be wasted for wooden towers of barbarian cities, destroy them instead with archers and flaming arrows.

- Range is important for accuracy of artillery because of projectile spread. Don't waste precious stones on long ranges. Position the stone thrower as near as possible to the wall. That is immediately outside tower range. Find the spot by using spacebar button to see tower range or, more immersively, move a mobile unit until the tower shoots at it. Try to attack in areas with as few towers as possible of course.

- All artillery is a kind of "I win" button for armies well suited for defense (pikes for example). Because the AI nearly always attacks if you as attacking player have artillery. This is especially important when attacking unwalled towns, to avoid long and boring battles in the settlement and the high casualties auto-resolve often brings with. Also field artillery has this effect; while relatively weak and quite a waste of unit space normally, it offers the army a bit more range on the campaign map than siege artillery.

[hoho96]

Historical pike phalanx aside, 8 pikes is a complete overkill no matter how you look at it. 4 pikes 4 man deep is more than enough to hold most 1vs1 battle lines. I honestly don't understand how are you using Pikes out of phalanx. Unless you're using full on royal short pikes, you will take huge casualties against anything that's not a trash levy.
Thorax swords and peltasts are a must especially after the reforms to keep your army more versatile and competitive.

[Vladdy Daddy]

Historically the greek/macedonian armies had their left considered weaker than their right because their right flank consisted of their most valuable household troops, while the left were usually composed of weaker troops and allies, therefore their left flank were usually the one being attacked and outflanked (the most handy example would be Alexander's army, where Parmenion commanded the left and was always struggling with being outflanked, since Alexander's right always was the one doing the outflanking and being the hammer with Parmenion being the anvil). But that detail isn't important, since we're talking about a mod that covers all the styles of ancient warfare right up to the early medieval/dark age, so strategies vary. We're seeing hoplites being the kings of the battlefield turning obsolete, even the sarissa phalanxes to a certain extent, so things change.
What I am trying to say is that I find your full pike army warfare kinda boring. Sure, it may bring good results to you and kudos to yourself for that, but I find it unnecessarily time consuming since the pikes don't have that that great kill ratio - they're more for holding and pinning the enemy, whereas peltasts, thureos and thorax units do most of the killing. Besides that, you yourself said that even with 8 pikes you are struggling with being flanked. Well, duh, that's because the pikes are slow, cumbersome units which need to be supported by lighter, more maneuverable units like your hyspaspists and other units, which, by the way, don't need to be also spearmen to protect the flanks. You see, the pike or should I say the sarissa phalanx, is a very particular, very specialized kind of unit: while it is very valuable in holding the line, it can't reach its full potential by itself like other types of troops ( the Roman legion being the most obvious example of versatility). Even the hoplites are more versatile than the sarissa, but that's because the greeks couldn't afford great cavalry, skirmishers and ferocious thracian troops like the macedonians did, so they had to adapt. Even the pikes in the middle ages needed support - "the pike and shot" era, so it's a very specialized kind of troops which loses its shine when used in other roles not suited for it. The mod offers you many many options, therefore I don't understand why would you choose to play with so many pikes, so little variety. Put aside the fact that is historically inaccurate, but gameplaywise I find it so lazy, so boring, so time consuming and even reckless, since a skirmisher army, a Parthian army for example, would tear yours to shreds. You're a Carrhae waiting to happen, a modern day Crassus lol.

[Basilius]

Out of curiosity, what is a "thorax" unit? While I understand "thureos" refers to a lighter shield that became more commonly adopted as time went on, I've never seen a "thorax"evolution. Does it just refer to better armor?

[Thousand]

Out of curiosity, what is a "thorax" unit? While I understand "thureos" refers to a lighter shield that became more commonly adopted as time went on, I've never seen a "thorax"evolution. Does it just refer to better armor?

Correct.
In the case of Bactria, you get thureos spearman with the 1st reform then thorax swordsman with the 2nd one.

[Basilius]

Some questions:

1.) Do Romans with weapon deadliness ignore ALL armor when they successfully hit? Or are simply guaranteed 1 damage?
2.) Is there a historical reason for this, or is it merely game-play?
3.) I've come across a few units with more than 20 health: Rhodesian Marines have 24, for example. Is this intended?

[hoho96]

1) I don't believe it means the unit will ignore all armor with each hit. Last time KAM explained it it was something like the unit will always deal a certain dmg with each hit regardless of armor + the normal dmg after armor is applied.
2) Well the Gladius was a staby staby weapon but I believe the reason is to simulate how Roman formations allowed for a much more drawn out combat through rotating ranks so there's almost always fresh troops to fight leading to a more consistent effectiveness throughout the battle. Most other armies didn't have such a system, and generally performed worst the longer the battle lasted.
3) Probably because Rodian marines were world class? I actually wanted to post that in the bugs section since I came on it today in my campaign when I tried to recruit some Rodian mercs

[Dresden]

Its possible that naval units have higher hp values since they are smaller

[hoho96]

But the Rodians are the only ones I've seen so far. All the rest have 20 hp

[PietrolEremita]

Some questions:

1.) Do Romans with weapon deadliness ignore ALL armor when they successfully hit? Or are simply guaranteed 1 damage?

Yes, the romans inflict one damage if they hit + the normal roll vs armor