Light Infantery would be more useful if the battleground itself varied a bit more. On a dry flat ground it's pretty obvious that a man with heavy plate armour will have an advantage over a man in a leather cuirass. But if there was a penalty to encumberance in muddy, uneven, snowy, elevated or vegetation covered battlefields then the light infantery would have the upper hand.
There is no greater proof for this than the fairly wellknown Battle of Agincourt(sp?). The british troops were both heavily outnumbered and "outgunned" by the french.
The battlefield formed a wedge, which consentrated the heavily armoured knights and completely broke down their formation, and the ground was covered in sticky mud, the bane of platearmour which any liveaction roleplayer can tell you (it sticks to metal like peanutbutter sticks to cloth and weighs you down quite a lot).
This meant that while the english archers were pretty ineffective using their bows they caused massive casualites amongst the knights by routing the cavalery into the footknights, attacking in melee with their long daggers and simply exhausting the mudcovered knights until most of them drowned in the mud or were trampled to death in the complete chaos.
If the men in the back of the french force would have pulled back instead of pushing into the wedgeshaped field then its propable that most of the knights would have lived, even if the battle would have been lost. Apparently it was greed that pushed most of them onwards since there was quite a competition to take the king of england hostage and hold him for ransom.
Then again a lot can be said about the french noblemen that choose to override the commander-in-charge and engage the british forces without a real battleplan. It's still pretty ironical no? Had it not rained then history would have taken a different turn indeed.
Being able to choose your battleground if you have the faster army would be a nice addition to Dominions III.
[ April 14, 2004, 10:42: Message edited by: Wauthan ]