Depiction of imperial reforms

[Geoffrey S]

I must echo the views contained in Foot's posts, which is a much better attempt at representing the same view as mine. I like the idea of a pros/cons list.

1) Remove the Polybian Reforms. They were a gradual process taking well over 30 years during which all of Italy was given Roman citizenship and the equipment of the Legions was standardized. For historical accuracy make it several reforms (one for each unit change and one for the added citizens).

2) Remove Antestignai (Light Infantry) from the Marian Period. Legionnaires were never Light infantry, only auxiliaries functioned as such. During the early Augustan Period several Legions had cohorts which were trained to function as light infantry, to counter-raid germanic and parthian territories. For historical accuracy remove them.

3) Add First Cohorts, which were basically Cohors Evocata with double the size of regular cohorts.

4) Give Triarii the phalanx formation.

5) Either downgrade Velites to 42 (same as hastati, Principes, Triarii) or raise those to 50, since their numbers were even in Legions.

6) In the Marian Period, make it so auxiliaries are the same as Cohos Reformata, as historically they were trained and equipped to the same standards, leave the spear auxiliaries as well, since they existed.

I don't know about 1, 2, 4, and 6, but points 3 and 4 have been adressed before: First Cohorts are available at least in Cunctator's mini-mod and in future EB versions, and the phalanx formation as applied in RTW is simply not correct for hoplite styled units. Further discussion on these matters I'd rather see in its own topic, since it is not particularly relevant to this subject.

So, if you are going to use historical accuracy as the argument to remove the Augustan Reforms I can use it to say do all that stuff, even though it serves no real purpose and adds nothing to the game.

Just leave the Imperial Reforms, since they remove nothing from the game.

I'm sorry, but where are people using historical accuracy as an argument to remove the Augustan Reforms? No-one denies they are as historically accurate as possible. What is being debated is whether the resources they use are disproportionate or not, and if the changes were significant enough in history and in the context of the mod to warrant a seperate reform over the Marian units. In my opinion they do remove something from the mod, namely the fullest oppurtunity to more accurately represent the period the mod focuses on.