Roman Legions and taxes

[LittleD]

Hi all, I like to first say this is the best RTW mod I have played yet. I just love the named legion systems.

I have 2 questions

1.(noob question) I have just recently started playing Total war campaigns. I get most of it but I still have a problem with the taxes. How should I know which city I should keep it low or high in? because I usually use Auto manage taxes. And a lot of people tell me not to do it that way.

2. Do you guys really use the Auxiliary system, where you have 1 Roman legion and about 1-3 Auxiliary legions as back up? or do you guys just use regular Roman legions. I see a lot of people use different ways. But what is the most historical way to use the roman military to conquer?

thanks

[Paedric]

First, welcome to the forum.
You should always try to have a green face (105% of happiness), so lower your taxes if they are angry.
If you have no happiness problem, put them to high. This way you have no traits which lowered your management, this happen when your taxes are too high, or too low.
For the auxiliary, 1 Roman legion and about 1-3 Auxiliary legions as back up is the more realistic way, but this really depends of how you want to play, people use the two ways.

[Tankbuster]

Paedric is joking. Set everything to Very High Taxes, and let your population suffer to be under your kind rule!!

Seriously though, I put my taxes to very high in every city. Training cities is like training dogs: if you cut slack off in the beginning, they get used to it; if you train 'em hard from the beginning, they stay sharp and they remember who's in charge

If you put all taxes to very high in the beginning, you will have a bit more trouble keeping public order though, but if you keep building temples and health buildings, you should be able to keep all cities at 105%+
When conquering new provinces, you have to give the citizens there a bit of time before you start raising taxes though.

[Cr7390]

I think, the Historic way would be to have one Army per Legion.

thats how my Legions normally Look like.

-Generl
-1. Cohort
-2-9 Cohort
- 4 Auxilliary Infantry
- 2 Velites
- 2 kavallerie
- 1 Katapult

Histroically a Legion had about 6000 Legionaries and ~ 5000 Auxillia Troops

[LittleD]

ok thanks for the support guys.

Also, for "huge and large" cities, about how many men should I have as garrison.

And wont putting every city to very high taxes cause cities to go broke or what ever negative effect happens.

[Leeham991]

High taxes unless is causes a problem.

And ya, I like to keep 2-3 auxilia as backup for each legion
1) Attack army for breaking into cities really easily
2) Defense army for holding key spots
3) Rapid response army for intercept missions.

Oh course it's best to move the units around a bit. I like to take my best 5 legionary cohorts and replace them with elements of the defense army so that they can join the attack army in a siege, bridge break, ect.
And another thing is to take archers from the Rapid response to join the defense army to hold high ground.

It's all flexible! As long as you get everyone back into the right battalions to do their jobs as Legionaries, wall breakers, defenders, interceptors; then it's all cool

[stanley86]

Set the taxes from the beggining as high as possible and try to develop your cities in all aspects (military, trade, culture, religion). If you focus too much on one aspect, forgetting about others, byou'll encounter problems with income or public order. I know it from autopsy. As Tankbuster wrote: train the cities
As for "huge and large" cities' garrison: it should be as small as possible. The governor and 2-5 militia units. That's how I do it.

[LittleD]

ok thank you again

Sorry for all the questions but I 2 last ones.

Im going to go ahead and restart my roman campaign. Now I am wondering what faction should I try to conquer first and how long should I wait to activate the Reforms.

[Beast Within]

as for the reforms i dont see how it matters tbh personal choice but i do like to spend quite a few years with the maniples

and i usually go straight for epirus, get control of italy while taking the rebel settlements near the alps then conserve your mini empire build your economy and then spread in whatever direction, but usually i end up getting attacked before i have chance to decide left or right and that makes the decision for me......watch out for syracuse and epirus sending see assaults happens often with me! otherwise gaul and macedon which seems to be the other threats just sit the for a long time

Just make sure you leave troops in italy as sea assualts are likely and also troops on your northern border, otherwise just take on whoever is taking on you when not build up your empire, i have started not one single war with any nation on the game, and all: macedonia, syracuse, epirus, gaul, greece, armenia, carthage have took me on so in otherwords dont go off on a mission the ai are aggressive enough, but once war starts commit your troops to that area and take out that nation as fast as possible, usually instead of sending one army at a time, send like 5-10 stacks i usually do and trample the enemy in a matter of years

hopes this helps

[stanley86]

Well, it's a matter of personal choice when to trigger the reforms.
Screen form my campaign:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I did it all with republican maniples. It's 589AUC and just recently I've started to swap them with VE legions. So, there's no need to trigger the reforms in the beggining of the campaign (have seen some screenshots from people already having 5-6 N&N legions, when not even controlling the italian peninsula).
As for directions of development, I can show you how I did it: Italy -> Sicily -> all the other islands of western Mediterranean Sea -> city of Carthage -> landing in Iberia -> all of western Africa -> landing north of Macedon ->Greece -> taking control of Iberian peninsula -> landing in Asia Minor and Egypt -> Middle East And now playing defensively until the marian reforms.