Velites vs Vigiles: Skirmishers vs Garrison units in general

[Vercingetorix_Defeated]

I was somewhat surprised to notice, when fighting various rebel armies in Italy, that Velites absolutely slaughter Vigiles in melee combat. Even without throwing their javelins before hand, 160 of my Velites killed 240 rebel Vigiles taking very minimal casualties (10-20).

Since Velites are cheaper to both recruit and maintain, what's the point of having Vigiles at all? Goes for Doryphoroi and other militia level units in general, the skirmishers are cheaper, but are more effective at fighting against all units.

Also noticed that Numidian archers can apparently crush Equite light cavalry. I charged 160 Numidian archers from behind with 101 Equite cavalry, and the Numidian archers simply turned around to slaughter dozens of Equites in seconds.

Obviously, the fact that Numidian archers, with no armor and very low attack value, were able to slaughter cavalry who had charged them from behind, pretty much makes cavalry useless.

What's the point of extremely expensive cavalry (equites are 800 denarii) that can't even win battles with skirmishers that they've charged from behind? If they can't beat skirmishers in that situation, they can't beat any unit.

[CaesarVincens]

There are several factors you must consider. Velites use a dagger in combat, and vigiles use a spear. Swords and daggers beat spears ceteris paris. I believe velites melee stats are better than vigiles too. However, the reason to recruit the garrison units is that they have more men in a unit and so have a greater effect on population order. They were never meant to be battle infantry except in the most dire of circumstances.

As for the archers against the cavalry, what difficulty were you playing on, if anything other than medium, there are attack and defense bonuses to one side or the other. Also, did your equites have a proper charge (they lowered their lances)? If not, they often lose more men on the initial impact than otherwise, and they kill fewer enemies too. And if you are playing with the 2 hp system, cavalry are less effective earlier on.
Also, equites are not Medieval knights in full plate, they are light cavalry, chargers at best, chasers and harrasers more often. Their function is to harrass and distract enemies units, and to charge the back of engaged units. They are meant to provide the final punch to rout a wavering unit.
If you charge a unit of cavalry into any infantry and just leave them there after, they should die. Cavalry's strength is mobility and shock.

Also, just as a general note, unit sizes and what not are better balanced at large for XGM, playing at huge will give infantry a better chance against cavalry.

[Vercingetorix_Defeated]

Yeah, I had thought that huge size had something to do with this.

Still, these aren't infantry or spearmen, these were completely unarmored, standard archers charged from BEHIND. In real combat, half of their unit would have been slaughtered by lances at the outset of the charge and the rest would have routed immediately. None of them are going to suddenly turn around and try to use little daggers against armored cavalry with shields equipped with lances....

If equites can't rout skirmishers and archers, they're nigh useless. Especially for the cost.

As for vigiles, after finding out that velites are far more useful, I won't be recruiting vigiles again. Sure, the extra 80 men helps a small amount in keeping order, but the thing is, with your main cities, they don't need any garrison to keep them happy anyway, while opposing cultures will still revolt and rebel with 2000-4000 infantry occupying them.

I think the problem stems from the "defense skill" stat being too much of an equalizer. When packed so close together in melee combat, the ability to dodge is minimal, and the shield is far more important. The Gauls found this out the hard way when the Romans packed them too close for their individual fighting style and long swords to be effective.

Vigiles have large shields and spears, which would give them a huge advantage over velites with tiny shields and daggers in melee combat. Just think about trying to attack someone in a formation with only a velite sized shield and a dagger, when they have a much larger shield and a 6 foot long spear. They could be stabbing that thing into your torso when you're still 3 feet from being able to hit them. This was, after all, what the hoplite was based around.

Personally I'm going to be making some serious changes to the EDU. Pretty much every unit, now that I think of it.

[Anakarsis]

Are you sure that those archers were not super-veterans? i tested this some times, at first with 1 hp and the second with 2 hp. Both times the equites exterminated the numidians, enduring 10-12 casualties with 1hp and 7-10 with 2hp, defauilt unit size (phalanx infantry 120 men)

As for the skirmishers, they are relatively professional soldiers, looks good to me that the beat local recruited militia in melee

[DimeBagHo]

Vigiles are not trained soldiers, Velites are. You can recruit one with no military infrastructure, but you have to build a baracks to get the other.

Apart from being unrealistic, if you start making level 0 garrison units better than proffesional soldiers then you will see nothing but stacks full of garrison units in campaign. That's going to get borring quite quickly.

It's also a bad idea to start rewriting the EDU based off isolated incidents in campaign battles. Lots of factors can affect the outcome of a partcular engagement, like relative experience, terain, command bonuses, weather, and so on.

If you think something is unbalanced then it is better to do some tests in custom battles with controlled conditions.

[Vercingetorix_Defeated]

Velites are the most inexperienced and poorly equipped soldiers in a Roman legion, the greenest of the green. Their ultra low cost and ease of recruitment represents that. I agree that they should have an advantage over militias: but that advantage should be that they have a bunch of throwing javelins that can wipe out half the militia unit without going near it. In flanking attacks on weak units they could also be useful.

But charging head on, when the enemies have large shields and spears? The Celts certainly weren't professional soldiers, but when they had large shields and spears, you wouldn't send light missile units charging head on into them and expect to slaughter them. (thats what you have heavily armed and armored legionaries for)

Anyway, I'll test Numidian archers vs equites in melee in custom battle, and see how it goes.

[Roman Warlord]

Have you even looked at the stats of the basic garrison unit of the barbarians?

They are far superior to the basic garrison unit of civilised people and would easily beat skirmishers in melee.

Milita are just what they asy they are untrained and more a police force given no training, imagine you were given a spear and told to fight. Compare that to someone who has been campaing for the last 6 months- several years reasonably disiplined and knows how to kill you.

Odds don't look too good for you now.

[Hurlbut]

smaller units of a Legion are also used as garrison

[War lord]

smaller units of a Legion are also used as garrison

I prefer the idea of later roman field tactics(BI players know what I am talking about)!

[Vercingetorix_Defeated]

I prefer the idea of later roman field tactics(BI players know what I am talking about)!

If you were going for "realism", why would you use later Roman tactics in a campaign that goes from 280 BC to 14 AD?

In reality, Rome itself had NO garrison at as the Roman Republic. I guess your Rome better have no garrison troops either, and no governor, since there was no governor of Rome during the Republic either.

Oh, and Vigiles were a fire brigade created AFTER the end of the Republic, so I guess recruiting even one Vigile unit isn't realistic at all.

[War lord]

If you were going for "realism", why would you use later Roman tactics in a campaign that goes from 280 BC to 14 AD?

In reality, Rome itself had NO garrison at as the Roman Republic. I guess your Rome better have no garrison troops either, and no governor, since there was no governor of Rome during the Republic either.

Oh, and Vigiles were a fire brigade created AFTER the end of the Republic, so I guess recruiting even one Vigile unit isn't realistic at all.

I am not going for complete realism I am going for trying to play the game as it was ment to be played.

Also:Thats Urban cohorts your talking about.

[Balikedes]

I find myself using 1st level skirmish troops as garrison troops because their upkeep is cheaper. Doryphoroi cost 20 more denarii per unit, per turn in upkeep than regular peltasts. If your empire starts getting kind of big, that 20 denari gets blown up with having up to 5 units in a city for a garrison, multiplied by your number of cities held, could be several thousand denarii per turn wasted on having Doryphoroi rather than peltasts as your garrison.

[DimeBagHo]

Balikedes: The order effect of a unit depends on the number of men in the unit. One skirmisher unit has 80 men on large. One garrison unit has 120 men on large. That means you get 50% more order for only 5% more cost with a garrison unit.

In cities where you only need one small unit to keep order you might save some money by using skirmishers. Anywhere else it will be cheaper to use garrison units.

[Balikedes]

Balikedes: The order effect of a unit depends on the number of men in the unit. One skirmisher unit has 80 men on large. One garrison unit has 120 men on large. That means you get 50% more order for only 5% more cost with a garrison unit.

In cities where you only need one small unit to keep order you might save some money by using skirmishers. Anywhere else it will be cheaper to use garrison units.

I see....

Thank you for the clarity.

[Barend]

The vigiles fire brigades were installed by Augustus, that's after the end of the Republic. And Rome had a sort of governor; I thought it was the urban prefect (not sure though) But does it really matter?
Units have to have names, and vigiles is a rather fitting one. The Latin 'vigil' means 'guard' in the time before the Principate (after the Republic vigiles is meant for the fire brigades), so vigiles is perfectly fitting for these units.

The urban cohorts were to counter the position of the Preatorian Cohorts in the city and their main duties were to keep the mobs under control.

[War lord]

So Urbans were like riot squads?

[Barend]

Yep.

So to sum it up:

Vigiles = firebrigade
Urban Cohorts = riot squad
Preatorian Guard = "bodyguard" of the emperors

[Vercingetorix_Defeated]

I've heard the Urban Cohorts described more as police, but that is basically the same thing as riot squad.

The Praetorians would have been the only ones to actually see combat out of the three, because they composed the bodyguard of not only the emperor, but of any important Roman generals in the Empire.

War lord, my point is that you like playing the game one way, other people like playing the game another way.

Why do you assume that YOUR way is the way it was "meant" to be played? Even if the developer came and said "Yeah, we wanted the game to be played that way", that doesn't mean anything, because I play it the way I want to, not the way someone else wants it to be played.

RTW vanilla had stupidly overpowered fantasy units, does that mean that we should all use those units? Of course not, so mods like XGM remove them and replace them with better ones.

[Barend]

The Praetorians would have been the only ones to actually see combat out of the three, because they composed the bodyguard of not only the emperor, but of any important Roman generals in the Empire.

This was only the case up until the Principate, then the Praetorians became the bodygaurd of the emperor.

[War lord]

This was only the case up until the Principate, then the Praetorians became the bodygaurd of the emperor.

Praetorian prefects and imperel famliy members on campain would have had Praetorian bodygaurds in Principate.