What would a historically accurate post-Marian army look like?

[Bacchus]

Thanks Alatar! I'll def check out that mod. (how many mods can one handle in a lifetime hahaha )
Reading about how you guys interpret and handle the legion-issue makes me consider switching ...

^_^

[alatar]

Well I've seen a screenshot from that mod with 20,000+ on the battle feild, money and population bonus's are given to the ai, and the AI never attack each other, just build up and wait for rome.

The game starts in 215, and you have to beat hanibal with just 1-2 legions, very hard.

[QuintusSertorius]

Does anyone have any thoughts as to tactics with a post-Marian army? Thing is you're no longer bound by the triplex acies and can deploy in as many lines as you like. But that also means there's no immediately obvious deployment strategy either.

I've been experimenting with the above two-legion force against overwhelming numbers, and they haven't performed too well when I haven't bumped up their experience a fair bit. Most recently I got narrowly defeated by a huge Gallic force (I killed a lot more of them than they did of mine, but eventually their greater numbers counted morale-wise).

I've tended to use a staggered single line, with spearmen on the flanks. But being outnumbered I often get rolled up on one flank, or find nothing happening in the centre and am forced to split my army in two.

Does anyone have some useful deployment/tactics against:
"barbarians"
desert peoples
horse-archers
"civilised" armies