I've never switched to empire. What does it do to your recruitment?
It does nothing, he's just sharing his way of roleplaying a more challenging / realistic recruitment.
I didn't know that the Marian reforms led to the recruitment of soldiers outside of Italy into the legions - I thought the difference was just that the poorer Romans, rather than any foreigners, could fight as Legionaries.
In my last Rome campaign, I found this strategy to be impractical because culture would convert so quickly (and it would be entirely necessary for it to do so to quell rebellions) that soon enough you would end up with many, many more plebes and proletarii in your conqured provinces than Peregrini. However now I've started my second playthrough with the cultural tensions and DEI Arbitriis sub-mods, this strategy will likely be necessary, as well as flavoursome and fun.
I intend to use the Socii units from Latium and Italia as the Allied heavy infantry and cavalry, along with Cretan archers as soon as I can get them. Other cavalry units - such as Numidians from Africa, which I have found extremely useful in the past - and light infantry will also be mixed in.
In my last game, my army composition was more or less standardised after the Marian reforms to include 1 cavalry general, 2 veteran legionaries, 8 legionaries, 2 spear auxiliaries drawn from the local region, 3 - 4 cavalry units, 2 - 3 cretans, and one ballista. The Marian reforms give a bunch of variety when it comes to sword infantry and it all looked very interesting, but because population in foreign regions increased so quickly, I never felt the need to supplement the legionaries.
When it comes to auxiliary units available to the Romans in the early game - does anybody have some suggestions for me to try out?
I tend to expand beyond Cisalpina pretty slowly, however I usually aim to get an aux barracks in Cisalpina or ehm, Switzerland, Cisalpina and Narbonensis gives you the mercenary heavy cavalry, the barracks gives you several celtic and massalian troops like their hoplites, after the thorax reforms you'll also get the romanized thorakitai, which are near legionnairy level, recruitable from the foreigner class, which is pretty impressive if it's going to take a while to get to the marian reforms. Southern Italy also has some excellent ranged units with the aux barracks i believe, although I'm not sure if they're available before the marian reforms.
Thanks for that comment- I hadn't realized until I read it that Rome has built in barracks. I have both auxillary and a barracks in Rome for over 100 turns. Really a waste of a building slot.
Overall I usually only build 1 or 2 training centers on the entire map. Starting with 1 central location and eventually converting that to other buildings and making two new centers equidistant from the edges of the empire. Having all infantry trained in 1 region, all cavalry in another, and any artillery in 3rd to maximize bonuses though that usually isn't possible until around turn 150 when most campaigns are pretty much over.
STAINLESS STEEL Historical Improvement Project (SSHIP) - v0.8.2 Beta released!
Recent AARs/Guides
Norway 180 turn SS/BGR AAR- http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...71#post8479471
Lithuania SS/BGR AAR- http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=369607
1390 SS submod WIP
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=479539