Athenian Killing Machines

[Spartan198]

I just had to post and compliment on how the Athenian hoplites are killing machines in every sense of the word. In my first battle wih them, I charged them headlong into a unit of mid-level Ptolemaic phalangites (the military settlers; I forget the name) and watched them cut through the pikewall like it was nothing and lay waste to the phalangites themselves faster than a Frank Miller Spartan!

[TM Is Back]

Sacred bands do the same he.

[RedFox]

Isn't this somewhat unhistorical? While an awesome unit of killer hoplites sounds like fun, it also removes the balance factor from games.
In my opinion, most strategy games should follow the Starcraft balance rules.
1 Cheap, crap, hordes of troops
2 affordable, tolerable, plenty of troops
3 expensive, strong, few troops

XGM seems to more follow the path of affordable, strong hordes of troops, which really ruins the experience for me.

[Zarax]

I'm afraid DBH is just following the popular vote though...

[DimeBagHo]

I'm afraid DBH is just following the popular vote though...

It's not just that though.

Cleruch Phalangites and Athenian Hoplites are both 4th level units, but they are somewhat special cases. The Ptolemies get their regular phalangites a little late, while Athens gets good hoplites a little early. A more representative match-up would be Phalangites (3rd level) vs Sacred Band (5th level), and I see no reason why the 5th level unit shouldn't come out on top there.

It's not like 5th level units are cheap or easy to get either - a typical 5th level infantry unit costs 600 per turn just in upkeep, and the building requirements are high in terms of time and money.

As for the more general point about mass troops vs elite troops, we have to contend with a couple of limitations of RTW.

(1) If you make the price curve too steep then the AI won't touch higher level units, even if they have lots of money. (2) The limitation of 20 units per stack tips the scales heavily away from mass troops towards elite troops. Even in multi-stack battles you can usually arrange things so that your 20 units only have to deal with 20 enemy units at a time. So quality become the dominant factor.

Taking both limitations into account I've tried to aim for a system where the AI and the player will both upgrade to better quality units as they become available.

[Dom9127]

I'm afraid DBH is just following the popular vote though...

When did people start asking for Uber-Units?

[Zarax]

Well DBH, the thing is that while heavy hoplites should have a good chance against levy or regular phalangites (aka winning after a looong fight with significant losses of course from the front) but an heavy/elite phalanx should beat them unless broken.

Imho in this case I think that we weakened the phalanx a bit too much in general, especially against shield wall capable units.

[RedFox]

About Phalangites: It is a fact that during the period of Philip V, first signs of elite trained units started to appear, with the Sacred Band, hoplite warfare changed forever. Philip V of Macedon ultimately proved that Syntagma > traditional hoplite phalanx in Chaeronea and showed how a wall of pointy sticks held by farmers and goat herders can beat a significant militia-hoplite force (which the Hoplites were - militia units.). With these facts, Zarax is absolutely right, history has shown that in any case Phalangites > Hoplites and not vice versa. Even the mighty Spartans had to suffer defeat under Macedonian pikes.

What pikemen should be about: Unit spacing 1, 1 like in ALEX. Big defence skill, weaker armour, weak shield.
If these guys get flanked, they have only a weak armour defense and die like they should historically.
Up front they should provide a solid wall of pikes against everything. Pike attack lethality should be ~0.4

Hoplites: Militia/Levy units, consist of farmers, herdsmen etc. High defense skill, low attack, low armour (so they die when flanked).
Elite hoplites: same principle as before, but with slightly bigger attack 2-3 extra armour.


I am aware that those troop quantities are hard to balance, but the easiest way would be: 120 - 100 - 80 - 60/40
So with this, Militia would have 120 units, regular medium infantry 100, good infantry 80, Royal guards/elites 60/40 men.
It should work out quite well in most cases and would represent the ability to field more militias than elites. RTR had a good idea with their small very tough elite Hypaspist units. They were awesome killers, but they were in small puny numbers. A lot more realistic than a 120 men ub3r unit.

Just making the units cost a lot doesn't really remove their awesomeness. With a good economy you can field a whole stack of super units and pretty much conquer everything. In real life that just wouldn't be possible.
So basically, it's all back to the "Starcraft formula" - hordes of weaklings and small numbers of strong units. Theoretically they should 'cancel' eachother out in cost-balanced battles.
3+ militias vs 1 elite = close defeat/victory.

[DimeBagHo]

Obviously the Greeks concluded that phalangites were better than hoplites, eventually. It took the Spartans another 120 years after Chaeronea to arrive at that conclusion though. They may have been conservative, but they weren't stupid, so there must have been a reason for their slowness in adopting the Macedonian system.

While the Macedonian phalanx wiped the floor with lightly armed and armoured eastern troops, hoplite armies had done that as well, and phalangites never had the same success against western heavy infantry - whether it was Greek hoplites or Roman legionaries. Even when the Macedonian phalanx won out, it was usually a tough fight, and often at great cost in casualties.

In fact Chaeronea provides a good example example of this. All the accounts agree that the two phalanxes were deadlocked until a gap opened between the Thebans and the Athenians, which the Macedonians were able to exploit. The Macedonian phalanx didn't simply go head to head with the Greek phalanx and dominate.

The reason for the widespread adoption of the Macedonian phalanx really had more to do with the shift towards professional military forces (which the Spartans already had, hence their slowness to change). It was easier to train and equip a phalangite than a hoplite, and they generally performed just as well in battle, so it made more sense to build a large professional force out of phalangites.

About the unit numbers idea, it might be worth experimenting with, though I suspect that the AI simply won't recruit units like that. It has a strong preference for more men and more hitpoints. Maybe it won't matter much if only the player uses elite units, so long as the numbers are low enough to prevent elite units from dominating too much.

[Zarax]

Elite hoplites should be better armoured though, a muscle cuirass is better than chain mail or linothorax...

[Zarax]

Hoplite VS phalangite of course won't be a straightforward victory for the phalanx without losses but on the other side at the same level of barracks the hoplite should be at least slightly disadvantaged especially on flat terrain.
Both were defensive units in any case and what we should look for is recreating a slow slugging match for both of them.

What phalangites changed in reality was that tactics were now more important, meaning that you wouldn't win by just having your elites smashing enemy levies but instead by managing to successfully flank your enemy.
That's what Philip and Alexander changed and the sucessors forgot.

In a battle between anvils there shouldn't be a quick victory unless by flanking or rear attack, even lvl5 hoplites will still have to pay a relatively high price to break a pike wall, even a levy one.

BTW, there are ways to prevent elite armies even with huge empires, it's mostly matter of smart coding.

I experimented a bit with giving a -5 law and +5 happiness bonus to founding monuments when conquered by other factions, it makes corruption grow much faster and with the tax bonus removed from the colonies it tends to give tighter money.

[Spartan198]

I seem to have sparked quite a discussion here!

[DimeBagHo]

Zarax: The -law/+happiness idea sounds good to me, though I don't think it will solve the elite/mass troops problem. Even if money is tighter the 20 unit limit will mean that elite troops are still the obvious choice.

Your idea will slow down the snowball effect - where it gets easier to field more and more offensive stacks as your empire gets larger.

I think RedFox's idea of reduced unit sizes is probably the only way to tip the scales back towards mass troops, because it's the only way to make sure that the trade-off between quality and numbers is reflected on the battlefield.

[RedFox]

I've had another great idea for some time now that will somewhat force the AI to throw out better troops:

#1 - Militia Barracks - only Levy Units
#2 - City Barracks - low level units only, no weak levies
#3 - Army Barracks - Regular good level infantry, few medium
#4 - Royal Barracks - Only good level infantry + royal infantry
#5 - Reform Barracks - Reformed infantry divisions + royal infantry

This looks a little bit backwards, but it ultimately solves the AI problem of not recruiting the right troops. There is ultimately each separate unit of barracks that only has the ability to recruit its own level units and a few from previous levels. So, if you have an AI Seleucid capital with, lets say an Army Barracks in Diadochi, they can only shoot out Thureophoroi (very good, elite skirmisher, medium spearmen), Pezhetairoi (heavily armoured pikemen), Hypaspistai (not royal, regular, expensive elite unit with small numbers).

The barracks would also work from the ground up with providing cavalry and ranged units. Instead of having to upgrade to unlock further units, you have different systems of recruitment.


It should work in theory, but no idea of its practical outcome. At the moment I'm working on a more than full time job, so I don't have time for Diadochi (again... bugger.), but it would be nice if you guys tried this out for XGM.

What would happen with Hypaspists would be a relatively small group of men (40 with large settings, while some levy units have 120) that pack a deadly punch, don't really die that easily (2hp) and are also expensive to maintain.
This makes the unit easy to be run over by cavalry, or shock, mass infantry, but when used well, these guys could be somewhat supermen.
Beats having an 80 man unit with similar attributes in balance

[DimeBagHo]

I've posted a poll with some possible schemes for reduced unit sizes here.

RedFox - I play around with a system like that a long time ago and didn't really like the results. Sometimes the AI just fields Govt. building units, when it doesn't think it has the money for top of the range stuff, and it has even more trouble retraining, and players tend to find it annoying that they have to hunt around for somewhere to train their uber-veteran 2nd level units.

[RedFox]

Well, I'll have a go at it with Diadochi though. It doesn't mean you cant retrain previous levels. It's more like you can only (re)train units of the previous level.
I'll see how it works - personally I have no problem with different barrack systems, because a higher level barracks already takes 8 turns to build and with that any player will have time to think ahead on the effects...