How variable was the appearance of legionares?

[hellenes]

While I know that Hellenistic phalanx soldiers had a great variety of helmets armor shield designs...im not sure how the REAL legionares (mostly after marian) varied? Cause I wouldnt like units of cloned romans all over again...

[sgsandor]

there is a spoiler in the december EB preview

[hellenes]

there is a spoiler in the december EB preview

I know ive seen it but its just WIP....and they are clones...

[Tellos Athenaios]

It's WIP but they aren't exactly clones.

[Long lost Caesar]

wip?

[fenix3279]

there is a spoiler in the december EB preview

Huh? Where is this preview? I can't seem to find it on here.

[Redmeth]

Huh? Where is this preview? I can't seem to find it on here.

The EB1 december preview
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=96896

Check the spoiler...

[General Appo]

Okay, I have looked very closely at the two pictures released, and from what I can tell the legionaries are exact clones. Wether they are wip or not I cannot tell, since I do not know what wip is.

[master of the puppets]

I would expect them to be clones. This was probably the first real army standard issue. All other armies of the time you would supply your own arms and armor or be expected to pay for them, thus leaving room for personal styles. Rome mass produced identical armor, tunics, helmets, and spears for a generallly uniform army. Unless you want to throw in a few who chose to put grafitti on the shields or something of the like, this was likely how the roman army would have looked.

[Sarkiss]

Okay, I have looked very closely at the two pictures released, and from what I can tell the legionaries are exact clones. Wether they are wip or not I cannot tell, since I do not know what wip is.

Work In Progress.
check the shields out.

[Ozymandias the Great]

In the pic, there are two different shield designs. While I wouldn't expect the equipment to change, the faces should.

[General Appo]

Yeah sure, but I doubt their faces were all the same.
But, I guess this is just a very early thing made just to tease us.
Evil EB team.

[Watchman]

Wasn't the degree of "uniformity" even in the post-Augustinian fully professional state-supplied legions still kinda nominal though ? Or rather, functional, especially as armour went - the soldiers got what was available, and insofar as they now had a good set of body armour it really mattered little whether it was scale, mail or segmentata.

In other words, as long as the soldier had all the items of the kit he needed to carry out his purpose (ie. kill the other guys and not get killed), the specific details of the gear (such as the exact type of the helmet, the specific form of the gladius, whatever personal embellishements they now could add to the outfit...) were largely irrelevant.

And the officers pretty much wore whatever the Hell they felt like and could afford. Then there were the various "badges of merit" soldiers of any rank might sport, and apparently also wore into battle...

After all we are talking about a pre-industrial society here. Even if the great arms manufactories were as close to assembly lines as period technology now allowed, the units in practice kitted their troopers out with whatever they had at hand - which might be quite old, looted, modified, repaired many times over, etc., none of which really mattered.

[sgsandor]

As to the question how variable were the legionares, I think that just like in modern armies, hair(facial, color and to a degree length, but the romans kept their hair short), coloring of uniform(due to fading, new guys get new stuff, old guys wear the same stuff till they need new stuff), and some equipment(some guys get mainz gladius others pompeii?) As far as the shields go, I think that that amount variation is standard and pretty darn good. As far as clone wars...to be honest it never bothered me but hey to each their own

[Sumskilz]

Actually, if you keep looking you'll notice that there are more than two shield variations. I bet the shields are the only thing varied at this point. That's probably part of why they're a WIP.

[Boyar Son]

....
After all we are talking about a pre-industrial society here. Even if the great arms manufactories were as close to assembly lines as period technology now allowed, the units in practice kitted their troopers out with whatever they had at hand - which might be quite old, looted, modified, repaired many times over, etc., none of which really mattered.

Ah I got it. The paint on the sheild for the symbol of jupiter should vary a little since painter cant paint the excact same thing onto hundreds of different shields, not to mention artist were many, with different talent. And different markings on shields?

And maybe auxilaries had different looking shields? some chain mail some with scale on troops in the same combat unit?

Maybe hastati had a little body armor while other hastati didnt? some troops in a unit could have both cuiraiss and chain mail on different troops?

[Watchman]

That sort of thing, yeah. Shields oughta have been more or less similar in the same unit normally though - it's after all chiefly a matter of the paint job, and shields tended to be something of a disposable good anyway. Their very raison d'étre sort of exposed them to a lot of abuse after all, so repairs and replacements would have been a constant necessity.

[bigmilt16]

i actually saw 5 variations of shields

[hellenes]

Wasn't the degree of "uniformity" even in the post-Augustinian fully professional state-supplied legions still kinda nominal though ? Or rather, functional, especially as armour went - the soldiers got what was available, and insofar as they now had a good set of body armour it really mattered little whether it was scale, mail or segmentata.

In other words, as long as the soldier had all the items of the kit he needed to carry out his purpose (ie. kill the other guys and not get killed), the specific details of the gear (such as the exact type of the helmet, the specific form of the gladius, whatever personal embellishements they now could add to the outfit...) were largely irrelevant.

And the officers pretty much wore whatever the Hell they felt like and could afford. Then there were the various "badges of merit" soldiers of any rank might sport, and apparently also wore into battle...

After all we are talking about a pre-industrial society here. Even if the great arms manufactories were as close to assembly lines as period technology now allowed, the units in practice kitted their troopers out with whatever they had at hand - which might be quite old, looted, modified, repaired many times over, etc., none of which really mattered.

So EB 2 romans will be a true Legio? Aka Levies...

[Watchman]

Now which period are you talking about again...? And what exactly do you mean by "levies" here ?

[hellenes]

Now which period are you talking about again...? And what exactly do you mean by "levies" here ?

Legio means levies and that what the early republican army was....

[Ashtart]

For the problem of roman clones it's a false problem. EB team can easely make warrior with different facial hairs, or some men physicaly a little bit stronger

[Olaf The Great]

I like the idea of Romans having Merit badges.

[antisocialmunky]

Is it possible to make guys of varying height. The thing that really contributes to clone armies is the uniform height.

[Gebeleisis]

well if in rome we had the issue of the evocata beeing giants and prateorian midgets i think it could be done to separate units,not sure if you can alter a soldier from a unit from another that way

[abou]

We see some variation. With the Marian era we may see some differences in the cut of chainmail, but there is mostly variety with helmets. In the relief "Sacrifice and Census" (formerly known as the Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus) we see a few soldiers with a variety of helmets including a "Sidon" type. There is another thought to commemorate the victory of Augustus at Actium, which shows Roman infantry on a ship equipped with what appear to be Thracian helmets.

[Gebeleisis]

btw afaik legionaries after marian reform were not accepted into cohorts if they didnt have a certain height ..like 1.77 or over but i may be mistakeing ,can anyone clarify?

[Atilius]

btw afaik legionaries after marian reform were not accepted into cohorts if they didnt have a certain height ..like 1.77 or over but i may be mistakeing ,can anyone clarify?

That's from Vegetius, but probably reflects an ideal rather than a reality.

[Hax]

That's from Vegetius, but probably reflects an ideal rather than a reality.

Yes indeed. The "required" height was between 1.50/1.60 and 1.80, I think, but they didn't really follow that rule.

[Captain Trek]

Would it be possible to utilize the 'random parts' system to also randomly scale each model by a very small amount in either direction (bigger or smaller)?