Army composition help

[keanucange]

Im playing as the romans and am having some hard time on how to set up my army. I was wondering what early tactics are good to use. at one point I tried to use 10 triarii, 5 axulia cavalry and a general (plus some merc cavalry) but it seems that cavalry got nerfed very badly. (and for some reason they tend to spread out and attack the units surrounding the unit I want to attack for example an annoying anti cavalry unit the spearmen grrr ) Was wondering if there is a way to stop that and if you guys got any hints. I just got this mod this day and would appreciate any kind of help you could give me.

[despot_of_rhodes]

The best advise i can give you is to adapt your army composition to the armies of your foes. Fighting rebells during the sieges without stone walls you could find funditores very usefull to decimate the enemy from the distance. Severall skirmishers could also do a good job, throwing their javelines at the defenders from outside the walls, decimating them and lowering their morale. Your hastati and then princeps would be able then to finish the job with ease.
Also, try to bring your skirmishers/light javeline infantry over the flancs in the rear of enemies heavy infantry - a couple of javeline volleys could do a miracle, causing mass routing through devastating effect ( if a unit is attacked from behind wether armour nor shield can protect the unit from the impact, causing really heavy causalities ).
Flank engaged enemy formations with heavy sword infantry allways from the right side and with your skirmishers from the left ( defence skills of the unit protects only it´s from and right side, while the shield protects the front and the left side ( reducing the impact of missiles of any kind ).

The motives of RTR moders was to make battles, and the gameplay in generall, as realistic as possible. There should be a text file within the mod, where you can learn how to play the game as "a true roman". Triari, for example, weren´t actually supposed to do much fighting, there were veterans, wich used to fight only if a battle was that tough, that they engagement was really nessesery. Ther are the elite of any roman legion, but their presence in general is much more important then their actual engagement in the fight, since this unit has got a command ability ( see unit card description: Eagle inspires friendly units ). So use your triari as kind of reserve, if you got outflanked to counter attack.

So, if you want to play a bit historically, you should made up your legions mainly from hastati, followed by princeps, a couple of velites and, of course, several italic auxilla units, wich are not only good for the correct historicyl legion composition, but also quite cost effective, especially important in the early game.

Cavalry in RTR serves actually three purposes: 1. driving skirmishers away from your infantry, 2. charging engaged ( and if possible tired and already decimated enemy infantry ) from behind and 3. harassing the fleeing/brocken enemies. Last can be efficiently done with light cavalry, because of fast moving and good stamina. RTW vanilla ( the unmodifed version ) frontal cavalry charges into enemy infantry isn´t really possible in RTR, except with heavy cataphracts ( and even then be aware of phalanx/spearmen )
Your general bodyguards do not have 2 hitpoints from vanilla anymore, so be carefull while charging with them ( a good trick is to rally with your commanding generall shortly before charging into the enemy - that way you reduce the chance that your general would get killed during the charge ).
One more thing about charging with cavalry: make sure, your horsemen stoped and reformed and are in an apropriate charge distance from their target. Only then they can deliver a "full charge", wich is successfull, when they lower their spears ( hold your mouse over the unit, after you gave them the charge order, and wait, if your cavalry really "charging" or not ).

Hope that helps a little. For farther details take a look at the threads, where all these tactics were descussed previosly. Good luck.

[keanucange]

ah thank you. this is certainly usefull. I remember in vanilla that horsemen (after the marius reforms) were extremely overpowered (or maybe the enemy that I was fighting just didnt have spearmen/phalanx yet) being able to decimate several units without taking massive losses (this has been changed a bit) the general thing is also quite usefull (the -2 hitpoints thing that is) since in the heat of battle I would use him sometimes to turn the battle will try to refrain from such.

[Rob of the Julii]

Very simple:

General
5 Hastati
5 Principes
3 Triarii
2 Velites
2 Cavalry

That gives you two slots to fill with whatever you need - mercenaries or artilliery maybe. I use the above set up in literally all my armies against any enemy and it's never failed me. It's also really authentic too, so if it was good enough for the romans why not for us?