SPQR guide : How to survive the first fifteen turns.

[Hesus de bodemloze]

Well using shieldwall will always give you more victims becous thy stand to close to each other.

[czePowerslave]

Testudo is awesome against missile fire yes, but suffers greatly against cavalry, artillery and infantry charges

[Hesus de bodemloze]

That is why you need to act quickly to undo the testudo when you get charged by infanterie or cav. We are wandering of topic, this guide is to survive the first FIFTEEN turn so there won' t be any testudo movements becous of the pre marius units.

[z32236]

I just pass the first 5 turns in SPQR7.0 with M/M difficulty.
I beat Cathage's 2 troops with 50% lost of my own legions.
I use Vibus's legion beat the Gauls and got one Gaul city in my north boundary.
It looks that the money is not a problem anymore in SPQR as I already have 10000 dinar in 5 turns.
I find that the Gauls is nothing and I think I can use town watchers as the first line to fight with Gauls.

[czePowerslave]

I just pass the first 5 turns in SPQR7.0 with M/M difficulty.
I beat Cathage's 2 troops with 50% lost of my own legions.
I use Vibus's legion beat the Gauls and got one Gaul city in my north boundary.
It looks that the money is not a problem anymore in SPQR as I already have 10000 dinar in 5 turns.
I find that the Gauls is nothing and I think I can use town watchers as the first line to fight with Gauls.

10 thousand. That is no money. And fighting Gauls. You will see. I am about 120 turns into the game, and I have 126 recorded battles with gauls

[Raglan]

well your obviously doing better than me cause im struggling to make 5000 each turn - mind you i have only just recaptured italy(genoa and south of the po + messalia in sicily) so not had a chance to build my economy much yet and i'm supporting 7 legions

[Hesus de bodemloze]

You should build up your economie afther taking Sicilia before invading other lands, becous you need to support more legions then 7.

[Raglan]

other than mines anything that you would recomend (i'm reluctant to build farms cause i dont like to large a pop growth)

[Hesus de bodemloze]

Ports, traders, forums, ...

[Raglan]

so same as vanilla then really?

[Hesus de bodemloze]

Sort of. Also roads bring in extra money and law to your cities.

[z32236]

I find it's 0 turn building armies. Is it reality?
I will try to invest more money in the city, as now I only have 3 half legions.
How to mark the legions with number? I can only see the SPQR in the legion flag, but no legion number.
Why there are legion number on each city?

[Raglan]

legion numbers are applicable once marian reforms occur (i think) and the legion names in citys is so you know where you recruited the legion (and so can retrain it)

all the post marian legions are restricted to a percific place so a legion raised in capua can only be retrained in capua

[czePowerslave]

other than mines anything that you would recomend (i'm reluctant to build farms cause i dont like to large a pop growth)

When you will start fighting on larger scale, you will need all the people you can get

[Hesus de bodemloze]

Legions will be numbered afther marius reforms, the number on each city is to make it easyer for you to finde out which legion belongs to which city becous you can only retrain your legions in the city thy belong to.

I find it's 0 turn building armies. Is it reality?

What do you mean by this? There is a 0 time recruitment meaning you can fill in the 9 slots and the next turn you will have 9 units ready.

*Edit* My god you guy' s are actieve.

[Raglan]

i've not ventured out of italy yet and i'm starting to understand that!

[czePowerslave]

I find it's 0 turn building armies. Is it reality?
I will try to invest more money in the city, as now I only have 3 half legions.
How to mark the legions with number? I can only see the SPQR in the legion flag, but no legion number.
Why there are legion number on each city?

0 turn recruitment reflects the ability to train multiple units at time. IE you dont need in reality to train single cohort for half a year, then another one. This way to train entire legion it would take 20 game turns. This represents as you can train like 8 cohorts at the same time.

Indeed invest into your cities. Against Gauls you need about 4 legions, and more for conquer.
Legions with numbers come when you get Marius reforms. And they are expensive

[Ejergard]

About shieldwall vs standard formation when facing barbarians. Tbh, in a big scale battle, I don't notice that much of a difference, that can't be blamed on coincidence, such as bad tactics, a flawed manouver, etc. So, I decided to go do some testing!

This was a fairly basic test. I copied a portion of a premarius battle line, with 2 units of Hastati and 1 unit of Principe, all with no experience or upgrades.
These units would then fight a Chosen Swordsmen unit with +4 in experience.
First, I did 3 tests with the units in standard shift+2 formation with the Hastati in front and the Principe behind to be ready to charge the gap, which is pretty similar to what I do in campaign battles. Only difference being that in a normal legion, each Principe is usually straight behind a unit of Hastati, but I still use them to charge the gaps.
All units have fire at will on, the Hastati are in guard mode and the Principe are in normal mode.
Standard formation shown on picture below:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Then I did 3 tests with all units in shieldwall formation, same test.
Only difference in formation is that i use shift+1 to make formation for Hastati closer to eachother:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The results we are interested is in which formation we lose the least personel, and the number lost is listed below.

Normal formation:
1st try 176 killed
2nd try 137 killed
3rd try 180 killed
Med: 164

Shieldwall:
1st try 129 killed
2nd try 103 killed
3rd try 146 killed
Med: 126

This is very "shallow" testing, but I think it is enough to say that there is a difference. If the results can be applied to a fullscale battle, it would mean the difference of losing 600 men in normal formation compared to around 450 people in shieldwall formation.

[cnaeus]

nice that someone finally tested it because i started too doubt if shieldwall did save my men but it turns out it does. thanks ejergard +rep.

cnaeus,

[BunnyPoopCereal]

Good test mate, I do stuff like this all the time.