Should most Roman Generals be Triarii units instead of Cav?

[CatoTheYounger]

Reading livy's book on the second Punic War i noticed most Consuls and commanders where on foot. I beleive Fabius had to get special permission to be mounted as he was not equestrian. Since the Mounted Generals often get their self killed by being overly aggressive it might even protect some generals better as the ai likes to keep reserve speermen. Hannibal also might live longer and that would be terrible for Rome.

Good consideration?

I expect Tedric to clerify shortly on when Roman generals did and didn't use horse during the Republic and later in the Imperial years.

[CatoTheYounger]

Also this would greatly solve the problem of the relative ease of getting to the rear with your horse and chasing down the general. Wont work against Triarii or speer units. Infantry would have to do that and it's far trickier. As long as the general would be held as the reserve speer behind the line it might work nicely.

[romanius24]

I wonder if its possible to do both.
Family members on horse and generals you buy be in a triarii unit.(and later cavalry or evocati?)
Would be really cool.

I found this on the EB2 forum in the [AI Redux] thread:


"On the battle AI front, the mod 1648 - The Thirty Years War seems to have solved the issue of suicide generals. Each general unit is given a 0 damage long range projectile. This keeps the AI generals from attacking until they run out of ammo, by which point the battle is already decided.

I think giving AI generals something like that in EB 2 might significantly improve the challenge in battles for the player. An invisible projectile with no animation would suffice for this."

[tungri_centurio]

but but.... i love my horseback generals

[Spartan999]

I am pretty sure it is hard coded so that your FM's get only one kind of unit when

they do spawn a GB. Your looking at RTW 2 if you do want a choice in terms of

GB choices (unless your playing as Rome, you can change things up so that

Triarii spawns you a general or something)

[demagogos nicator]

I am pretty sure it is hard coded so that your FM's get only one kind of unit when

they do spawn a GB. Your looking at RTW 2 if you do want a choice in terms of

GB choices (unless your playing as Rome, you can change things up so that

Triarii spawns you a general or something)

You are right saying that all family members get the same kind of units which is unawoidable but still you can make a different unit for the recruitbale non-family memebers bodyguards (feature availble on BI engine). IIRC this feature is used in Norman Invsion for English faction and is planed to be used int eh new release of the FATW.

[Spartan999]

You are right saying that all family members get the same kind of units which is unawoidable but still you can make a different unit for the recruitbale non-family memebers bodyguards (feature availble on BI engine). IIRC this feature is used in Norman Invsion for English faction and is planed to be used int eh new release of the FATW.

IK that that is why I said change things so that when you recruit a Triarii you can

have a General. The problem here is that the OP seems to want the AI to have Triarii bodyguard

for the AI, which would be near impossible as the AI would be too stupid to recruit any

(or they might end up spamming them). We would also need to remove a unit from a faction

as we would need to make two separate Triarii units

[romanius24]

Is it possible to make a general type unit instead?
Lets say you create a unit(like a triarii) and give it some morale bonuses just like a general would give and place an officer in that unit to represent him.

I assume this would mean he doesnt act as a FM(not traits,etc) and doesnt have a portrait.

[CatoTheYounger]

It doesn't have to be Triarii but that would make the most sense to me. Maybe eqestrian's can be mounted(master of horse) and all others can be a foot unit. The spartan Generagls are on foot i beleive.

[Alavaria]

I beleive Fabius had to get special permission to be mounted as he was not equestrian.

We also have plebian generals, which is rather amusing when they get an army at 16 years old.

[CatoTheYounger]

There were plebian generals of course. Gaius Flaminius Nepos was a good example. The game mistakenly has him as a patrician i beleive. Either way you control whether you turn your armies over to a 16 yo. I give Consuls armies first and alow them to retain their armies as proconcul unless they perform poorly. Leaders with high influence are next consideration. in far off lands like spain or Africa i simpy alow the best general to command and give him imperium.

It would be cool to have most leaders on foot and only some on horse. 10 star generals like Hanibal or Phillip V would be far more dangerous imo.

[Alavaria]

With crappy generals, occasionally your levy units will break after 50% losses in an instant due to never bracing before a ridiculous cavalry charge. But with just a few stars or some extra help, getting your levys to fight down to 40/240 guys or less regularly is not a problem.

For choosing a general, my main points to look for are a combination of age (less is better, of course) and then traits that give bonuses to movement; the logistics one you tend to get by just winning, but there are others like "Trains Hard*" and one or two others that can't be picked up so easily. A general that is born with those gets top priority for the next stack.

*As a bonus, apparently if you start life as a character with "Trains Hard" it just improves over time (via a chance-based mechanic), so yep. You can't pick it up anywhere either... thankfully you can get it on characters put for adoption/marriage, so there's enough chances that you shouldn't run out too fast.


Infantry generals are occasionally ok, though I like being able to run my morale-raising general about faster than if he was on foot. Depending on what kind of cavalry general you get, some don't have shields which makes their unit very vulnerable to being sniped by the AI. (Though Dacian generals apparently have 16 armor and 10 shield, seriously?). I actually just had my horse general do a proper lance-down charge through my guys and totally waste an enemy general unit. It's very nice to have the cavalry general's uberstats. The small unit size is not too bad (stretch to 2 ranks, it's usually more than long enough), and they refill so you're always at that nice size. The main reason I don't care to make use of this more often is because Syracuse has a heavy lancer that frightens the enemy, so I always have those and don't want more horse.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

Seeing as Cato' invited........

Firstly, even though I have read most of Livy I must admit that I have never noticed any comment that Consuls were on foot most of the time - and would appreciate the reference?

Secondly in RSII/RTW the General is a unit, as opposed to Rome2 where he is assigned a unit (from a discreet selection). There's also a limited number of units and the Generals are part of that - if you wanted a 'Triarii' option, then something else would have to go. Triarii would also only be useful for Early/Middle Republic - which many cruise through rather fast!

Thirdly, I think most would 'expect' a cavalry unit - and there are normally good reasons why Generals tend to be mounted; both to see and to move around (use messengers) to give orders. Even I don't use the General Camera, although it would be very realistic (the AI doesn't - so it seems unfair!).

Fourthly - RSII gives the flavour of the classic 3 classes of Rome and uses ranks to match and different career choices - but if it were truly accurate (just like vanilla RTW) all Generals/Consuls (including Flamminius who was by then a Patrician and Consul, whatever his roots) would have been Patricians; either as Consuls, Pro-Consuls or Praetors. It should be noted that a 'full stack' really represents a full consular army (2 Roman + 2 Allied legions); 4 Late Republic legions; or 2 Imperial Legions + Auxilliaries to match - so in fact most Generals would be senior to Legionary Legates! RSII has the beautiful named and numbered, however, and it's just nice to have '1' per stack. The scale is still there, however.

[CatoTheYounger]

Actualy the passage i read from Livy refered to Dictators not being allowed to ride horses and that he was to command the infantry on foot while the master of horse comanded the Cavalry. It isn't clear where regualr Consuls stand in this regard but i know Flaminius Nepos was killed on foot. Doesn't prove alot though.

Quote from livius account from wiki--Then Fabius quickly sought to calm the Roman people by asserting himself as a strong Dictator at the moment of what was perceived to be the worst crisis in Roman history. He asked the Senate to allow him to ride on horseback, which Dictators were never allowed to do.

Also i agree about the full stack representing a full consular army. Thats why i have the first line being Roman cohorts and Triarii from Rome and Latium while the second row is identical but of allied.In every other city i build allied/client state in every city to provide the other line worth of troops. After the reforms i switch by giving citizenship but i wait for the historical date so this army composition last a long time.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

That's interesting - for the Dictator and the 'Master of Horse' are, in fact, equivalent roles - and I strongly suspect that the quote is a throwback to earlier times when there was just one army. For the Dictator and the Magister Equitum take over from the 2 Consuls, although in this case the Magister is definitely subordinate. That said, this is supposed to happen 'in extremis' so that the armies may well often be combined (like at Cannae - let alone doubled in size!).

Either way, on a battlefield, it is very common for a General to be mounted - simply to gain some height and see! A definite exception would be a Spartan King - for he's got to fight in the front rank and really lead from the front. Alexander did this too - but then he had someone else 'commanding' once the plan had been made and Alexander went off to be heroic with the Companions.

[CatoTheYounger]

Yes it sounded special situation during Fabius consulship because the master of horse was imposed on him by a special elaction where the Tribune spured on by the Plebes, voted Minucius co-Consul and Master of horse. In Flaminius case he probably was on foot because they Carthaginains and Gauls pushed back all the way to the Generals bodygaurd and it was touch and go. I do remember Publius Scipio being on horse in his defeat to Hanibal during the recon mission at the battle of Ticinus. So maybe it was just a dictator thing but Hannibal was on Foot in many battles (cannae) and Roman Generals at times too. The option to have a General on foot would be cool if only to keep them alive with the reserve longer.

The oher posters skirmisher unit with no amo was interesting but horse in general get's tracked down and killed easier. Not so much reserve speer units. Oh well..

[Alavaria]

I do note, though, that General's Guard Cavalry of different types have the highest success chance when it comes to stomping pikemen by attacking head on (results are better if they don't actually do a formed charge, but just blindly blunder in)

Heavy infantry like Triarii or those Cimbri madmen don't have such luck.

[MacBlain]

I think the game would play much better if the AI were given a commander unit that stayed in a more conservative role. Just sayin.

I love that idea from 1648. Maybe the general could shoot invisible "Strategy Bullets" that would inflict a slight morale penalty or something.