thorakitai argyraspides and pergamon

[alex33]

I always wanted to ask why pergamon really needs to have the thorakitai argyraspides. I think they are a great unit and are very pretty made but why does pregamnon need such an iconic seleucid unit? This is actually the only thing thats holds me off from playing this awesome mod xD is there a way to remove them from the pergamon unit roster?

[Ovidius Empiricus]

I don't know the history well at all. Just going by wikipedia, they originated with Alexander, not the Seleucids. So if anything, I would say it's an iconic Macedonian unit. And they apparently fought as hypaspists/hoplites (maybe pikemen?), not legionnaires who used swords and threw javelins. (Now that I think about it, they're probably using spears and javelins like other "thorakitai" in the game, but I don't remember.) It seems reasonable to me that Pergamon and the Seleucids would have very similar armies, even including this sort of unit. Of course Pergamon can't use elephants or chariots, for example; but in this case we're talking about an elite version of basically "normal" infantry, which basically every faction would have (if not for historical reasons then at least for better balance in the game). But again, this is me making up history based on very little information, not knowing it.

Perhaps they would've taken a different name in Pergamon, or the unit description in-game could say something about it if it's referring to it only as Seleucid (as I believe it might). But if you don't want to use them at all, like any other unit, it's easy to not recruit them and disband the one at you start with (if that's really enough to prevent you from playing somehow). It's pretty expensive, takes 2 turns and is only recruitable in the elite barracks, so that's probably why I haven't seen Pergamon make much use of them when controlled by the AI. So really you wouldn't need to change anything about the game, just exercise some self-control.

[tungri_centurio]

if you fight the roman named legions you be verry happy to have them in your army

[the man, the myth, the legend]

or you could just, I don't know, not recruit them.

[dvk901]

As Ovidius Empiricus stated, this unit was not exclusive to the Seleucids, but a later unit more in response to the Roman threat. Also, Pergamon was under the influence (and thumb at times) of Seleucid and its armies. They fought them often, and would've needed to 'respond in kind'.

[Archesel]

The only problem is that their recruitment doesn't require the marian reforms, like machairaphoroi for exemple. But someone wrote that such a thnig would be very hard to implement in the game.

[FeralBlueBird]

I don't think such a reform should be required. We know that the Seleucid Argyraspides sometimes fought as a phalanx (standard silver shields) and other times split into units of thorakitai. My point being that the implementation of Thorakitai Argyraspides would not have resulted from a single military reform, but from individual armies responding to pressing situations. Here's an article that mentions this adaptive quality of the Argyraspides. Look under "Romanized Infantry". http://goo.gl/qo3wmm