During my AJE; civil war game, my opponent (on the Pompeijan side) made several invasions of Spain and Italy. Sneaky, and good use of the Pompeian superiority on the sea and its interior lines. I was wondering though, if it was not a bit too easy to land 100k troops on an enemy shore. The only real examples I can think of are Darius (a few hundred years earlier) and the invasion of Britain (both Caesars aborted try, and the second successful one). And those took quite a bit of organizing. The main issue, as I see it, is that in the game we can collect our ships, and keep them as one big fleet, ready to transport even the largest army. In reality there wasn’t an harbor big enough to put that much galleys up, and keeping them anchored off shore would very quickly render them out of action. I am unclear on how you could enable the historical possible invasions, without making this ship hoping possible though.
A second thing I think could be improved is the taking of the cities. It works well enough for level 2 (and above) fortifications, and with some real troops. The costs for assaulting a level 1 fortification with militia defending on the other hand is way too low. As it is a major army can assault all level 1 towns in a single day (on arrival), and expect to 10-1 ratio of casualties – in its favor! This isn’t very realistic – assaulting towns was a risky business. First troops on a wall got a medal – and that was not because they were expected loose only one man for each ten enemies. (And I don’t think those town militia would be eager to muster, if there was a 90% chance they would be annihilated within the day). As it works better with more experienced troops inside the walls, I would suggest shortening the frontage (even more), giving a (larger) cohesion bonus to the units on the wall, or raise its minimum cohesion (it is, after all, easier to keep in formation if you are standing on a wall), giving them more protection (less hits to the unit), and more hits and cohesion damage to the attacking unit. As I read it, assaults were not so common, and if there was an assault, the kill ratio was more like 10-1 in the favor of the defender. A small number of not so highly trained troops, could hold of a large number of enemies (especially as the number of units that could actually attack was limited) until an entry was forced. Tougher defenders, with more casualties to the attacker, would force the player to choose between assaulting or taking the time to lay siege. Now it is a no brainer – my men always charge the wall.
Third remark is about the size of the armies. Though I don’t think the (maximum) size is wrong, it seems to me that it is too easy to keep large standing armies. In the civil war scenario we had Caesar and Pompeii staring at each other across the Bosporus, each with 120k+ men. As attacking would mean crossing the water and we both were “entrenched”, we stayed that way for more than a year. Meanwhile we both had 40k+ armies in Italy and Spain (and we are playing on hard attrition). I think that even the Romans would not have been able to keep that many men in the field for such a long time (it works good for the armies of the nations in Persia, they are severely limited in size by supply, money, and attrition).
I’ll put the scenario specific comments in another post – this is long enough as it is
. Ah, and before someone thinks me negative: I really love the game(s), and will be playing them for a long time.
