marian reforms

[MSB]

I'm quite new to this so I'm not sure if there has been a post about this already. but I think the marian reforms should not be linked to a date but more to how big your empire is, because that was the actual reason of the reforms, the people didnt't want to fight any more because it was getting to dangerous on the battlefield. and that's why marius made the reforms and made the roman army a profesional army.

Actually Marius made the reforms beacause before the reforms only landowners could join the army. The ammount of landowners was however in decline due to the new style of Roman farming on Great Estates which involved kicking landowners of their farms and building huge low maintainence farms which grew almost everything. This lack of landowners and increase in unemployment caused there to be a shortage of men to join the army and the few that could could not afford to be outfitted correctly. So Marius removed all land and property requirements, got the senate to pay for all of their weapons and armour, increased their pay (to promote people to join up), removed the "once the war is over you go home" style of army and made the army professional each soilder serving for up to 25 years and (knowing that retired soilders could be dangerous) gave them a nice pention and a plot of land for when they left the army.

And very often there were a few problems with this system. As the soilders got the wages payed by their general and got their pention of their general this made them more loyal to ntheir general that to the senate. This was quite bad for if a general decided "I want to become an emperor today" he could as his troops were almost guarenteed to follow him into battle.

I think they should be tied to the level of farms you build and the ammount of settlements that you en-slave personally.