Unit Stat issues

[dvk901]

This is basically for Tone...observations on stats:

The scattering issue is really worrisome at times....but I am less concerned with that than I am with the 'they just won't die' comments, and running out of time.

There are two things here that I think can be fixed with one setting...lethality. Units don't die because lethality is to low. Units don't panic and run because they aren't getting killed. I see even skirmishers and slingers and such standing up to heavier units for far longer than they should. This is NOT a morale issue. I have fought battles where the last units I had standing were my Velites....all the Polybians and Triarii dead and gone or ran away.

1. Roman Triarii are 'inferior' to the Polybians. As a player, I get to the point where it's pointless to recruit them. Maybe it's just my problem, but they really don't seem to be much of asset in my armies.

2. Roman Allied units, IMHO, should be BETTER than their Roman counterparts. Now, before everybody has a cow over this....I'm not talking about any historical precident or rationale here...I'm talking about the 'value of having a unit in the game'. The Allied units have nothing going for them. Rome typically and more easily expands northwest or northeast...AWAY from these units. This creates a retraining issue for the player for a unit that is exactly the same as one they can recruit everywhere given the right barracks level. So why recruit it? As a player, I wouldn't. But make this a better unit, or cheaper...at least in the Roman modfoldered campaign, and I would consider using it if it was worth it's meddle...if you know what I mean. And I think it's likely players will comment on this.

3. Campanian cavalry have to be available in a lower level barracks, or in Rome. I've kicked Carthage out of Italy and I've never yet been able to recruit them.

4. By and large I think the stats are near perfect....with the exception that battles occasionally are just running out of time. I always play with the time limit off (unchecked), but the hourglass still runs out..especially in city battles.

[tone]

By scattering what exactly do you mean?

1) In what way are triarii inferior?
2) Maybe it should be the Allied units that are available everywhere and not the Roman ones? Then we give the Roman units better stats?
3) How about making the Campanians available as a mercenary unit (as in recruitable through the mercenary system) in the early stages?
4) I'll do a little more lethality tweaking

[rory o'kane]

I initially argued for having both sets available everywhere, because that way all the armies in the republic would be a mixture of Italian and Roman troops - they should have equal stats because they were basically identical. this also means that the player would be encouraged to use the Allied units because he could retrain them. Obviously, they'd have to disappear when the "Marian Reforms" building is built, because they were then enfranchised. It was a mixture of Italians and Romans that colonised the earlier Roman provinces, not just Roman citizens - i think the recruitment of both Allied and Roman units both in and outside of Italy pre-reforms should reflect that.

[tone]

...but presumably just the Roman ones in Rome and Capua?

@DVK: In terms of Campanian cavalry, I've seen them recruited at an early stage by the AI Rome:

[dvk901]

There is a difference between an AI Campaign and a 'real' one...in the sense that the player doesn't have the money that the AI will have. Especially if you are running the AI campaign as another faction. The AI tends to 'skip' buildings that the player would have to build to maintain happiness, and I can say for certain that the Roman Modfoldered campaign is quite difficult money-wise. What this means is that the barracks in Capua just can't be built in time for the unit to be used by the player, because you just can't focus on Capua for that unit.

Regarding Allied units, I don't want to 'reverse' the situation and make it so that the Roman units are harder to retrain than the Allied ones. How about we go with Rory's idea...make the Allied units appear first in the Roman barracks (at a lower level) everywhere (except Rome and Capua), then the Roman units show up in the next barracks level (order3)...and they co-exist until the reforms? I really like having the units in there, and it provides a nice bit of variety. It's just that at present it's too difficult to use them. Then we could just leave them the same stats and cost wise?

Concerning my comment on the Triarii...ummm, forget it. I had just fought a battle in a city where a unit of triarri and polybians got their butts handed to them by a unit of Levy pikemen (as in, all Roman units dead!)...so I was having a tissy fit about it until I realized this had involved a narrow street against 'levy PIKEMEN' and I had put the Roman units in guard mode.

The lethality issue is a tough one....because I find that battles in the open field are absolutely perfect. But fighting in cities is difficult because of the time issue. I don't know...maybe that's just the way it has to be.

[rory o'kane]

that makes sense, as it is a process of Romanization after all - any latins/italians there might gain extra rights and mingle with new roman citizen colonists as you progress up the Oppidum tree, so that the last one before the reforms building has both sets of Velites, Cohorts, Triarii and Equites available - oh, and DVk, after the "marian reforms" building is built in a region where named and numbered legions aren't trainable before the actual "New Man:Gaius Marius" event (which needs to be re-jigged so that it actually shows Augustus' reforms - a new title and description should suffice), polybian cohorts should soldier on until the event hits, to represent the huge number of legions recruited in the time between Marius's reforms and Augustus' ascension to the throne - so that when the Reforms hit, you'll have to do an Augustus and disband a lot of the older legions and recruit the newer imperial legions instead.... does that make sense?