What exactly is[are] the trigger[s] for the Marian reforms as it stands?

[coit105]

Just realised I've kind of asked the question in the title so one more thing that's playing on my mind; will RTR 6.0 become completely usurped by RTR VII ie. not downloadable from the main site anymore?

[Bull3pr00f de Bodemloze]

@Team: who decided to unstick the "links to previews"-thread? It can prevent questions such as these.
@coit: Has already been previewed:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=409582
Note that the trigger is a bit outdated; iirc, the balkans got a few more "requirement regions", but other than that this is still accurate

On the second question: Of course not! At least, not for as far as I know. RS1.6 is still available for download, and that one got completely "replaced" as well, so why would it be different with RTR, which is RS's "sister project" of some sorts?

[coit105]

So wait you won't have to have any provinces in Greece? What the feck? Rome took Most of Greece by the early years of the 1st century b.c.! I believe also that the small kingdom of either Pontus or Bithynia had lost it's last king and in his will the lands were left to Rome. The final decline of the Seleucid empire and the Syrian war, too, began around the middle of the same century and territories there were swallowed up by Rome. The world's arse was in far more pain because of Rome than the new Marian reform requirements are showing them to be. Is there any way that I could change the requirements for the Marian reforms myself on the current version of Realism?

[Muizer]

The world's arse was in far more pain because of Rome than the new Marian reform requirements are showing them to be.

I wouldn't say it was this success of the Roman Republic that triggered the Marian reforms though.

[coit105]

I'm not saying that, although the Marian reforms were due to the fact that the old system wasn't going to allow Rome to defend itself properly against increasingly powerful and numerous enemies so arguably it was. In my teachers words, very roughly, 'the [old] Roman republic was designed for a small series of Italian states and then it kind of just went on to take a large chunk of the known world and some people realised 'bollocks it's not really going to work well anymore is it?' ' Anyway what I meant was that the provinces you have to have under control to trigger the reforms in VII are substantially less than those held by Rome at the time of the reforms. Also @Bull3tpr00f, is the map on the link you representative of the entire world that's up for grabs in VII and again @anyone how do I change the triggers for the Marian reforms under the current version for myself?

[DukeCanada]

I would say the Marian reforms we're instigated by the fact that client armies had begun to rise during the period in which Marius and Sulla lived. Suddenly, armies were loyal to commanders and not to the SPQR. So when one man "won" or took charge of the republic, he could make any reform he wanted without to much hassle. The Senate could not oppose him. Coincidentally this coincides with a time of increased Roman expansion and a lack of a common enemy for the Romans.

In RTR VII this can be simulated fairly well in RTR VII. Once you have the Major enemies knocked down, you get the Marian reforms.

[Muizer]

That's not how I remember it. Very briefly: Rome was an agrarian society with an army of citizen-soldiers. To serve in the army, people had to meet certain property requirements. In practice this meant owning land. This system came under pressure of continuous warfare. This meant farmers were absent from their farms too often and too long to keep their business running alongside their soldiering. They went into debt and eventually had to sell off their land, often to absentee landlords, after which they and their families migrated to the cities. This, however, eroded the very basis of the military might. Odd as it may sound, for a long time, rather than reconsider this farmer-soldier tradition, the solution was sought in "land reform". Basically bolstering citizenship (and thereby military manpower) by trying to redistribute land amongst the landless. Finally with the marian reforms, this all changed, and the poor were allowed to join the army. Then happened what Duke hints at, though I would say the reforms were more likely part of the cause than the consequence. Yet, it is interesting to notice that even the warlords of the late republic still sought to reward their soldiers with land, before anything else. The whole farmer-citizen-soldier concept was deeply engrained in the Roman psyche and remained so long after it ceased to be the backbone of Roman success.
Anyway, I'd personally say the Marian reform triggers would have to be linked to a shortage of manpower. After all, if there had been no such shortage, the Roman ruling class, snobs that they were, would not have given the poor and landless access to the army.

[Caligula Caesar]

And what if I say the Marian Reforms never happened? Indeed, the movement away from the hastati-principes-triarii legions of maniples was gradual, starting soon after 200 BC, apparently, and Marius' only innovation was to recruit men from the proletarii (poor people) because the Senate would only allow him a certain amount of men from the classes which were normally recruited from. In fact, there is, I have read, little real evidence for the decline of farmers and rise of slave plantations, which is often given as a reason for the necessity of these reforms, though there was a decline in the numbers of volunteers simply because war was going out of fashion.
I read that, mostly, in Edward Bispham's Short Oxford History of Roman Europe, though I understand that a fair amount of authors probably do not agree with him. I myself am inclined to agree with the Oxford Professor

[DukeCanada]

And what if I say the Marian Reforms never happened? Indeed, the movement away from the hastati-principes-triarii legions of maniples was gradual, starting soon after 200 BC, apparently, and Marius' only innovation was to recruit men from the proletarii (poor people) because the Senate would only allow him a certain amount of men from the classes which were normally recruited from. In fact, there is, I have read, little real evidence for the decline of farmers and rise of slave plantations, which is often given as a reason for the necessity of these reforms, though there was a decline in the numbers of volunteers simply because war was going out of fashion.
I read that, mostly, in Edward Bispham's Short Oxford History of Roman Europe, though I understand that a fair amount of authors probably do not agree with him. I myself am inclined to agree with the Oxford Professor

I dont see much basis behind that though. I think HB's reasoning is the most sound. War cant fall out of fashion, even now it is not out of fashion.

[coit105]

OK Duke Canada, the ? The Marian reforms weren't caused by armies being loyal to their commanders they caused armies to become loyal to their commanders; pay was mediated by their generals as opposed to the state under one of Marius' many illegal consulships. He got his consulships through populist political tactics not because his army was loyal to him, although no doubt they would have admired his leadership greatly.

Muizer that's basically what I said except explained more in depth. Because of the way my teacher teaches, I like to keep stuff like this simple and ever so slightly humorous. The Roman republic, the way it was, could have survived a fair amount of time if it had kept to Italy, but when it began to grow out of it's boots, all the while staying pretty much 95% of the time in a state of war, people like Marius, mainly Julius Caesar and Augustus, came along and shook it up eventually creating an, arguably, more stable imperium.

CC (Caligula Caesar) I don't give a damn about your Oxford professor, just because a university carries prestige doesn't necessarily entail that it's students are more intelligent (just look at the nuisances in British politics at the moment), it's LUDICROUS to say that 'war was going out of fashion', in Rome of all places, when the MariusVSulla civil war, the conquest of [modern day] France, the civil war during Julius Caesar's life, the annexing of Egypt and the two civil wars that followed on from it were still to come, along with various other bloody revolts and such, not to mention the writing of the Aeneid, with all it's terrifically vivid descriptions of hectic battles was yet to be written. Also I think you'll find that Marius had, if I'm not wrong, 7 fecking consulships. He can't have just snoozed his way through all of them without passing something that resulted in the, otherwise coincidental, renewing of Roman military might.

And for the love of god, will somebody please tell me, how in the hell does one go about rearranging the triggers for the Marian reforms in the blasted game?!

[Clearchus of Sparta]

I suggest you go and try looking through the modding tutorials and take your attitude with you.

[Remlap]

Closed this can only go down from here.

[Caligula Caesar]

Just to clear up the "war going out of fashion" bit: Wars were getting unpopular because a) they were becoming rather distant - Iberia and Asia Minor, for example. The Romans didn't feel obliged to fight, because they were not exactly protecting themselves and, as they weren't particularly poor, they didn't need the money. And b) they suffered several defeats and had to fight on long campaigns (abroad) during the middle and late part of the 2nd century BC (eg the Celtiberian Wars, the Lusitanian War, the early part of the 3rd Punic War, the Jugurthine War and the Cimbrian War, in which they lost 80,000 men in one battle).