On the Ptolemaic army

[Quinn Inuit]

I've been reading up on the late Ptolemaic army in Griffith's The Mercenaries of the Hellenistic World and Bar-Kochva's Seleucid Army book. From what I can tell, the phalanx really degrades rapidly during the 200s BC. The recruitment at Raphia was abysmal, and by the end of the century at Panion it appears that they only had ten-to-fifteen thousand actual phalangites. After the phalanx was smashed at Panion (the Aetolians managed to flee, not that it did them much good in the end), I'm not sure they ever fielded a phalanx again.

Based on that, should we try to phase out Ptollie phalangite recruitment after a certain point? If so, what point? I'm trying to figure out the best way to do this while not being too heavy-handed.

[Slowpoke]

Always remember the historical uncertainty principle. Who is to say that a rich, powerful, prosperous, strong Ptolemaic empire would experience the same breakdown in troop quality it suffered in 'our' version of history? The Total War series is all about rewriting it. I've never liked the highly-constricted, Hearts of Iron-style of historytelling.

[Quinn Inuit]

That's the thing, though, the Ptollies were rich and powerful IRL, too. The fundamental problem was their lack of Macedonians.

[GraaEminense]

Would be interesting. So what you could do is to include some kind of parameters, similar to the loss of the phalanx, which would limit or remove the phalanx recruitment if met? Getting a full-stack army annihilated, perhaps?

Alternatively, end phalanx recruitment at a given time unless parameters are met -like possessions in Macedonia, from which one could resettle phalangites?

Just thinking out loud, no idea what's possible.

[Quinn Inuit]

Yeah, something like that. The loss of a large army to another Diadochi faction is what triggers the Machimoi reforms, actually.

Hmmm...those reforms only occurred as a result of the degradation of the main phalanx. I wonder if we could set up something that both reduced your ability to recruit Macedonians and gave the ability to recruit Machimoi?

[Ramiro]

I think that you could say that phalangite belong to a middle class of farmers, as the early and middle republic legionaries and greek hoplitai, right? How about that you make a link between farming development in the region and the capability to recruit this type of troops? on the other side urban and commerce development should decrease phalangite availability as this social classes where (at least as perceived by contemporary authors) much less apt to be soldiers.

But this change should not only apply to ptolies.

On the other hand: elite military units (argyraspides, hypaspists, etc) should only be available to factions that have plenty of money to pay for them but ALSO to factions that hace seen quite a long period of constant and rather sucessfull warfare. In the TW series this is replaced by the idea that if you build some structure in your cities this allows the recruitment, this means that your are sucessfull in strategic game terms (as you have spare money to spend in this buildings) and that you have money to support the elite troops, but sometimes a prolonged peace period allows for this structures to be built and elite troops recruited and mantained, but this DOESN´T reflect the actual historical conditions that allow the recruitment of this troops. I believe that amore direct connection between sucssefull warfare and recruitment of elite troops should be implemented.

[Carados]

I'd say leave it as we have it. If they take Syria then they get an extra source of Macedonians to recruit from. If they take Macedonia then they get an extra source of Macedonians to recruit from. If they can't take any regions with Macedonians in them then they'll have to rely on the limited number that they have in Egypt - to which there is competition with other units and mercenaries to contend with.

The Macedonians were always there, they might have just decided to become merchants or something since they could let other people do the fighting. A little similar to Carthage in a way.

[Quinn Inuit]

That makes sense. OK, let's leave that as-is.

[Sardaukar One]

The Macedonians were always there, they might have just decided to become merchants or something since they could let other people do the fighting. A little similar to Carthage in a way.

Carthage's citizen body chose not to fight unless Carthage itself was attacked. I don't think that was even an option for the Ptolemies.