Help with Augustus campaign Roman army make up.

[hoom]

Playing my Pompey Augustus campaign I find myself unsure how to put together a vaguely historical Legionary army makeup not overflowing with Praetorians & Eagle cohorts etc.

In Rome1 (or mods thereof) I used a makeup something like:
2 Hastati, 2 Principes, 1 Triarii plus 2 Velites = Legion
Same numbers of Auxiliaries for Allied Legion plus general & a cav unit gives a 2 Legion 16 unit stack, 2 stacks = I believe a reasonable take on a Republican Consular army. (on about a 1|10 scale from reality)

But I never really got into the Post-Marian period much either ingame or in history knowledge.


I know I really shouldn't be using Praetorians except at Rome garrison, probably only a couple of units.
How many Legionaries should I be using per Legion on a 20 unit stack?
1 Eagle Cohort per Legion?
No idea about Evocati (probably rare like 1 per Legion max?) or Auxiliaries (I understand not as common as Republican but not sure what kind of ratio).
Armored Legionaries represent uparmored Legions for fighting Dacia so I assume I can substitute them for normal Legionaries in high-intensity area/assault army?

[Hooahguy]

From what I have read, it was about 10 cohorts of normal legionaries and then another 10 cohorts of auxiliaries with the compositions being varied with cavalry and ranged units. I have a large book of roman military tactics and compositions hiding in my basement somewhere, Ill try to do more research on this.

[Sp4]

6-8 legionaries, rest whatever.

I like to go with 2-4 cav, 2-4 javelins, 1-2 artillery if I can.

Oh throw in some spearmen as well if you're fighting cav heavy factions. The more cav the others like to use, the more javelins and artillery I substitute for spearmen.

-E- Oops, I didn't understand what you were going for. I guess the spread was something like 40:60 Legionaries:Aux
When I feel like it, I recruit 1 Eagle Cohort and 1-2 Evocati and rest normal Legionaries. By that point, your economy is probably strong enough to be using only Eagles or at least only Armoured.

[lars573]

In the general a legion was 10 legionary cohorts plus legionary cavalry, Auxilia filling any battle role not covered by that. In terms of the game although there's a unit called "Legionary cavalry" (upgraded equites) the cavalry generals unit more properly fills the role. As for the legionary cohorts units like evocati and armoured legionaries are odd ball special circumstance units. Armoured legionaries are more based on the anti Dacian units Trajan raised. Evocati are retired veterans coaxed back into service by their general. For my own general terms 1 eagle cohort/first cohort and either 7-9 legionary cohorts(1), plus 4 cav units(2), 4 ranged infantry(3), 2 spear aux (4) and a siege or oddball unit (5)

(1) If I choose it I'll pair off evocati or armoured legionary with the first cohort
(2) 2 light which can be ranged or melee and 2 heavy, auxilia cav or equites
(3) velites if the nearest local aux barracks doesn't give good ranged support
(4) If that legion only has 8 and not 10 legionary units
(5) dogs or stinging biting creature launchers if not a straight siege engine

The real problem is that historically Auxilia cohorts were 1000 men while a legionary cohort was 500. And could be mixed infantry and cavalry. That's why I just work for them being anything that's not legionary infantry or the cavalry general.

[hoom]

Thanks guys :)

For my own general terms 1 eagle cohort/first cohort and either 7-9 legionary cohorts(1), plus 4 cav units(2), 4 ranged infantry(3), 2 spear aux (4) and a siege or oddball unit (5)

This seems a fairly reasonable target composition, though I tend to be lighter on Cav (I rarely have more than 2 or 3 including General) & more infantry/missile focused.

I have been building stacks with 8 or 10 Legionaries
6-8 missile (Velites & Aux Egyptians so-far)
2 Aux Spears (partly because seem to be the only type available in most of my empire so-far)
General & another Cav (mostly Aux Cav but did start out with a couple of Legionary Cav)

So I guess I'm not too far off, should drop a couple of Velites (replace most with Aux missiles as I gain access?) & gain some more Aux infantry/Cav.
Really quite a lot too many of the elite types :o will need to thin them out quite a bit. (why aren't they number limited like other elites??? is too tempting)


Also:
In case anyone is wondering whether the AI does Naval invasions, I sent a couple of armies over to England without proper scouting, nearly lost one while the other managed to escape :o
Then I got chased across by these guys

They are a bit thinned out on elites due to the battle where I nearly lost the army, I did inflict heavy losses on what was presumably their main army but there is plenty of experienced force still there & more back across the Channel.

Meanwhile war with Lepidus broke out so I can't actually rush support up North to help fend them off until I finish raising a couple of new armies.
Conquering England will have to wait until Lepidus is dealt with.

[Slaists]

LOL, quite a story there near Britain :)

As to army composition, I'm playing as Antony now. About 10 legionaries (with a mix-ed in single first cohort) + a varied mix of auxilia. In the East Front, armored Syrian archers seem to do the trick against hordes of horse skirmishers and horse archers (legionaries in testudo, to protect the archers; while the latter kill the horse skirmishers). Mix in a few Persian cavalry (picked up in vassal Armenia) + maybe an odd armored Asian war elephant unit. Actually, lately, I've been tempted to drop 2 legionary units and put 2 more archers in. Just too many horse skirmishers in the East.

In the West: I'm holding the line in the Adriatic. Raiding Octavian's coastal villages with a fleet (then abandoning) while the land is being held by local legionaries + Illyrian auxilia.

[Seyavash]

From what I have read, it was about 10 cohorts of normal legionaries and then another 10 cohorts of auxiliaries with the compositions being varied with cavalry and ranged units. I have a large book of roman military tactics and compositions hiding in my basement somewhere, Ill try to do more research on this.

Please post the title of the book when you find it. Might be worth checking out.

[Hooahguy]

Please post the title of the book when you find it. Might be worth checking out.

I found it. Its The Roman Army at War 100 BC - AD 200 by Adrian Goldsworthy

[hoom]

Well I actually didn't really recruit much after that post lol & didn't really get much chance to re-organise (mostly reduce elites).

I found myself far too busy with the long campaign to stamp out Lepidus while desperately avoiding the rest of my empire completely collapsing.

Here is the final state:




And how I got there (kinda long):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Following on from the Invasion shot above I retreated my depleted Gaul force South and Iceni captured a couple of my towns.
Fortunately once I rushed a stack up to support & my depleted armies recovered from their losses, Iceni decided to sue for peace.
With my forces needed elsewhere & only a couple of cities lost I readily agreed and for a long time that front stabilised.

Meanwhile I rolled Lepidus out of North Africa & Greece but I found myself suffering a -25 diplomacy penalty near finishing this which nearly caused complete collapse of my Empire.

Historically friendly trade partners one by one cut me off, this loss of revenue combined with a couple of food crises caused by uncareful economic expansion & surprisingly cunning exploitation of my thinly spread forces caused me twice to lose nearly all of Ethiopia & Egypt, more of Gaul, some of North Italy & bits of North Africa.

A few town losses is no biggie but with enough & breaking Province control in rich provinces like Africa & Egypt really hurt.
For a few turns my income was deeply in the red, had a food surplus & was losing towns on all fronts, really scary stuff.

Deeply frustratingly Numidia & Marcomani in particular would take one town then sue for peace next turn before I could get forces in range to win them back.

With my forces thinly spread & not wanting to be stuck at war with absolutely everyone I readily accepted their Peace even though it hurt my pride but planning vengeance later once I was done with Lepidus.

Eventually I finished off Lepidus in Spain which freed forces to hurry North just in time to defeat a more determined Marcomanni/Scordisci invasion.
Having retaken lost territory & started my momentum rolling against Marcomanni but with Egypt on the verge of collapse, Marcomanni sued for peace & I accepted.

I left a reasonable force behind in Gaul to stabilise that front but was able to spare some extra stacks to add to those I was already sending East to retake Ethiopia while also leaving a stack each in Spain, Carthage & Greece.

And of course, about the time that my forces were approaching the East, Parthia having finished taking Asia Minor took Crete off me & sent a lot of force over to Greece so that forced me to divert some there.
Fortunately I caught most of them with my main Navy = massive slaughter for minimal loss my side.

Meanwhile the reinforcements arrived in Egypt in time to fend off the major invasion by expanding Palmyra, retake the whole Egypt & Ethiopia.

Along the way I guess my scary big size started outweighing the diplomatic penalties & I had started to get some of my trade treaties back, Roxolani & another faction up at the top of the Black sea even offered military alliance which I accepted.

With Egypt secured it was time to start my invasion into the Levant with a naval invasion across the mouth of the Red Sea at the same time as taking Jerusalem in the North.
Well to my great surprise Palmyra up & offered to become my Client state even though they weren't militarily broken & still had most of their territory.
Not trusting it but in the interest of further reducing my enemies & planning to redirect to an Asia Minor invasion, I accepted.
(Their fairly light troops didn't really have a chance against my super-elite forces anyway as shown in Egypt & Ethiopia already...)

Which got me the last mission Success including all secondaries & a massive silver payout.

It also got me within cooee of Victory conditions so I used a bunch of that cash to encourage Iberia (who had long ago negotiated military access, taken over Northern Greece, Ilyria, Macedon & Thrace, and very importantly had maintained both trade and peace!) and Numidia to also become Client states.

And that got me the Victory.

Kinda cheap way to end it but I think its time to move on to a faction with more varied roster & I now have ability to field enough forces to attack on at least a couple of fronts while holding others so even in the event of Numidia & Iberia attacking at same time as fighting Palmyra & Persia, I'm confident in being able to at least hold in the East while clearing out the West -> sparing more force to steamroll the East so I don't think there would be much more of significant interest to do.

TLDR, I present you the very venerable & bacon loving Emperor Sextus Pompey Magnus:


And my final domestic Political situation:

Maybe because Medium difficulty but I had surprisingly little difficulty keeping the balance about the same region even without paying too much attention & never had a Civil war, as far as I can tell was never close to it either.

[Slaists]

Once your characters accumulate a ton of gravitas, influence turns very "sticky" (as in, it does not change much no matter what you do). I've got a feeling the gravitas cost of each senator gets inflated as the total gravitas pool grows. This is especially pronounced in IA since characters tend to live through the whole campaign.