Your personal 4th C military developments

[mw1776]

It probably goes without saying that one of the more compelling aspects of playing in the latter half of the Roman Empire is the complex and diverse military structure. The enormous amount of different units in the game is one of the features that draws me back to SAI because it means I have to pay attention to my troop levels, recruit in advance to bring in reinforcements, and pick my battles so I don't waste Roman lives.

While I try to stay historically plausible, I rarely adhere to the military setup at the start of the scenario. By that I mean while I generally move the legions as is when I start by the time I'm done with a few campaigns I've got those tidy legions all over the place.

My 363 Julian campaign just passed year 410 and over the course of that game I've developed my own army compositions to fit my unique campaign experience.

My Palatine legions are generally composed of 4 heavy inf (brigaded pairs of junior and senior legio palatine is possible) 2 lanciarii, 2 palatine archers, 2 aux palatine, 1 pedites domesticorum, 2 horse archers, 2 scutarii, and 4 heavy cavalry (usually 1-2 cataphract/clibinarii and one equites domesticorum). I try to always have these units be of legio palatine or scholae quality. This is my Emperor's personal legion, regardless of his actual combat skill he always commands this.

My two Commanders in the Presence command similar armies with regular quality cavalry (mostly scutarii and promoti) and aux palatine infantry. The Master of Horse and Foot command half stacks of similar quality troops according to their type. The Master of Foot also commands the siege train.

The Regional Commanders (Magisters or Comes) command armies composed mostly of comitatus units with about 1/3 foedorati. Dux commanders are limited to limitani and foedorati.

My main developments come in the use of cavalry. In the East my armies will almost always be 2/3 cavalry with roughly half of that horse archers. The Duces of Syria and Palestine command mixed camel and Ghassanid cavalry with their infantry being mostly archers. I usually have only 2-3 units of heavy infantry for them. I've found this to be most effective in dealing with the little half and quarter stacks that the Lahkmids and Sassanids throw at you. For garrisoning cities I almost exclusively use archers and slingers, usually at a 3:1 ratio.

For the Rhine and Danube (which have been quiet for about 2 decades) I garrison my cities with 2 limitanei and 1 archer unit. My regional armies make extensive use of Frankish, Gothic, and Hunnic foedorati, usually about 1/2 of the stack. I don't use as much cavalry here but I do include a higher proportion of archers.

Overall I've found that archers (both foot and horse) and heavy cavalry are replacing my heavy infantry. What started out as 2 archers and 6 cavalry are now becoming 4 archers and 8 cavalry. I suppose it somewhat mirrors real world developments but I made the changes based on gameplay and not historical accuracy.

How have your armies changed/developed over the course of your campaign?

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

Not much. My armies are exactly like real life - an ad hoc mixture of whatever is to be found to patch the holes in defences and replace the losses in the mobile response forces.

[mw1776]

Do you find that you use more of the limitanei/foedorati troops as opposed to your comitatus/palatine as time goes by?

[SimonGermanicus]

I would love to be able to compose armies but for the most its just hastily drawn together levies atm...

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

mw1776, that's an excellent summation! I am alas still to early in my main Julian campaign and still playing according to the House Rules I formulated in an earlier thread elsewhere. My aim is to preserve that as much as I can but haven't played enough into a future to see a possible development yet!

[mw1776]

SBH,

I've been using a modified version* of your house rules as they make for a more immersive game. For the better part of the 360s and 370s I tried to maintain some semblance of the Limitanei/Comitatenses/Palatine organization but it ended up a mess. After stabilizing the Danube, I took Julian, his two Masters in the Presence, and his Master/Count of the East and spent a good five years stomping through Persia. My Master of the East (along with all those eastern Palatine soldiers) went rebel so their names were stricken from the Notitia.

After all that fighting I spent the next few years consolidating and dealing with the Rebels. I try to leave them Crete or Rhodes though so that I'll still have rebellions to put down. For most of the 380s I slowly converted Greece, Anatolia, and Thrace to Neoplatonism despite Julian converting to Manicheanism sometime in Persia. I also spent much of this time nail biting as I waited for Julian to produce an heir. He didn't but his son-in-law will inherit the throne.

For most of the game I took what troops I could. Starting in the mid 370s I was able to form a coherent strategy based around a modified version of the historical setup. It's mostly the same but with a higher percentage of archers and cavalry and with my heavy infantry down-graded in all but the personal armies of the Emperor and Masters in the Presence.



*I started with yours because I liked the added depth they bring. In particular I like not retraining in a town but instead waiting until they're below half strength before raising a new unit. Once every 20-25 years I retrain all my elite units or any unit with more than 1 chevron in order to represent influxes of new soldiers. I also RP my generals to their fullest. Skilled Cavalry commanders make use of more cav and will deploy them aggressively on the field. The same goes for Skilled Infantry commanders. Generals with low command ratings use simpler deployments with less maneuvering. Any adopted barbarian generals will also command/recruit according to their traits.

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Julian converted to Manicheanism? Ouch. That must have been a shock! Yes, the RP elements - especially with the regional governor and military titles - adds a wonderful flavour to the game - it really simulates a Late Roman period. More than once or twice, I have suffered a barbarian invasion only to find the only 'general' unit in the area is a civilian governor and so unable to take the field with the nearby field army units!

I now spend at least half of my set-up each turn moving generals around and swopping out ancillaries to create accurate characters. All good fun.

Your later army development reads as if you are gradually moving towards an even later Justinian period which is interesting.

[The_Nord]

I try to keep it as strictly historical as possible. I hand out all the correct offices and such to the appropriate commanders/governors. As for army composition I do as correct field armies and central armies as I can as some of you described above. My limitanei however have become less historically accurate due to changing conditions in the game. My forts at the Danube and Rhine rivers are often occupied with entire stacks of limitanei units at some key places, and boy, those soldiers sure haven't had it easy lol. As I expanded my territory into Armenia and as far as Ctesphion in Persia, the new limes forts there are also occupied with entire stacks of limitanei.

I've had massive problems with saxons in germany, so it is probably the most militarized place in the entire empire, although right before my persian invasion with his imperial majesty Julianus himself, syria had 3 full legiones, 1 full legio palatinae army, 2 aux palatinae armies, 1 gothic/alemanni feoderati army and 1 ghassanid feoderati army (with some persian cav) and finally a siege train. The invasion was successful to say the least, heh heh heh.

The brittish provinces are the calmest actually, with the picts under control, hadrian's wall firmly fortified and a field army between londinium and eburacum, the picts dare not make a move.

[Dzandza]

How do you "give" offices to anybody???
I just see it that this character is a man of this, that one the man of that... I didnt knew I can influence this.... how?


My armies are two comitatensi armies, 5 armies of federaties and maybe one or two limitanei.

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

You can 'switch' ancillaries from general to general by dragging and droping the ancillaries file as long as the general characters are in the same town or army stack - see my House Rules thread for more detail!

[Diocletianus]

I began to make new legions in 361 campaign like the Quinta macedonia and the Lanciarii Gallicani. Theses new comitatenses are composed like this :

6 Heavy infantry ( Legio)
3 Lanciarii ( legio )
3-4 Sagitarii comitatenses
1 General ( obviously...)
2 Horse archer
3-4 Cavalry ( scutarii or catafractii )

The olds legions are the same as the begining of the campaign.

[mw1776]

Is that for the Rhine, Danube, or East?

My armies do look a lot like armies in Justinian's day. In replaying some older battles I realized that part of the reason I started using higher percentages of archers/cav is that my hvy were getting mauled in fights were I didn't soften the enemy up. The ranged were there to take out enemy light infantry so that when our lines clashed they didn't add to the press. Often find that regardless of how I contact the enemy (either through initiating a charge or receiving one) they would push my men back. Showering them with arrows, picking off stragglers with scutarii, and delivering multiple flank/rear charges to reduce contact time eventually turned my battles into mostly ranged/cavalry affairs.

I'm even thinking of writing up my own personal ND.

[Diocletianus]

Is that for the Rhine, Danube, or East?

Standart ''new'' legion for all fronts. I'l make a new legion for the lowr danube region because the foedati are not strong enough against multiples barbarians hordes in the Sigidinum- Marcianopolis Region.

[The_Nord]

Writing up your own ND sounds pretty cool actually. I have soooo many limitanei legions all over the empire, it's a bit hard to keep track of them, I recently noted that one limitanei legion vexilliation you can recruit in the middle east was guarding the Rhine for example, so they've been thrown all over the empire.
One of my few complaints about SAI is the relatively small number of Comitatenses legions there are available for recruitment, they get really spread out over the empire, since they have to go to hotspots, it can leave other parts of the empire vunerable, which is why my Rhine and Danube limes are so packed with limitanei (due to my recent campaigns in the east and north Africa, and the enroaching huns near Armenia), I mean, I suppose it emulates the empire in a neat way, I just sometimes wish there were more Comitatenses around for recruitment. I never go on punitive missions, or expansion campaigns with limitanei, thats strictly for the mobile field army and central field army.

[mw1776]

Yeah there are too few legio comitatensis units. One unit type per region doesn't seem enough once you've got your empire stabilized and/or prosperous. There's also only one region to recruit pseudocomitatensis but then I suppose that's what the legio ripensis armata are there for. Fully upgraded they're solid line infantry.

[The_Nord]

Yeah, but I fear if they were to add more, the game might become too easy as the romans.

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

The ND is a very good idea. It might be worth compiling it so that new players can have something concrete to aim for.

[The_Nord]

I agree, alot of people come on these boards asking for help on how to keep their borders safe, especially when they're at the beginning of the campaigns featured in the mod. As for an earlier topic discussed here, namely the lack of comitatenses legions in the game, if not more comitatenses, perhaps more pseudocomitatenses could be added?

[julianus heraclius]

Gentlemen, I hear your pain, but there is no more room in the descr_model_battle.txt and the export_descr_unit.txt for any more units. I intended to have restrictions on both comitatensis and palatinae units to avoid the creation of rolls royce armies. If my memory serves me correctly at best there were only the Praesentalis I and II field armies, the Orientum, Thracia, Illyricum and Gallic Regional field armies, and in game you can recruit 9 comitatensis legios and 6 palatinae legios giving you a total of 15 field army legio units which I think are sufficient to cover 6 field armies.

Part of the game play is to have deal with shortfalls in recruitment; it shouldn't be too easy as some people are saying. But I have been interested in the way you have gone about organising and reorganising your late roman army structure. I think developing a ND would be great for beginners and could be used inconjunction with SBH's Houserules.

[The_Nord]

Alright, if it's full, it's full Whilst I do sometimes lament the lack of Comitatenses to tak with me on expedtions (I play mostly according to the houserules), I do feel that you are right in saying that the way it is now better reflects the situation in the 4th century. The comitatenses, they're good, they're really good troops, if there were too many of them to recruit, the game would be far too easy, the legio palatinae are even better. My field legions normally look like this: 4-6 heavy inf comitatenses, 2 lanciarii and 2 sagitarii, the rest of the infantry are normally feoderati troops or auxilia Illyricani (What exactly are their status anyways? Field army or limitanei or both? If it's in the description then I must've somehow missed it). Then the appropriate amount of cavarly, promoti, scutarii and so on, and if available cataphracts or clibanarii. So basically according to the house rules, same goes for Emperor's/highest ranking officers' armies. When I have recruited one legion, I don't make a copy of it and have two of them going around the map. I do find that as I've progressed I've started to use archers more and more, and against the Sassanids? Let me just say this: Manubalistarii. Words cannot express how good they are against those nasty heavy cavs of the Sassanids! Leaving weakspots behind as you go on campaign is a pain, but then thats what limitanei are for!

I'm curious how it will be in RO, the army was pretty different to say the least in Aurelian's time.