Romani

[nic]

I'm enjoying a campaign with the Romans but have two issues. Firstly, my main army is full of Triarii and I know I could choose not to do this but they are fantastic soldiers. I personally would raise the recruitment cost a little, by 100 or so just to give people something to think about and represent their relative rarity otherwise people will fill their armies with them given that they are easily the best soldiers in pre-polybian times.

My second issue is the historicity of the accensi. They may have fought in reserve but they may not. This from 'the making of the Roman Army' by Lawrence Keppie, p20:

'Livy's account must be largely derived from much later sources, especially Polybuis, so that its independent value is not great. Yet its very incongruities may lend it a certain measure of authority. Livy may have been attempting to reconcile patchy source material but it is difficult to imagine that the legion he describes ever existed in reality. The rorarii and accensi could be held to represent the the Fourth and Fifth servian classes, now added to the other three and equiped in simple fashion. But accensi in the normal meaning of the word, should be servants rather than fighting soldiers.'

[Dayve]

I spent quite a lot of time trying to work out exactly how to set up a legion... You need to have an equal number of leves, hastati and principes, and half that number of triarii, so lets say 4 of each and 2 triarii, that's 14 slots used because if we have 3 of each we can hardly have 1 and a half unit of triarii, and 2 of each seems way too little. SO, 14 slots used. We need a general and 2 units of equittes, that's 17 used. Now, there needs to be an equal number of allied troops to Roman troops, as well as Rorari and Accensi, so if we don't count leves as Roman troops, just the hastati, principes and triarii, we need 10 more units which exceeds the amount of units we can actually have in an army...

Alternatively, we can half the number of Roman troops, 2 hastati, 2 principes and 1 triarii, but we still need 2 units of cavalry, one Roman and one allied, as well as an equal number of allied infantry to the Roman infantry, which is another 5 units. So that's 10 with the Roman and allied infantry, 2 cavalry and a general, 4 leves which is 17 slots used, so now do we say 2 rorari and 1 accensi, or the other way around? So there we have 20 units, a front and second line of 4 units each, 4 units of skirmishers, 2 triarii reserves and the crappy spear armed rorari behind... But to be honest, 4 units as a front line is way too little, at least for me anyway, so this option isn't my favourite. Such a small front and second line causes problems in attack and defence, attacking, 4 units isn't enough to charge at the enemy line which is usually longer than 4 units. Defensively, the enemy simply envelop your line and cause a lot of casualties. Early hastati are crap, lets face it, and 2 units of them as well as 2 allied infantry as a front line is just pointless, it simply isn't long enough.

The last option is just to use a larger number of hastati and principes and pretend that half of each are allied units, since they fought much the same as each other, so like 6 hastati and 6 principes, 3 triarii, 2 equittes (again pretending one is allied), a general, 1 rorari and 1 accensi... This seems the best option to me as it presents a long front line to the enemy, but is it realistic? Did the allied soldiers on the front line use the exact same equipment and fight exactly the same way as the hastati would fight? I always thought that allied soldiers would be armed with spears since they were used on the flanks... Soldiers on the flanks of any line are used to either defend or envelop the enemy line, especially to defend against cavalry since the flank is always where the enemy cavalry will hit (they can hardly get behind since your second and third lines are there) and what better weapon to defend against cavalry, OR defend in general, than a spear?

The other option is to increase the number of men in Roman units and decrease the stats accordingly...

[nic]

Alternatively you can fill your ranks with Triarii and sweep all opposition from the field.

[Dayve]

Yeaaaaaaaaaah but i have this thing with being historically accurate and it kind of borders on obsessive compulsive dissorder... I do not fight a battle unless i have a full legion or close enough to it, i hate untidy armies.. All units have to be tidy in the units panel... Using an army of triarii whilst playing as Rome is unthinkable for me... I wouldn't even do it for fun.

Although i will admit triarii are awesome soldiers for their time in the game... Invincible (literally) to frontal attack... Near invincible to any kind of missles... Perhaps a javelin will kill one or two of them occasionally, excellent morale and can most of the time fight their way out of being surrounded... An army of these 45 year old veterans truly would be formidabble... But way too unrealistic for dayve...

Although it would be nice if an EB member could comment on what i said about the makeup of a legion.. I've stopped playing EB because i am at a loose end as to what to do with my legions composition wise... I've nothing to use as allies, except for peltasts... Which are actually decent light infantry, coupled with the 10 or so javelins they have makes them very very decent light infantry... But their unit card is a blue peasant and since i am strange, i absolutely will not use untidy peasant cards in my armies!

[Byzantine Mercenary]

the way i see it an ''army'' can be more that one stacks with each ''battle'' being part of a larger battle for instance i often have a seperate army folowing made up of cavalry to act as scouts on the campaign map im not an expert on ancient battle tactics but they didn't always fight with whole legions, wern't some elements left in reserve?

[Dayve]

I'm no expert either but, the second and third lines are the reserves aren't they? As well as the rorari and accensi, they are reserves also... The ideo being that, if the hastati don't break the enemy, the second line would, so the second line were like reserves... And the triarii were the last resort behind which the rest of the legion could form a new line if they had been broken... So the early legion you see used reserves like this. Or am i completely wrong, oh great EB ones?

[nic]

Yup you are indeed strange, but endearingly so. Its not currently possible recreate the legions as they were because many of the Italian allies aren't in yet so i'd work on your OCD instead. Roman armies of the time would often contain Numidian cavarly (which are in) and cretan archers (that aren't) and Italian infantry. Later they started using Gallic and Germanic cavalry. It's good that you want to do things properly, I just think they should raise the costs of Triarii to stop people like me who can't help themselves.

[Dayve]

Don't triarii have close to 500 minai upkeep already? Although they should have more. Pezhetaroi have a similar upkeep and their stats aren't even as good as triarii.

[Sdragon]

Pezhetaroi have longer reach and allot more men per unit. Wonder which would win? It’s nigh impossible to get the ai to fight you with a phalanx head on.

[Ludens]

My second issue is the historicity of the accensi. They may have fought in reserve but they may not. This from 'the making of the Roman Army' by Lawrence Keppie, p20:

'Livy's account must be largely derived from much later sources, especially Polybuis, so that its independent value is not great. Yet its very incongruities may lend it a certain measure of authority. Livy may have been attempting to reconcile patchy source material but it is difficult to imagine that the legion he describes ever existed in reality. The rorarii and accensi could be held to represent the the Fourth and Fifth servian classes, now added to the other three and equiped in simple fashion. But accensi in the normal meaning of the word, should be servants rather than fighting soldiers.'

Nic and I raised this issue earlier, but we didn't get much of an answer. I still wonder what the rationale was for adding a unit whose historical position was in the back of the line, yet was incapable of functioning as a reserve.

[khelvan]

The rationale was that they existed, and saw battle. IIRC, Dionysius references the accensi as well. They certainly existed, they certainly were found in the rear of the battle line, and they were described as everything from having no weapons whatsoever and scavenging them from the dead to join battle, to nothing but slings and stones, to being armed so similarly to the triarii that they were mistaken for triarii in battle.

As the information varies, we chose what we could best glean from the various sources.

[Ludens]

The rationale was that they existed, and saw battle. IIRC, Dionysius references the accensi as well. They certainly existed, they certainly were found in the rear of the battle line, and they were described as everything from having no weapons whatsoever and scavenging them from the dead to join battle, to nothing but slings and stones, to being armed so similarly to the triarii that they were mistaken for triarii in battle.

As the information varies, we chose what we could best glean from the various sources.

Okay, I can see that. Thank you for the information. Still, the Romans were not the only one who had poorly or unequiped campfollowers that on some occasions joined battle.

[edyzmedieval]

Setting up a ceasefire with Epeiros in the south shall give you enough time to get your army built up. I train Triarii constanly in Rome, as they are easily the best soldiers.

I am now waiting for the Polybian reforms, to see what they are bringing.

At start by the way, Romani are boring. But I saw something huge for the AI: Epeiros built a fort!

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Well little of what is here actually answers the question, no offence guys.

It is in fact unlikely that Livy combined different accounts. What Livy is more likely to have done is identified the account that seemed the most right and copied it.

Why?

Because sythesis wasn't used in the ancient world. Remember the written accounts of a historian's predecessers are all he has to go on. If he starts mixing them up then the picture will get even muddier. Suppose he gets it wrong, then he's just making stuff up. Its not that Livy didn't use different sources, he did, he even used some sources to fill holes in others but he never mixed them up, taking them all apart to try and get at the "truth." Thats a very modern concept.

There is plenty of evidence that there were five classes in the Legion, bear in mind that there were free plebs too poor to actually serve in the Legions.

[khelvan]

We included the fifth rank for the Romans because we had direct evidence to do so, including how the legion was formed and organized. Other faction reserves are included where appropriate.