ROME TOTAL WAR Is A Perfectly Balanced Game With No Exploits - Excluding Overpowered Horse Archers

oh dear it's just down to craig and dave and now it's just dave oh dave it's okay dave believes coffee is better than t so he will not be missed hello there ladies and gentlemen i'm the spiffing brit and today we're playing total war rome remastered that's right we're back last time we played this game we managed to um beat the entire thing in just i think 15 turns now today we're going to focus on something entirely different we're going to show off an absolutely amazing strategy in rome total war that is going to allow you to perfectly balance the ai and create literal hell for them how we going to do it well we're going to use this era's equivalent of the attack helicopter by using a unit that has insane accuracy insane range but most importantly is completely and utterly unreachable meaning it is impossible to kill now this unit existed in the original rome total war however in the original game due to how bad the ai pathfinding was it wasn't a very useful unit however now that the pathfinding issues are in comparison absolutely non-existent we're going to be using this insane strategy and unleashing its true potential as ladies and gentlemen we're starting a brand new campaign as none other than the lovely horse lords of the scythians i know it's going to be amazing apparently this faction difficulty is hard this is a lie this is going to be an absolute walk in the park and without further ado ladies and gentlemen make sure you sat back relax you have a nice warm cup of tea in front of you as we're about to perfectly balance rome total war remaster and hey if you're feeling especially fantastic you can even like this video now the thing is you have to imagine that in most modern strategy games there are many factions that have a whole bunch of units and all of those units have strengths and weaknesses modern strategy games might say have heavily armored tanks that are great at dealing with infantry however when faced up against a long-ranged artillery bombardment they're not so strong most strategy games go for the rock paper scissors strategy where every unit is strong to one unit and weak to another type of unit to an extent that exists in rome total war spears are good at dealing with horses but horses are good at dealing with infantry and infantry is good at dealing with spears and archers are good at just ruining everyone's day excluding horses because horses absolutely shred archers but what if you combine the two most powerful types of unit into this game onto one very speedy speedy boy well that's what the people of syphia have done ladies and gentlemen as their entire army is pretty much made up of only ranged units sure they have access to these guys here the archer warband an 80 strong group of boys who cost 170 gold per turn they're terrible at fighting in melee but hey they've got really strong missile attack in a decent range but why you have yourself an archer warband when instead you can have scythian horse archers ladies and gentlemen scythian horse archers are exactly the same except for one very important difference they're on a horse which is exceedingly speedy and they cost hardly any gold to maintain yes there's less of them but it doesn't matter also because we're playing with arcade battles the decrease in ammunition makes no difference and the reason we're playing with arcade battles is just to showcase how stupidly overpowered this faction is now the thing is the entire syphilian roster is basically just horsemen it's variations of different types of horses a couple of archers and then just either peasants or some dude holding an axe basically meaning if you were to face up against an entire roman army in one-on-one combat you're going to lose no matter what however scythians don't have to play by the rules because their entire army is designed on a concept of memes where you take the classical roman history playbook eat it out of the window and just take a look at 700 mile an hour horses plinking arrows into very slow moving infantry it's absolutely incredible now we need to get our economy up and running very quickly but more importantly our entire empire needs roads because if you can believe it there's no root in this land we didn't have time to build any apparently we are very uncivilized barbarians but hey that's fine we've got to get the roads built and that should get our economy up and running at the same time i'm going to start moving units from across the empire over to our main capital area our focus as an empire is going to be entirely on what is to the west of us over here we have a whole bunch of romans messing about in italy over here we have some britannic boys on chariots we have some germanic berserkers we have whatever the dacians are if you go all the way over here you have the frenchies as well as the spaniards when it comes to our actual threats in this game technically the biggest threat that we're ever meant to face are the greek cities down here the reasoning is simple the greeks are designed to perfectly fight cavalry they have gigantic long spears however those gigantic long spears move at the same pace as a snail which is heavily inebriated basically meaning that they can be absolutely smashed and i'm going to end our first turn and hopefully if i can give myself a diplomat we should be able to pull off our money maneuver to just completely fix our economy oh my goodness so phrase our first natural enemies start off the game with two settlements campus gettier here and then a capital building down here and naturally they've decided to basically abandon their city they've left only the faction air inside there and consequently the entire city is rioting instead they've moved all of their defending forces outside of the city oh my goodness what are they doing well i was considering to try and pull off a money-making maneuver on them but instead i think we actually have a better plan for our diplomat we're going to go over and meet the dacians but seeing if they've left their entire army outside of the city i think it's time for a lovely general to initiate a welcome maneuver oh my goodness are we out of moves oh we are just out of moves seriously oh god well luckily in this one region there's fracy and mercenaries because we're going to need to hire them because these frey scene mercenaries have to push a battering ground because none of these people can but yes the phrasian army is actually relatively weak they've got one unit of militia hoplite some unarmored boys and yeah it should just be a complete another walk in the park oh they haven't actually gone back into the city the army's just running off okay what they're just leaving the city with only one militia cavalry in the faction air well looks like this city is going to die now we're only going to be able to build one battering ram but that's fine because we only have one unit that can push a battering ram and we'll also bring over our reinforcement army and heck we have actually a bit of money so maybe we start investing in our economy trust me we're going to need it now the thing is a lot of our settlements are being garrisoned by archer warbands here and the thing is this settlement up here of campus tomate is never going to be attacked no one in their right mind is going to attack this garbage province that makes basically no money so what are we going to do well we're going to get rid of the garrisoning archer warbands we don't actually need them and instead we're slowly going to swap them out over time for these barbarian peasants they only cost a hundred per ton to upkeep and they can maintain a greater public order at a much cheaper cost anyway next time we're going to attack this settlement i'm actually going to send one of my archery units back to campus cipher just to deal with any uh public order problems and i think it's time for us to attack this city they only have two units defending it but it's a perfect time to demonstrate our abilities especially as we can choose to fight a night battle ladies and gentlemen oh yes now we're going to be demonstrating exactly why horse archers are completely and utterly stupid as in today's battle i'm pretty sure we should be able to manage zero casualties now this is a lightly defended settlement basically meaning we can just waltz up to the main gate and take it alright we're starting to break down the front gate there we go that was nice and easy that basically means our masteries have done their entire job so we can just walk them back because i mean it's not like we're going to actually use lightly armored men who look like goblins and gnomes to actually fight our battles i mean seriously if you looked at the fracy and mercenaries i mean they look brilliant but they also look like a garden gnome wearing a leopard skirt because that's kind of exactly what they are anyway the enemy units have decided to hide back on their one campus effectively the town square which is fine that's completely okay just means we need to use some creative mechanics to actually win this battle so we're gonna get all the horses through the front gate we're going to line up our general probably around about here and then we're going to have a whole bunch of horse archers sit behind him now the main reason why horse archers are so powerful is for one very simple reason horse archers can fire whilst moving meaning they can retreat and shoot at the exact same time making them very spicy indeed anyway we've got three squads of horse archers here and our generals bodyguard of heavy cavalry oh dude they're throwing spears at my head general okay general get out of there scythians do your thing right we've forced them off of the town square so um it's time for us to just run around the uh city streets dodging all of this missile fire so get out of here my friends you can move and shoot they can't so use that to your advantage want go horses go ride like the wind horses okay we're currently taking most of their army on a merry goose chase around the city streets at high speed we will cause ourselves a few traffic jams which is okay we can we can live with a few traffic jams meanwhile whilst they're chasing us we can just use this other set of cavalry to just take the town square and that is going to force them to immediately fall back it's a bit messy but this fight is going very well as you can see as these horses run past they're also able to do damage to these units oh my goodness this is such a silly fight okay we're still being chased down by the uh generals bodyguard here but should be fine we're taking them on a lovely merry goose chase and i think we found a way to flank our enemies in the back okay horsey boys go shoot that general there we go just going round this corner and he'll follow us around this corner and then he'll follow us all the way down this entire street or as we shoot him whilst running in the opposite direction it really is that simple we just run this way he's slower than us and we shoot him once we retreat it is a perfectly balanced way of fighting trust me ladies and gentlemen very fair very very fair this is heavily armored general's bodyguards normally an absolute nightmare to murder but no not today ladies and gentlemen because we've got a lot of arrows all right you know what chief charge into him finish this guy off he probably got basically no health murder hit the general there we go the enemy general's dead lovely stuff and i think that's a win right we should be able to break them with just a quick charge from our general might get an occasional hit a friendly fire but ah it'll be worth it right there we go kill them break them there we go they are now very sad oh go we clearly won the battle well they managed to kill eight men and we inflicted two friendly fire casualties so overall only 10 people lost i'd say that was well worth it for a city and there we go that settlement's now ours we're going to uh enslave it and send the population all over our empire there we go just to improve a little bit of everything at the same time in campus cipher we're going to start training up a few peasants because they're going to make up the main garrisoning force of our empire and we're also going to want to build a mix of traders and land clearance in most of our cities because the more population will allow for us to gain more money via trading and trust me our economy otherwise is going to be pretty pathetic but there we have it that's our first settlement and now our adventures are only going to continue now here's the thing our army basically needs to immediately get moving again out of zapotes so i'm gonna send this army marching on down south as well as this army to follow it up although we could actually use some mercenaries from being said one unit of peasants over from the capital and just drop the capital down to a high tax rate there we go that'll solve our problems temporarily all right let's make our way down south if we take this settlement we knock phrase out of the game although i think from the looks things there is a chance they might have captured byzantium already although i would be surprised because that is held by a large quantity of rebels otherwise the rest of our empire is looking relatively okay it's not immediately rebelling which is always a good sign now it looks like their city is basically only defended by their new factionaire after the last faction had died and a large quantity of pale tests which should mean that this is going to be a complete another walk in the park anyway next time we're going to take down the phrasing capital it should be quite a nice walk in the park really all right and now we're just going to procedure this settlement here there is a chance that they'll actually oh my goodness wait uh spy's opened up the gates oh right well i guess we don't even need to do the siege then now it is defended by a faction air with a large quantity of heavy cavalry as well as two sets of peltast missile units however they're going to all die oh would you look at that the gates really are just completely wide open right well let's form up three groups of horse archers and get nice and close to the gate as we can see there are some people tests here but the pedal tests i'm pretty sure can't actually hit us for quite a while they don't have much range if i remember correctly whereas we should be able to shoot them from yep right here so here is where the fun begins as the power tasks are going to validly defend this gate however they just can't survive oh and would you look at that they're immediately running away chase them down men chase them down get closer to the walls once again the perks of being able to shoot whilst moving and that you can relocate into a better position and continue to harass there we go as they retreat their numbers are down to 54 lovely stuff we're going to now capture this town and move up to this area here where we should be able to once again absolutely bombard these uh these lovely power tests whilst we walk into the city and yes that's exactly what's going to happen because look we can just shoot over these buildings these guys can't shoot over the buildings but we can oh yes and it doesn't matter the fact that you've got a flimsy wooden shield because we've got a lot of horsey boys oh would you look at that they're coming over to try and say hi to us oh my goodness look at that they think they can actually put up a fight that's incredible look at the bravery on them well this is actually a great opportunity just to move up more horse cavalry and now that they're starting to get close you know what we do we just immediately retreat get the horsey boys out of there before they can even throw off a volley no casualties will be taken today my friends oh yes and now we've got two more sets of horses here perfect stuff rest in peace pearl tests well there we go that's all of the pale tasks dead so now we just watches our lovely horse cavalry kind of plink up the general's bodyguard a bit and the generous bodyguard has a whole bunch of hit points making it very hard to kill anyway i think it's time for us to engage operation super cheesy strategy as what we can do is we can probably force all of these units off of the main point using just one cheeky tactical maneuver and this cheeky maneuver is one that i like to call standing right here on the other side of a paved road and eating arrows into the main square because the peltasts aren't able to fight back ah yes perfectly balanced would you just look at this now of course the enemy general is going to know that something like this is happening so the enemy general is trying to relocate so that they can actually fight us however that just means we've run away and the enemy general has to try and chase us down on the very least he thinks he has to and we've got even more horse cavalry coming up behind the rear of the enemy general doing some extra damage and then we can just run these boys away actually the general does not know which way to go he's completely conflicted oh these poor men oh the general's trying to chase us down well that's fine we just run away and chute was running we lost one horsey boy there maybe two horsey boys i can't tell but yes we're out of there now the benny hill theme can engage as the general's bodyguard unit is going on a absolute wild rampage oh look at this poor general this guy's absolutely no idea what to do meanwhile we're starting to actually capture the point now uh and killing these pale tests right round the corner we go again oh the enemy general's dead rest in peace all right round we go on the merry goose chase all right there we go they're all dead they killed seven of us there were a few friendly fire incidents but i'd say them killing seven of us for us killing 200 of them that feels like a pretty fair trade oh god the horsey boys they're so memey now this is it ladies and gentlemen the end of the phrase we've managed to get our spy into the settlement and guess what he opened the gates meaning we can fight a glorious battle and you know what we'll do this one in daytime we just defeated most of the freycine army which was in a field battle because for some reason they decided if they took an army of equal size against horse cavalry they could defeat it lo and behold they only killed eight men and they lost all of their heavy infantry but yes i mean honestly i don't even know why i bother sending infantry with any of these armies when i can just have a giant fleet of spies run around opening all the doors anyway the settlement should be nice and easy to get into i'm going to select three squads of horse archers and just get them to line up in front of the front door and then behind those horse archers i'll have another set of horse archers and then behind that horse archer i'll have one more set of horse archers everything will be horse archer alright and now the shooting can begin all of these lovely missile cavalry that can't even land a shot oh you poor sausages you poor poor sausages oh you're just gonna group up all of the cavalry like that you know what sure you do you ai now the thing is these two units of militia cavalry here are basically being told by the ai to defend this gate here however they can't really defend the gate because when they stand here they just get assassinated by arrow fire there's hardly any of them left oh dear oh dear oh dear all right we're going to do a test maneuver now ladies and gentlemen we're going to move one of our horse archer squads inside of the gate and this should hopefully trigger the ai to do something potentially this is going to get them to try and relocate some infantry over to actually come fight us alternatively nothing will change well this does give us an advantage because there's a whole bunch of militia hoplite spearmen over here who i want to see murdered because they are a threat to horsies so upcome our horsey boys as we're going to say hello to the natural counter of a horse a very long pointy stick however it only counters a horse that wants to do melee fighting and who would want to do melee fighting when you can just shoot lightly armored spearmen in the back chase them down don't let them retreat they're showing their backs to you which means they're even weaker chase them all the way to the town square come on go go go go yes good good oh we just actually ran into the back of the don't melee fight don't mellow fight experiment that's bad that's really bad just shoot them like normal perfect that's our advantage oh i think this is the end of the little hop lights rest in peace little hoplites it looks like they're actually going to send a heavy cavalry bodyguard over to me to actually try and deal with the shenanigans that i'm creating which is good because of course heavy cavalry can't keep up with light cavalry and also these are scythian horse archers some of the fastest like have in the game i mean just look at how well we swarm and can go around corners right there we go we're running down the alleyway yes perfect i can see the general he's one of the two remaining guys and he's dead there we go right that's one of the generals dead just a few more to go okay now we dealt with one of the sets of the hoplites over on this gate we've got 18 random spear furry boys so we're just going to stand here and murder them and then i think we swing up to the northern gate where once again we've got some more hoplites but anyway it's time for these pow tests to die before they can throw any of their annoying missiles we're just gonna do a drive-by maneuver here and there we go they're all dead perfect okay now we're gonna have one squad of horse cavalry come up this flank and another squad to come on this flank and then we're going to see if we can knock out the militia hop lights from both sides oh my goodness the hop lights are moving the militia hoplites are moving right perfect this is a great opportunity also it looks like they're marching the remnants of one set of militia hoplites into us which is also fantastic news oh look at that they're maintaining a little defensive formation oh and they're running away now they're not running away can you make up your mind of what you're doing little militia hop lights oh these poor little militia hoplites there's just only four of them left rest in peace my friends rest in peace you did certainly fight to the last man it's only a shame you weren't able to actually get any hits in and meanwhile how's this set of militia hoplites doing well similar story um there's not too many of them left they can't quite work out what they want to do do they want to fight or do they want to try and run away and you know take this again from a different better angle and it will just pull back a bit let a few more volleys off the range on these guys are just absolutely insane oh my goodness these poor little guys these poor little guys got the worst job in the world oh goodness oh the poor militia hoplites they're almost in range look at that they're almost there you've almost done it guys oh but wait the horses are just gonna turn around and move back they're broken they're just standing still like how could this have happened to us oh there's only eight of them left oh these poor little guys these poor little guys oh dear it's just down to craig and dave and now it's just dave oh dave it's okay dave believes coffee is better than t so he will not be missed right now i'm pretty sure it's basically just general's bodyguards and some missile cavalry left yep that's all it is right let's go do what we do best ye old baity maneuver but this time from two separate angles right we're leading the general's bodyguard on a merry goose chase around the city's outer defenses and we're keeping him just kind of closely enough that he's gonna think that he has a chance of charging us down but of course in reality he does not let's just go around this corner these horse archers here are also drawing five from the militia cavalry which is perfect come on get around this corner guys you know what you need to do just keep running away from that general's bodyguard just keep weakening him down we stand on the corner wait for the general to get close he's down to just 18 men now oh my goodness this is perfect all right and men alicia volley into the general yes good good right now down the corridor go go go my man go oh dear there's some horses in front of us out the gates men out the gates exit the city we're now leaving but we can now sit outside the gates and um the enemy general's never going to step a foot out of his own city so uh this is the unreachable position oh and look the general's bodyguard is actually coming back for another attempt at this this is the actual commander he's one of two remaining generals bodyguard units but let's just run down the corridor there he goes just the general left now he's the only guy remaining of this unit and he's dead oh this is so stupidly overpowered right there's only one unit left and it's a whole bunch of militia cavalry well let's do the old drive-by maneuver horsies just run straight past the town plaza and you horses you can just run straight down here as well just attack them from both sides really ah the perfect drive-by good luck trying to find a counter for this one ai and then we just immediately move out of range perfect oh my goodness this is such a dumb strategy and it just works so well there's only one unit left it's just craig it's just craig ladies and gentlemen you know you're having a really bad day at work when you're the final guy remaining in a gigantic siege defense and so far you've killed hardly any of the enemy oh dear and then also you have to deal with looking at this it was not a good day for craig well that's a gg they did manage to kill 31 men which is a shame but of course that was mostly down to my negligence and horse management skills but with that the entire scythian faction is completely and utterly destroyed and it's got me thinking up a new strategy what if we got rid of the infantry entirely because now that phrase is gone we did manage to discover that basically all we needed to break into a city is a spy so surely if we train enough spies we can break into just about any city well here we are ladies and gentlemen many times have passed and i kind of destroyed daisier and have kind of just sat around waiting for the inevitable to happen the inevitable being that we actually build our main capital city of campus syfia up to the level where we can train mega troops what kind of mega troops are we talking about ladies and gentlemen we're talking about the incredible scythian noble archers now when you look at them and compare them to regular horse archers there's not much difference one extra missile attack some more morale some more defense a lot more armor the biggest difference is that these units of course have decent melee attack but most importantly an increased range of 170. but the thing is a base syphia noble archer by itself isn't very powerful eight missile attack i'm sorry but that's you know pretty weak or rather it's pretty standard however we've built a blacksmith and a level 3 shrine consequently meaning our syphia noble archers are actually using missile attacks of 12. they have an armor of 10 a total defense of 16 and a melee attack of 14. these boys are incredible yes they cost a decent bit more money to actually maintain but we are fielding an entirely cavalry army and the thing is it's going to work because cavalry armies move faster than armies with infantry in them meaning that these units are heading down south to deal with some greeks who've recently just taken byzantium the greek army consists of exactly what you'd expect to completely and utterly counter an army comprised of horse archers it's a whole bunch of angry spear boys but we're going to remind this game that no matter how hard they try everything can be completely and utterly exploited oh yes and one of the greek armies wants to fight me independently of the other perfect oh yes this is going to be one heck of a battle say hello to the greek city's main army led by captain xanthia some brandon bloke with no command skill he is fielding an army of hop lights hell tests more hoplites more pell tests a couple of missile cavalry some really heavily armored hoplites but most importantly some pathetic normal noodle archers now here's the thing normal archers have the same range as our standard cyphion horse archers in comparison our cipher noble archers are veritable long-range siege batteries and here it is ladies and gentlemen the battle has started dear god they've started on top of a gigantic hill um well that's fine it's time for us to form up our noble archers into groups we're going to be moving them around in groups of four and then we're going to be having our general and all of the other slightly weaker archers kind of run off to the side probably over here and to the corner we don't really want them engaged in this fight but as you can see standard range of one of our horsey boys is this much in comparison noble archers have incredible range however the greeks do have an advantage because they're sat upon a hill however they left a gap in that hill which we're of course going to exploit oh would you look at that it looks like some of our first noble archers have their first shot available so we'll get them to line up here and see what we can do oh yes in comes the fire now as you noticed uh if one of these arrows hits these men they die instantly that's because these are much much much more powerful arrows now even against armoured hoplites here with shields and decent defensive statistics you'll notice they're starting to melt a bit like butter but the thing is the ai doesn't really know how to deal with an enemy that has this much of a ranged advantage so it's deployed all of their men into a slow moving uh formation and well lo and behold they're just going to kind of limp towards our front line whilst they get shot in in the flanks yep it's not going to go very well for them right we're gonna send one set of the nobles around the flank to just really throw them off and we're gonna start pulling back on this main front flank yes now that we have a shot in the side of these hop lights this is where the fun can begin because as soon as we break up their formation all of their defensive stats go away as these boys are only armored as long as you face the front of them and now it looks like we've just opened up a flank so that all of my men can run up the hill and if we have the hill advantage on our side oh yes well the damage from our shots just increases tenfold oh i love having not only height but also a ranged advantage it's completely and utterly balanced we can sit out of range like an attack helicopter and just plink away on their lovely shields and eventually these heavily armored hoplites of death with a total defense of 22 will fall anyway these poor hobblers decided to show their backs to us so um they all die nice and simple really see they have all of these ranged units here like look at this we've got some archers we've got some power tests but the issue is they can't really attack us because they just don't have the range and now they also don't have the hill oh dear well that's one set of heavily armored hoplites some of the most expensive units in the game they've just died meanwhile it looks like the ai is sending more lovely hoplites towards us up this hill which as we know is going to end very poorly for them i would appear the ai is now completely reforming their entire army to try and box us in which um is not going to work because we're just going to get around their flanks and shoot them in the rear just like so there you go shots to the rear and the armored hoplites don't really know what to do and there we go we're dealing with this horse cavalry nice and easily if a shot lands a horse he dies it really is as simple as that oh such a shame for you to only have a total defense of six imagine how difficult life must be well looks like the enemy general unit's about to go down and there we go here's the enemy general bet he's slightly regretting his decision to stand and fight against us rest in peace or generalissimo their poor army is now having to try and push up the hill towards us into sustained arrow fire which is of course not going particularly well for them at the moment oh dear oh dear oh dear it's just an endless stream of death into heavily armoured hopper lights ah these poor poor armored hoplites these units are so expensive and they're just being absolutely cyberbullied like this these are effectively incredible spartans some of the greatest greek warriors known to man but no no they they died to arrow fire just as good as anyone else does well i'd say overall this has gone uh exceedingly well for everyone involved excluding the greeks of course certainly not gone very well for them and well there we go we've clearly won the battle they successfully managed to kill 28 men we killed 1332 oh god horses are so broken it's unfair and there you have it ladies and gentlemen this is how to build the syphilian death stack you kind of expand out knock out phrase early wipe out the daysunes and then power level your capital until you have a high quality blacksmith that gives you armor and increased missile weapons as well as also a shrine that gives you an insane amount of experience recruited to troops anyway ladies and gentlemen i hope you enjoyed watching today's video if you give this challenge a go yourself make sure to send me some lovely screenshots on twitter anyway as always thank you very much for watching if you enjoyed today's video make sure to give it a like and hey hop on down into the description and pledge your undying love to flying helicopter horses of death as always a massive thank you to each and every one of our majestic patrons who make these fantastic videos all the more possible seriously thank you very much you lovely sausages if you're wondering what video to watch next look no further than this one on screen now it's perfectly balanced trust me anyway i'll see each and every one of you in the next one have an absolutely lovely day and good bye for now

Channel: The Spiffing Brit

Views: 895,030

Keywords: Spiffing, Brit, rome, rome total war, rome total war is perfectly balanced, perfectly balanced, total war, rome total war remastered, rome remeastered, exploit, the spiffing brit, overpowered, funny, funny moments, perfectly balanced game, montage, total war rome remastered, rome remastered, total war rome, rome remaster, rome: total war, rome remastered gameplay, horse archer, horse archers, horse archers total war, total war game, game, strategy game, gameplay, video game, totalwar

Id: rDosnLlxT44

Length: 28min 36sec (1716 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/BaenEndkind]

Don't know if you will actually see this Spiff, but you missed an opportunity to show how everything British is just better. British Light Chariot Archers will actually beat anything Scythia has on an equal cost basis, AND they can be fielded early due to Briton's relatively strong early economy.

British Light Chariots have 10 base ranged/missile damage and 6 charge, same speed as light chariot archers, same range as light chariot archers, but 2 hp. In a skirmisher vs skirmisher battle this is important, as even though their defense is crap they need two hits. However in addition to this, they frighten nearby infantry! This is especially useful dealing with elite roman units, who even with testudo will demoralize from a charge. Only weakness is they will occasionally auto charge, and harder to maneuver in cities.

With the original RTW I ran comparison tests with all units, custom battles of 1 unit of peasants for two roman factions with the actual test armies as AI allies. Equalizing cost with experience as needed, British Light Chariots demolished everything up to full War Elephant armies, where cost became a difficult to equalize. They notably fare much better against Roman top tier units than Scythia due to the fact they do morale damage. Notably only Parthians really win out in a campaign, as they can actually afford multiple full war elephant armies once you get their silk road buildings fully built out...

[u/NopeNextThread]

Funnily enough /u/TheSpiffingBrit are you familiar with the Battle of Carrhae fought between the Roman Republic and the Parthian Empire? Because it's basically what you did, IRL.

Here's a snippet from the article.

Thus, he sent his horse archers to surround the Roman square. Crassus sent his skirmishers to drive the horse archers off, but they were driven back by the latter's arrows. The horse archers then engaged the legionaries. The legionaries were protected by their large shields (scuta) and armour, but they could not cover the entire body. Some historians describe the arrows partially penetrating the Roman shields and nailing the shields to the limbs of the Roman infantry and nailing their feet to the ground. However, Plutarch wrote in his accounts that the Romans were met with a shower of arrows that passed through every kind of cover, hard and soft alike. Other historians state that most wounds inflicted were nonfatal hits to exposed limbs.

The Romans repeatedly advanced towards the Parthians to attempt to engage in close-quarters fighting, but the horse archers were always able to retreat safely and loosed Parthian shots as they withdrew. The legionaries then formed the testudo formation by locking their shields together to present a nearly-impenetrable front to missiles. However, that formation severely restricted their ability in melee combat. The Parthian cataphracts exploited that weakness and repeatedly charged the Roman line, which caused panic and inflicted heavy casualties. When the Romans tried to loosen their formation to repel the cataphracts, the latter rapidly retreated, and the horse archers resumed shooting at the legionaries, who were now more exposed.