Italian units need some love...

[SenseiJT92]

Hi all,

loving the new release of this modification; however something that has been bugging me is the choice of armour for some of Syracuse's units (namely the Italian based ones). I understand that this would be a very low-priority change, but the Aristocratic Spearmen (and their cavalry counterpart) for instance, despite having an armour rating greater than the Syracusan Royal Spearmen, are simply protected by the bland square chest piece that the basic Italian Merc. Spearmen start off with. I'm not sure whether this is historical or not, but considering they are one of the higher tier units for Syracuse, I believe that they should have some additional armour visually.

Italian Spearmen

Italian Aristocratic Infantry (elite unit)

"

Syracusan Royal Spearmen

"

I think that changing the chest piece so that it is mainly the one shown in the last image (highlighted) along with adding the greaves (also highlighted) and also adding a cape/cloak to the unit would make them seem far more expensive/higher end units. I would leave the helmets/shields unchanged of course as these are Italian troops!

The Syracusan marines also have the standard square chest piece, which again makes them look lower-tier than they are meant to be...

[Augustusng]

Those chest pieces are historical. The archeological record and what artwork exists from that period tells us that's basically the kind of armor they wore, but they also probably wore some hellenic-style armor. I do see one guy in the first Italian Spearmen picture with a linothorax, and maybe there should be a few more with that kind of armor in the "Aristocratic" unit. Here's some historical evidence: part of the "sarcophagus of the Amazons," from Tarquinia, c. 325 BC (in the archeological museum in Florence). The picture isn't completely intact, but that armor looks like a linothorax to me.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As to them looking "lower-tier" than they are meant to, remember that these aren't professional soldiers, but citizens armed with whatever weapons they can buy. Only the wealthy soldiers could actually afford helmets and breastplates. For the Italians, this only really changed once the Romans switched to a military armed and paid for by the state (the Marian reforms).

But this mod does have some strange armor values. Looking at those Royal Spearmen, they do seem to have heavier armor than the Italian Aristocratic Infantry. I don't know how these armor values are decided; it may have something to do with balance, but these aren't the only units that have armor stats different to what the armor actually looks like on the unit. I think one example people often mention are the Greek swordsmen, who have a higher armor value than hoplites, while the unit models wear what appears to be less armor.

[Damocles]

For a moment I thought this was another thread on how overpowered the barbarians currently are.

The Celtic/Gallic 'Carnute Cingetos' with the druid chant, are nearly unkillable. I've seen them butcher legionaries in hollow square, taking very little casualties. It might be their combination of chant AND shield wall. Crazy hard to defeat.

I'm really not a fan of unit balance in DeI at the moment. It feels there's no overriding rhyme or reason. Just put in as many different types of units as possible and don't worry about how they should interplay amongst each other.

[lollaaja]

For a moment I thought this was another thread on how overpowered the barbarians currently are.

The Celtic/Gallic 'Carnute Cingetos' with the druid chant, are nearly unkillable. I've seen them butcher legionaries in hollow square, taking very little casualties. It might be their combination of chant AND shield wall. Crazy hard to defeat.

I'm really not a fan of unit balance in DeI at the moment. It feels there's no overriding rhyme or reason. Just put in as many different types of units as possible and don't worry about how they should interplay amongst each other.

Exactly. There is no rhyme or reason to the units. There are way too many of them for many of the factions and it's impossible to tell the quality of them at a glance, compared to what you have. The celts have 50 spear units and 50 different units with axes/swords/maces. It's too much.

[meerkatology]

its not the current version, initiative have completely been trumping everything else in all version. refer to the many other large threads posted before here, i will release a balance submod, soon, hang tight.

in the meantime, don't play the romans ... or any faction that uses low initiative units

[Red_Barron]

I'm really not a fan of unit balance in DeI at the moment. It feels there's no overriding rhyme or reason. Just put in as many different types of units as possible and don't worry about how they should interplay amongst each other.

Bringing balance to non-eastern units is a goal for the mod team in version 1.0. It is a logical goal to balance unit stats after finalizing 90% or so of the types of units that will be available in the mod. I think the mod team has basically fleshed out the roster of units as of .9, and a big part of that was developing the reform and AOR systems. Now that those are well developed, they can bug fix them and start to balance the stats. The team may have come to the conclusion that it would be much harder to balance X% (say, something less than 50%) of the units they thought they wanted to put into the mod fully, and then add on the remaining Y%.

These discussions on unit balance are probably great for the mod team however.