Just finished my first XGM campaign
Greek City States, just captured Rome with a lot of Thracian falxmen. I didn't know what "effective against armor" meant till I read about someone's comment on the forum. It decreases the armor stats by half (now, is it only armor or does in include the shield stat as well?) So even though Rome has ultra-experienced principe and triarii, the units with rhomphaia cut through the Roman units even faster than fighting rate of the Spartans.
Again, the implementation of Eastern cavalry as a unit made the campaign very interesting, so is overall the auxiliary barrack buildings. (interesting in the sense that it makes capturing new provinces interesting)
Some of the best units in XGM (and this is only having played the Greek faction):
-The Spartan Royal Guard unit, definitely the best Spartan unit in all the modded Greek factions I've played so far. (I haven't seen how EB did the Spartans yet, so I am not writing "out of all the mods")
-The Spartan phalangites (I actually haven't produced even one since Spartan is still building the last level of barracks, however I am sure it's one of the best units)
-The Thracian infantry upgraded as peltasts
-The Eastern cavalry, heavy cavalry with javelins
-Median cavalry, armored mounted archer with axes
-Syrian archers, with even farther range than Cretan archers
The availability of Galatian swordsmen and other Galatian units in the middle of Seleucid Anatolia. Very great.
-Hypaspists, probably the best-looking unit on the Greek roster apart from the Spartans, especially the texture, makes it look like antiquity's Greek special forces
-And, take a guess, Eastern infantry, it's one of the best units in XGM, not because of its usefulness in battle (maybe only good in melee vs archers/slingers and routed units), but because it's so widely trainable with auxiliary barracks and it's the cheapest garrison units in the cities (150 denarii per turn for a unit of 120).
The ability of building auxiliary barracks that can retrain most of the mercenary units (Median and Scythian horse archers can be retrained, and produced), makes the campaign particularily interesting. So far the only merc unit that I found can't be retrained are the mercenary Greek hoplites. Otherwise if a faction barrack or auxiliary barrack can produce the same unit as a mercenary unit, then it can be retrained. And such widespread "regeneration" of units, including mercs, is a first.
I also noticed that the armies and ships can move about twice as far on one turn in XGM than it did in vanilla RTW. Thanks a lot and again that made the campaign much more interesting.
Suggestion:
-add some texture to the Thureophoroi (including the unit card picture). Iberia Total War has an excellent skinning of the Thureophoroi. A little detail on the shield, armor plate and helmet makes a lot of difference, and makes it so it doesn't feel like a bunch of generic peltasts.
-it'd be great if one of the auxiliary barrack level in Roman provinces made Samnites. That way the Samnite Mercenaries can be retrained.
Or, it'd be great if level III auxiliary barracks in Roman provinces made gladiators. Or have gladiators available as mercenary units in Italy. Even if it was limited to the province of Capua, it'd still be great. Getting a special unit like gladiators would offer some incentive in taking Roman provinces, as much the incentive in expanding North (from Greek perspective) would be the availability of training Scythian horse archers, and in expanding East, the median archers, and in expanding towards Antioch or Carthage, elephants, or towards Ancyra, Galatian swordsmen.
-If Odeons and Lyceums provided a 5% increase in either happiness or law, that'd be great.
And this is more of an idea for the sequel of Rome Total War: I thought of this when some of my generals were getting the beast master ancillary in the Aegean, when it'd only be useful in Antioch that's quite a few turns to walk. So in the sequel of Rome Total War (I think it's probably not in MII:TW either), if diplomats could carry ancillaries between provinces, rather than have generals do it, that'd be great. In other words, in the sequel of Rome Total War, it'd be great if diplomats could be used to transfer ancillaries.
And, one final question: does "effective vs armor" halve only the armor stat, or does it halve the shield stat as well?
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Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier
