I find it pretty reasonable that 300 men beat 50 men. perhaps another medieval fighting expert can enlighten us how he can realistically fight 1v6.
You're ignoring two important things: they're not talking realism, they're talking
wage cost and game balance/progression. 50 Legionaries cost more money and effort in wages, training and upgrades than 300 recruits. So they need to be worth that cost in a fight to be worthwhile to the player. And yet, not only do the Legionaries lose, they lose
overwhelmingly. There are 200 recruits left by the end. So why ever bother using high-tier infantry at all when massed recruits are more cost effective, and a handful of Fians or Khan's Guard are more effective than both?
Regarding realism, it's not just "men" vs "men". It's "untrained and unequipped men" vs "well-trained, well-equipped men."
I'm actually okay with 300 T1 units beating 50 T5 units and agree with you on that, but the casualty margin should be a lot closer (only ~50 recruits should still be alive, not 200), and the wage cost for T5 units should be lowered to 5x that of a recruit (it is currently 6x).
Our reality, people get swarmed, lynched, mob'd. Even professional fighters preferably avoid taking on multiple opponents at once.
Obviously they prefer not to, but they can if they have to.
Five unarmored, weak men with swords cannot seriously hurt a well-armored, strong man with a sword by just attacking him. His entire body is protected and difficult to injure, but he can wound any of them easily, since their entire bodies are exposed. The only way they can inflict real injury is getting him to the ground, but that comes at the risk to each man of being slashed or stabbed in the gut, or the face.
Multiple opponents also get in each others' way.
As others have also said, there's the morale factor. Even if theoretically you and your four mates can take on the guy in armor, once you see two people get stabbed, do you really want to be next?
T5 troops should be able to fight 1v5 against recruits and have a good chance of winning. Here are some historical examples for smaller, better-equipped forces defeating much larger but worse equipped forces; or overwhelmingly defeating worse-equipped forces of a similar size.
Cassel: 14,500 men-at-arms and soldiers fight 15,000 rebels. The rebels have 3,100 casualties. The soldiers have only 17.
Frankenhausen: ~6000 mercenaries fight ~8000 peasants. 7000 peasants die, and only 6 mercenaries die.
Otumba- The Spanish (who were
low on gunpowder) and their native allies defeat the Aztecs while outnumbered 12 to 1.
Mello - Soldiers and knights fight rebels, being outnumbered 3 to 1. The soldiery annihilate the rebels with only light casualties.
Croatian-Slovene Peasant Revolt: 8000-1200 rebels vs 5000 soldiers, few to no casualties for the soldiers, 3000 casualties for the rebels.
Battle of the Standard: 16,000 mostly unarmoured Scots are beaten by 10,000 mostly armoured English soldiers. The English suffer low casualties, the Scots suffer ~12,000 killed or routed.
for games.
