Early Roman Republic Manipular Legion Army Composition

[Heskey]

Hi all,

This post is for those who want a quick tip on how their army compositions as Rome in the first few decades can be as historically accurate as possible, for Roman-citizen based legions. The maths works out best when Unit Size is set to Ultra, and as a new player to DeI myself I can't comment on if this is either strategically or economically viable... but I'm about to give it a shot. I welcome your feedback.

Due to unit sizes, and army size limitations I'll list some variants which you can use depending on your fighting style preference, and speak more on the maths behind it further down. I'm going to be trying the default composition:

Default - Infantry-Centric

1. General - 100 (TOTAL: 100)
2. Equites - 100 (TOTAL: 100) (CAVALRY TOTAL: 200)
3. Levy Javelinmen - 175
4. Levy Javelinmen - 175
5. Levy Javelinmen - 175 (SKIRMISHER TOTAL: 525)
6. Hastati - 200
7. Hastati - 200
8. Hastati - 200
9. Hastati - 200
10. Hastati - 200
11. Hastati - 200 (TOTAL: 1,200)
12. Principes - 200
13. Principes - 200
14. Principes - 200
15. Principes - 200
16. Principes - 200
17. Principes - 200 (TOTAL: 1,200)
18. Triarii - 200
19. Triarii - 200
20. Triarii - 200 (TOTAL: 600) (INFANTRY TOTAL: 3,000) (LEGION TOTAL: 3,725)

Variant #1 - Skirmisher-Centric

1. General - 100 (TOTAL: 100)
2. Equites - 100 (TOTAL: 100) (CAVALRY TOTAL: 200)
3. Levy Javelinmen - 175
4. Levy Javelinmen - 175
5. Levy Javelinmen - 175
6. Levy Javelinmen - 175
7. Levy Javelinmen - 175 (SKIRMISHER TOTAL: 875)
8. Hastati - 200
9. Hastati - 200
10. Hastati - 200
11. Hastati - 200
12. Hastati - 200 (TOTAL: 1,000)
13. Principes - 200
14. Principes - 200
15. Principes - 200
16. Principes - 200
17. Principes - 200 (TOTAL: 1,000)
18. Triarii - 200
19. Triarii - 200
20. Triarii - 200 (TOTAL: 600) (INFANTRY TOTAL: 2,600) (LEGION TOTAL: 3,675)

Variant #2 - Cavalry-Centric

1. General - 100 (TOTAL: 100)
2. Equites - 100
3. Equites - 100
4. Equites - 100 (TOTAL: 300) (CAVALRY TOTAL: 400)
5. Levy Javelinmen - 175
6. Levy Javelinmen - 175
7. Levy Javelinmen - 175 (SKIRMISHER TOTAL: 525)
8. Hastati - 200
9. Hastati - 200
10. Hastati - 200
11. Hastati - 200
12. Hastati - 200 (TOTAL: 1,000)
13. Principes - 200
14. Principes - 200
15. Principes - 200
16. Principes - 200
17. Principes - 200 (TOTAL: 1,000)
18. Triarii - 200
19. Triarii - 200
20. Triarii - 200 (TOTAL: 600) (INFANTRY TOTAL: 2,600) (LEGION TOTAL: 3,525)

Note: You could also replace 2 units of Levy Javelinmen with a unit of Hastati and Principes to have a more Cavalry & Infantry focused legion, or reduce just 1 Levy Javelinman and 1 Equites for the same replacements, bringing total cavalry down to 300 (including the General), retaining 2 units of Levy Javelinmen and having a strong Infantry core.

Mathematics & Unit Size

It's said that each rank of the 'triplex acies' consisted of 10 maniples of 120 soldiers each, with 10 half-strength maniples for the Triarii at the back. We can't use 30 unit slots for the core infantry alone as Total War limits each army to 20, so we must improvise - but we can still achieve the total of 1,200 soldiers for both the front and middle ranks, and 600 at the back. On Ultra Unit Size, the Hastati, Principes and Triarii consist of 200 men, so 6 of the first two makes 1,200, and 3 units of Triarii makes 600, achieving the core infantry size of 1,200 + 1,200 + 600 = 3,000 Infantry. This takes up 15 unit cards. The General must be present so this means you only have 4 unit cards to play around with Skirmishers/Cavalry as you wish, and can consider the General within your total cavalry numbers if you like. We can't make the legion further divisible by using lower Unit Size settings, as the values are 50, 100, 150 and 200 - there isn't an option for 120 although I'm sure this could be modded (and I'm also sure this would upset game balance somewhat)

Roman cavalry, supplied by the Equites social class was never great in number and the role was eventually farmed out to Rome's allied legions, or alae socii. Sources generally corroborate that there were between 100-300 Equites in such a legion.

Lastly, the velites are said to have numbered between 1,000 - 1,200; but to have so many would require 6-7 units of Skirmishers alone and severely impact on the efficiency of the rest of the legion.

Enjoy, and let me know how you get on!

Sources

Wikipedia - Manipular Legion (315 BC - 107 BC)
YouTube - THFE Productions: "Total War History: Triplex Acies"
Podcast - The History of Rome - Ep. 14b - "A Phalanx with Joints"
YouTube - SurrealBeliefs - Rome 2 "Let's Play" (can't remember which episode number he covers it in, but it's between 1-10)

[Ivan_Moscavich]

You should actually swap out one unit of leves with one unit of the leve slingers in all cases. They're absolutely crappy slingers, but it does represent the absolute rock bottom poor people who were drafted to fight who indeed often used slings.

[Purplzhazy]

In your setup, it's a pure roman legion. Italian are not taken in account.

[Heskey]

Hi all,

This post is for those who want a quick tip on how their army compositions as Rome in the first few decades can be as historically accurate as possible, for Roman-citizen based legions.

I know

[Meraun]

hi! iam not trying to be the bad guy here, but you cant call a Roman-citizen-based legion historical.... its not...

If you want a historical Legion you can have 10 Roman units tops..

My historical setup is:

-1x General
-5x Hastati Roman
-3x Principes Roman
-2x Principes from Italian confederate
-2x Triarii
-4x Javaline
-2x Equites Socii (I always use confederate Cav)
-1x ballista or polybos (love them)

[Falco]

Cool to see what other people are using. I personally prefer to have a mix, like maybe 2-3 hastati, 2-3 principes, a triarii or two, then just mix all the socii I can in there. I like to include the socii ala in the stack (in previous versions I would make the whole army roman, then make a socii ala stack that would follow the army around).

[Dardo21]

I use 3-4 ranged, 2-3 ballistae when I get them, 4-5 triarii, 4-5 principes, 1-2 hastati or principes samnitci (late) (or 1 infantry and 1 bagage) and 3-4 cavalry (mostly socii/aux or merc's) units depending on the use of the army

[Beedo83]

I've been toying with the idea of having a few legions each with a different purpose but all working in unison. Such as having my forward legion have a scouting/skirmisher focus with it's own commander, then another legion with my heavy infantry that would always be reinforcing the skirmisher legion with it's melee focused commander. Would be beneficial to have 2 or more generals each specialized to it's own set of units. It gets boring for me making cookie cutter legions (not knocking historical accuracy as I'm a huge history nerd). I mostly like the idea of having multiple commanders that would oversee different operations.

[Heskey]

hi! iam not trying to be the bad guy here, but you cant call a Roman-citizen-based legion historical.... its not...

If you want a historical Legion you can have 10 Roman units tops..

My historical setup is:

-1x General
-5x Hastati Roman
-3x Principes Roman
-2x Principes from Italian confederate
-2x Triarii
-4x Javaline
-2x Equites Socii (I always use confederate Cav)
-1x ballista or polybos (love them)

You're right that legions had attachments of alae - usually on the flanks, but artillery didn't feature in standard land-legions, at least not until much later into the Republic; and with a 20 unit card limit, you're making a very small-scale legion if you want to encompass ALL aspects of a full army in one TW army. The suggestions in my OP are historically accurate (and very well researched) for the Roman-citizen based portion of a legion; discounting the allied units, which, you can do what I did in vanilla R2TW and make a 2nd legion fully comprised of the allied troops that accompanies the main legion wherever it goes, so when you go into battle you have 40 units to control - main legion + allies. Ta-da!