Polybian Infantry Cohort claim source?

[reaper101]

So, in the unit description for the Polybian Cohort, it says that the hastati and princeps were intermingled. I've never heard this before - where's the source?

[isa0005]

As far as I am aware, you're right there is no evidence to suggest that the Roman Manipular legions entirely abandoned the triplex acies formation in favor of a single cohort of fronlt line infantry i.e. the Polybian Cohort. Rather I wonder if the purpose of the Polybian Cohort is to reflect the transitional 'Proletarianisation' of the Roman army that was beginning to occur as a result of the Punic Wars. In other words, the class system that the Early Republic's legions were based on was beginning to blur as the need for man power was becoming more pronounced. This became fully realized under Gaius Marius' sweeping reforms yes, but this process was already underway prior to Marius' ascension to the Consulship. I also wonder if the Polybian cohorts might be a nod to the fact that Scipio deployed his hastati and principes together in the same battle line at a number of his key battles against Cathage. With this information and the fact that there is a unit number limitation in RTW engine, I imagine the devs saw the idea of have two infantry units that were in effect identical in purpose was pointless.
Just my thoughts make of them as you will!

[dvk901]

I would answer your question in detail...if I could...but I suffered a hard drive meltdown a while back and lost all my resource material and historical data. Now, I'm having a hard time finding that reference. I did a LOT of reading and digging 'back in the day', and from what I can remember (which isn't much) the reference came from a particular Roman General (I'm guessing either Scipio or Marius) who did this in a battle because the Hastati couldn't hold their own. Mixing them encouraged the younger men and they fought better. I can only say I wouldn't have put the reference in there if there wasn't 'something' to back it up, because we tried to be as 'historical as possible' without sacrificing playability and the fun of it. A good deal of our information on Romans came from British sources (museums, colleges, etc.) so I might have found it there.

[reaper101]

I would answer your question in detail...if I could...but I suffered a hard drive meltdown a while back and lost all my resource material and historical data. Now, I'm having a hard time finding that reference. I did a LOT of reading and digging 'back in the day', and from what I can remember (which isn't much) the reference came from a particular Roman General (I'm guessing either Scipio or Marius) who did this in a battle because the Hastati couldn't hold their own. Mixing them encouraged the younger men and they fought better. I can only say I wouldn't have put the reference in there if there wasn't 'something' to back it up, because we tried to be as 'historical as possible' without sacrificing playability and the fun of it. A good deal of our information on Romans came from British sources (museums, colleges, etc.) so I might have found it there.

I did a bit of digging, while I couldn't find a reference with regards to that specific statement, I did find some information that property classes had been lifted re: the army by the timeframe of RS.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

Having now seen this, I can add some further detail.....

The source, indeed, is dear old Polybius' Bk6 - give it a good read, particularly Ch23. Read it carefully and you will find that the Hastati & Principes are in all important ways 'identical'. The only difference between them in practice is that they are split in two halves by age. Depending on their property wealth, length of previous service, or being lent armour by friends or family they may show variation in having a corslet/hamata or just the 'heart-guard'. Otherwise they fight and operate in just the same way - so no reason to have different troop types at all - especially given Vanilla RTW's unit limit.