[Jasper]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
The only use I've found for LI so far is their javelins - they do as much damage as longbows, and because of their shorter range, they have better accuracy. A squad of LI behind a squad of HI can be fairly effective against moderately armored troops. Against Ulm you still need crossbows or magic though.

I got alot of mileage out of my starting 25 LI with Machaka by using similar tactics, although not enough I built any more.

Some people on this thread seem to be claiming that it shouldn't take any more money to maintain a company of fifty men with Full Plate of Ulm, a full helmet, tower shield and warhammer (say) than spears, leather hauberks, javelins and maybe hard leather caps. I don't see how you can support this view - if nothing else, war gear wears out or breaks and has to be replaced. That costs something.

[Further stuff suggest gold maintenance cost for high resource troops snipped]

My main arguement here is simply game complexity. I would only support giving them more maintenance in a uniform manner, e.g. by increasing their cost, or by calculating resources in the gold maintenance cost.

On the other hand, I also think that a large part of the heavy vs. light problem stems from light troops' ineffectiveness on the battlefield, and that this is a very "deep" problem because it ties into the defense vs. protection issue and combats resolving in too few rounds for fatigue to be a major problem for nonmages.

Both problems could perhaps be solved (or at least ameliorated) by an across-the-board +1-2 to all defense skills (perhaps excepting units that already have very high defense). LI would still die faster to shortbow fire, but wouldn't necessarily die faster in melee (except perhaps compared to Ulm) because they would get hit less often and because the heavy troops would get tired before they had killed 3x their own numbers.

Another possible fix (to the over-effectiveness of protection vs. most attacks) would be to make any hit do at least 1 point of damage, regardless of the str+weapon vs. prot roll. Then units that get hit a lot but often take 0 damage would be getting hit for 1 damage, which could make quite a bit of difference to a 10 hp unit.

Historically Light troops got demolished by heavy troops in frontal melee. Furthermore, massed heavy infantry had more staying power, despite what one might guess from heavy armor.

Making Light Troops more powerfull in Melee is not a good solution, IMHO. They _should_ get demolished in melee.

Finally, historically there were melee weapons specifically designed to pierce armor - pikes, for instance. Why aren't they armor piercing in Dom (I or II)?[snip]

I see no basis for this in history at all. Pikes were used because they were long, that's it.