Full cohort recruitment

[Timoleon]

I was fighting Romans in Italy as Epeiros in about 200 BC and I noticed that the Roman armies were full of Principes but had very few (if any) Triarii and Hastatii. This is very inaccurate since the Romans fought in almost equal numbers of Hastati, Pincipes and Triarii in three lines.

I tried playing the Roman faction myself and after the Polybian reforms I found out that my armies were more successful when all the infantry was Principes, supported by slingers and cavalry!!!!

This may sound silly, but wouldn't be a good idea, to recruit a full cohort (hastatii, principes and triarii) at the same time, at an increased cost, instead of recruiting each unit seperately? That way, all the Roman armies will have an historically accurate composition of troops.

Does the RTW platform allow something like that be implemented?

[Rodion Romanovich]

Might be a good idea, but what if you lose all your hastati in a battle but no principes... Then you can't recruit hastati only to fill the voids. Better perhaps to let the player have house rules if he wants, and the AI will do odd things anyway. But hastati and principes also have very similar stats so I don't mind if the AI creates too many principes and forget hastati...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I was fighting Romans in Italy as Epeiros in about 200 BC and I noticed that the Roman armies were full of Principes but had very few (if any) Triarii and Hastatii. This is very inaccurate since the Romans fought in almost equal numbers of Hastati, Pincipes and Triarii in three lines.

I tried playing the Roman faction myself and after the Polybian reforms I found out that my armies were more successful when all the infantry was Principes, supported by slingers and cavalry!!!!

This may sound silly, but wouldn't be a good idea, to recruit a full cohort (hastatii, principes and triarii) at the same time, at an increased cost, instead of recruiting each unit seperately? That way, all the Roman armies will have an historically accurate composition of troops.

Does the RTW platform allow something like that be implemented?

It does allow for such mult-recruiting but it takes up another unit slot and requires scripting.

It's not going to happen. After the Polybian reforms Hastati and Princepes are essentially the same anyway.

[Centurion Crastinus]

That's too bad, that would be so sweet.

[Ailfertes]

IIRC, this is actually what happened when approaching the marian 'reforms', that the armies were simply and slowly uniformised (if this is a correct english word anyway) in the manner that the hastati and triarii class were abandoned in favour of one principes type of soldier. I believe this allready was happening during the Gracchi period and was finally customary with Marius. Please correct me if I'm wrong because for now I'm just putting together small peaces of information I have about this.

[Zaknafien]

Marius didn't develop the cohortal system; he simply did some rather insightful things by firing the civillian hangers-on of the army and making his soldiers carry their own equipment and some some unifying of equipment.

[NeoSpartan]

It does allow for such mult-recruiting but it takes up another unit slot and requires scripting.

It's not going to happen. After the Polybian reforms Hastati and Princepes are essentially the same anyway.

edited

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

edited

I beg your pardon?

[Sarkiss]

That's too bad, that would be so sweet.

you can try 77 BC Twilight of the Republic. it does have this recruiting system implemented.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=46

[Cheexsta]

I was fighting Romans in Italy as Epeiros in about 200 BC and I noticed that the Roman armies were full of Principes but had very few (if any) Triarii and Hastatii. This is very inaccurate since the Romans fought in almost equal numbers of Hastati, Pincipes and Triarii in three lines.

I tried playing the Roman faction myself and after the Polybian reforms I found out that my armies were more successful when all the infantry was Principes, supported by slingers and cavalry!!!!

This may sound silly, but wouldn't be a good idea, to recruit a full cohort (hastatii, principes and triarii) at the same time, at an increased cost, instead of recruiting each unit seperately? That way, all the Roman armies will have an historically accurate composition of troops.

Does the RTW platform allow something like that be implemented?

Hastati. Hastati. Hastati. Right up there with Romani.

To answer your question, it can be done through scripts, but it's hard to say whether the AI will actually be able to do it. It would work by recruiting a single unit (such as a general or an Aquila unit) and having a small army spawn nearby, but all the AI will see is an overcosted unit that it shouldn't bother with.

When the AI recruits unrealistic stacks like this, I tend to just shrug and play as if the different Roman soldiers are still there, they just happen to be armed in a similar way

[Zaknafien]

is there any way to make it where the AI can't recruit at all, and only recieves spawned armies? perhaps a spawned garrison for each city, and one spawned stack per X number of cities they own?

[Cheexsta]

Probably. You'd need to use a few building slots for it, though; one building for every faction. Have the campaign script detect which faction is local (ie the player faction) and plonk that building in all cities. Then use that building as part of an "and not" condition for all recruitment except for that faction.

At least, it works in my mind. Whether or not it would work in reality is subject to actual testing.

[Atilius]

is there any way to make it where the AI can't recruit at all, and only recieves spawned armies? perhaps a spawned garrison for each city, and one spawned stack per X number of cities they own?

That would become an enormous mess very quickly. In the case of the Romans, you've got 4 military eras and 198 cities to deal with. Without adding logic to avoid spawning armies when they aren't needed, you create a potential upkeep nightmare. Dealing with recruitment cost and population reduction due to recruitment is a big headache too.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Add to that the massive lag it would create: basically you are trying to rewrite the entire part of the AI which deals with recruitment. And then execute it as another layer of programming on top of the game itself...

Trying to persuade the AI into recruiting sensible armies would be less of a headache, and if you accept the occasional/frequent unbalanced stacks it comes up with it will yield much better performance (game-speed wise).

EDIT: Oh and apart from the possible CTD you might cause by removing all recruitment if there is an rebellion... that one has a nasty ring to it...

[Hooahguy]

I was fighting Romans in Italy as Epeiros in about 200 BC and I noticed that the Roman armies were full of Principes but had very few (if any) Triarii and Hastatii. This is very inaccurate since the Romans fought in almost equal numbers of Hastati, Pincipes and Triarii in three lines.

not really. IIRC, the hastati and principes were almost the same numbers, but the triarii were about 1/2 that amount.