Praetorians Imbalanced

[DSChapin]

Their strength of 8 is 33% more than the unit they replace (the swordsman at 6.) Most unique units only gain a free promotion or so that only make them useful in 1 specific situation, and this 33% is clearly the largest power increase of any UU.

It is, in fact, even more powerful than it appears, because it applies to base strength. A unit with 8 Strength is vastly better than a unit with 4 Strength and +100%. Why? Because each promotion means more.

Apply a +25% to an Axeman, and you're only getting an extra 1.25, even vs. melee. Apply a +25% to a Praetorian, and you're getting an extra 2.0.

 

[Cu Chulainn]

Thier unique unit is very good. But i hate playing rome because their traits are total crap and i mean the worst combination in the game.

What good is having the most badassed army around if you can't afford to maintain all the cities you capture? Civic costs go up with empire size and cheap courthouses + slavery means you'll never have to pay more than half price for city upkeep. Cheap granaries are awesome and the +2 health can really help especially combining it with hereditary rule to control happiness so you can have bigger cities than would normally be possible. The only issue I can see with Rome is perhaps building too many Prats to finance them all.

 

[Wodan]

Nobody has really mentioned cost. Spend the same amount of hammers on Axemen and Praetorians, and the Axemen will take them out. Yes, a few Axemen will die, but so will a whole bunch of Praetorians.

Say the first Axeman to fight each Praetorian dies. Say the second Axeman wins. So, you've just traded one Axeman for one Praetorian.

It's not quite that simplistic, but you get the idea.

Wodan

 

[emills]

@ DSChapin: I did not think the modifiers worked like you are saying. The only modifiers that "add" to the attacker is the combat (I, II, etc) propmotions. All other modifiers either add or subtract to the defender.

So an axemen with the anti melee promotion attacking a standard praetorian is:
Axeman = 4
Praetorian = 8 - (50%+25%) = 2

Although that doesn't seem right either.

 

[DSChapin]

@ DSChapin: I did not think the modifiers worked like you are saying. The only modifiers that "add" to the attacker is the combat (I, II, etc) propmotions. All other modifiers either add or subtract to the defender.

So an axemen with the anti melee promotion attacking a standard praetorian is:
Axeman = 4
Praetorian = 8 - (50%+25%) = 2

You're sort of right. I believe it's actually:

Axeman = 5
Praetorian = 8 / (1.75) = 4.57

The thing is:

5 / (8 / 1.75)

is the same as

(5 * 1.75) / 8

 

[Malarkey]

Errr, no.

Organized + Expansive = Horizontal + Vertical Growth = Large Population = 1st in GNP, 1st in Crops, 1st in Production.

Organized is the best trait for large empires or domination victories.

Expansive is only crap at easy difficulties.

Stop playing at Warlord.

I couldn't have said it better myself. I used Caesar on my first monach game, and was surrounded by Catherine to the west, and Asoka to the south. They had more cities than me, were outteching me, and had a higher score than me. As soon as I got some Praetorians, I first took out two of Catherine's nearest cities, then declared peace. A few turns later, I took out 3 of Asoka's cities, including his capital, and declared peace. They were both hurting for the rest of the game, and I even managed to threaten some techs out of them for the peace treaties, and by that time only Mansa was giving me a problem in the tech race, who was nice and cozy on his own little island. Normally I play Catherine for the financial trait, but her UU comes so late in the game, that it almost seems useless by the time that I get them. I think that being a warlord in the early game can help you catch up in the tech race with financial civs, and can really damage your neighbours pretty badly early on. Double production speed of courthouses is amazing too. Nothing worse than watching one of my mediocre cities taking 14+ turns to build such an important building. Ack! Seriously, organized is powerful!

Nobody has really mentioned cost. Spend the same amount of hammers on Axemen and Praetorians, and the Axemen will take them out. Yes, a few Axemen will die, but so will a whole bunch of Praetorians.

Say the first Axeman to fight each Praetorian dies. Say the second Axeman wins. So, you've just traded one Axeman for one Praetorian.

It's not quite that simplistic, but you get the idea.

Wodan

Lets not forget that Praetorians can use barracks promotions as well. It's also not usually a good idea to send any unit off by themselves. It's usually better to send your Praetorians with axemen to counter any units, and a spearman or two to keep the mounties off your back.

 

[naf4ever]

pratorieans are not hard to beat. Use axemen smartly in rough terrain to get bonuses and make your first counterattack a strike to take out their iron...

 

[gunkulator]

Nobody has really mentioned cost. Spend the same amount of hammers on Axemen and Praetorians, and the Axemen will take them out. Yes, a few Axemen will die, but so will a whole bunch of Praetorians.

Say the first Axeman to fight each Praetorian dies. Say the second Axeman wins. So, you've just traded one Axeman for one Praetorian.

It's not quite that simplistic, but you get the idea.

Wodan

I don't remember the relative costs but if it's, say, 4 Axemen vs. 3 Praetorians stacked, you'll likely lose the first 3 axes and only take out 1 Praetorian with the remaining axe.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

That doesn't work very well in multi-player.

I don't play much multiplayer.

 

[Sisiutil]

I think one (of many) things the game designers were going for is a certain level of historical accuracy. Given the domination of Rome and especially its legions in the ancient world, it makes sense that their UU would be the terror of the early game.

Every civilization around the Med had the same problem. The Romans weren't unbeatable, but you had to be smarter, stronger, and luckier--quite a tall order.

 

[DeusPopuliPixlm]

The Romans weren't unbeatable, but you had to be smarter, stronger, and luckier--quite a tall order.

Or fight them in closed terrain (i.e., heavy forest), so they couldn't bring the might of their legions to bear.

 

[gettingfat]

While I agree it is correct to reflect the dominance of Roman legionaries in ancient era, it's historically inaccurate to make them so strong that they can beat mounted units and some advanced archery units on regular basis.

In the current setting, attacking Praetorians with longbowmen will consistently lose. Horse archers, even the historical powerhouse Keshiks, will almost always lose to Praetorians, which is impossible considering how horse-archers can toy with a bunch of soldiers carrying 90 pounds of equipment with hit and run. Crossbowmen just have a bare edge over them. If the Praetorians are fortified the crossbows will lose. This doesn't make sense to me.

 

[Xanikk999]

nevermind this post

 

[Xanikk999]

Errr, no.

Organized + Expansive = Horizontal + Vertical Growth = Large Population = 1st in GNP, 1st in Crops, 1st in Production.

Organized is the best trait for large empires or domination victories.

Expansive is only crap at easy difficulties.

Stop playing at Warlord.

I actually play on noble most of the time and have tried prince a few games.

 

[A+ombomb]

At least praetorians only have one movement point. Try cossaks if you want to see real imbalance for the age.

 

[*Nosferatu*]

I've had my Cossacks destroy Riflemen

 

[henrycccc]

If anything, preatorians are underpowered in my opinion. rome is not an agressive civ, so they can start with only 1 promotion. Historically preatorians were better armed and trained than most medieval troops. An axeman upgraded to shock does the job easily.

 

[Sisiutil]

While I agree it is correct to reflect the dominance of Roman legionaries in ancient era, it's historically inaccurate to make them so strong that they can beat mounted units and some advanced archery units on regular basis.

In the current setting, attacking Praetorians with longbowmen will consistently lose. Horse archers, even the historical powerhouse Keshiks, will almost always lose to Praetorians, which is impossible considering how horse-archers can toy with a bunch of soldiers carrying 90 pounds of equipment with hit and run. Crossbowmen just have a bare edge over them. If the Praetorians are fortified the crossbows will lose. This doesn't make sense to me.

That's not completely inaccurate. The legions would close ranks, form square, cover themselves collectively with their shields on all sides and above, then the whole formation would bristle with spears and their short stabbing swords. Archers and cavalry alike had a hard time penetrating that formation, and it was very effective at wading into and slaughtering a teeming crowd several times their number. (Horses in particular instinctively refuse to launch themselves at a wall of sharp pointy objects. They're smarter than humans that way...)

 

[gettingfat]

That's not completely inaccurate. The legions would close ranks, form square, cover themselves collectively with their shields on all sides and above, then the whole formation would bristle with spears and their short stabbing swords. Archers and cavalry alike had a hard time penetrating that formation, and it was very effective at wading into and slaughtering a teeming crowd several times their number. (Horses in particular instinctively refuse to launch themselves at a wall of sharp pointy objects. They're smarter than humans that way...)

This is quite inaccurate. First of all, trained military horses are often braver than human warriors (they are also partially blind-folded to reduce their angle of vision). Ancient Japanese used a lot of spears but the most formidable army before the widespread use of muskets was still the horsemen of Takeda Clan. Not even mention Praetorians only used short spears, that won't scare the horses too much. Second, this type of formation works only when they are organized. The impacts of charging horses are very powerful and can disrrupt a formation like this. Third, we are talking about horse archers and relatively advanced archery units. The composite bows of Keshiks have a drawing force of 100-150 lbs and can shoot from 250 yards away. Within 100 yards the arrows can penetrate most shields and armours easily. English longbows can hit 300 yards far. Catapults are particularly effective against well-packed formation.

Praetorians (or more correctly, Legionaries) were dominant to a certain extent because their opponents are not as advanced in terms of technologies, tactics and organization (basically fighting non-stacked barbarian axemen ). There's a reason Attila the Huns (using a bunch of "pre-Keshiks") could have taken Constantinopole if they had some seige weapons.

 

[SpriteSODA]

the Praetorian lifetime in normal and even epic games is very short.
the best UU is the Cossank, which last for a VERY long time and he kicks ass bigtime.