Total War: Rome II - Page 62

On September 07 2013 08:35 Tula wrote:


Note that I agree with the parts I've removed from your post, but I do have some small quibbles with this post. You are mixing and matching a number of different periods of the roman army here. The famous 40km a day (point of order, 40km was a forced march, 30km was the goal Caesar set, and he was considered a harsh disciplinarian in that aspect) was only achievable after Marius removed 90% of the baggage train with his reforms. Any prior army was exactly as slow as any other ancient army (with the exception of Nomadic cultures, one of the reasons they had such problems with the Cimbri).

At the start of the republic the chain of command was indeed very clear, One consul would be sent out with an army (usually around 2 Legions maximum) the other would mind the fort at home. The title of proconsul (properly put imperium pro consule) was invented at the time when rome started to field more armies than they had consuls or praetors they could send away (some disagreement here, but usually people cite the creation of the pronvinces as this point so sometime during the punic wars).

The individual chain of command varied a lot depending on how the general wanted to use his legates. Some of the most famous Roman blunders happened when two senior dignitaries did not agree with each other (Aurasia, Cannae to name the most famous examples).

Until the second Punic War Rome fielded their legions in a pseudo phalanx formation (haestati in the first two lines, followed by 2 lines of principes and a line of triarii was considered the ideal formation 1000man wide 5 ranks deep, if I wasn't on vacation I could cite you a latin source for that). They were actually very inflexible tactically and won their wars against the other latin tribes through a combination of good diplomacy, attrition and pure grit. After Hannibal wrecked them twice Cornelius Scipio (later called Africanus) reformed the Army around the maniple and Centuriae and instituted many of the things you list (chain of command, Centurions, Standards to orient the men, Horn signals to name a few). Before that point few Historians actually considered Rome anything special military wise. The difference between them and their neighbours was that they simply didn't know how to quit, most guesses as to why that was, indeed list the idea of long military service as a "standard" to become a good Roman. While 20 years would be exceptional if the sources can be believed (they are rather scarce for that time period) Almost anyone did at least 5 Campaigns in the Legions. More if you wanted to become a politician (Military Tribune and later Legate was one of the few ways to get noticed as a Youngish Man if you were not an outstanding orator/lawyer).

Anyway, back on topic. At the start of the game the Romans probably should be weaker, but frankly it's kinda difficult to code that. You'd need to include at least 3 distinct steps and it would make the game flow much stranger (with the barracks system it already feels artificial enough, but at least does are linked to research, imagine if you simply had to wait and hold out for 60 turns before you could deploy your units in the typical Rome formation...). They kind of gimped Carthage heavily with the two 2 client states. I can understand why they did so, because by rights they should rule 2 entire provinces to start which would overpower them, but the First Punic War can be described best as "Superpower against the annoying gnat who just won't quit and accept peace". The Romans simply kept fighting until Carthage went bankrupt because their entire military was set up around hiring mercenaries (until Hamilcar barcas came around after this specific loss and had to fight 3 years of Rebellion). Since Carthage can recruit units normally in this game, they had to nerf them harshly in some other way

One last comment from the historian, the one area where Rome truly outshone all their opponents was Siegecraft. Both the mobile artillery and their construction to siege cities was unmatched until the Trebuchet was reinvented in the late middle ages.

Edit: after watching the extra credit episode, I must give those guys credit they actually condensed the first punic war down well for a 5 minute clip. Guess I'll show that episode to my students in the review session at some point

On September 07 2013 13:28 Skirmjan wrote:


Well, Gaius Claudius Nero clearly didn't know that, as he force-marched north some 500-600 km in 10 days before the battle of Metaurus in order to defeat Hasdrubal Barca although to be fair, he -wasn't- burdened with the baggage train as he was supplied by the local italian socii, but i had to point out that occurence still, that's an incredible feat anyways,so if the roman army was somewhat as slow as any other civilized force when burdened with baggage, it could be much faster even in pre-marian time, given the right circumstances.


The manipular legion invention is traditionally attributed to Marcus Furius Camillus, during the Samnite wars; besides only the triarii fight in a fashion vaguely resembling hoplites,both hastati and principes fight much more like iberian mercenaries (scutarii, to be more precise, which were the specific inspiration for their redesign of both their sword (gladius) and their shield/pila in the first punic war) so i have to disagree with your statement on "pseudo-phalanx legion" in the early game.
The Pyrrhic wars are a perfect example of the differences between those 2 army systems.


I fear there isn't really a way to make Rome challenging without making the AI and/or have a friend manning an opposing faction, Rome is nerfed enough by the absence of manpower/population in the game (and the italian provinces aren't quite as rich as opposed to say, german ones as historically true) so Carthage needed a nerf too

On September 07 2013 20:12 Tula wrote:


Yes if they abandoned the baggage train they could force march amazingly in the right circumstances (so could the Spartans or any other army for that matter as long as the general in command had the right authority to make it happen).

We are talking about two different things with the manipular legion there. You are talking about organisation while I was talking about tactics. Yes their marching order sorted stuff by maniples (also to make it easier to break off small units, in the Samnite wars 1 Legion was considered an army by itself), but for battle the "standard plan" was to line up in the 5 lines to create a disciplined shield wall, anchored by the most experienced men possible. Yes I can also list a few battles where they tried to do things differently, but by and large that was the way they approached battles.

And the reason I said pseudo phalanx was precisely because they had little in common with hoplites, even from the earliest points. To my knowledge they never used overreaching spears or anything similar even with their trarii, but they still lined up in similar formations at that point in time.

On September 08 2013 00:12 Tula wrote:
Right, Livy wrote the definite work on that period, but keep in mind that he did write nearly 300 years later (he lived as a contemporary of Augustus and is considered together with Vergil one of the writers of that "golden age". Many people cite him, whereas most others disagree based on older sources (even if those are usually fragmented at best) and that he glorifies ancient Rome while doing his best to villify the individual Generals who lost anything (the passage on Lake Trasimene reads something along the lines of "the poor advisors knew exactly that it was a trap but the headstrong flaminius ran headlong into it anyway). The point where people disagree heavily is that the "3 lines" he proposes simply put make no sense. Simply put if your formation is 3 lines deep as described above it would break apart against any concentrated cavalry charge. From the few accounts of eye witnesses we do have (notable 3 seperate greek sources from battles of the first punic war) the formations put into the field usually varied in depth according to the terrain available and also tried to adapt to the force opposing them. It would have been madness to deploy the standard lines of infantry with your hardened spears at the back against a Numidian cavalry force, but simply put we don't know what they did to deal with something like that.

Hannibal wrote a letter nearly 40 years later during his campaigns in Italy that he was suprised the Romans were so unflexible with their maniples.

What I meant by 5 lines as the ideal formation was that a full strength legion working in open field against a similar sized force would form up approximately along those lines. Out of a full 5000 men (and yes I know that including camp followers and officers a legion had around 4500 fighting men instead of 5000) you'd have 2000 hastati, 2000 principes and 1000 triarii ideally. That is an obvious oversimplification, but it was considered the ideal. If you deployed those in 3 lines by their maniples the triarii either had to be overstretched to cover the full length or they had to leave the flanks without them. Doesn't sound very practical. What they did instead was they deployed their maniples like a checkerboard. All white Squares were filled with a Maniple of soldiers except for the last line. The triarii deployed in a straight line (still split into maniples for unit control so that they could cover the entire formation with their strength.

We are completely ignoring the velites and Equites here btw, but let's not go there even if they did include those in a standard army.

If you want to continue this discussion (preferrebly tomorrow when i'm back to my books so I can cite my own Sources) let's take it to PMs before we continue to derail this completely. The point I wanted to make was that before the 2nd Punic War forced them to change and adapt (as the first had forced the Carthagians to adapt 30 years earlier) the Roman line of battle was by no means considered exceptional. Their "technology" so to speak was at best equal to their enemies, what set them apart was their grit and will (on the part of the senate and the people). They didn't stop and ask for terms at many points during the first punic war or the samnite Wars where it seems "obvious" in hindsight that they should have. Instead they built another fleet and tried again, and again, and again until they finally won a Fleet engagement and Carthage folded immediately.