A thought on GE Arco

[The_Paladin]

Been away from the game for a few months but the sheer detail in it always draws me back...

Anyways my friends and I have been playing blitz games on the weekends with Zen's Concepts and Saber Cherry's Recruitable Rebalance mods.

I play a lot with Arco default but am always drawn to playing their GE theme. The roleplayer side in me constantly fights with the powergamer side when I do that. Personally I find the default national troops kind of bland but their GE counterparts interesting. They present a lot of interesting options:

1 - Engineer for siege / defence
2 - Philosopher for research
3 - Wind rider for blessing and flying tactics
4 - Icarid for flying tactics
5 - New chariots for both archery and improved protection (though for some reason in SC's mod the default chariot has 4 more HP than their GE counterparts - maybe thematic???)
6 - Myrmidon
7 - Skeptic

And you really only lose:

1 - Astrologer (Ok... this one hurts)
2 - Heart Companion (he's good but low strat move relegates him to defence oft times but a decent bless troop)
3 - Hoplite (meh... a little better than 2 since he be recruited anywhere but still)
4 - Hypaspist
5 - Elephant
6 - a few others of that I'm not bothering to mention (sorry Strategos)

I would argue that, for the most part, the myrmidon can replace the hoplite, hypaspist, and heart companion reasonably and the new chariots can replace and improve slightly on the old one. The other loses hurt. I lose early expansion power with the elephant and my lovely S31? (true random) astrologer.

The skeptic with stealth 0 just doesn't get the juices flowing for me. The only use I usually have for him is if I've lost and want to preach myself out . The other new leaders / units are good and if I didn't have to choose between only using one type of them in any significant numbers I might like them and say goodbye to the astrologer more often. I mean except for the chariots and myrmidon, everyone is capitol only. Every turn I have to choose between my philosopher (#1 researcher), my engineer (pocket-protected castle defender), and my icarid champion or wind lord (to take advantage of flying). This is of course neglecting the mystics (versatility anyone?), priestess (healing / priest), or other commanders still available but this problem disappears with a second castle.

Beyond the leaders you also have your icarids and your wind riders - both heavy on the resources. To save money you can combine these two weighing more to the side of icarids. You still can't get a decent number of them this way when you factor in the forced sloth.

With only strat move one you need a lot of engineers to be effective in a defensive role. Only being able to defend one castle... or heaven forbid my capital doesn't really interest me much. The enemy will just move and I can't catch them with the engineers. So I try to get a lot of engineers - well there goes my research advantage from the philosophers and since the engineers are resource heavy they also significantly cut down on my fliers. What are they making those pocket protectors out of anyway? I mean I'm an engineer in real life and I have yet to carry my own catapult to a siege .

So then I think lets try out these fliers. They can't really be used in initial expansion too well as getting enough of them takes too long. They are good for raiding though, if a tad expensive in that role. Once my raiding party has been caught by a trapezing SC though they are very expensive and time consuming to replace. The wind rider is a good bless troop but again scarcity and inability to use them in early expansion limits their role until they are practically made obsolete by magical troops. They are marginally useful in their roles to augment normal troops (which negates their strategic movement bonus) or raiding - though no where near as cheap as Caelum raiding parties (not that I expect them to be either as that would be insane). So I tend to stray away from them when I can't use them till mid-game and then spend 10 turns and potentially 1500 gold just to lose them to an SC or mage team.

That leaves me with my philosophers and yes they are great - no complaints. But do I really want to give up my elephants and astrologers to gain a philosopher and maybe the occasional raiding party, or maybe defend a castle with engineers? When I'm forced to choose only 1 (maybe 1.5 depending on how you look at it) of the benefits of GE Arco I just can't give up my astrologers anymore (and arguably better gem income from default arco).

Has anyone found a way to use more than one type of these new units truly effectively? I've read the other topics on the forum about this but mostly just found complaints about the wind riders price or people talking about using just the engineers.

As I like to be constructive, my proposed solution to this problem would be to allow the icarids (and champions) to be recruitable everywhere. This would have to be tested of course but it seems to me it would allow you to alternate between recruiting engineers and philosophers in the capitol while still being able to use mixed parties of fliers earlier in the game. What do people think of this change? Comments and suggestions are always welcome!