Roman faction

[Drakich]

As for the second one: Greeks were at the time involved in quite a few struggles: Sicilian Greeks fought against Epeiros & Carthage, Mainland Italian Greeks fought in the service of Epeiros against Rome, Greeks & Carthage, and on the Greek Mainland + Carthaginians relied on mercenary armies (a small Carthaginian population controlling a vast amount of territory + the need for loyal soldiers...), and therefore couldn't simply 'replace/retrain' units like the Romans could - a whole different type of warfare altogether...

Exactly, so from a game balance perspective, cost and available manpower is the main barrier to recruitment. Since you are limited in the number of troops you can raise in a turn, cost is the real barrier to the size of the armies you can raise. Early Romans weren't that good of soldiers, but they could field and re-field large armies even in the face of total disaster like Cannae (which was arguably worse than Adrianople, but with a different aftermath).

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

You are totally missing my point. The Romans would mobalise their entire population for war if need be the ecenomic strain that caused was immense. The Punic Wars were one of the major contributing factors to the collapse of the Republic.

[Zaknafien]

I dont want to make it seem like we're teaming up on you here, but uh.. Wigferth is right.

[Drakich]

Team up on me all you like....I'm not easily offended, and my questions weren't criticisms, just questions based on my understanding of the Rome of the time, which by no means is perfect. I didn't expect my questions to go unchallenged.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Well you're dealing with two very different systems. The Greek and Hellenistic states drew their manpower from the middle of their population as hoplites or phalangites, then they added a few cav from the top and a few archers from the bottom. By contrast the Romans drew manpower from every class and they drew main infantry from a lot lower down the strata, which gave them a larger pool relative to population.

[Iskandr]

I think what he's trying to get at is that currently, the Hellenistic factions have no trouble raising huge armies, again and again. This is, at least, grossly ahistoric, as every ancient commentator and source indicates that raising sufficient RELIABLE forces was an all-but-insurmountable problem for the diaodachoai. Of course, I realize that given the inherent lack of a 'loyalty' stat for individual units, you either have troops, or don't, only two variables seem to be available: cost and morale. As has been stated, unit cost is apparently not on the table. Perhaps there should be more low morale units? As a prime example, the machimoi are specificially mentioned as being more expensive to raise and maintain because of their unreliabilty- but they are neither costlier nor less reliable than any other low-end phalangite. Thank god the AI just ignores them and spams the kleurcheroi agema instead (that's of course a different issue).
Anyway, back to topic, the 'correct' way to deal with manpower, by my way of thinking, is to actually do that- limit the starting pops and growth rates for the various factions to something more historically justified. Of course, given the AI, I suspect you'd see a lot of 400 pop villages in central Greece as the AI abuses the free money script to build endless stacks of Akontisai and peltastai.

Thanks,
iskandr