Using the Notitia Dignitatum for Legions Triumphant

[Hoplite1963]

While its not likely to see the light of day before next year I wanted to raise the issue of what use is going to be made of the shield patterns in this document in the module and float some ideas. There are a couple of full colour online resources for the document at

http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db ... =5&seite=1

and

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/luke/ueda-sarson ... terns.html

For those not familiar with the document, it’s a medieval copy of a series of 4th and 5th centaury documents not only giving the full theoretical order of battle of the Roman army at that time but also full colour shield patterns for a very large number of specific units.

Obviously the game is not going to be able to cover any more that a sample fraction of the units shown (indeed down the line you might want to think about a special expansion module devoted to units given in the Notitia Dignitatum) however I do think that there are ways to maximise the number of specific Late Roman Units you can get into “Legions Triumphant”.

From the reading I have done I think in theory the Late Roman army used shield patterns to distinguish between one unit and another, not that they did not wear uniforms (they did) but that these were more standardised within units of a particular type with shield patterns playing the role taken by variations on turn backs and cuff colours in post 1700 uniforms. Also I notice that only about 2/3 of the photos taken for a particular unit actually show the shield with that facing away in the other images.

This means that if you paint all late Roman units of a particular type such as say “Legiones palatine” the same apart from their shields that you would only need to take a full set of photos for the 1st unit, just needing 2/3rds as many for any subsequent ones. Thus for example for the same number of photos as you would have to take for 5 separate normal units you could get 7 units worth of late Roman troops and an extra 3 units worth for the number of photos normally needed for every 2 units after that.

Any thoughts ?

Ian