Battle deployment of Marian Cohort

[paullus]

how narrow are your lines? most of your enemies will come at your at least 8 ranks deep on huge sizes, but with 2 reinforcing lines to back up your first-rankers, you can put the front line 3 or 4 deep, and the rear lines 2 or 3. That'll keep you from getting outflanked by a similarly sized opponent, and I find my troops usually hold up really well, even though the formation seems dangerously thin.

Though I haven't played my Romani LPP campaign since versions got upgraded, I found putting the first rank of Marian legionaries on hold formation allowed them to last a long time against much deeper enemy forces, and allowed me to either reinforce them with similar long second lines to continue wearing down the enemy, or mass a unit from a rear line for a heavy assault at a weak point in the enemy lines, and force a breakthrough.

[The_Mark]

Narrow? Er, thin? The cohorts are some 8 men deep, the loose order light inf is just a few lines. The light infantry in loose formation won't do much damage there for certain, but they give in slow in melee (provided they don't face a massed cav charge, of course). Slow's the key word here - they just take the brunt of the charge and fight a bit, then you swap in the heavies. Then there's the bonus of having a ridiculously wide frontage with sufficient depth...

[paullus]

I'm saying you should stretch them out yourself. Legionary cohorts usually fought 4-5 ranks deep, so there's no reason with our smaller units that you should use even deeper ranks.