I was playing random map against the Greeks. The Greeks kept on sending these Phalanx units very late game which cost (I believe) 40 gold. All gold on the map was already long harvested. I didn’t see any trading ships of the enemy either. (When will the AI trade by the way - this is a must implement!)
So obviously my units were being destroyed by these Phalanxs… so do they, on hard?
OK so now that I played as Greek myself… these Phalanx or even Centurion(!) units are really, really powerful. Might even be overpowered!
I remember I was trying to counter these units with sword yielding units. Now that I used these Centurions myself as the Greek (+30% speed, -20% cost) I’d say almost nothing can stop these units.
So I was probably fighting the same units over and over. Ofcourse, if the Hard AI does get some sort of bonus, even if it’s at start, I’d like to know.
You can deal with Centurions by using priests or archers with other units in front of them.
You can beat them if you have enough swordsmen (legions) especially if they are Roman or Choson. They should have 13+7 attack from storage pit to be effective. Any units that have 15 attack or less will only deal 1 damage to centurions per hit as centurions have up to 14 melee armour.
Beware of Macedonian centurions as they are 4x as conversion resistant and have +3 more pierce armour, which makes them very tough. They don’t have the Greek bonuses however. Try balista/helepolis and again you can still use melee and archer combo, but your archers will be limited to horse and elephant archers to be effective (Mace centurions have up to 5 pierce armour).
Of course you can also deal with centurions by using centurions 
Throw in some cavalry or attack archer group to deal with siege that will likely also come from Greek AI.
Thanks!
Does that mean with Legion 13+7=20(attack)-14(armor)=6 damage is done to Centurions? Still a bit out balance if you ask me, since Centurions can deal 30 (or even more?) damage! Well if my formula works that way.
In any case, thanks for the tips!
I did a test of 1000 gold to spend and yes, centurions beat legions easily, even the Roman and Choson ones.
Best to try and fight them with other non melee units and to use a meatshield in front.
Legions could benefit from logistics which allow you to exceed the population limit. In addition, they build faster, and move faster. That can be helpful.
A good way is to put a lot of cheap units in front of a lot of ballistas as meatshield to protect them and the ballistas will kill the centurions like Penelinfi said. If they are not the fast greek centurions heavy catapult (maybe also the catapult) will also do a great job (but killing your own meatshield units).
As far as I know the AI seems to get on hard at least a small starting bonus. They sometimes just build up like a human player could do with the given ressources, but I also observed sometimes in tests, that the AI built two houses, a granary and a storage pit immediately after the start of a game, though the starting wood was at 200 for everybody.
As far as I know the AI seems to get on hard at least a small starting bonus. They sometimes just build up like a human player could do with the given ressources, but I also observed sometimes in tests, that the AI built two houses, a granary and a storage pit immediately after the start of a game, though the starting wood was at 200 for everybody.
I knew there had to be something different. In each hard AI game I lost or came out last. Moderate AI seems to be weaker than the Easy AI. Because Moderate AI just builds a bit and hardly attacks. Unless it’s been updated lately.