Marian Madness?

[b0Gia de Bodemloze]

Except that it isn't true. They weren't the first, and they certainly weren't the only professionals around at the time. Again, what do you think mercenaries are? Successor armies had large components of professionals, too.

They were the first professional army Hollywood displayed to us...

[Auvar]

I guess I'll step up to the plate as a Marian-lover. As a caveat, I'll say I've played very little EB2 yet.

I loved EB, and I played a whole lot of it. I played every faction, though my favorites by far were Hayasdan and Pontus. When I played Romans, however, I beelined to Marian units as fast as possible. I looked up the reform conditions, and in fact edited the reform conditions so I could get them sooner. Why?

My first thought is that Camillan/Polybian "unit diversity" is not all it's cracked up to be. Yes, the pre-Marian armies are quite varied - you get all sorts of different flavors of Roman and Italic units. But for all the variety in units, the variety of roles was not great. Plenty of units were - while beautiful, historically interesting, and flavorful - essentially redundant in a tactical sense. Maybe this makes me less than a purist, but EB is also a game, and in the context of that game "diversity" is about role as well as description.

The Marian army cut the fat. It reduced the Italic roster to essentially one iconic unit (with a handful of elites/specialty variations), but the roster was no less tactically varied because of the availability of local auxiliaries, including some kinds that were only available post-Marius. The kind of Roman Army I liked to play was a heavily ethnically customized one - a legion in Spain with caetrati skirmishers and cantabrian cavalry, a legion in Africa with Numidian archers and horsemen (and maybe some elephants for fun), and so on. What tied all these various thematic armies together were the Roman cohorts, a unified, standardized core, the regimented counterpart to the auxiliary pageantry that differed from region to region.

Of course, the other big draw to Marian cohorts was availability. They were practically unique in the game because you could, given enough governmental development, build them almost anywhere. That's attractive from a gameplay standpoint because it severely cut down on the logistics; cobbling together reasonably accurate assortments of Romans and Socii and then shipping them across the sea was never something I particularly enjoyed. It's also attractive to me from a thematic standpoint, because to me, this is what is really unique about the Romans - cultural assimilation. Sure, plenty of EB factions have ethnically varied rosters (it's one of the reasons I liked Pontus so much - Greeks, Galatians, Cappadocians, Karians, Caucasians galore), but none of them seem go the lengths Rome eventually did to make the people they conquered like themselves. In EB, the Marian cohort is the symbol of that process.

I'm not saying I dislike earlier units; Polybians and Camillans are fine, and I'll use them. To me, however, they're an evolutionary stepping stone on the way to the kind of force that exemplifies what made Rome different than many other factions, rather than merely a classical Italic kingdom that happened to not have a king. The chance that I'll play Romani, knowing that Marians aren't available, is about zero percent.

And there's nothing terrible about that. EB2 is a work in progress, and as said, Romans weren't my favorite faction in EB and they're unlikely to be my favorite in EB2. I won't be spamming the forums with "MARIANS WHEN" anytime soon.

I also don't strongly favor giving the Romans a privileged focus; the whole ethos of this project, as far as I can tell, is that everyone is equally important ("Everyone is a barbarian to someone," right?). That said, however, I view Marians as part of the core factional roster, even if they're not initially available. They're a key unit, something that makes the Romans who they are, not just a little bonus upgrade. Romans without Marians are, to me, like Seleukids without elephants - playable, certainly, but not whole.

[Satapatiš]

I need Marian legionaries as my designated endgame in EB campaigns.

They have good stats and a uniform nature of army composed of them makes it easier for AI to field a force that is an actual threat instead of a random collection of whatever expensive troops it found in its recrutation pool.
TW AI never was extremely good at army composition.

But they also have a unique flavor.

If I'm playing Pahlava or Hayasdani and I'm finally at this point when I can seriously think about continuing an Achaemenid Empire, which will involve going into Europe, all Hellenic factions are either gone or powerless. At best some Ptolemaic remnants are hanging out in Northern Africa, provided Carthage or Numidia did not finish them.

That late into campaign Romans are about the only serious threat I can get, and a most original one. Carthage is like fighting Hellenic kingdoms with small adjustments, a bulk of Celtic or Germanic troops usually does not fare very well against a missile-heavy army in an open field, so... Marian Romans are the most fun to kill.

Imperial reforms are, imho, rendundant.
In the end it's just an upgrade to a Marian model, can be handled with armor upgrades. And it's borderline beyond a time scope of EB games.

[z3n]

Ai army composition is something we're looking at. Its a combination of three things edb/edu/cai. Invasion priorities kick the war buildup into gear and choice of units during this stage are determined by edu recruitment stats/cost/upkeep/priority while recruitment choice is decided by recruitment refresh rate in the edb. Financial factors also come into play when the cai calculates current income/treasury.

[anonimo272]

It's impossible to tell some people to look at the romans unbiased,it's like trying to explain that Samurai aren't the best to a weeaboo.

sint nice reading skills !
i just said their units are "cool", that holywood influenced me first, and that they are unique that's it, where do you see my bias ?

has we are in a historical forum it was just simpler to say unique but i can clarify it
quintus, i didn't said they were the first neither the last neither the only ones at this period of time to use professional armies , what i mean by the marian reforms uniqueness: is their high % of professionals employed uniquely by the state in this period of time and that makes them unique
pretty much every state has it share of uniqueness and that's one of the lessons of eb right ?
saying that the romans aren't unique, that is biased

[Thuycidides]

I hope Hollywood makes a film about the ancient Armenians, or the Iberian Celts, or some other obscure nation that the Romans conquered. The upstart hero will wear unhistorical albeit handsome armor; he will speak with a British accent; and he will definitely have his men use flaming arrows.

...Just to see you all squirm.

[Sint]

sint nice reading skills !
i just said their units are "cool", that holywood influenced me first, and that they are unique that's it, where do you see my bias ?

has we are in a historical forum it was just simpler to say unique but i can clarify it
quintus, i didn't said they were the first neither the last neither the only ones at this period of time to use professional armies , what i mean by the marian reforms uniqueness: is their high % of professionals employed uniquely by the state in this period of time and that makes them unique
pretty much every state has it share of uniqueness and that's one of the lessons of eb right ?
saying that the romans aren't unique, that is biased

My post=

good looks aside as some have already said the fact they are a professional army makes them unique in this period of time

Which as said before serveral times isn't true.By the way you did notice that my other post was a joke?Good reading skills

[QuintusSertorius]

quintus, i didn't said they were the first neither the last neither the only ones at this period of time to use professional armies , what i mean by the marian reforms uniqueness: is their high % of professionals employed uniquely by the state in this period of time and that makes them unique

Philip's army he used to subdue Greece were professionals, over two hundred years before Marius. Some of them were still in the ranks, under arms, half a century later.

The Romans were neither unique in the timeframe or even general region for using professionals.

[Darkan]

From the poll so far I can see that opinions are more or less the same, in regards to people who prefer this or that. I voted for both, but the reason I like both pre and post Marian Roman armies have nothing to do with TW gameplay. There were both advantages and disadvantages to both systems, they were used simultaneously at one point, but the impact was, in my opinion, less in the army itself as opposed to social impact.

Strictly from the EB2 point of view, I play SPQR more than other factions but I must say I much prefer pre-Marian armies. I never actually got to the Marian reforms, ever, so yeah, I doubt it will happen (very quickly) in EB2...

The Romans were neither unique in the timeframe or even general region for using professionals.

in regards to this, after studying Rome, I jokingly tell everybody that the only Roman original characteristic was their stubbornness. Everything else, they took from others (Etruscan, Samnite, Iberian, Gaulish, Greek...), adapted, improved and it got them where it did.

[juanplay]

In theory the marian and roman imperial army should be more varied than the polybian roster given the hundreds of auxiliary regiments of the former two, however due to the unit limit of the engine this cant be properly replicated.

[anonimo272]

sint
your first post on this page was obviously a joke, neither did i said otherwise in any post, again reading skills..
quintus now our points are pretty much the same after the reforms, the topic and my post being about the marian reforms and the marian legions, under this period did any state provide such amount of % professionalization on the army ? the answer can be yes but i don't know any example of it

anyway heres another controversial statement i think that even at the start in EB rome has a unique army, because of it's profissionalization combined with it's way of fighting

[tobymoby]

sint
your first post on this page was obviously a joke, neither did i said otherwise in any post, again reading skills..
quintus now our points are pretty much the same after the reforms, the topic and my post being about the marian reforms and the marian legions, under this period did any state provide such amount of % professionalization on the army ? the answer can be yes but i don't know any example of it

anyway heres another controversial statement i think that even at the start in EB rome has a unique army, because of it's profissionalization combined with it's way of fighting

Every faction had a unique army in 272 BC.

[Brihentin13]

My view is similar to many others here. The Marian reforms are important and should definitely be added eventually, but Imperial reforms I could honestly do without. Very few games ever progress to the point where you get to experience the Imperial reforms playing as the Romans, and the AI certainly has a world of trouble getting there. The armor upgrade idea would be nice though.

Really, I don't even care about the Marian reforms. I usually play Celts anyway. I recognize the importance of the eventual roster change, but I'll shed no tears if time is spent fleshing out all of the other rosters first.

[Satapatiš]

i think that even at the start in EB rome has a unique army, because of it's profissionalization combined with it's way of fighting

Not really a controversial one, just untrue.

And the start of EB Roman army is still made of citizen levies divided into social classes, which does not make them any more professional than any Greek or Italic city state.

Their way of fighting is unique, but mostly because Rome is the only Italic power playable. If we had playable Samnites, or any other tribe using manipular tactics, then Rome would feel less unique.

[The Ferret]

Uhm, no.
Not the first one professional army ever.
Egyptians
Assirians
Babylonians
Persians
Chinese


Plenty of people before this time stumbled upon an idea of having a core of professionals to gather levies around. Roman accomplishment was rather in polishing this idea and pushing it further, than in coming with something completely new.

The big Roman accomplishments were more in the areas of supply, logistics and the physical and civil infrastructure to keep a large professional army in the field, not in the professional army per se.

[QuintusSertorius]

The big Roman accomplishments were more in the areas of supply, logistics and the physical and civil infrastructure to keep a large professional army in the field, not in the professional army per se.

Precisely, in logistics especially, they reached a level of sophistication that wasn't again matched til the 19th century.

I've seen it mentioned a few times that one of the reasons for the legion's success in battle was a rather simple one: that they could pretty much guarantee that on the morning of the fight itself, every legionary would have eaten. That may sound trivial, but it isn't, often tribal levies or other less-than-organised armies would gather together and strip the nearby countryside of everything there was to eat, but there was no order to it. If they stayed in the same place for too long and foraging parties couldn't get out to places that hadn't been stripped, then food would become scarce. You can guarantee it wasn't the nobles or aristocrats who'd starve, should that arise.

[Titus le Chmakus]

And there is another thing to take into consideration : the battles had to be in large open fields for the Romans to be able to manoeuvre correctly. I remember a battle held in the woods in the late Imperial period that Romans lost, because of their unability to manoeuvre properly ...

[QuintusSertorius]

And there is another thing to take into consideration : the battles had to be in large open fields for the Romans to be able to manoeuvre correctly. I remember a battle held in the woods in the late Imperial period that Romans lost, because of their unability to manoeuvre properly ...

If you're referring to the Teutobergerwald, that was rather more to do with being badly led and having treacherous local guides, than merely fighting in a wood.

[Sint]

If you're referring to the Teutobergerwald, that was rather more to do with being badly led and having treacherous local guides, than merely fighting in a wood.

And it was really a large fight but a series of ambushes.

[Jervaj]

It seems isnt possible to vote anymore I would say both.

Ok, I agree that the Marian roster may be less varied. But was an important change and gave birth to one of the best armies for a long period of time. I may understand others finding it boring but for me it really feels an acomplishment been able to finnally field that professional and iconic core of the Roman armies together with the corresponding auxilia. And that was unic to the romans.

About the imperial, they should be really at the end of the list (if there is possibility to do them at all). For me is a lot more important giving every factions its uits and reforms, speccially having in account how late the Imperial one would be. Giving any priority to this would be absurbdily roamn centristic as the impact in the game would be really small.

I have to say I like Rome, though not my preferred faction (I tend to like hellenic a bit more) but surely among the top quarter.