Marian Vigiles?

[Hegix]

According to the unit description in game and on the web page Vigiles are said to be Augustan units, but after Marius I get them in all non-Hellenic cities. I like them, they are cheap and come in large numbers for garrison duty, but this seems like a mistake.

Also, since Marius seemed to have removed the Equites Romanii, do I have to build regional MICs to recruit the different auxilia cavalries? I like to make my conquests romanized as soon as possible,but in that case I guess I'll have to make some allied states as well.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Vigiles are like militia spearmen / prefects / town guards from vanilla and other mods. Their internal name is augustian vigiles so that matches the description. But I am pretty sure they are meant to be there in the Marian Era, maybe there was once a plan to make two types of Vigiles...?

Romans weren't very fond of cavalry. Cavalry in a Roman army was mostly allies and later avxilia. After the Marian reform, there are no more 'Roman cavalry', you have to recruit Romanized Avxilias for cavalry (Gallia, Germania, Thracia, Iberia).

[sass]

I never could figure out why the romans disliked Cav so much? why, wierdos

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

I think it was because they weren't very good at it. Jealous, I guess. :clown:

[Boyar Son]

Romans like fighting as infantry, I guess even in there time with their wealth they thought horses were expensive

[CaesarAugustus]

Another reason that the Romans didn't really put emphasis on cavalry is that they didn't really need it. Until the late empire, the legions were (with a few exceptions), unbeatable, so ther was noo need for "Legionary Cavalry". After Adrianople, it became clear that Rome could no longer rely on the legionairies alone to win battles, and they needed to hire more barbarians who could fight as cavalry. By then, the army was mostly barbarians anyway.

[Boyar Son]

Rome did have good troops. The unbeatable legionaries, cavalry recruited from the finest peoples with tradition of horse warfare, not to mention archers from the mideast; the best in the known world.

Rome at that time was invincible (sort of), well... the only thing that could hurt them was bad emperors...

[antisocialmunky]

I wouldn't say that the Roman Empire was unbeatable, they just refused to lose and got pissed off and sent larger armies to attrition you to death.

:-p

[Watchman]

Dogged stubbornness, particularly about wars, was one of their central tenets. Mind you, I've read that attitude was part of what allowed Hannibal to pull his textbook double envelopement at Cannae...

It's not like the native Roman cavalry was actually bad; by what I've read they performed well enough, and for example were able to defeat superior numbers of Celtic cavalry and supporting light infantry at Telamon or some similar battle. Seemed to do pretty well in the Macedonian Wars too. It's just that the parts of Italy the Romans inhabited weren't very suited for raising horses so they were obviously quite expensive, and moreover the eques class was the incubatory of the future sociopolitical elite which gave them a vested interest in keeping the membership a bit exclusive - no point in letting future competitors in the door, right ?

So the Romans preferred to "farm out" as much of the cavalry duty as they could to the socii. This had several advantages. For one, it shunted the raw expenses of raising and maintaining the horses on the Italian subjects/allies. Second, it put a good portion of their aristocracy where the Romans could keep an eye on them and they were disinclined to cause trouble. Third, one cynically suspects, it helped to whet down the numbers of the potentially troublesome socii aristocrats in a manner that was both socially and ideologically acceptable plus militarily very useful for the Republic to boot...
And, of course, it allowed the equites and the higher social ranks that often came from their numbers to play closed club more than they could otherwise have.

[antisocialmunky]

Huh, I never thought of it that way. Seems like a win-win situtation for everyone.

[Watchman]

Well, except for the socii. Their horsemen didn't even get the political clout the eques did out of it, after all.

[Al_Veran]

About the roman cavalry :

May be it is because of the social organisation of Rome.
The Roman army was historically an army of citizens who pay their equipement themself.
So only richest social classes can pay a horse, so that automatically limits the number of horsemen.

The tradition remained and roman army was so progressively organised around the less expensive footmen until the empire era.

It is a cultural question in fact.

[Watchman]

Some of the cavalry were provided horses by the Republican state IIRC. Don't remember whether this was the older, more prestigious way of fighting as cavalry, or whether the fellows who could afford to ride their own horses conversely looked down on the "state" cavalry as upstarts.

[cunctator]

-All units that appear and disappear with reforms, as all late republic auxiliary cavalry, can only be recruited in the factional MIC. These auxiliaries already represent units recruited from roman provinces or romanized mercs and allies that have served aside the legions for many years.

-We never had any marian Vigiles planned. It is the only low level roman unit after the reforms and needed to fill out the lower MIC levels or the AI will not build them. Even during the empire some cities kept larger stocks of weapons and many had this kind of militia or a corps of watchman, sometimes armed sometimes not. They are a generic unit unit in an area where there was no regulation, so the historic part of description is only based on the situation in Roma with the most famous and best documented unit of this kind.

About roman cav. I repost what I've posted earlier since I have not much time now, so I probably repeat some things other have already said:



The roman republican cavalry was surely no world beating force but I've never seen anything conviencing that should be extraordinary bad. The average roman upper class member certainly not thought that they were bad horsemen.

Republican citizen cavarly was mostly vastly outnumbered by their enemies. The equites of the republic were members of the leading classes, the sons of the senators and the equestrians, the richest and most influential man in the state. It's core were the 1800 equites equo publico, fighting on a state provided combat horse, the original equites of the early republic. At some time when the number of the cavarly had to be increased the ordo equester had to be enlarged it was only possible by allowing less priviledged members that fullfilled the requirements that had to fight with their own horse, the eques equo privato. Belonging to the ordo equester was quite prestigous thus it couldn't easily expanded by lowering the requirements to enlarge the available cavalry. Also the availability of sufficent numbers of efficent cavalry to fight for the roman cause on nearly all fronts, numidians, thracians, iberians, celts, etc., since the punic war made this not neccessary. From the late 2nd and early 1st century BC onwards the equestrian class become a purely ecomical and social elite with a comparible small group of officers on their top and the allied italian cavarly dissapeared after all almost all italians received citizenship and were recruited into the legions after the social war. The generals of the late republic had to rely only on foreign and allied cav. that was recruited if needed and their armies were still succesful so this system worked quite well for the romans.

After the wars in the second half of the 1st century the things changed and togehter with it's profesional standing army the empire developed it's own strong regular cavarly arm out of the republican celtic, thracian and iberian auxiliaries that had often served for nearly for decades on side of the legions during the civil war era. Besides the horse archers that appeared in regular roman alae since augustaean times after the experiences of the first parthians wars the imperial cavalry of the 1st century was mainly dominated by celtic and iberian traditions and tactics. The roman standard cav. during the principate was a moderatly armoured highly flexible force, armed with javelins, a rather short one handed lance and the new spatha swords. Discipline and training in the auxiliary units was on the same level as in the contemporary legions and especially the alae were among the most prestigous units in the army. Their equippment and tactics were largely standarized by imperial decrees. Originally their first soldiers were recruited from a single ethnicity in their home province but if the units were transfered to another province they mostly immedietaly begun to reccruit locals as replacement. In the late first and second century AD the numbers of citizens in axuilia units steadily increased as the provinces become more and more romanized and the now citizen sons of former auliary soldiers often prefered to join their father's unit.

After the danubian wars in the late 1st early 2nd century AD and the more intesive contacts with steppe nomads and again parthians the imperial army introduced true heavy cavalry and the first pure units of contarii and catphractarii apear, closing one of the last weaknesses in their roster. At this time the percentage of cavalry reached 20-25 % of the hole army, more than doubling the average value of the hellenistic and republican era of around 10%.

[Al_Veran]

The well developped version of what I have just said before : the roman cavalry is mainly a social question :2thumbsup:

[Swordmaster]

I was wondering about something which I'll ask here instead of making a new topic: why are Vigiles not recruitable in the Hellenic world?

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Vigiles are from Latin peoples. They are only available in Italy and places with Roman colonies. The Romans didn't need to send colonies to Greek regions or reform their military since they already had a civilized working system. It was just another distinction between East and West that helped split the Empire.

[Swordmaster]

Okay, thanks for the info :thumbsup:

[Zaknafien]

Actually the Roman cavalry had the early reputation of winning all of the battles when the cowardly infantry fled from the fight. This is probably more likely because they arrived to the battle first as they were mounted. The early Roman cavalry were more like mounted hoplites, who rode to battle then fought on foot. Its only after the changes in law which allowed those without the public horse to join the cavalry that the class began to degrade, fighting without armor and with light lances before adopting greek panoply sometime after the Camilan reforms.