The Roman UU combo looks like it'll be deadly, since the Legion and Ballista take a while to obsolete. The next big jump in military techs come with Knights/Crossbows/Longswords* - and they'd still have to build them after the tech - so you can build up your army and grab some land before your units get relegated to frontier patrol. Granted, your enemy might've beelined Steel and pushed out a few Longswords, but they'd have neglected their empire so much it's likely a death sentence.
Sadly, the Greek UUs don't benefit from this; the Hoplite is obsoleted quickly enough. By the time you research Bronze/Horseback and build your units, your opponents are dangerously close to having stronger units. Not to say the Hoplite/Companion are irrelevant, but you'll really need to capitalize quickly to get the most out of them.
*I'm not counting the Pikeman since it's not terribly relevant against Legion/Ballistas
Uh.. have you looked at the tech tree? Horseback riding (Campanions) and Mathematics (Ballista) are in the exact same place in the tech tree, right down to the techs required to get to them. So it's a choice of either/or when you get to them (Siege or Horse).
You may be right about hoplites, but the Companion has the
exact same relevancy that you gave to Legions and Ballista; If we assume all classical techs researched; Companions, Ballista, and Legions all need to research 2 more techs to become outdated. I'd say it's also important to note that Companions are more powerful than Legions, with +1 str and 3 more movement.
But I think it's unfair to not include pikes, which the Hoplite is only 1 str less than a regular pikeman. Which means that barring any other differences between the units, you essentially get pikeman at Bronze Working instead of Civil Service, which I would also argue to be very powerful.
Plus, I personally think the +50% bonus toward mounted units isn't correct, and that it's more likely +100%. I don't think we've actually
seen a screenshot that listed the bonus of Spears/pikes. In terms of combined arms, +100% makes more sense because if it ere plus 50%, the anti-horse units of the age remain irrelevant.
Ancient
Spear = 7 str (With 50% bonus, +3.5 for horse, making it 10-11 str)
Sword = 11 st
Horse = 12 str
Medievil
Pike = 10 (With 50% bonus, +5 for horse, making it 15 str)
Sword = 18
Knight = 18
With the above examples, in the sense of combined arms, Spear and Pikes are made irrelevent to Swords... However, if the bonus was
100%, Then Spears would have a str of 14, and could thus be an actual
threat to horses, while remaining otherwise the weakest compared to other units. Likewise pikes would have a str. of 20 against mounts, therefore besting the knight but getting squashed by swords. If the bonus turns out to be 50%, then in reality, there's nothing really "anti-horse" about Spears
or pikes, since they're still weaker or at best equal in strength than their Swordwielding counterparts.
So, in the event that the combat bonus is 100%, and thus making spears/pikes quite relevant, the longevity of the Hoplite becomes, arguably, the longest of any of the above units ~ as a Hoplite of 9 with a 100% combat bonus would be 18, thus at least
equal to the knight. Meaning they could still serve to protect from horses flanking you if you chose to put off pikes for w/e reason.
Although I wouldn't guarantee that the Hoplite gets +100% against mounted, as we've seen UUs with neutral/negative attributes elsewhere. It'd make sense for flavor (phalanxes were designed as anti-infantry, not anti-mounted) for them to not get the full (or any) bonus against mounted, but we'll have to see on 9/21.
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