Troop types and how to use them?

[SoNiCbOoM4321]

Hey all, in my current campaign as Rome. I've triggered the marian reforms, and also built up my barracks. Now that I've done that I'm able to recruit auxiliaries, and my question is HOW DO I EFFECTIVELY MAKE AN ARMY WITH THEM?

I know they are supposed to support your legions, and in battle I've been successful with them. When I auto resolve though, my armies get crushed, or win and take heavy loses.
Is there any specific combination of troops to make an army extremely effective against various faction's troop types, or do I really have to tailor an army specifically to another factions troop types.

ex. Greeks, Barbarians, Carthage etc.

[Tar-Elendil]

Clicky

Clicky

Clicky

You're welcome! Haha, just do what feels natural. There's no right composition

[Braeburn]

Whatever you do don't hit the Auto-Resolve button the AI cheats that way. Best to play on the Battle on your own that way the AI can't cheat by deleting a number of men . Apart from that knowledge of tactics used in the era also help in winning battles with lesser casualties.

As for composition (as you said of Auxiliaries) It is often best to have a mix of units from the standard aux. inf to your archers and cav units.

What I use (pretty close to my non-aux composition)
1 General
10 Aux inf
4 aux archers
4 aux cavalry
1 (extra for any merc unit or siege weapon)

You could also have.
1 General
11 Aux inf
4 Aux archers
4 aux cav

Whichever you prefer. But as Tar said there is no best or right composition.

[General Sultan V]

Auto resolve is supposed to make accurate losses and casualties for both sides I Thought

I Merge auxilia with my Legions, For example, 11+ Legionary cohorts, 4 Auxillary infantry, 2-4 Auxilliary cavalry, and a Legate, No Auxillairy archers, they are inaccurate (until you conquer a land in thrace and syria, lol)

[Dramatic Cat]

Lol you say that using archer auxillia is inaccurate and yet you use 11 legionary cohorts.

Just saying.

And no, Auto-res doesn't make accurate loses, it just calculates stats and can sometimes bring up the silliest results.

[Tar-Elendil]

LOL, that's why I was having a hard time understanding what Sultan said. At first I thought he meant they didn't have accuracy, as in not being able to hit their targets. I thought he was making a joke,

[General Sultan V]

legionary citizens formed the core and majority of legions, so I Don't know why it is'n accurate

recruiting Syrian archers from a curia Hositilia in The middle of italy is'n accurate either. nor recruiting Hispanic Alae in Africa & Italy, nor recruiting thracian archers in Italy.

so yeah. I Know what I'm talking about, the recruitment system is 'somewhat' messed up

[Tar-Elendil]

Hey, whatever works for you is great

I think what Dramatic Cat meant is that the standard legion consisted of 9 cohorts and a 1st cohort, so you saying that you didn't recruit archers to remain historically accurate, but then recruit legions of 11 cohorts is kind of an oxymoron.

But I personally agree that recruiting the syrian archers from Rome is a bit silly, so I see what you mean.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

.............
so yeah. I Know what I'm talking about, the recruitment system is 'somewhat' messed up

If you did it might actually be worth a discussion.........

[Tar-Elendil]

If you did it might actually be worth a discussion.........

Ouch That's gotta hurt!

[Dramatic Cat]

I Know what I'm talking about

I really have nothing to say to that.

[General Sultan V]

If you did it might actually be worth a discussion

ok I Don't know what I'm talking about, I Should shut up and believe it that the romans built a second curia hositillia in all of their cities and exported syrian & Foriegn immigrants from distant lands and then trained them in italy and Merged them with their early legions. and recruiting Spanish auxillary cavalry and gallic auxilia spearmen in A fortress in the middle of italy? It must be me, I Don't know what Im talking about. look man the recruitment rosters for each city Is messed up. check it yourself

[Gotterdammerung]

ok I Don't know what I'm talking about, I Should shut up and believe it that the romans built a second curia hositillia in all of their cities and exported syrian & Foriegn immigrants from distant lands and then trained them in italy and Merged them with their early legions. and recruiting Spanish auxillary cavalry and gallic auxilia spearmen in A fortress in the middle of italy? It must be me, I Don't know what Im talking about. look man the recruitment rosters for each city Is messed up. check it yourself

The point that they are making is that each legion famously had nine cohorts and then one cohort of double the normal size of men. Recruiting 11 or more cohorts per legion is historically inaccurate (unless you are doubling up to represent the size of the First Cohort, although that doesn't seem to be what you said), and yet you are worried about the inaccuracy of using archer auxiliaries from Rome.

[General Sultan V]

lol duh. I Know that the Roman legion was composed of 10 Cohors, But I'm shooting for numbers here (trying to make battles as large as possible as they were in real life. plus the fact that legionary cohorts count 203 men here)

archer auxillaries hailing from all the way to syria being readily avilable straight after the marian reforms, before you even control syria IS not accurate, because the roman legions made very rare use of archer auxillaries anyway.

I Do wish if they could size up Units even more (Making them larger than 200 men + 1/2/3 officers / 240 men + 1/2/3 Officers). It would be great for realism

[LoGaL]

archer auxillaries hailing from all the way to syria being readily avilable straight after the marian reforms, before you even control syria IS not accurate, because the roman legions made very rare use of archer auxillaries anyway.

Don't you say???
Better ideas to allow archers to be recruited in almost every settlement as all the factions can do?
Provide maybe a never existed "roman archer legionary cohort"?

[General Sultan V]

and what the hell is a legionary archer cohort?

better Idea to make those units recruitable in their accurate regions, Thracian archers in Thrace, Syrian auxilia in middle-eastern Regions (and those syrian archers, they were raised in The Roman territory of Damascus, so only there) Iberian Auxilia from Their home region. in here you can recruit those guys anywhere and IDK why you even want to argue against what I'm saying, because its obviously defiant to logic to recruit Ala I Asturum (Which was raised in Spain) in southern italy.

Provide your proof against this.

[Spartan999]

Their being exported to Italy? Since you know they don't have their own good cavalry or archers. Yes I am aware you can hire the Syrian/Crete Thracian archers almost . You can also mod it to fit your needs.

[LoGaL]

and what the hell is a legionary archer cohort?

better Idea to make those units recruitable in their accurate regions, Thracian archers in Thrace, Syrian auxilia in middle-eastern Regions (and those syrian archers, they were raised in The Roman territory of Damascus, so only there) Iberian Auxilia from Their home region. in here you can recruit those guys anywhere and IDK why you even want to argue against what I'm saying, because its obviously defiant to logic to recruit Ala I Asturum (Which was raised in Spain) in southern italy.

Provide your proof against this.

You didn't get my point... Anyways since there is no room for other units, the developing team had, i suppose, to make available 2 types of archers in every settlement, as every faction in this game can recruit archers having the proper barracks
And this choice, even if arguable, was better than providing a never existed archery cohort or similar stuff
One could say that they could go for a generic archer auxilia but it appears that they also wanted named cohorts of auxiliary troops
Giving this disadvantage to the romans wasn't, therefore, correct

[Tar-Elendil]

@ Tedric, What do you think about my idea of implementing an AOR line in the EBU for the recruitment of the archer auxilia. There could be one for each Area that the Archers can be recruited from.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

@ Tedric, What do you think about my idea of implementing an AOR line in the EBU for the recruitment of the archer auxilia. There could be one for each Area that the Archers can be recruited from.

Oh, it could certainly be done - but here I don't see the advantage of doing so. The AOR system is not set-up to be accurate as to actual recruitment areas, but much more based upon where units were first attested to be used (particularly with the Imperial Legions) and then later based.

In the archer's case - they were in use all over the empire, but in limited numbers. Whilst I would like to see a difference made in the units to make a choice between them practical; you can recruit/support them anywhere, which is at least reasonable.

Let's take the bigger problem!

In the Early Republic period the player can recruit Polybian units anywhere he can provide the infrastructure; after the Reforms there is a simple swap and he can recruit the Generic legions in the same places. If that player, however, wants the lovely named and numbered Imperial legions (and let's face it, I'm in love with them like most everyone else - however ahistorical it is) he is faced with a massive logistical and AOR-limited task that is definitely not historical at all....

Of the 28 legions in RSII, all but 4 were already in existence as forms of the, for us, Generic legions. If we were limited to just a few units (like in Vanilla), this wouldn't be a problem. I have been wondering, therefore, if there are any ways this could be mitigated in any way.

One of the ways I have been thinking it could would be to have a lot of the Early Imperial legions recruitable in Area 6 (Italy) for example......but I'd love other ideas. Perhaps even have their 1st Cohorts restricted to Roma?