Which Roman units....

[Lucpol]

Fellow imperators....
Whilst playing with the Roman factions, which legionary units do you prefer to command & train. Early, urban etc? (cavalry?) -velites vs archers?and for what reasons?comments most welcome!!!

[Slimshoom]

Early legionary cohorts, some auxilia, roman cavalry, and archers. My post-marian legions usually contains 6-8 cohorts, 4 auxilia, 2 cavalry, 2 archers. But if there is a threat to my territory i make bigger armies.

[.Socrates]

I did this with RTW 1.0 just to be stupuid but i made lots of praetorain cohorts and 5 archers in one army

[syphax]

I train 4 Urban cohorts, 2 Auxilia, 1 Archer Auxilia, 2 Praetorian Cavalry and some Samnite Gladiators.

[GORE]

mine is 8 legionary cohort, 2 praetorian/urban, 2 auxilia, 4 archers, 2 legionary cavalry. last two slots are for siege equipment or generals or anything i need to add after spying on the army im going to fight.

[Trajan]

My preferred post Marian legion setup is one General, thirteen legionary cohorts, one legionary first cohort, two archers (two ballistas or onagers for sieges), and three cavalry units. Pre Marian would be one General, five Hastati, five Principes, four Triarii, one archer or slinger, one skirmisher, and three cavalry units. Of course with sieges, I replace the two missile units with ballistas.

[Septimius Severus]

The prerequisite for my army consists of 8 units of Legionary Cohorts, 4 units of Legionary Cavalry, 2 units of a Siege-type weapon which varies depending on what I plan to use the army for, and 2 units of Archer Auxilia. The last 4 spots can change from entirely Auxilia to a general + other units, usually mercenaries.

[NobleNick]

It varies, but I like archers and calvary. My ideal post-reform army consists of:

6-8 Legionary Cohorts

1 General (heavy Cavalry)
6 Legionary (heavy Cavalry)
0-2 Light cavalry

4-6 Archer Auxilia
0-2 Heavy Onagers (2 needed if sieging against Epic walls)

The Archers, Onagers and Heavy cav are the big offensive weapons, here. The heavy infantry are mostly just to keep the Archers and Onagers untouchable while they do their work. Speed keeps the heavy Cav away from anything they can't squash. Well, almost. The Light Cav / Equites provide good bait and flanking speed to help lay down or spring traps on the even faster enemy Cavalry Auxilia / HA, who foolishly think that their slight speed advantage allows them to harrass heavy cav with impunity. How long does a HA unit last against a simultaneous charge from 2 heavy cav, and 2 units of Equites (which just blocked off the HA's retreat path)? About 5 seconds.

The nice thing about Archers is that you can concentrate fire on one enemy unit with fire and non-fire arrows. Add in a heavy cav charge at the end (if needed). Most enemy units subjected to this treatment quickly rout.

Another dirty trick I like is to make an ALL Cavalry army, and place it where I know it will be attacked. Then I just run the cav all over the battle map while the foot soldiers march and march and march until they are puking their guts out. (Any cav that the enemy has is quickly overwhelmed if the AI is stupid enough to chase beyond the protection of the main army.) And then attack the poor exhausted saps with still fresh cav. Even the faster and very pesky enemy Cavalry Auxilia can usually be handily crushed by the slower Roman cav if the trap is set right. It is very satisfying to win heroic battles that start with 60 heavy cav and 100 Equites, against the enemy's 1100-1200 standard mix army... and then do it again the next turn to another enemy army that is just as big.

[faustus]

I'm with noble nick here.... I dont tend to have ideal armies, more whatever is good enough health near enough the front lines is pulled together to keep the advances momentum going. When I do build ideal armies, cav and archers are very highly ranked. I go for at least a quarter cav and a quarter archers. The archers, especially long range ones (archer auxilia, cretan mercenaries etc) can make mincemeat of massive numbers of enemy troops, and once they've been marching in under arrows (or standing under an arrow hail on the defensive) they're badly weakened and morale is down, then I beat em the way caesar beat pompey, trap and destroy their cavalry, engage their infantry with my own to hold em still, then flank them on 1 side with all my cav, 1 massive charge at the flank/rear of the last few units on their battle like, and they'll almost always start routing, once they do, use the routing friendlies morale penalty to just roll the entire enemy army up along the line with the cav.... basically one long charge along the entire enemy line destroys almost all of them. Then its just riding down the fleeing fools with cav. Cavalry are quick enough that if they happen to have tough, high morale spear units on the ends, or on just one end of their line, just ride past and hit others in the back, once you get some units routing, its almost always all over for the enemy (unless their troops are very far spread.

As for trapping the enemy cav, best way I find is to have a few units - spears work best for this, though I rarely have triarii ever (usually hit marious reforms before I've made more then a few units of them, plus I like the pilum action of the hestatii and principes) but I'll have spear auxilia after the reforms or just use legions - place them in loose formation right behind your archers, preferably also in loose formation. You can usually lure the enemy into charging the archers, then at the last minute just fall back with the archers through the infantry and charge with the infantry. With spears this destroys pretty much all cav, same with legions since they're just tough even without !cav bonus.

If they wont charge you oh well, just keep pounding with archers, then when your cav sweep out and around just hit theirs and since I almost always outnumber or out-class the enemy cav I can destroy them cav to cav.

Faustus

[Lucpol]

Thanks guys.Seems that despite the stereotype tactics applied by the roman commanders, youy have come up with a variety of equally effective options.I shall try them out to figure out the most effective roman composition

Merged double post. - Trajan

Have you ever used an army composed of just the Praetorian Cavalry unitys and generals?

[Decimus Equitius]

Have you ever used an army composed of just the Praetorian Cavalry unitys and generals?

Yeah I used 19 units of Equites and one general to kill a nine star german general that was leading an army of 3 gold chev units. It was pretty cool, but all they did was manage to kill the general.

My post marian legion usually consists of 10 cohorts 1 first cohort 1 general 2 velites 3 archers and 3 cavalry units.

Pre marian heavy Infantry legions are 7 hastati, 4 principes, 3 Triarii, 2velites, 3 archers or slingers and a general

[Slimshoom]

no, but ive used one composed entirely of roman cavalry and a couple of generals. I made it because my campaigning army was low on cavalry, so i made some, gave them one of my extra generals, and sent them to the front lines.

[Lucpol]

Indeed...no commander should ever underestimate the shoch and speed of the cavalry units on the battlefield. I have also tried using a legion composed of mainly heavy onagers+few units of urban cohort.The end result was a carnage ande annihilation of the greek hoplites!!!What a battle that was-the Greeks did not even manage to engage my cohorts.

[Aemilianus]

I don't have preferred numbers of divisions in each army...but in a hypothetical 20-division force, no matter who I was playing with, I would want absolutely no less than 6 cavalry divisions and really as many as 10. Infantry usually holds well, even if inferior, for a while, and usually (even if outnumbered) a quick cavalry flanking motion and a shock into the back of the enemy line (even with just one or two divisions) can do some serious damage to the integrity of the enemy front. Routing one division off, then withdrawing and repeating with another enemy division....then running down the routing troops....there have been times where I have been able to defeat armies numerically three times my size with these tactics.

[tFighterPilot]

Just a ****load of legionary cohorts.

[Publius]

Normally I will use 6-8 early legionary cohorts for two reasons: 1) can retrain them earlier 2) Almost as good as legionaries but not so much $$$. I would (ideally) have two archer companies and some auxilia to protect the flanks from cavalry attacks. I very rarely make urbans or praetorians, as they are so expensive and can only be retrained in a few cities. Town Watch hold down the fort inside any cities/towns of course, and I consider velites/auxilia practically useless unless you know you will be fighting elephants.

[Flavius Silvanus]

If we're talking post-Marius"

Patrol Army
5 x Early Leg Cohort
3x Light Auxilia
2x Roman Cavalry
1x Praetorian Cavalry (Captain in Charge of Army)

Heavy Army
10 x Leg Cohort
4 x Auxila Spearmen
3 x Archer
2 x Legionary Cavalry
1 x General

[hellheaven1987]

Light Force

Five Auxilia units + Four Rome cavarlary + One general

Regular Force

Five Legion Cohort + Five archery Auxilia + Five Auxilia + Four Legionnaire cavalary + One General

[Kraut]

Post Marius:

8x Legionary Cohort
4x Archer
4x Legionary Cavalry (only 2x for siege battles, replaced by either Onagers or mercs)
1x General
2x Auxilia (can be lef behind if I want to hire mercenaries)

For pre-marian armies I do not have such a fixed pattern, as during this period I am often short of money or something like that

[Skiion]

I mainly have about half of my army filled with Urban and Praetorian cohorts. Then a quarter is archer auxilia and the rest generals, seige equipment, and Legionary Cavalry. The battle starts with my archers at the front of the line. They weaken the enemies while they march towards my hoard of infantry. When they come my archers retreat behind all the infantry and then the battle begins. If they try to flank me with cavalry, I send my cavalry to intercept them.