Unit Diversity per Faction

[LemonySniffit]

I have counted the amount of units each playable faction has on the vanilla version of the game (not counting generals since they are simply duplicates) and this is what I found. The factions are numbered in order of their announcement.

14) Seleucids – 34 units + 7 artillery
1) Rome – 31 units + 6 artillery
8) Egypt – 31 units + 5 artillery
3) Macedonia – 24 units + 6 artillery
7) Parthia – 20 units + 5 artillery
11) Athens – 17 units + 6 artillery
12) Epirus – 16 units + 6 artillery
9) Pontus – 16 units + 5 artillery
13) Sparta – 15 units + 6 artillery
4) Iceni – 15 units + 5 artillery
2) Carthage – 13 units + 6 artillery
5) Arverni – 13 units + 5 artillery
6) Suebi – 13 units + 5 artillery


So, the Seleucids have the most recruitable units, followed by Rome and Egypt, with the Arverni and the Suebi coming last. In fact, if you add the amount of recruitable units (ignoring artillery) of the Seleucids, Rome, Egypt and Macedonia together you have 120 recruitable units. Then if you add the amount of recruitable units of the other 8 factions together you have 139 recruitable units. Basically four factions have 120 units, while 8 have 139. As you can see, three out of the three barbarian factions are found in the bottom four positions of that list, meaning they as a cultural are underrepresented, which is ironic considering all the hellenophiles and Parthia fan-boys who said that the barbarians were going to be over represented.


Edit:

15) Roxolani - 9 units + 1 artillery
16) Royal Scythia - 9 units + 1 artillery
17) Massagetae - 10 units + 1 artillery

 

[Abot_]

"700 units"

 

[krisslanza]

"700 units"

To be fair, that isn't counting mercenaries, or the later DLC factions with their own unit rosters.
Also is units including ships? Just trying to clarify, because I swear Rome has Auxilla of almost every culture type...

 

[LemonySniffit]

To be fair, that isn't counting mercenaries, or the later DLC factions with their own unit rosters.
Also is units including ships? Just trying to clarify, because I swear Rome has Auxilla of almost every culture type...

The 700 something include all mercenaries and ships too, and many, many duplicates with different names or slightly different stats/appearance. Though DLC units like "Heroes of Sparta" were not included in the original count, still, its not very different.

Anyway, to answer your question the list I made just consists of the units recruitable through buildings/in your own territory, so not mercenaries.

 

[krisslanza]

The 700 something include all mercenaries and ships too, and many, many duplicates with different names or slightly different stats/appearance. Though DLC units like "Heroes of Sparta" were not included in the original count, still, its not very different.

Anyway, to answer your question the list I made just consists of the units recruitable through buildings/in your own territory, so not mercenaries.

So just land units, right?
Curious numbers though. I did suspect Seleucids had quite a bit from when I poked around on them a bit... I really want to give them a try, but it feels kinda wrong to not beat the game as Rome first.

 

[jamreal18]

Yes, they should add more units to units roster of other factions.....

Please CA....

 

[jamreal18]

Hope you post it in official forums....

 

[AusHaching]

If we´re going into details, it becomes even more unbalanced. For example, two of the Suebi units (Club Levy and Bloodsworn) are so bad that no one would think about recruiting them. The same goes for the Bloodsworn naval unit. You need an upgraded port to get a unit that is worse (and cheaper) than the one you can build from the start.

Pontus on the other hand is completely lacking in tier one and two units. Their best infantry units are about as good as the units Rome can build from scratch. Sparta is like "I heard you like hoplites, so I put hoplites in your hoplites, so you can hoplite while you hoplite".

Right now, Rome with the ability to build Auxiliaries of just about any type and Seleucids with elites in just about every unit type represent the other extreme. I guess there will be a barbarian DLC one day.

 

[krisslanza]

If we´re going into details, it becomes even more unbalanced. For example, two of the Suebi units (Club Levy and Bloodsworn) are so bad that no one would think about recruiting them. The same goes for the Bloodsworn naval unit. You need an upgraded port to get a unit that is worse (and cheaper) than the one you can build from the start.

Pontus on the other hand is completely lacking in tier one and two units. Their best infantry units are about as good as the units Rome can build from scratch. Sparta is like "I heard you like hoplites, so I put hoplites in your hoplites, so you can hoplite while you hoplite".

Right now, Rome with the ability to build Auxiliaries of just about any type and Seleucids with elites in just about every unit type represent the other extreme. I guess there will be a barbarian DLC one day.

To be fair, trying to make a game where every unit was and served its own purpose, is pretty darn hard. Medieval 2 really had that problem, it had a huge unit roster - but almost all of them were useless because by the time you got them, you already could train a better troop anyway.

Not that Rome 2 avoids this either - like once you have Principes, why would you have Hastati? It's difficult to give units all a purpose in a game once you get beyond a certain amount.

 

[Riekopo]

To be fair, trying to make a game where every unit was and served its own purpose, is pretty darn hard. Medieval 2 really had that problem, it had a huge unit roster - but almost all of them were useless because by the time you got them, you already could train a better troop anyway.

Not that Rome 2 avoids this either - like once you have Principes, why would you have Hastati? It's difficult to give units all a purpose in a game once you get beyond a certain amount.

For Rome at least this problem could be avoided by having certain units unlock when they actually did historically. I think Rome 1 did that.

 

[Xanthippus of Sparta]

I mean, what else can you possibly add?

The Averni unit roster is pretty good I'd say. Same with Carthage, who has the same amount as the Averni. I don't know how I like the Suebi roster, I have not played with them at all.

It's not that non-Roman factions have weak units, I'd argue the Romans are just OP.

 

[♠ Thomas Cochrane ♠]

complain as much as you like, but the barbarian factions didn't have "UNITS" like the civilised peoples did. They were SO much further from having a professional army than any of the greek peoples were, and only the Romans achieved it. So keep your rants in focus eh.

 

[krisslanza]

For Rome at least this problem could be avoided by having certain units unlock when they actually did historically. I think Rome 1 did that.

Not at all. You got the Post Marian Reforms troops as soon as one of your cities got to "Huge" size - this all rendered all your Pre Reform units useless, and unreplenishable.
Unless you purposely avoid upgrading cities at all, and you don't try to boost population, you'll probably get the Reforms about 150 years early - also the AI could trigger it. As soon as one Roman faction, you or AI, got a Huge city, the Reforms happened.

 

[Jarvgrimr]

Another problem is that with the Suebi, almost every unit uses the same assets; Tribesmen, Spear Levy, Spear Bros, Club Levy, Bloodsword, and Wodonaz spears use almost the exact same assets, excluding some weapons and hats.

 

[krisslanza]

complain as much as you like, but the barbarian factions didn't have "UNITS" like the civilised peoples did. They were SO much further from having a professional army than any of the greek peoples were, and only the Romans achieved it. So keep your rants in focus eh.

The only reason Rome had "professional" armies is it was stupidly rich. You'll notice that even in the medieval ages, no one still used professional armies - this is because a professional, standing army is expensive. Not to mention, unless you're at war, they're nothing but a drain on your economy - they don't do anything but train or guard things.

It could be argued Rome's professionalism isn't really what gave it a huge edge, but that Rome also had superior logistics. It could replace, rearm, and retrain soldiers faster then anyone else. This is a pretty huge boon in any situation when you can replace your soldiers faster then the other guy. And given they were professional soldiers, it wasn't taking people away from the farms really.

 

[Igor85]

The last half of the factions sureley needs a unit boost, especially the barbs and carthage (-> merc boost [more Iberians and Numidians]). Right now its very unbalanced.

 

[AusHaching]

Unit diversit can serve two purposes: Supporting different styles of play and keeping interest up. For example, the Seleucids can field a competitive infantry army with little to no cavalry. They can also form an army of heavy cavalry and missile cav. Both are viable.

That is not true for the Suebi. There is only one way to go: Spear Levy - Wodanaz Spears - Sword Masters. There is no missile cavalry and no shock cavalry. You need a tier 4 Building to build heavy melee cav - which is about as good as the Citizen Cav that hellenic factions get with a tier 2 building. There is no pike infantry, and quite a few of the units you can build are so weak that they are useless (Spear Levy, Club Levy, Light Riders, Bloodsworn).

If you want to be succesful as Suebi, you have to beeline to Infantry Chainmail (a level 3 tech) to get Sword Masters. Once you have reached Sword Masters, there is no point in building anything else anymore (excluding Cavalry and Ranged units). You can have some Berserkers for fun, but they aren´t as good as Sword Masters.

 

[jamreal18]

Every faction must have units which is unique to their faction only...

Carthage must be able to recruit a lot of mercenaries...

Epirus has been neglected, look at their unit roster...

 

[archone]

There are a lot of problems with both factional unit variety and unit uniqueness. Not only do some factions have very few units, but many of them are just buffed up versions of an earlier unit or a shoddy reskin of another unit. Epirus basically has the same roster as Macedon but missing a bunch of units. Everything Epirus can do Macedon can do better. Rome has 10 reskins of the same unit, each 1% different. Even mercenaries are boring, at least make cretan archers and balearic slingers good and unique! Nope, they're reskins of persian archers and slingers. *Prefix* spear plays the same as every other spear and *prefix* slinger is just like every other slinger.

No unit really feels unique to play or opens up fresh tactics like in Shogun 2.

I wrote a wall of text on the subject in this topic:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/show...ersity-Is-there-a-problem-and-can-it-be-fixed

 

[JaM]

number of units is not that big issue (majority of modders can create you new units quite quickly without a problem). what is problem though is the fighting animations are the same for all units of the same type.. all melee infantry share same fighting animation, even axemen which looks quite weird. Same for Spearmen that fight exactly the same. Look of the unit is just a graphic, it practically doesnt matter if there is no diversity based on actual fighting style and used weapons. Not that much is actually needed. Just separate animations for Slashing weapons (with more barbarian style animations) and a bit different animations for overarm and underarm spear use (with Hoplites using overarm while in phalanx, and underam when fighting out of formation, while normal spearmen should use underarm all the time.)

And if CA has limits with amount of animations in game, they can turn off all cheering animations. they are totally pointless, and combat animations are much more important.

 

[jamreal18]

Every type of unit in the game shall has different animations.

Melee units shall has different animation from spearmen. Romans fight differently from barbarians... Sword infantry should fight differently from axe infantry....

Even spear infantry and pike infantry should have different animation. They have different weapons...

Hope ca adds more units and animations...

 

[JaM]

No need for every unit to have different animation.. But it would greatly helped if there were different animations for certain weapons, as they also required different fighting style. With Celtic longsword you would not thrust much, as it was usually made from soft iron and in bended a lot.. there are a plenty of descriptions made about Celts putting their swords on the ground and stepping on them to straighten them up after prolonged melee (as they bended even from slashes) Kopis/Falcata swords were also used more for slashing that thrusting.. But where this is the most ridiculous is Axes.. having thrusting animation for Axe is just plain wrong..

 

[Tigerfox]

Just counting how many units each faction has is absolute nonsense, because there is much overlapping. For example all greek factions have the same kinds of ranged units (with the exception of agrarian axemen unique to makedonia and epirus, which are not much different form other peltasts and dont even have different melee stats like their axe would suggest), nearly all have civilian cavalry and most of the lower tear holpites and phalangites are shared between them, especially thureosspears. So for example Epirus has the same units as Makedonia, just missing a lot of cavalry and meleeinfantry an some higher tier units having different names and slightly different stats (but those are identical to ptolemaic units). Agemacavalry, Hippeus lancers, hellenic royal guard and companion is all the same with only slightly diefferents stats. Same with Footcompanions, silvershields and hellenic royal guard.

And even if you look at different units of the same kind, many ar much to similar to be counted individually, like Egypt or the Seleucids having many very similar kinds of greek and foreign javelin- and bowmen with only a few statpoints difference. It is even worse for many yet unplayable germanic factions, as I've checked with the all factions playable mod. There is a big group of them which has a mixture of the suebi and averni rooster, many times having two or three similarly stong units for the same task, but no unique unit.

I find it most frutrating that many factions just differ from others in lacking some of the good units. Like Athens (and many similar minor factions) having more kinds of different holpites than all other hellenistic factions, but the best of them (thorax hoplites) beeing worse than macedon shieldbearers or the similar merc veteran hoplites. Like, really, Athens sucking at hoplites? So what are they good for? They only have the standard phalangites either and no swordinfantry.

So I'd rather have more factions with a more similar, but bigger rooster and only some uniques in the higher tiers. Give all greek factions all the regular units and leave only royal peltasts, the shieldbearers, one kind of elite phalangite, the elite lancers (plus the unique macedon lower tier lancers) and some regional units like easterners for seleucids and egyptians for Efypt unique, so that less factions have significant holes in their roosters.

But that alone won't be enough for many other cultures. Nomads completely lack usable infantry like in rome 1, as do parthians and many other easterners, which also lack really good cavalry most of time (few have cataphracts and heavy horsearchers like parthia). Germans have very crappy lower tier meleeinfantry (give them axes instead of clubs!) and laughable cavalry before they get their nobles. Most Celts lack archers and axemen, which some transalpine tribes have. Dacians have good Archers, many spearman and good meleecav, but no meleeinfantry apart from deadly but nearly unprotected falxmen. I could go on foreverer...

And lastly there is a loot of finetuning needed to when I get which unit. As macedon, I get hoplites and levy pikes wiht the first level of barracks, then standard pikes and agrarian axemen with the second infantry barracks, as well as civilian cav and sarissa lancers but thureos spears, thorax pikes and sword plus royal peltast plus tarantine cav and thessalian cav with the third level, and shield bearers, footcompanions and aspis companions with the last. Here I get thureosspears to late, as thoarx swords and royal peltast are always better, so that even thorax swords are a bit late. I would also like to get agrarian axemen and tarantine cav from the archer barracks to make them more sensible to build.

 

[LemonySniffit]

So just land units, right?

Yeah exactly.

Hope you post it in official forums....

I have not but I might.

complain as much as you like, but the barbarian factions didn't have "UNITS" like the civilised peoples did. They were SO much further from having a professional army than any of the greek peoples were, and only the Romans achieved it. So keep your rants in focus eh.

I didn't complain, nor did I rant; I just listed the amount of units each faction had and said which ones were underrepresented in comparison to others.

 

[LemonySniffit]

Update:

15) Roxolani - 9 units + 1 artillery
16) Royal Scythia - 9 units + 1 artillery
17) Massagetae - 10 units + 1 artillery

 

[Downtown1]

That free DLC was really rushed, tiniest unit selection, no yurts on battle map, no special gameplay, etc etc..

In regards to Carthage, while they can recruit mercs and field merc armies, by the time they've teched up to the point where that's affordable the generally-available mercs are crap in comparison to what they can build themselves (usually T2-T3). I only used mercs myself to quickly raise more armies or to pad out 1-2 losses, never as a serious fully-geared army.

 

[krisslanza]

That free DLC was really rushed, tiniest unit selection, no yurts on battle map, no special gameplay, etc etc..

In regards to Carthage, while they can recruit mercs and field merc armies, by the time they've teched up to the point where that's affordable the generally-available mercs are crap in comparison to what they can build themselves (usually T2-T3). I only used mercs myself to quickly raise more armies or to pad out 1-2 losses, never as a serious fully-geared army.

This does seem to be a flaw with mercenaries. They're pretty good in the early game, but they become outclassed by everything else after a point, since they never really "keep up", so to speak. Even if mercenaries were pretty important to warfare until everyone was using professional armies... which isn't for a while.

 

[Toho]

guys just download mods, there are so many awesome units....

 

[LemonySniffit]

Edit: the units I listed are the amount available for custom battles, however it seems that only Rome, Carthage and the three Steppe tribes are factions who have units available in the campaign but not available in the custom battles.

 

[The_Bulgar_Slayer]

FYI, here is a nice site to find a list and details of pretty much every unit in the game by faction.

http://www.honga.net/totalwar/rome2/

Rome has A LOT more than 31 units, closer to 80 I believe not counting artillery or ships.

On another note. I wish in the campaign game that Carthage could recruit Iberian and/or Gallic troops that aren't mercenaries. I understand why CA didn't implement it, but I still wish that was the case.