My problem with the whole legion system

[rudthemighty]

Needless to say RS2 is amazing with all the little details you guys have managed to add. However the post Marian roman system can be annoying and requires tedious micromanagement.

Here is why I feel the Marian legion system is broken and quite frankly makes the roman faction the most tedious to play as:

(1) You can only recruit X legion in Y province which means if you want to continue using a legion you have to constantly keep reinforcing them from Y province. This is okay except that the AI can spam you with tons of stacks which makes reinforcing a single stack a waste of time.

(2) For every legion you need to build buildings A, B, C, D .... the requirements are endless, and ultimately the legionaries are just fractionally better than other faction elites (Averni champions for example), which means in the RS2 drawn out battles you will lose quite a few of your men. And you will have repeat the process mentioned in the previous point (1).

(3) Right after you trigger the Marian reforms you can train next to nothing to defend your cities, except a basic missle unit (Agnesti* or something), and basically until you decide to (or have the opportunity) build a roman fortress you must rely on these basic units. So basically all the barracks buildings you built before the reforms are worthless in essence. Since other factions dont have such deep requirements they can constantly keep spamming you with better units that your crappy Agnesti*.

The whole legion process works no doubt but is tedious as hell. Not to mention every single unit in RS2 has beyond elite morale so no one ever runs until you kill 90% of them, which means my late Praetorians will have to fight those worthless gallic archers till their last man.

Also the Praetorian legions are completely worthless cause if you have a legion with those guys you have to keep returning to Rome to retrain them, not to mention the added expense.

And did I mention that fatigue has no effect on morale which means all battles last 20 mins. Also when replying to this rant please dont say "Oh! Historically the romans used to blah blah blah", cause that doesnt excuse the gaps in the gameplay.

[Tsim]

wasn't it even worse in 1.6 where the units had like 70 defense? and you lucky to get away with 20 mins per battle

[NerZhulen]

in RS1 I conquered whole map with legio III augusta, basicly all units I used in the whole campaign were from one city
I do not see this as the biggest problem

[Ibram]

It may be tedious, but I think it's mean't to accurately reflect history. You wouldn't be able to reinforce your legions instantly using the citizens you just conquered. Even during the Napoleonic Wars, Regiments were based in a certain part of England, and so could only recruit from the local area, and then those recruits had to be shipped out as replacements.

That's just how these things work, and I think it's great the guys have tried to reflect this. It's mean't to present you with a challenge, force you to think ahead, and not just steam-roll all over the place

[General Brittanicus]

All you need to do is have a constant stream of reinforcements travelling to your legions at the front or have a stack close by that can act as replacements when your legion takes losses. As for the praetorians you could always use them to defend italy or dont use them if you dont like them.

[Siegfriedfr]

Needless to say RS2 is amazing with all the little details you guys have managed to add. However the post Marian roman system can be annoying and requires tedious micromanagement.

Here is why I feel the Marian legion system is broken and quite frankly makes the roman faction the most tedious to play as:

(1) You can only recruit X legion in Y province which means if you want to continue using a legion you have to constantly keep reinforcing them from Y province. This is okay except that the AI can spam you with tons of stacks which makes reinforcing a single stack a waste of time.

(2) For every legion you need to build buildings A, B, C, D .... the requirements are endless, and ultimately the legionaries are just fractionally better than other faction elites (Averni champions for example), which means in the RS2 drawn out battles you will lose quite a few of your men. And you will have repeat the process mentioned in the previous point (1).

(3) Right after you trigger the Marian reforms you can train next to nothing to defend your cities, except a basic missle unit (Agnesti* or something), and basically until you decide to (or have the opportunity) build a roman fortress you must rely on these basic units. So basically all the barracks buildings you built before the reforms are worthless in essence. Since other factions dont have such deep requirements they can constantly keep spamming you with better units that your crappy Agnesti*.

The whole legion process works no doubt but is tedious as hell. Not to mention every single unit in RS2 has beyond elite morale so no one ever runs until you kill 90% of them, which means my late Praetorians will have to fight those worthless gallic archers till their last man.

Also the Praetorian legions are completely worthless cause if you have a legion with those guys you have to keep returning to Rome to retrain them, not to mention the added expense.

And did I mention that fatigue has no effect on morale which means all battles last 20 mins. Also when replying to this rant please dont say "Oh! Historically the romans used to blah blah blah", cause that doesnt excuse the gaps in the gameplay.

20 minutes? Spent like 50 minutes (unnacelerated) in many battles when the mod was released :p

[Ibram]

Historically the Preatorian Legion never went anywhere anyway, apart from to accompany the Emperor on the rare visits he made elsewhere. Weren't they also supposed to be rubbish? Or at least not as good as the normal legions.

[Imperator of Rome]

Historically the Preatorian Legion never went anywhere anyway, apart from to accompany the Emperor on the rare visits he made elsewhere. Weren't they also supposed to be rubbish? Or at least not as good as the normal legions.

The Early Praetorians wasn't rubbish, due to the fact they fought during the Late Marian/Augustan rebellion era.

[Imperator of Rome]

Historically the Preatorian Legion never went anywhere anyway, apart from to accompany the Emperor on the rare visits he made elsewhere. Weren't they also supposed to be rubbish? Or at least not as good as the normal legions.

The Early Praetorians wasn't rubbish, due to the fact they fought during the Late Marian/Augustan Civil War era.

[rudthemighty]

Basically what I m saying is that after the Marian reforms you have very little access to units until to build the roman fortress, which makes everything a pain, since you have to go get people to fight in every battle.

[Ibram]

Well, knowing this, surely that means you just prepare better?

[Tsim]

Well, knowing this, surely that means you just prepare better?

That's meta gaming how would you know you are getting the reforms unless you go to a forum and read about it some people here role play the factions

[Ibram]

Point accepted, but in real life when the Roman Republic made it's transition into the Named and Numbered Legions, they wouldn't have suddenly found themselves 'unable' to field troops due to some arbitrary event. So even in role-playing, you need to make allowances for what you know will happen OOC so that it doesn't disrupt your experience.

[mp84]

Point accepted, but in real life when the Roman Republic made it's transition into the Named and Numbered Legions, they wouldn't have suddenly found themselves 'unable' to field troops due to some arbitrary event. So even in role-playing, you need to make allowances for what you know will happen OOC so that it doesn't disrupt your experience.

Just a suggestion, as I haven't gotten to the Marian Reforms yet, but why not make sure, before you build the Imperial Palaces in Sicily, make sure you have the proper barracks and such for all your other cities? This way, the moment the reforms hit, you will have your proper barracks ready to go in other towns?

I haven't hit the Reforms yet, and probably won't for awhile, so what I say may not be valid, but just a thought.

[rudthemighty]

Basically when you hit the reforms rome the most powerful army in the game suddenly cant field any troops.

Not to mention the troop variety with rome is really really really limited. All you can field is Legion XYZ with some variant of Auxilia ABC and consider yourself lucky if u can get any cavalry or archers.

[DarthLazy]

You can, normal marian legionarys, you just have to take care and build supply of army rations and metal import in the areas that are your recruitment places

[rudthemighty]

Also now that I am complaining let me also mention that morale is wayyy to high for 90% of the units and archers are completely useless even when firing from the flanks. They are more of a nuisance at best in RS2 not something that will stop you from making a headlong charge into enemy lines or even consider using the testudo (why should you? they cant kill anything!!!).

[NightEye]

Well, I actually like the long battles so whether or not the battles are too long is a bit subjective.
As for archers, are you fighting armored/experienced/upgrade enemy units perhaps? I use Cretan and Celt archers and they seem to do fine. And even in vanilla, archers can never stop anything except crappy light infantry or peasants from charging. They're best used to take out a few of the enemy before going in and finishing them off.

[TW-fanboy]

Also now that I am complaining let me also mention that morale is wayyy to high for 90% of the units and archers are completely useless even when firing from the flanks. They are more of a nuisance at best in RS2 not something that will stop you from making a headlong charge into enemy lines or even consider using the testudo (why should you? they cant kill anything!!!).

Chane it in the EDU

[sithlord447]

each unto his own, imo i hate vannila battles and battles from most mods as charge a couple minutes of fighting route, with little tactics is boring, the drawn out ones, are awsome as you really can flank,be flanked and so on and once you you get the surround and get their general, 1 good cavarly charge and they start to route, usally at about 1/4 to 1/3 strength