Raising the accurate legion - A suggestion.

[Dayve]

We all know it's very difficult to get it balanced with the exact same number of Roman infantry and allied infantry, and then fit all the other units in around them with the 20 unit limit... 2 units of hastati in your front line means you'll have to have 2 units of allied infantry next to them, and then 2 next to your 2 units of principes in the next line, but a front line of 4 units is just too short. You can't have 3 units of hastati and 3 allied because the Romans need to go in the middle so you're going to have 1 unit too many allied soldiers on either flank... But 4 units of hastati and 4 allied is too much, because your front and second line would take up 16 unit slots and that doesn't leave room for the rest of the legions units, so the only option you have really if you want to be realistic is 2 units of Romans in each line and 2 allied, but like i say the line is way too short and i know the Romans used a rather long battle line.

So anyway my suggestion. For example, if we play on large unit sizes, there are 80 men to a unit of hastati, so if we have a front line of 4 hastati, which is long enough for a legion, then there would be 320 Romans in the front line. So we need 320 allies now, but 4 units is too much since it takes up too much of the slots, so my suggestion is simple... Make the number of men in whatever allied infantry unit you are putting in the game double the number of a unit of hastati... So 160 men. That way you put one on each flank, you have the same number of allied troops as you have Romans, and still enough space to fit all the other units into your legion.

Another suggestion about the triarii... If we had a front line of 6 units, 4 of them being Roman, then we need half the number of triarii on the 3rd line, so 2 units of triarii. But you have to either put them side by side or space them out one at either side of the line, and i don't think this is how it should be, they should be as long as the battle line itself, so increase the number of triarii slightly also so that we can make the last line as long as the rest without spreading them so thin that they are uneffective.

[Kralizec]

I'm pretty sure it's not possible to have 120+ units on large unit size.

And increasing the Triarii unit size is not historically warranted. In fact, they're innacurate now. In fact Triarii maniples contained only half the men compared to Hastati or Principes maniples (60 instead of 120)
So it wouldn't have been possible for the triarii to form a long, Greek style phalanx because they wouldn't have the numbers. Their job was to form a core of fresh veterans who'd stop the tired enemies long enough for the principes to reform for another attack.

[Slider6977]

It would also completely unbalance the game to double the unit size of every "allied" roman unit in the game. Not to mention, you don't think that is the exact number of men in a legion as represented in the game do you? You can not possible create a completely historically accurate legion in this game. So why bother agonizing about it.

[Wardo]

Defeatists.

Dayve, at least you tried. I wouldn't mind going back to M/STW sprites if the sprites allowed massive battlefields with massive numbers.

But since MTW:2 will be even more graphic intensive, I guess there isn't much room for truly epic armies.

[Dayve]

Defeatists.

Dayve, at least you tried. I wouldn't mind going back to M/STW sprites if the sprites allowed massive battlefields with massive numbers.

But since MTW:2 will be even more graphic intensive, I guess there isn't much room for truly epic armies.

I'm willing to wager that M2TW will be graphically excellent with an AI as poor as RTW. CA want money now, they no longer care about true strategy fans.

[Ludens]

CA want money now, they no longer care about true strategy fans.
Given that CA spent quite some time and resources to prepare 5 patches in return for which they did not receive a penny, I rather doubt the truth of that statement. The more I learn about history, the more I realize that the TW series is, and always has been, a merely passable representation of it. If anything has changed in this aspect, it is not CA.

[Dayve]

They HAVE to make patches, every game has to make patches, so don't tell me they are the good samaritans because of a couple of patches. Their history is SOMEWHAT decent... But it seems rushed to me. Surely they knew that Egypt, or the Ptolemaic kingdom as it WAS at the time of the game, had long since passed the days of axe armed pharao's infantry and pharaos guards and highly decorated chariot units... Fighitng Egypt wasn't even fun it was just frustrating and ridiculous...

And what of all the fantasy units added and Spartans that look like they did 400 years earlier and are supermen on the field? Lets face it, they put 90% of their efforts into shiny graphics and ninja looking fantasy crud to attract new people who they know will probably play the game for a week and then move on to another game...

The things that matter like AI and a real challenge and historical accuracy has had to be added by mods like RTR and EB

[Greek_fire19]

Shogun had just as many fantasy units. Battlefield ninjas and kensai sword masters anyone?

The total war series isnt about 100% realism. Never has been. It's still a whole lot more historically accurate than most of the 'history based' RTS's going about at the moment. It would have been easy for CA to have the factions: Greeks Egyptians Persians Romans and barbarians, and have spawning 'super generals' like Cleopatra and Atilla the Hun, but to their credit they didnt. Furthermore, even if all they did was create a basic framework for all the fantastic mods to work with, it's still pretty awesome.

I don't know. It annoys me too when they do silly stuff like insulting fans who want to play realism mods and creating expansion packs that don't hold a candle to Viking Invasion, but at the end of the day, including all the fun Iv had playing mods and so on, was RTW worth £29.99? I think so. I'll definately buy MTWII.

Anyhow, back on topic, I personally think that slavishly trying to recreate the way the romans fought is unnecessary and could possibly be unhistorical.

The romans were always masters of adaptability and improvisation. Im sure if the romans had suffered a shortfall of citizen legionaries for some reason, or had been unable to train them in sufficient quantities, they wouldnt have refused to train more allied soldiers on the basis that it would mess up the delicate composition of their legions. They were practical and made use of what they could get. The later years of the empire when they made increasing use of semi-trained auxiliary soldiers and barbarian cavalry shows this. Obviously if you create an entire monster army of gold chevron pretorians it's not something that was likely to happen in ancient rome, but are you really saying that the Romans would definately never have fought with more allied soldiers than hastati?

[Ludens]

They HAVE to make patches, every game has to make patches, so don't tell me they are the good samaritans because of a couple of patches. Their history is SOMEWHAT decent... But it seems rushed to me. Surely they knew that Egypt, or the Ptolemaic kingdom as it WAS at the time of the game, had long since passed the days of axe armed pharao's infantry and pharaos guards and highly decorated chariot units... Fighitng Egypt wasn't even fun it was just frustrating and ridiculous...
Actually, they don't have to make patches. Anyway, if they did it out of obligation, like you imply, they would have released only one or two, like they did with their previous titles. And in both cases the second patch only came after the community had clamoured loudly for it. Also, they stopped supporting the original games after releasing the expansions. Compared to this, R:TW is very well supported. The patches also made huge improvements in the game, so I am disclined to believe that CA only cares about money.

I never implied that R:TW is historically accurate. I merely said that CA never produced really historically accurate games before. This puts all this clamouring for historical accuracy in perspective. I do agree however that R:TW was a big dissappointent, and I am very grateful to the EB-team for making such a great improvement to the game.