Any mods with correct sized units?

[rebelscum]

I've been reading a bit about roman unit sizes.
The basic fighting unit was a cohort, composed of six centuries (480 men plus 6 centurions)
Even on huge unit sizes this can't be achived. And a legion was ten cohorts or 4800 men.
So is there any way of modding the unit sizes to be larger and having more officer units in them?
In BI you can have unit names I obviously want real sized units to go along with them.

[Afro Thunder]

I think if you had real-sized units, most people's computers would blow up.

[Kraxis]

I believe the enginge can't go past 255 men in a unit.

You forget the upsized 1st cohort. So the engine would have to be able to go even further... I think you have to be patient and wait another few years.

[Oaty]

Six centuries would be 6 units of 80 men totalling 480 men. So actually it's quite easy to make a cohort. Take 6 units(on large size) and the group them together, march em together fight em to together and if need be you can split the cohort up to handle multiple threats.

Did the cohort historically fight in 1 big group or 6 different groups but within a very close proximity to each other.

[rebelscum]

Oaty I suppose you are right, you have to use your imagination ~;)
:book:
At the front the hastati and principes each formed a maniple of about 60 men, with 20 leves attached to each maniple of hastati.
So the normal unit sizes are about right.
leves are lightly armed 'velite' types but with spear. (So where are they in the game?)

At the back the triarii rorarii and accensi were organized into a group of three maniples, about 180 men, called an ordo.
As the historian Livy quotes the main fighting force, the principes and the hastati, at a strength of fifteen maniples then the following size could be assumed for a legion:
15 groups of leves (attached to the hastati) 300
15 hastati maniples 900
15 principes maniples 900
45 maniples (15 ordi) triarii, rorarii, accensi 2700
Total fighting force (without horsemen) 4800

What I'm saying is that you can't form a legion with the current unit sizes.

[CBR]

Hm thats a very early legion. The units in RTW are for the "Polybian" and Marian type of Legions.

Most likely they fought with a small gap in between the units so they wouldnt get totally mixed up and disordered... a few meters perhaps.

If your 20 units are to represent several legions you will also run into problems with number of men per unit anyway. Best way is just to look at it in an abstract way and think of each as 5-10 men or something like that.

The individual Maniples were not that independent anyway. One example might be how the companies worked in battalions/regiments in musket warfare. IMO it would have been the same for the Romans.


CBR

[Kraxis]

Besides the Rorarii and Accensi, a controversial part of the legion, were stationed to the rear and by all accounts were never comitted to battle (and their equipment was at best lousy). That is where the controvercy comes in. It is believed that they were merely attendants and even people outside the levy. Livy was writing long after the Polybian legion was gone, and thus he didn't have any proper info on it. So naturally the man took everything he could find and jumbled it in, even if the people weren't part of it.

In general it is better not to include them, as they merely make it harder to understand. Obviously they were later removed from the legion (though the legion still retained some attendants... hmmm, makes you wonder huh).

[lars573]

What I'm saying is that you can't form a legion with the current unit sizes.
And your not supposed to (not really). The units in RTW are abstracted representations of a legionary maniple or cohort. For the Marian (early legionary cohorts) and Augustine (legionary) cohorts they are shown at 1/3 (on huge) and 1/6 (on large) size. The Polybian legion is trickier as on huge the Maniples are proper sized (more or less) but an army can't field the proper amount of them. Now if you used multiple armies you could get an almost accurate sized legion. It would take about 2 or 3 armies to get a accurately sized Polybian legion. Using a rule of as close to 1200 as possible with out going over you'd need 7 units each of Velites, Hastati, and Princepes. Plus 5 Triarii and 2 equites

On the Rorarii and Accensi they were folded into Velites years before even the first Punic war started. They were definatly part of the Camillan system. This is the Roman amry where Princepes and Triarii were still a phalanx. But they were armed with javelins and a large shield and no armour.

To get an accurately sized Marian or Augustine legion you'd need 27 early/regular legionary cohorts plus 4 first cohorts, 2 units of roman cavalry plus what ever auxilia units you want, that's for huge unit sizes for large multiply by 2.

[rebelscum]

You guys obviously know your stuff, however if the game starts pre 256 BC that would be early legions pre Polybian and Livys legion description would be correct.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

The Maniples of the Polyibian Legion are sized like this:

Legion: 4,200 men.

Maniple of Hastatii/Principes: 160 men

Maniple of Triarii: 60 men

Forty Velites were attached to each maniple

Each Cohort is composed of one maniple of each, divided into two centuries. Ten Cohorts make up the Legion.

Added to which there were 320 organic cavalry, divided into 10 tumae of 32 men.

The problem is that this isn't until the 2nd Century BC.

So the the Legion at the start of the game should be the Camillian Legion, with all five property classes, I would say the Rorarii and Accensi were probably last ditch reserves. The last class Accensi litterally means reserves.

If you want to get really pedantic then you should also take into account the fact the Gladius hasn't been invented at the start of the game, nor the helemts the Legionaries wear, and the shield of the skirmishers should be three feet in diamater.

Since the game is clearly screwed regarding accuracy I wouldn't worry about the unit sizes.

[lars573]

The Maniples of the Polyibian Legion are sized like this:

Legion: 4,200 men.

Maniple of Hastatii/Principes: 160 men

Maniple of Triarii: 60 men

Forty Velites were attached to each maniple

Each Cohort is composed of one maniple of each, divided into two centuries. Ten Cohorts make up the Legion.

Added to which there were 320 organic cavalry, divided into 10 tumae of 32 men.

The problem is that this isn't until the 2nd Century BC.

So the the Legion at the start of the game should be the Camillian Legion, with all five property classes, I would say the Rorarii and Accensi were probably last ditch reserves. The last class Accensi litterally means reserves.

If you want to get really pedantic then you should also take into account the fact the Gladius hasn't been invented at the start of the game, nor the helemts the Legionaries wear, and the shield of the skirmishers should be three feet in diamater.

Since the game is clearly screwed regarding accuracy I wouldn't worry about the unit sizes.
Not true the Polybian system was put in place in 275 BC. The Camillan system goes from 400 to 275 BC.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Excuse me, *Goes away, does some reading.* Polybius was apparently born in 204BC in Arcadia and was held by the Romans 160-140BC, aproximate. Where do you get the date 275BC?

[Kraxis]

Ifyou use the date of the author as a mark then wouldn't the fact that Livy lived around the time of Augustus bring a small flag?

[rebelscum]

According to this source,
http://www.roman-empire.net/army/army.html which is where I got the information from to begin with, it doesn't give an exact date for the census, but from wikipedia Servius Tullius died around 535BC. So the original five class system existed even into the fourth century BC. Then Scipio brought in some reforms to the Roman army and we see the setup as we have in the game, but this is supposed to be 2nd century BC, which is much earlier than the beggining of the game. Does the EB mod address this as well?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Kraxis, yes, Livy gets a flag, which is why I'm looking to Polybius.

While I'm distrustful of internet sources, and that one does seem slightly dodgy, it still bears me out on the broad points.

It states "2nd Century BC" for the Post-Camillian. Thats the 100's, not the 200's.

[Kraxis]

It seems a small recount of the Roman army seems to be in order.

Around the time of the formation of the Republic, the legion was a phalanx with emphasis on the richer people, just like the Greek systems, though it seems there was a higher percentage of lighter troops.
This went on for quite a while, until the Gauls came by and came the Romans a good beating, this was the first indication that the system was no perfect. Not long after that the Romans went to war with the Samnites. This warlike people seems to have adopted the tall towershield and converted it to their own devices (bent it and trapezoided it). They then formed their own rugged warriors into a battleline of heavy javelineers in front and heavy spearmen behind, all with this big shield. This was a perfect formation for the broken and mountainous areas of their homelands, the phalanx on the other hand was very unsuited for this (Xenophon's Anabasis give a very bleak picture of the phalanx' and hoplites' abilities in mountainous areas).
After reverses in the first war changes happened (they could have been started before or later, but it was around that time). The Romans saw the good of the system with reserves and troops willing to close with the enemy on their own.

The first 'legion' as we know it came to be. But it was different in that the Hastati weren't meant to fight prolonged fights, tehy were simply too light for that. They were meant to disrupt the enemy with a heavy barrage of heavy javelins (either they had the pila at this time or some other heavy javelin), then a furious charge meant to take advantage of this disruption. A weak enemy would break, and thus the light Hastati (completely unarmoured) could chase them easily. A strong enemy would stand firm, and the Hastati would retire soon to let the prime fighters (Principes) advance and do the job properly. These Principes were at the time spearmen, as is fitting since the spear was the prime fighting weapon. The Triarii would either support them, and eventually cover a retreat.
A very similar approach to the later system.

This carried on to the time of about Pyrrhus it seems. Where the Principes began to carry pila as well. It seems that the Hastati had proved to be quite effective in breaking the enemy on their own. Since they were rather light it might have been argued that heavier versions of them would be even more effective. And it seems that argument was right.
In any case the system now looked like the early RTW system, but perhaps a bit lighter in armour (but over time in general the Romans got heavier armour). But the Velites, had yet to be anything important, and it wasn't until Publius Scipio 'Africanus' went to Spain that they had any true impact. There he armed them with a sword and a large round shield and used them aggressively in battles where there wasn't the ground for a normal deployment. This was apparently quite successful, as was the adoption of the rather straight gladius, compared to the leafshaped and heavier sword of earlier days.

This again lasted for around 100 years, but with slow changes towards a more professional army (people signing up time and again, or even taking other people's places in the army but getting equipped by them). Finally the time of Marius did away with the 'different' Triarii (these were retained as similar legionaries instead of spearmen), Velites and Equites (whether it was him or not that did this is debateable).

You can add a lot of details to this, or argue minor points (which I will likely give you), but I have used years to get it down to this in general (if you can dig up old Red Harvest I'm sure he will elaborate a lot on it) and I have yet to get it in conflict with anything. It simply fits too well with the circumstances of the early republic.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Yep, is all good there. Vague but good ~D

My original point though was that the Legion in 275BC is not the Polybian Legion portrayed in the game. That plus the Marian reforms in the game a twaddle. Although it would have been a lot more complex to do it properly.

[rebelscum]

I installed RTR and if you look at the Roman army there it seems to be more like a pick and mix of provincial units with basic hastati, priciples and velites as the core of the army. Which is what I was looking for. But for unit sizes I'll just have to wait, as one guy put it, for a few years.

[Atilius]

To address the question that started this thread:

You can mod the game to put a full Polybian legion on the battle map, at least in terms of the number of men.

First, you need to set the unit scale to "huge". Then set the number of men per unit in (Data\export_desc_unit.txt) to 60 for Velites, Hastati, and Principes. Set the Triarii to 50. We'll deal with the Equites later.

What you need is 1200 Velites, 1200 Hastati, 1200 Principes, 600 Triarii, and 300 Equites.

With these settings, you need 5 units each of Velites, Hastati, Principes. That corresponds to 2 maniples per unit; since the maniple was the basic tactical unit of the Polybian legion - centuries never operated independently - this works pretty well. For the Triarii, you need 3 units to get 600 men which means (OK, this is a weak point) 3 1/3 maniples per unit. But look, unless something bad happened, the Triarii mostly just stood around in the back cheering on the younger guys.

So far we've used up 18 of the 20 units available for an army. There a couple of options for the cavalry:

Set the number of men per unit for the Equites to 38 - this gives you 152 men per unit. Your remaining units are then 2 units of Equites (304 men) or 1 unit of Equites and 1 general unit (total of about 200 to 250 men).

So, you have exactly the right number of infantry. The number of cavalry is also right unless you have a general, in which case you are 50-100 men short. This was common enough - Polybius mentions legions with 200 horse
more than once.

All you've sacrificed is some tactical unit granularity. For the Hastati and Principes, your smallest tactical unit is 2 maniples rather than 1. For the Triarii it's roughly 3 maniples, but normally they did little in most battles,
at least until the innovations credited to Scipio Africanus. For the cavalry you have 2 wings rather than 10 turmae. This is a bit more serious perhaps, but controlling 10 independent units of light cavalry was likely impossible for a
legion commander anyway.

Hope you find this useful.

[lt1956]

How I did it in SPQR was that every man on the field = 4 men in real life.

This allows me to do a 120 man cohort and have the exact number of legionaries.

Its about the only way unless you wish not to have a full legion on the battlefield.

Lt