View Full Version : Is there a case for shrinking Polybian equites?
QuintusSertorius
05-26-2008, 16:56
I play with half-sized Polybian triarii maniples, and I was thinking about the equites. There weren't many of them in a Polybian consular army, just 300 with the rest of the cavalry being Latin and otherwise allied. Given Huge unit size is roughly a 1:10 facsimile of reality, that means they should be 30 in a unit.
As it stands, the unit we have is the same size as all of those allied units, which makes it took big. Now there is a case not to recruit them at all if you've got a young Family Member with your army, since his bodyguard is effectively a group of young equestrians and the like.
So I'm thinking, cut the size of the equites unit by half, or maybe even smaller than that. While they won't be brilliantly useful as a result, in reality they weren't brilliantly useful at all.
Thoughts?
didnt you said once that aprox 3 units of cavalry were a good historical representation?
QuintusSertorius
05-26-2008, 23:47
didnt you said once that aprox 3 units of cavalry were a good historical representation?
For the entire cavalry of a consular army (taking it to be 1:10 on Huge unit size). As above, a lot of the time you could take the younger FM's bodyguard to be the Roman cavalry, and thus one or at most two proper units for the allied part of it.
oh now I see heheh :stupid:
well then I guess you have a point there...but well personally I would do it cause I dont want to mess up more whit my files , and well I dont know...I'm just too lazy to be switching things every now and then...
and well I play with large size so it would be 15 equites instead of 50 , wich is well pretty much nothing ,15 arent even capable of cleaning the map of reuters
and offtopic
In fact I'm so lazy that I dont think I'll switch files each time I want to have a new client ruler... so I'm not really sure what am I going to do now...
1)start another campaing...I'm just in 256 bc or something and around 6-7 hrs of game
2)Forget about Client rulers
sugestions? :huh2:
the minimum amount of units to my knowlege is 12 on regular size. so that's as small as possible.
Praetor Diego
06-09-2008, 01:12
Minimun unit size is 6 (for regular size, in the edu file) :beam:
Minimun unit size is 6 (for regular size, in the edu file) :beam:
my bad-I keep confusing Large with normal (I only play with large).
QuintusSertorius
06-09-2008, 22:39
I only play on Huge.
jhhowell
06-09-2008, 23:57
:2cents:
If a historically correct size for Polybian Equites would be 30-50 men on Huge scale, I would consider that not to be an argument to make such a change, but an argument for eliminating the unit and using the slot for something else. Only diehard historical nuts (and I mean that as a compliment ~:)) like QuintusSertorius would ever recruit such a tiny and weak unit, and as mentioned above there's almost always some young tribune handy to provide the right number of Roman horsemen anyway. Heck, I never bothered recruiting Polybian Equites even at their current size...
QuintusSertorius
06-10-2008, 00:34
I'd have said 30-50 on Huge, rather than large (assuming 1:10 scale for Huge), so they'd be 15-25 in Large. But yeah, a younger FM's bodyguard is probably a better reflection of them anyway, the unit itself is largely redundant.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
06-10-2008, 00:52
The Polybian Equites represent all allied cavalry, the only really Italian Cavalry are the Campanians and if you're going for historical realism they are destroyed during the first Punic War. So all you have is equites.
johnhughthom
06-10-2008, 02:47
i have never recruited a unit of Polybian Equites, always use a young FM to simulate my cavalry wing.
Olaf The Great
06-10-2008, 21:02
The Polybian Equites represent all allied cavalry, the only really Italian Cavalry are the Campanians and if you're going for historical realism they are destroyed during the first Punic War. So all you have is equites.
Completely ignoring tarantines and Equites extraordinarii
QuintusSertorius
06-10-2008, 23:54
Completely ignoring tarantines and Equites extraordinarii
Tarentines vanished even before the Second Punic War, and the equites extraordinarii are supposed to be the cream of your allied cavalry.
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