Historical Accuracy?

[Octavius Julius]

Does anyone try to play the game according to what actually happened in reality?

Example: you find out that your family has produced Gaius Julius. Do you give him loads of battle ancilliaries so that you can use him to emulate the real Gaius Julius (i.e Caesar)?

There are other examples out there like not invading Ireland, and holding the Rhine-Danube frontier etc etc.

Another one might be to play with a "proper" legion. Having say 6 hastati, 6 princepes and 6 triarii with velites infront and some equites to the flank.

Should Praetorian cohorts be better than Urban cohorts? I can't understand that. Also, it should only be allowed to build Praetorians in Rome i.e the Senate can build them, however, once you take Rome, you can build them.

I think the historical realism though in RTW is brilliant compared with other games, especially Civ3, which is just so pathetic...spearmen versus Panzers...like hello!

[Kaldhore]

Ive thought about this too, but before I say what I would like to do -

Urban Cohorts ARE Praetorians according to the description.

I havent checked out this recently but what is a Legion made up of....
I read somewhere that its about 3500 men, but at school (alooooong time ago) I was taught it was more like 1200.

Whatever the case I wanna go with 1200. Ok so what is that made up of?
Well again according to my school daze I was told that cohorts were between 80 and 120 strong. and usually there were 8 cohorts to a legion. So between about 640 and 960 Legionaires. The rest were auxilaries and barbarian levies. So - lets say were playing about with Large RTW units.

8 x Legionary Cohorts = 640
4 x Light Infantry (auxilary or javs) 980
2 x Auxilary Archers = 1140
2 x Auxilary Cavalry = 1220
1 General + Bodyguards = 1250 (av)
Other = Balista/Onager crews + possible more Numidian Cav

Thats how I see a Historical make up - but we all know that we would rather take 6 Archer than 2 and 4 javs...And probably 2 more cav units instead of the numidian allies.

A feature from civ3 I would like to see is the ability to "name" Armies. That way you would keep track of your army groups or "legions" out in the field and possibly give them real Legion names like IX etc.

[Catiline]

I use Polybian legions - 4 velites, 4 hastati, 4principes, 4 triarii and a couple of equites. THey are hard to use successfully but very satisfying.

[Sinner]

For post-Marian legions, that structure is incorrect. A legion had 10 cohorts of legionaires, 9 of which had 6 centuries of 80 men each, with the elite 1st cohort having 5 centuries of 160 men each, giving a total of 5120 infantrymen. Each legion had a small unit of cavalry, primarily used as scouts and couriers, adding another 120 men.

[Kaldhore]

Doh I got Cohorts and Centuries mixed up - Shame on me.....

[Kaldhore]

Cant edit....

Cohorts were roughly about 420 men according to my now 6 feet under tutor (god rest his latin soul).

[Barbarossa82]

I did think about trying to replicate some of the military and political situations of ancient Rome (i.e. feeling my treasury run dry due to the expense of maintaining the Rhine legions in their forts), but it's actually not fun, since it's not possible to use the limited mechanics of an RTS game to reflect complex human societies and their development.
RTW is a historically-based game, not a historical simulation. This is what people seem to forget when they get upset about things like legionary armour being 1.86cm too narrow across the belly button or whatever.
Personally I love history, but I also like to enjoy myself by taking Roman armies to Denmark, conquering the world as Carthage, and using unit types which probably never existed.

[Baiae]

I tend to make my Roman armies up to mimic historical roman legions. I use ten units of legionary cohorts to represent the main heavy infantry, one general, two units each of archer auxilia, auxilia and cavalry (usually legionary cavalry) and one unit of praetorians to act as a bodyguard for my general/final reserve in battle. I add two scorpions/repeating balistae when I can get them. Overall a fair reflection of a roman legion considering the restrictions of the game.