On the post-Marian Legions: Those forces did not appear out of the nowhere overnight. In fact the Roman state allready pays for/provided equipement for the militia soldiers since or soon after the Thrid Punic War. It is all to sensible to assume that a level of unification in armour and weaponary has been achieved in the following century until Marius.


Quote Originally Posted by Basileos ton Ellenon
It is widely interesting to see that many lands conquered by Napoleon were pillaged during XVIII century wars before and "conquered" by European powers. It's also interesting to notice that they were all re-conquered by these European powers before, so that must mean that the Grand Armee really sucked.

Ah I see, we are closing in to the main problem of this threat: When an army was more successfull than its opponents, its units must have been better than theirs. Right? Wrong.

Speaking of your example, the Napoleonic Wars, the common battalion French infantry of the line was by its "stats" (if we would make an EB 1800) not better than, for example, a comperable British or Austrian unit. The Prussian army of 1806, that was curshed within a few hours, was a well equiped force of long serving professionals. The army of 1813/15, that sent Napoleon to exile twice, was a levy mob that had to borrough weapons and uniforms from their allies.


So you see, that the quality of a unit most not go according to the victory of an army made of those units - and vice versa.