in which occasion will you raise taxes

[st.patrik]

I think a distinction has to be made here between Light Infantry and conscripted crappy infantry. That's the point I was trying to make with the hypaspists - they (in Dom I, which is what was my frame of reference) are a light infantry, but still very useful. Whereas on the other hand militia aren't very useful, and I think that's appropriate.

So there are 3 classes of troops (very roughly):

• Heavy Infantry [well-trained, thick armour, poor defense, slow-moving]
• Light Infantry [well-trained, light armour, high defense, fast-moving]
• Conscripts [poorly trained, light armour, low defense, average movement]

You would expect quality LI to have lesser PROT than HI, but greater DEF and AP, and that's exactly the difference between Hypaspists and Hoplites in Dom I [Hypaspists' stats are quite a bit different in Dom II]. It's easy to see the advantages of both, under this paradigm: when fighting slow but strong troops you'd want LI, because their higher DEF score should avoid the attacks altogether. In the same situation HI would do alot worse, because they wouldn't dodge any of the attacks, and therefore get damaged a lot.

Militia would be pathetic in this (and pretty much every other) situation.

In other words: I'm just fine with militia-like troops not being used much - conscripted troops with little training have always been best as cannon (or dragon) fodder, and not much good at anything else. On the other hand, well-trained light infantry should be useful, and if this means a DEF boost, so be it.