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Once again, it felt like you got lazy at points where you did not micro enough to make them effective. Clearly moments where they either were not forming pikes or facing the wrong direction and you took too long to try to fix it. The unit by all accounts should perform as well if not better than Pike Milita but you did not show that enough.

You got very lazy in this video with the Heavy Infantry and Cavalry tests. You need to constantly micromanage the pikes to keep their formation but you just let them fall apart and take heavy casualties for no reason.

I'd say the main issue with Javelin units, beside the lack of speed, stamina, and range, is that they suffer worst from one of the irritating issues with Vanilla Med 2 and that's the fact that reload animations, which are slow in general, have to be completed before a unit can move. We see that happen a lot of times in just this video alone and it really fucks over such a short range unit like Javelins and means they just cannot skirmish, not without making you pull your hair out trying to maneuver them. I really think just making their animation faster would alone make them viable as skirmishers because at least if you ordered them to move they would do so much faster than they do now. I wonder if you could download mods like Stainless Steel and check out how much they improve the gameplay experience with units like these.

I still believe elephants could have won against urban cohorts its just bad pathing and rng on this fight all elephants were chasing 1 unit

If ELC can win then LC can win, they just didn’t in this particular test.

Don't like how they only have about as much defense and attack as Feudal Knights because they gave them lower defense skill. I would have given them a bit higher attack like 11 and as high a defense skill as Chivalric Knights.

Elephants and chariots should win with cycle charging. Either pull back or pull through. No ancient cavalry wanted or was designed to be in prolonged melee with heavy infantry.

a faction heir is crying in the background

The praetorians got surrounded, unlucky. Elephants weakness=garbage AI

Does Elephants perform better when it comes to Desert terrain? Seeing that in their stats that a Sunny ☀ with 6x EXP bonus in there

Wonder how they wpuld fare against the Velites, Light Auxiliary, or Cavalry Auxilla? Interesting how even the Praetorians stood no chance.

It turns out, they CAN Legionary Cohort.

The ever rare Triarii win.

You had one job auxilia.

I hate this roster. Chariots are trash. Head hurlers are neat, but have limited ammo. Otherwise, the roster is Gaul without cavalry. I lost family members chasing routing units in campaign with this faction.

Okay, I was wrong, I thought a pila volley would be much more effective but it was essentially useless. I must have thought that javelins in vanilla work against them like they do in EB.

Ankka this commander was disgrace , his duty will be banned if senate see his behavior like this at this bridge battle

Those shadows flickering on the infantry make it look like they're in a rave. I don't really know what stipulations were made in this battle. I think what I would have done here is setup your pikes and then let the Roman approach with his archers. The opponent will set them on auto-fire and they'll take pot shots at the phalanxes. Probably the ballista as well. Then, you can run up your archers to the waters and allow them to start firing. Finagling with them at first allowed the Romans to dominate and they already had a pretty big advantage going into the engagement. I would then set a phalanx to each side, in the front ranks of your archers, against the bank. I think phalanxes have...+5 defense against arrows? Or something? This will negate some of the damage to your archers and potentially force the Romans to reposition. Your phalanxes will take losses, but every archer you kill on their side is several arrows that you are removing from the enemy. The Romans really just need to approach while the missiles are engaging, discharge their pila, and weaken the phalanxes. It is possible that as they approached or when they were in a prolonged melee with your pikes, you could have charged your cavalry in. You could even have turned on flaming arrows with your, hopefully preserved, archers. This shock would have been really painful for the romans and as they retreated you'd mop up kills with your cav or arrows. What might have been okay is to allow some Cretans. Those Archer Auxila have long range missiles. Your Macedonian Archers do not. You can even see the Roman pulling away, out of your range, to fire on you without countermeasure. Honestly, some mercenary peltast could have totally been allowable in this fight. Just give Macedon a unit or two. They can punish the Romans, raring back with their own pila, and shower them as they are vulnerable. When you inevitably get overwhelmed, they can get into melee with the tired Roman Legions and at least hold the line for your cavalry to hammer and anvil. With their big shields, they'd be great at screening for your archers and even pikes whom might be being attacked at the side. I think Macedon just needed a few more tools at their disposal to have a better chance. With some slightly different tactics.

Druids are one of the units that *should* be good with your army, and they do a lot, but the problem is that as Briton you naturally lean heavily towards light chariots and very mobile armies. Druids are far more useful with Gaul.

could you do cataphracs vs. armores war elephants? cause I find it somewhat laughable that the war elephants lost against armored hoplites but if the elephants would win against the cataphracs it would be even more funnier 😂

All their cav minus Greek is S tier. Militia Cav is criminally under rated and makes up for lack of missile units. 4 of these units in an army can let you just sit back in your phalanx with Cataphracts and Elephants hanging out while they peel off and defeat in detail multiple units, forcing the enemy to engage you. Can also use them as bait with Companions or Elephants being the hammer to swamp enemy cav. Let your militia cav take all the casualties, expend your enemy's artillery and archers, and then replenish them for near nothing. Elephants are elephants. Cataphracts and Companion ... both phenomenal. Militia hoplites are junk. Levy Pikemen are the Yari Ashigaru spear wall of RTW. Cheap and exceptionally effective. The baseline garrison unit for the entire game. Will wreck every rebel army that spawns. Phalanx Pikes become baseline infantry for all but the most elite late tier units. Last as the core army unit for 80% of the campaign. Eventually you might have to upgrade to Silver Shields and Legionnaires. Or just build more Cataphracts and Elephants.

Macedon only used half of its available denari, and could have had twice the size of the army and won handily

I feel like Javelinmen, and all Javelin unit in Med 2 in general, really should have had the fast moving and good stamina trait. It makes no sense for skirmisher units to not have that. I wonder how much better they are in Kingdoms since they are given higher range which helps somewhat but I do wonder if they have faster movement speed since I know Kingdoms really ups the speed for the Native American factions, I wonder if the same goes for the skirmisher units.

- Cretan Archers... dear god. The best. - Slingers are pretty good too, but have to be careful of friendly fire. Still, this is a unit style not available to most factions. - Hoplites are phenomenal for early through mid game sieges when you play a faction without this ability. Just 2-3 units will make advancing through city streets a million times easier. Even for Roman factions. - By same principle, Thracian and Bastarnae infantry are amazing for factions that only have phalanx infantry. Such as the Seleucids. Again, just 2-3 units for shock and support. - Iberian infantry are like cheap Hastati. My fav campaign was to start as Seleucia -- but completely abandon the starting position, sail all the way across the Med, and start from scratch in the Iberian peninsula. Seleucid starting hoplites are awful... I disbanded most of them to save cash and picked up Iberian infantry upon arriving. They do work early on, but become obsolete mid game. - The other infantry are all "only if you're desperate" or population management tools. - Sarmatian cav are excellent shock cav. - Barbarian cav are great for running down enemy units or tearing into ranged units. - Elephants seem like they should be amazing but... frankly... just aren't worth the hassle most of the time if you can't build them - Scythian cav, like Elephants... should be really good. But realistically, I don't "need" these mercenaries to shore up any weaknesses. Eventually the Elephants or Scythians die off, and then you have an army that needs a different composition because you can't recruit their replacement; necessitating a need to approach battles differently. - I love Numidian Cav, but... as mercs... it's a hard sell. The value of this cav style in factions who can recruit them is their low cost and ease of replenishment... resupplying cav with their long distance movement is butter smooth. They become the "fodder" for the army. As mercs, that goes away. - As others have said, slow archer cav is bad archer cav. In general, the Arab units are all pretty underwhelming and suffer from the same issues as Elephants, Scythians, and Numidian ... while not being as good.

Two major problems that lead to your defeat 1. Why did you just let that one Pikemen unit get slaughtered by arrows? They got down to more than half their unit and you essentially did nothing but keep them there to get killed off. Should have just left them all the way into the back to prevent themselves from getting sniped so they would have been more help later one. 2. Completely wasted your cavalry, and made no use of your rally ability to keep the Pikemen in the fight. You wasted too much time trying to get them to maneuver on the sides when it would have been better to just charge them into the melee alongside a rally to support your foot troops.

Re: Macedon You can manipulate the plague though. Like it sucks, but you can just produce peasants and send them into the Brutii territory while focusing on all the juicy income in Greece. The plague can hold down and kneecap the Romans to the West.

The Roman’s honestly could have won even more efficiently. I think they had the advantage of better archers and artillery, which could have been used better. Could have more quickly eliminated Macedonian archers, and began wearing away at the phalanx units. Pila could have been systematically used earlier. The relay was great it should have been done before nearly any infantry was used in a charge. But Rome was always going to win this. It’d be a very tough bridge defense. Romes kit is simply too good.

Why send that first phalanx across the bridge? Seems like you threw away that unit for no reason

It turns out that bridges are not so invincible, although they are OP. But the player can act wisely on the bridge: first, the ranged units and/or ballistas act, then the legionnaires throw their pila, simply leave, others come, throw pila and leave... And when everyone has emptied their ammunition, and the number of phalanxes has decreased, you can first make them get tired in the first battles, and then simply push with fresh forces. Squeeze them out! And the value of the cavalry in the end was not in the charge, but in adding a little more strength, stability to this "cutlet" from the thinned phalanx at least somehow. But it's too late and useless, there is 100% defeat... It's just that the computer dummy does not know how to do this, but the player does. Still, "Rome: Total War" is a brilliant game of its time, back then Creative Assembly tried and did it conscientiously, and were not corrupted by big money and fame.

They read my mind with that javelin relay

Good play on the Romans' part. Winning against Phalangite armies who are on bridge defense is tough in RTW.

Nice video, but if I played for Macedon I would have won)😁

Thought for a moment that Ankka had lost his mind there....

Gonna have a tier list coming based on yours soon.

my bet is on the romans