Legion or Cataphract

Arachnofiend said:

The Legion is kind of dumb because it comes so late that if you're going to use it you're going to use it against Medieval Units.

It has 1 more combat strength than Pikemen so that's totally a viable thing to do if you're into it (better upgrade path too woohoo) but it's very silly from a thematic standpoint.

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It depends on timing. If you want to use the legion, you need to forgo philosophy. Go straight to bronze working and iron working. There are a window of opportunity where the Legion will be very strong. You can basically take cities without ranged support. Pretty much unstoppable in multiplayer.

I can certainly see it working on multiplayer but on high difficulty single player games you can reasonably expect AI's to get to Civil Service by the time you've pumped out your Legion army. Now you've got an army of melee units that is only one combat strength better than the much larger army your opponent is fielding. That opponent is also very close to Education and you haven't build the National College yet.

Thats one problem of the game right now. Its hard to balance the game for all difficulties and for multiplayer. We have to live with the fact that certain things will have to be neglected when playing on higher difficulties. I do not like the bonus tech AI gets. I'd rather the AI have more bonuses in production and gold. However, this will make AI very slow in the tech race and ultimately fail to reach any victory condition.

Vitruvius said:

Thats one problem of the game right now. Its hard to balance the game for all difficulties and for multiplayer. We have to live with the fact that certain things will have to be neglected when playing on higher difficulties. I do not like the bonus tech AI gets. I'd rather the AI have more bonuses in production and gold. However, this will make AI very slow in the tech race and ultimately fail to reach any victory condition.

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Well, just replace the AI's head start with faster AI progress throughout. Then classical units might have some play. But pikemen still need to be taken out of civil service or nerfed. Neglecting military for a tech beeline needs to mean you don't get to have a military, that's the whole nature of choice and the tech tree is totally missing choice right now.

I agree! It's really bizarre how easy it is to defend yourself with a straight science beeline. Pikemen do fine on the defensive well into the Renaissance, and once units start to flat out beat it there are Gatling Guns waiting for you only one tech off from the Electricity beeline. After that all standard units are placed directly on the science path.

At the very least Pikemen need to be moved to Metal Casting. It'll be a nice boost to the Horseman/Knight UU's too since not as many AI's will go there automatically.

Arachnofiend said:

At the very least Pikemen need to be moved to Metal Casting. It'll be a nice boost to the Horseman/Knight UU's too since not as many AI's will go there automatically.

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Yes please!

And move Infantry from Plastics into the Atomic Era while you're at it.