About Regionals

Why are they limited to certain factions?

Shouldn't all factions be able to recruit regionals in an area? They don't rely on any factional training or anything, so I would think that they should be available to anyone who controls a certain territory. This would add a lot of diversity, and make certain territories very attractive for the player. Why would a Romanii Player ordinarily conquer Britania? Not much reason to, but if they can access all the Goidilic units there would be a lot of incentive to get those nice units.

I also wanted to know if the EB team was considering moving mercenaries to the regional MICs, since that would solve the Merc Spamming generals and make them retrainable. You'd also get a lot more unit cards, or spaces (or whatever they're called), since you wouldn't have to have a space for the merc and one for the regional. This way regionally recruited Pezhetairoi and Mercenary Pezhetairoi are the same thing. Saves space and makes sense. It would also allow for more units for lesser factions (like Hayasdan/Pontos) and more regionals.

There are two reasons that not all regionals are available to everyone.

Firstly, historical. Not ever people would be willing to serve every type of overlord. Some peoples, like the Romans wouldn't necessarily used units fighting in their natural styles, but would rather train them in the Roman style (post Marian).

Secondly, game restrictions. There are more unit slots than models slot in RTW. Therefore, some unit use the same model. And a faction cannot have two units that use the same model. In these cases, a faction is given the most appropriate unit that has that model and cannot have the other unit(s) that use that model. This is why a faction can have only one of the Deuteroi, Pantodapoi, or Machromoi phalanx units. (The 'merc trick' comes into play here. Factions can have a merc unit that shares a model with a normal unit. Therefore, some units are called mercs even though they are recruitable normally.)

Okay, the first reason makes sense. I guess I dindn't put much thought into it. After all, why would Romans want to hire Regionals who use bronze armor and wood shields when they use chain mail and iron bosses?

Now to see if I got reason #2 right. There are more slots for units than models, so certain units would use the same model (like the different legionary cohorts in vanilla). A faction cannot have units using the same model, even if they are basically the same unit (merc pezhetairoi and pezhetairoi). This means that the only way to have units with the same model in a faction is to make those models mercenaries? Would that be about right?

So how is it decided which regionals are used by which factions? For example, why do the Seleukids/Makedonians use Galatian Heavy Spearmen, whereas the Ptolemaioi use a Legionary knockoff?
Which factors decide the Regionals available to a faction? I imagine that expansion during the time period, the faction's military thinking and style, and its culture would come into play, but is there anything else? Since if we use only that then the Romans should have access to all of the Regionals south of the Danuve and west of the Rhine, but that ain't so.


btw, why are the Balearic Light Infantry only available to the Carthaginians if they sold themselves as mercenaries to the highest bidder? I can understand why the Romans don't have them (Velites are practically the same thing), but why do the Gauls/Lusotannan not have them?

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Originally Posted by gran_guitarra

So how is it decided which regionals are used by which factions? For example, why do the Seleukids/Makedonians use Galatian Heavy Spearmen, whereas the Ptolemaioi use a Legionary knockoff?
Which factors decide the Regionals available to a faction? I imagine that expansion during the time period, the faction's military thinking and style, and its culture would come into play, but is there anything else? Since if we use only that then the Romans should have access to all of the Regionals south of the Danuve and west of the Rhine, but that ain't so.


btw, why are the Balearic Light Infantry only available to the Carthaginians if they sold themselves as mercenaries to the highest bidder? I can understand why the Romans don't have them (Velites are practically the same thing), but why do the Gauls/Lusotannan not have them?

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The Seleukids and the Makedonians get Galatians because Galatians were around for them. They passed through the Balkans and settled in Galatia, which is in Asia Minor. The Ptolemaioi get a legionary knockoff because they made them, and historically had no business in Galatia, to my knowledge. And the Romans would have had access to all those regionals, but, like you said, they wouldn't have utilized them due to their military philosophy.

And I think the Balearics would be Carthy only because I'm not so sure barbarian factions did any mercenary hiring, nor would they have. They may have extracted troops from surrounding areas and subjugated areas, but I doubt they would have hired professional mercs.

Ok, each faction can only have one unit on each model. In some cases these are different units. Many Galatian units share models with Gallic units. You can either have the Gallic version or the Galatian version. The 'merc trick' allows you to use the merc slot on the model (every model has a skin option for each faction and one for merc). The game thinks it is just the mercenary version of the unit, but you can change it all you want and give it recruitment. The downside of the merc trick is that you can only assign one skin to them for all factions and one standard bearer. This is why the Hoplitai Haploi look the same no matter who you play and why they have a generic grey standardbearer.

The Ptolemaioi shipped in some Galatians to the Nile Delta and gave them land grants, provided they would serve in the Ptolemaic military in times of need. These are the super Galatian (Kleurchoi(sp)) units that the Ptolemai have. If the Ptolemai get to 'Galatia' they can recruit a wider range of Galatian, but I think the Galatian Kleurchoi shares a model with one of the good ones...

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Originally Posted by MarcusAureliusAntoninus

There are two reasons that not all regionals are available to everyone.

Firstly, historical. Not ever people would be willing to serve every type of overlord. Some peoples, like the Romans wouldn't necessarily used units fighting in their natural styles, but would rather train them in the Roman style (post Marian).

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On this subject, how come the Romans can only use mercenary Thureophoroi?

I try to avoid questions like that, as it seems a bit ungrateful. However, it always struck me that Thureophoroi are quite like Imperial auxilliaries and the description for the Thureophoroi even implies that they saw greater use under Roman rule (or possibly patronage, before the acquisition of Greece proper).