Conquered province local unit recruitment - Romans recruit hoplites

**Destraex** · July 12, 2012, 04:40 PM

I think it was called "areas of recruitment" in mods.
Its a feature where if you conquer a region you cannot initially recruit your own units but the local units to help.
So essentially the Romans would get auxilliary troops from most regions and legionary re-enforcements (at least whole new units) would come from italian regions.

Eventually though the region converts fully and you no longer have the option to recruit local traditional units.

I would like to see this in RomeII. But am worried people will just be pitting local armies vs local armies rather than just using auxilliaries to re-enforce the legions.

On the other hand their were empires that never converted the populace to a standardised unit type.

**daelin4** · July 12, 2012, 06:17 PM

I liked the idea. CA included a form of this in Kingdoms Brittania. Depending on the culture percentage, certain units were able to be trained. The higher the culture percentage is Scottish, better units could be trained. In some cases you couldn't wait for the percentage to go down and had to recruit some local units.

I'd want the units to be limited though. I can't expect the Romans to recruit tons of Spartan Hoplites when they take over Laconia. I think militia hoplites should suffice. Units that would give some unique variety to their conquerors and not just hand over the entire unit roster to their disposal. Cretan archers from Crete, Rhodian Slingers from Rhodes. Those uber-units like Praetorians and Spartans should remain spawnable garrisons or faction-specific reward units.

Auxiliaries could also be a particular and evolutionized form of local militia. Where rather than training legionaries you can also (or only) train specific auxilia. German regions would produce Germanic auxilia, such as cavalry, whereas Gallic regions could produce auxilia of a light-infantry variety. Greek auxilia could be spearmen. This kinda enforces the whole "legionaries are citizen armies and thus can only be found in Italy" idea. It limits where you can recruit certain units but also doesn't really penalize your for expanding. Losing Gallic provinces with their well-developed cities won't seem that big a deal because you won't be denied the best facilitates for training legionaries. You just have denied access to certain auxilia units you might want to augment your forces.

Auxilia would be basically be an in-between to local milita units like spear levies and such, and the more elite legionaries that can be trained in Italy.

If the idea of legionaries only in Italy is too outrageous, there could also be a tech-tree advancement like "Citizenship" that extends Roman citizenship to all Roman regions, allowing legionaries to be recruited in all provinces. Italian provinces maintain a distinct bonus though, to reward all the effort put into time and money spent on building the structures to train them. Non-Roman provinces could also train inferior (re non-veteran, no bonus) legionaries.

At least this way hisorical accuracy is kept to a certain degree, even if it's not down to the last detail.

**Rorarii** · July 12, 2012, 06:23 PM

I don't think the roman Repblican manipular legion system had any room for soldiers NOT of type legion, unless it was an allied army on the flank. The Cohort legion allowed Auxilaries - of many different types.

R

**Grimbold** · July 12, 2012, 06:40 PM

Well i certainly won't be using any roman dogs on my armies.

**Mausolos of Caria** · July 12, 2012, 06:51 PM

Originally Posted by Grimbold

Well i certainly won't be using any roman dogs on my armies.

I think they were muuuch worse than the flaming pigs. After all the pigs are historically proven while the number of dogs that was used in the game (even in historical battles!) was just crazy and wrong

As for the AoR- Units, I liked that feature in the RTR- series and would love it in RTW II as well. I don't think it's unrealistic for the Romans, they always used auxiliaries, even when they already had troops of the Socii with them.

**Grimbold** · July 12, 2012, 08:37 PM

Originally Posted by Mausolos of Caria

I think they were muuuch worse than the flaming pigs. After all the pigs are historically proven while the number of dogs that was used in the game (even in historical battles!) was just crazy and wrong

As for the AoR- Units, I liked that feature in the RTR- series and would love it in RTW II as well. I don't think it's unrealistic for the Romans, they always used auxiliaries, even when they already had troops of the Socii with them.

You misunderstood me. I wasn't refering to the unit "roman dogs". I was calling roman soldiers dogs.

**IronBrig4** · July 12, 2012, 06:45 PM

But will your non-Roman units still be replenished if their home region becomes significantly "Romanized?" One of my biggest pet peeves in RTW was being unable to replenish pre-Marian troops after the Marian Reforms. I'd have elite troops that would eventually, inevitably, be ground down to nothing.

Besides, I have a far more important question. Will we still have flaming pigs??? I loved my flammable porcine friends!

**daelin4** · July 12, 2012, 09:21 PM

Originally Posted by IronBrig4

But will your non-Roman units still be replenished if their home region becomes significantly "Romanized?" One of my biggest pet peeves in RTW was being unable to replenish pre-Marian troops after the Marian Reforms. I'd have elite troops that would eventually, inevitably, be ground down to nothing.

Besides, I have a far more important question. Will we still have flaming pigs??? I loved my flammable porcine friends!

Good question. I think a suitable compromise would be that A) replenishment for "obsolete" units be at a reduced rate; an/or B) a toggle replenishment button. Empire sort of had this, where your units won't replenish until you order them to, and I don't recall there being any sort of limitations besides the rate of replenishment.

I did find the Pre-Marian units being unable to retrain as annoying. It didn't really hurt to be able to retain their numbers, even if you can't retrain anymore.

**Destraex** · July 12, 2012, 10:02 PM

I had not thought how strange it would be to have legionary troops fighting for barbarians ;p

**O'Hea** · July 12, 2012, 08:25 PM

Sometimes I feel like mods take AoR too far, but I do think that your militia-type troops should all be local. The 'regular' troops for each faction (principes, pezhetairoi, etc) would be all about having the right buildings. The Romans could possibly be an exception (having a tech or event to standardize your local units into auxilia), but I think this works for the most part. Hellenistic factions would all have the same structures for recruiting their hetairoi and pezhetairoi but their psiloi would be Egyptians or Syrians or Persians or Thessalians depending on what lands they controlled. Same goes for Roman foederati, Carthaginian mercenaries, and the like. It shouldn't be especially difficult to set up recruitment for your typical heavy troops, but I think the game should reflect the fact that all ancient armies relied heavily on local allies.