Army composition as rome?

[austerlitz]

Which are you using?For polybian and marian era?

Im using 1 baggage train,4 velites,3 cav,cav general ,6 hastati, 5 principe or 4 principe and ballista.

[Lord Damian]

With polybian reform im using: general, 2 equites extraordonaries, 3 velites, 1 ballista, 5 hastati, 5 principes, 3 triarii.
Im playing VH Campaign and normal battle diff.

[TFCAliarcy]

For Polybian I use 2 Hastati, 2 Hastati tier unit, 2 principes, 2 principes units, 2 trirarii, 2 pedites extraordinarii, 1 equites, 2 allied cavalry, 2 velites, 2 allied ranged units.
Marian: 2 Volunteer Legionnaires, 2 Veteran Legionnaires, 3 Allied Cavalry, 4 allied Skirmishers, 2 allied spears, 6 Legionnaires

[Samir]

I tend to rely on mercenary cavalry, the rest is always a good mix of legionaries and some archers or slingers. I rely heavily on bravery by my line infantry. Brute force and strict discipline! If there was a decimate (the original one) command for commanders I would really really be the happiest pro-consul ever I also tend to sacrifice my mercenary troops to the last man occasionally to polish my roman diplomacy skill (as you dont have to pay dead man and the next bunch of stupid idiots is waiting in the next province to be hired for this awesome position that just opened, I found you can save thousands of gold this way, especially as I tend to forget to send the mercs home after the campaign and they loiter around my army camp and cost a fortune for years to come)

during mid late game I tend to field specialized siege armies who do the technical stuff. As most barbarian villages and cities are a piece of rubble anyway the standard legions just have torches as siege instruments as the 2 additional legions will easily make up for siege equipment to break down walls if you give them ladders

[SacremPyrobolum]

I usually go with a base army of the general, three triarii, and seven principes with a ballista if I can get it. This doesn't really accurately mirror Polybian armies which had hastati but whatevs. I also have 4 AOR but preferably Romanized cav and missile units.

For your first two armies, recruit those from Syracuse as you can get Creten archers and Macedonian shock cav.

When you get to Marian, upgrade your legionaries and general but disband a triarii first and replace it with an eagle cohort. And there you go, a semi-historical powerhouse of an army that can siege cities at will.

[Scuta]

For Polybian/Camillan, i go for :
1 x General
4 x Hastati
4 x Principes
2 x Hastati
2 x Equites
3 x Ascensi/Velites

I mix in socii units for flavour, and fill out the rest with AOR/Mercenary troops. Mostly skirmish and missile, with some cavalry. Whatevers available.


I tend not to fill every army with Kretan Archers and Cataphracts, because it gets boring. So i like to use the weaker AOR troops too.

For Marian, ive started using 8 legionary units rather than 10 as i used to. 8 is enough, and 10 units doesnt really equal a historical legion anyway.

This leaves me more space for other cool units, so i tend to go:

1 x General
1 x First Cohort
5 x Legionary Cohort
2 x Veteran Legionary Cohort
3 x Archers/Slingers
2 x Heavy/Medium Cavalry
2 - 3 x Skirmisher Cav

And the rest filled with interesting infantry, Spearmen are a good bet, and fill a weakness.


After my first Civil War, I start using the Auxilia units in my armies, and sometimes form full Auxilary half stacks, usually used for defence.


I dont use Artillery much, since in field battles it causes the enemy to rush at you, which can prevent them using more interesting tactics.


Hope someone found that helpful/interesting!!

[UsulDaNeriak]

I just copy my post from this other thread in the strategy section:

I establish historical armies as soon as possible, because a roman only army is too overpowered. First of all, a stack in TW is not a legion, it is an exercitus (army). The romans almost never fought with legions; it was always an exercitus. I am not that restricitive in composing my armies, because surprisingly no roman army looked the same. This is especially true for the post marian and imperial timeframe.

However there are some rough guidelines, the romans used to establish a pre-marian army.

1. About 50% socii, actually a bit more socii.
2. The heavy infrantry part of the romans is divided into hastati, principes and triarii (roughly 2:2:1). For the heavy infantry of the socii unit types are not that well known. I guess the romans took what they got from the socii (also hoplites from the south).
3. The light infantry (velites) are roughly the same amount of units like the hastati or the principes. But in some cases the romans recruited no velites at all and used socii-light infantry (anytype) also for the roman half of the army.
4. The cavalry was about about 5-7% of the army (1200 cavalry in a consular army of 4 x 4200 men infantry or more). The romans provided 1 ala of 300 men, while the socii added 900 men. In a single stack in TW you cannot do both: use less than 10% cavalry with a ratio of 1:3 romans : socii. I usually use the general as roman cavalry and 1-2 units of socii, which is a bit too much.
5. You may add non-italian allies to your army. In this case the percentage of your roman units drops even further, and it is fully situational how many allied troops the romans used, but I would not overdo with such allied units, if not in case of emergency.

So my composition usually is:
1G (1 roman cavalry)
1T, 2P, 2H romans (5 roman heavy infantry)
1T, 2P, 2H socii (5 socii heavy infantry)
2V + 2 V socii or 4 V socii (4 light infantry anytype)
2C ( 2 socii cavalry)
3 A ( 3 allied units of any type, including the baggage train or siege units)

For the post marian times, we got no clue about standards. Often a roman army had more legionaries than allies. But it could be vice versa. Amount of cavalry was about 10%, perhaps sometimes up to 15%. Usually all non-italians. For an interim period I am not hesitating to use a mix of pre-marian and post-marian armies and units. What we call the Marian reforms actually started with some measures of Scipio Africanus after 210 BC during his campaigns in Spain. And the last pre-marian roman army was raised around the War of the Socii 90 BC. So the Marian reforms actually lasted over 100 years.

For imperial times we got again roughly 50% romans and 50% auxilia, plus sometimes allies. So even 60-40, 40-60 or 40-40-20 is possible. Cavalry was about 5-15% in an provincial exercitus, but could be up to 20% in an campaigning army, because the romans sometimes took all nearby cavalry on a campaign (e.g. Arrians campaign against the Alans) but not all infantry. If we assume, that a stack is an exercitus with 1 legion as its core, imperial armies had not more than 1 first cohort and usually just 1 of veterans. Cataphracts were never more than 10% of the cavalry, so more than 1 unit sounds unhistorical. Praetorians were used on campaigns. But just a few and just if the leader is the emperor or his heir. For example Germanicus led multiple legions and lots of auxilia into Germania, but was accompanied by just 3-4 praetorian cohorts. You do the math.

In summary, my roman armies are very flexible and they never look the same, with usually less than 50% romans.

[Beagle74]

I've started to try and use armies comprised largely of AoR units and auxillia, I thought it would be quite fun as I started to get a bit bored of the old historically based armies.