Some questions about auxiliaries, as I'm not sure exactly how they were used. Through a general interest in Roman history, I always thought the auxiliaries were used to fill the gaps in the Roman army where they were particularly weak in their early years, such as the cavalry and their missile troops. The standard legion I thought would be made of 10 cohorts of legionaries (4800) and about 200 cav auxilia attatched and the other 1000 would be various forms of auxilia, artillery, engineers, surgeons, generals. I thought the auxilia was part of the legion or included in the standard 6000 men. When I hear 'legion' I automatically think of a large bunch of legionaries, with small attachments of auxilia to support them. Then, in the preview section about the auxilia, there is a line stating 'In 101AD, Trajan led his legions, accompanied by thousands of auxilairies'. Does this imply that the auxilaries were just attatchments of the legions and would only be added to form a full legion of 6000 men during a campaign or do I have the wrong impression of what a legion was?
With the detail RS2 gives surrounding the army, it's confused me a little and makes me wonder and ask questions as to how they were used.
In the preview section it states that the auxiliary cohorts were either 'quengenaria' (500 strong) or 'millaria' (1000 strong), 480 men and 800 respectively. These auxilia were heavy infantry as well as missile troops and cavalry. In their stats in RS2, some are even as good as legionaries, and at a lower price, much lower, about half. Does this simply mean that auxilia were a cheaper way of recruiting non-citizen soldiers who were as reliable but at a lower cost?
In RS2 the auxilia heavy infantry are given names, and in the preview section they are decribed as campaigning in Syria and Germania. It doesn't make it clear however if they were campaigning by themselves, or alongside the legionaries.
Basically to make my questions simple:
1) Were the auxiliaries used to provide specialised troops(such as cavalry) initially but during the empire they evolved to supply a cheap method of manpower as effective as the legionary?
2) Were they attachments of the legions or were they in the legion itself?
3) Is it historically accurate in RS2 to have armies that consist entirely of auxilaries and disband some armies of legionaries to save money?
4) I remember somewhere reading that at it's height, the Roman empire's army consisted of 400,000 men. While this may not have always been true, how many on average would have been legionaries and how many were auxilaries?
5) When playing RS2, when fortifying the borders with forts or 'limes', is it more historically accurate to create one fort for the auxilaries seperate alongside a fort of legionaries, or to create legion forts containing small amounts of auxillaries?
At the moment I have about 20 active legions in my campaign, (85 settlements, just hit the 2nd rebellion, but put that aside), all numbered. Their armies are usually made up of 1gen,1 1st cohort, 8 cohorts, 2 artillery and the other 8 slots is made up of auxiliarys depending where they are be they archers, cav, cavalry archers or auxilary infantry. I have one small Praetorian army outside Rome. I also have a few forts throughout the empire consisting of very small amounts auxiliary infantry and and cav just to act like a peace time guard force. I have absolutely no forts consisting of large armies made up entirely of auxiliares near the borders. In summary I use auxiliaries purely as addition to the legion and they are used completely to support them.
6) Is this use of auxiliaries accurate. If it is, there must have been fewer auxiliaries than legionaries, and my gut tells me that's not true. So really would there have been fortifications manned entirely by auxiliaries on the borders and would they have been as big as the legion forts?