"I just wanted to say that I beat the Urbans with the Spartans in a custom battle on very hard battle difficulty."- quoted form Dionysios

That isn't really anything special as any competant phallanx unit can destroy a elite non-phalanx unit in a direct toe-to-toe battle (the wall of spears would not allow the soldiers to pass)

Yeah, Spartans have a higher attack rating than urbans and can hold back the Urbans with their phallanx formation. Stat wise, Spartans are the best infantry unit and can defeat a urban in combat. However, when you add in the variables of cost, retrainability, and recruitment, you can see that Urban cohorts are far better campaign wise. Due to the fact that Spartans can only be trained in the cities of Sparta and Syracruse, they rarely are used in roles other than the guarding of those two cities and the occasional battle in Greece. Urban Cohorts can be trained anywhere as long as the settlement has Urban Barracks. In closing, Spartans would definitely kick the arse of an Urban Cohort in a direct fight but would not be practical on campaign.

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True, but who would send them head-to-head against Spartans? You should skirmish until you run out of pila, then flank and kill.

Quoted from idiot_savant:

Quoted from RomanKnight:

Exactly. In RTW, combat resoultion is not an abstract process like say Civ2 (assuming you are not auto resolving): when units meet Phalanx in formation head on, the Phalanx are damaging in individual units with their spears, at a distance (zoom in and see). Urbans can damage at a distance, but by hurling missiles. Urbans also have another strength that was squandered in a head-on match-up with Spartans: the key element of maneuvorability. Spartans sacrifice relative mobility in phalanx formation. By fighting Spartans head on, you fight to the strength of Spartans, and nullify the primary strengths of the Urbans... hence the Spartans should win, all else being equal. So in certain specialized roles, Spartans are the ultimate unit... if the enemy fights them on their terms. However, if you use the Spartan weaknesses against it on a favorable battlefield, even Equites can eventually rout the Spartans.

Idiot_savant hit another key point, too... availability. Roman infantry can be built across the empire, Spartans cannot... this will also translate into numerical superiority, and maintainability in the field.

If you throw a spartan unit against an urban unit on medium difficulty the urbans will almost always win, no matter which side you are commanding as opposed to the ai.

Okay, my bad, sorry guys

I've gotta recheck on the Spartan vs Urban matchup.

[This message has been edited by idiot_savant (edited 12-10-2005 @ 04:29 PM).]

Urbans are better in the campaign because you can train them anywhere. However Spartans you can only train in Sparta and Syracause. In a head on fight one unit of Spartans will always beat one unit of Urbans no matter how many of the Urbans' pila are thrown.

I beg to differ.
Everytime I have one urban against one spartan, the urbans win regardless of the number of pila thrown, though obviously the more pilas thrown the bigger the victory.

Really? I haven't tried it on 1.3 but Spartans easily defeated Urbans on 1.2. And also what difficulty level are you testing it on? Do any testing on Medium or morale bonuses and penalties are applyed.

It was all on medium.
I tried varius unit sizes, urbans always win, the more units the easier.

I give myself full stack Spartans vs full stack Urbans on hard and I win.

hmm, agsinst the flawed AI i am sure that a unit of spartans could be beaten by a denari equivalent amount of peasents.

I disagree with wartrain. Why would it matter if Urban unit has a maneuvarability? A Spartan unit can turn to face the Urbans any way possible and in time as well. So one on one, Spartans will win every time at every level, no matter how many pilum are thrown. And unlike other phalanx and non phalanx unit in the game the Spartans don't easily rout even if attacked in the rear. And what is this nonsense with Equites routing them? First of all, presence of cavalry is not mentioned in the original thread, therefore they are out of place in this argument. Second of all, I dare you to meet me online and try to show me how you can rout my Spartans with your Equites. Even if you had 2 units of Equites vs 1 unit of Spartans, the Spartans will still win.

These fights are killing me! Every troop should be counted as part of an Army, not as an invidual unit, and not alone. Urbans are faster and they turn better, so they are more manouvearable, so when 3 spartans, 1 stack of archers and 2 greece cavalry fight against 3 urbans, stack of archers and some cavalry fight against each other, Urbans have lot more better chance at winning. IMO urbans are better cause of their manouvereability. Another story is when those are matched against lots of cavalry...

I would rather shelter behind a group of Spartans than a group of Urbans. They take cavalry charges batter.

I love using urbans cos the decimate pretty much any infantry on the game but didnt think they could beat spartans head on. I tried a 1-on-1 battle with both units on 3 gold chev, gold weapon and gold sheild. The computer acknowledged that the spartans were stronger on the blue and red meter and when they engaged the spartans massacred the urbans driving them back. However as this little fight progressed the urbans who were down to only 11 had spread round onto the spartan flank and proceeded to roll down the formation. I set the spartans off phalanx cos there was no enemy infront but they kept facing that way but 11 urbans proceeded to kill 32 spartans. this happened on every level including easy and they way i could beat the urbans was by strching the spartan line out to 1 deep which surely would make them mincemeat against any cav charge. Anyone had similar experince of this type of thing?

Well that's how urbans beat spartans.

You would have to control the urbans to see proper results becaues the computer makes the urbans run around like crazy and take unnecessary casualties.
On the other hand AI spartans perform pretty well compared to AI urbans.

What of First Cohorts