Romans

[Lamachus435]

...Therefore it may readily be understood that, as I said before, it is impossible to confront a charge of the phalanx, so long as it retains its proper formation and strength.

But:

The Romans do not, then, attempt to extend their front to equal that of a phalanx, and then charge directly upon it with their whole force: but some of their divisions are kept in reserve, while others join battle with the enemy at close quarters. Now, whether the phalanx in its charge drives its opponents from their ground, or is itself driven back, in either case its peculiar order is dislocated; for whether in following the retiring, or flying from the advancing enemy, they quit the rest of their forces: and when this takes place, the enemy's reserves can occupy the space thus left, and the ground which the phalanx had just before been holding, and so no longer charge them face to face, but fall upon them on their flank and rear.

[shadowdragon]

I didn’t bother to collect that stats on that but it might suggest that Legion heavy Roman army isn’t an easy one for inexperienced players even if it’s a popular choice.

I suspect those players lost because all the crappy auxiliary BGs (Numidians, LF, cavalry) were the prime target of their opponents. A legion-heavy LRR with minimum auxiliaries would be the army I would recommend for inexperienced players as it can stand up to just about anything if you keep a reasonably tight line and seriously reduces the opponent's options. Not much fun to play though.

That's something the MRR list protections players from doing....taking too many non-legionnaires.

[shadowdragon]

...Therefore it may readily be understood that, as I said before, it is impossible to confront a charge of the phalanx, so long as it retains its proper formation and strength.

But:

The Romans do not, then, attempt to extend their front to equal that of a phalanx, and then charge directly upon it with their whole force: but some of their divisions are kept in reserve, while others join battle with the enemy at close quarters. Now, whether the phalanx in its charge drives its opponents from their ground, or is itself driven back, in either case its peculiar order is dislocated; for whether in following the retiring, or flying from the advancing enemy, they quit the rest of their forces: and when this takes place, the enemy's reserves can occupy the space thus left, and the ground which the phalanx had just before been holding, and so no longer charge them face to face, but fall upon them on their flank and rear.

Not to mention....this quote from the histories of Polybius.

I thought it necessary to discuss this subject at some length, because at the actual time of the occurrence many Greeks supposed when the Macedonians were beaten that it was incredible; and many will afterwards be at a loss to account for the inferiority of the phalanx to the Roman system of arming.

Apparently that's still true...

[VMadeira]

Well, referring to the several historical sources praising the "unstopble" phalanx, to be coherent, we should give them the same credibility when it comes to evaluate the results of the battles they describe. And when it comes to results, those same writers, give repeated smashing victories to the romans, in some cases as in Pydna, they mention 25.000-30.000 macedonian casulaties to just a few hundred roman casualties (in an 1 hour battle), but this is not the only one, see Magnesia or Cynoscephalae for example.

so in what are we going to believe?

One thing is certain though, after some clashes between the phalanx and the legion, several of the roman enemies were replacing phalanx units, by roman style units, not the opposite (as we can see in the FOG army lists ). This I believe, clearly shows what system the contemporary generals and rulers thought was better.

[VMadeira]

Lawrence, i was referring to the results of the battles. Which with the above exceptions, always went in roman favour, several of them, being huge defeats for the pike armies (Magnesia, Cynoscephalae, but there's others).

And these were even points battles. Wow. The Romans must have rolled a lot of sixes.

Or their political and economic system was superior, enabling a more powerful military, and therefore more points on table.

Did the romans had a large good army because of the economy and political conditions, or they had a good economy and political conditions because they had a good army that conquered lands and riches and gave them trade advantages, compared to other peoples?

What comes first, the egg or the chicken

[VMadeira]

Shadowdragon, as to the statistics, correct me if i am wrong, but the later statistics are the ones that should be used, as they incorporate more results than the previous ones, so are more balanced.
The ELO ranking for the roman armies is as follows as at today (out of a total of 241 armies):

- 14th place: Dominate Roman (549 games / 1717pts)
- 36th place: Early Republican Roman (10 games / 1676pts)
- 202nd place: Mid Republican Roman (279 games / 1527pts)
- 216th place: Late Republican Roman (630 games / 1507pts)
- 223rd place: Principate Roman (340 games / 1499pts)
- 224th place: Foederate Roman (159 games / 1495pts)

Note that Dominate / Early and Foederate armies need not / cannot use the classical legionaire.

For an army that dominated half of the know world for about 5 centuries, these is lousy classifications. Discarding the Early Rep. Romans (which only has 10 games) all the legionnaries armies are clearly underperformers.

[shadowdragon]

Shadowdragon, as to the statistics, correct me if i am wrong, but the later statistics are the ones that should be used, as they incorporate more results than the previous ones, so are more balanced.

The range of numbers I quoted are "later statistics" in that the graph on the bottom is only for the most recent games and shows the "variance" in results. There has to be some variance in any statistic. Simply taking the last score because it "incorporates more results" is a complete misapplication of statistics.

The graph only shows the last 130 games. The MRR have about 279 games and their graph shows their ELO score nearly at 1600 when they were just over 200 games and again at about 235. Unfortunately they've declined a lot in the last 35 or so games..... I do not see that the most recent score is "more accurate" but merely reflects normal variation.

By the way, if you look at the MRR graph, you'll see a strong dip 3/4 of the way along. One player accounted for a drop in ELO of 63 points. That's a lot but it is an indication of the high variance with you can expect in the results due to the influence of player ability.

You migh also want to note that you can't prove the hypothesis that the Roman's are underperformers. What you have to do is look at the null hypothesis - i.e. are the data consistent with the Roman's being no different than other armies.

For what it's worth, I'd happily take the Romans to an "in theme tournament" but not to a wide open one.

[grahambriggs]

Lawrence, i was referring to the results of the battles. Which with the above exceptions, always went in roman favour, several of them, being huge defeats for the pike armies (Magnesia, Cynoscephalae, but there's others).

And these were even points battles. Wow. The Romans must have rolled a lot of sixes.

Or their political and economic system was superior, enabling a more powerful military, and therefore more points on table.

Did the romans had a large good army because of the economy and political conditions, or they had a good economy and political conditions because they had a good army that conquered lands and riches and gave them trade advantages, compared to other peoples?

What comes first, the egg or the chicken

The former. The initial Roman system was no different to their neighbours. What they were good at was taking better weapons and systems they came across and making them their own and a steely determination that allowed them to take a heavy defeat and produce a new army. Contrast with the late successors who were still using pike phalanxes - fearsome frontally but weak if out manouvered - and gave up after a few heavy defeats.

[grahambriggs]

Shadowdragon, as to the statistics, correct me if i am wrong, but the later statistics are the ones that should be used, as they incorporate more results than the previous ones, so are more balanced.

The range of numbers I quoted are "later statistics" in that the graph on the bottom is only for the most recent games and shows the "variance" in results. There has to be some variance in any statistic. Simply taking the last score because it "incorporates more results" is a complete misapplication of statistics.

The graph only shows the last 130 games. The MRR have about 279 games and their graph shows their ELO score nearly at 1600 when they were just over 200 games and again at about 235. Unfortunately they've declined a lot in the last 35 or so games..... I do not see that the most recent score is "more accurate" but merely reflects normal variation.

By the way, if you look at the MRR graph, you'll see a strong dip 3/4 of the way along. One player accounted for a drop in ELO of 63 points. That's a lot but it is an indication of the high variance with you can expect in the results due to the influence of player ability.

You migh also want to note that you can't prove the hypothesis that the Roman's are underperformers. What you have to do is look at the null hypothesis - i.e. are the data consistent with the Roman's being no different than other armies.

For what it's worth, I'd happily take the Romans to an "in theme tournament" but not to a wide open one.

What are their statistics against historical opponents? Threads elsewhere have a "save the warband from the legionaries" air about them.

Proper legions struggle in an open competition as they are quite expensive yet weak against things like knights.

[Strategos69]

I haven't participated in this thread because I think that in the overall the interaction between pikes and legionaries is well balanced. It is case where the result is good even if the arguments are not convincing. If we take a look at battles between the Romans and the Macedonians (Cynoscephalos, Pydna) we see the phalanx first winning and then dying of victory. This is: they pushed so hard the Romans that made them retreat and it happened what usually happens to a moving phalanx: gaps appear, flanks are exposed, etc. The Roman military system, by contrast with the Greek, was well prepared to retreat from the enemy when needed. The fact that the first ranks broke off from the enemy did not mean that that was the end of the battle, as Greeks were used to.

FoG does not cover the pushing effects, nor the disorder while pursuing or moving. If you want a really realistic depiction of what happened, you need a more powerful phalanx at impact and to some extent in melee, but there should be lots of more conditionants to the phalanx too like being more prone to disorder even in what FoG considers open ground. Capturing all that is very complex and requieres a new philosophy of game (it is feasible and I would like a set of rules like that, but we should admit the whole complexity it would imply for something they have solved in FoG in a very neat way).

Another different problem is that, maybe, the Middle Republican Roman is a list too large to cover armies that were very different and when we discuss we think in the better options they have. The legions Pyrrhus faced were very different to the ones Macedonians faced almost a century later. That list enjoys the benefits that only some generals had in specific campaigns (like veteran legions or armoured ones), whereas it is fair to say that legions were not that protected until the second half of the third century BC and BG should be bigger in early legions than in latter (to represent the lack of flexibility). Roman cavalry proved to be inferior to their counterparts (sometimes just small in numbers) until the reforms they did, probably because they realized during the Punic Wars. And so on with leves and velites, the progressive less use of the triarii, etc.

[shadowdragon]

Shadowdragon, as to the statistics, correct me if i am wrong, but the later statistics are the ones that should be used, as they incorporate more results than the previous ones, so are more balanced.

To summarize:

You theory is that "traditional" (i.e., ones with lots of legionnaires) Roman armies "underperform". I would assume that means "underperform" regardless of a players experience and talent. While the statistic of current ELO score / average points per game is consistent with that theory, once you take into account the variability in the data you can't claim the data supports the theory with a great deal of confidence (in the statistical sense of "confidence"). The data are also consistent with other theories, such as:

1) The results are due to randomness.
2) Poorer / less experienced players are attracted to "traditional" Roman armies.
3) "Traditional" Roman armies are difficult to play well for poorer / less experienced players.

The difficulty with the data is that one can’t control for player experience or talent. With an experiment you would select players at random and assign them armies at random or use some other method of controlling for player influences. However, with the data players have selected their own armies; this introduces a significant factor due “player influence”.

There have been 9468 games entered in the database or 18,936 results for armies since there two armies per game. Traditional Roman armies appear in 1259 games (ERR = 10, MRR = 279, LRR = 630 and PR = 340) which is 6.6% of the total.

I looked at the top 20 ELO-ranked players. They have played a total of 1,014 games and have used Roman armies just 36 times (ERR = 7, LRR = 29) for 3.6% of their games. That is consistent with theory #2 above by the way.

Even more interesting are the results for these armies as played by top players.

ERR = 1 X 1st place and 1 X 2nd place
LRR = 5 X 1st place; 1 X 3rd place and 1 X 12th place

That’s actually a very good record for traditional Roman armies; and one which shows that in the hands of a capable player traditional Roman armies DO NOT underperform.

[VMadeira]

Actually I think the statistical data confirms what i say, quite well, lets see:
Why are these armies underperforming:

1 - “The results are due to randomness”:

If statistics are worth anything, than the conclusions we draw for the roman armies are among the best we can have with these data, as they have more representative samples (because they have many games played, their statistics are more reliable).
In the ranking by number of games played, the Late Rep. Roman is 2nd (630 games), Dominate Roman is 4th (549 games), Principate Romans is 7th (340 games), Mid Rep. Roman is 17th (279 games). So the statistics for these armies are less vulnerable to randomness than those of other armies.

2) Poorer / less experienced players are attracted to "traditional" Roman armies.

Indeed that could be one reason (and i believe it is). Next question would be why good/experienced players don’t play these armies. Possible answers, that I can imagine off, would be:
- Because the armies are not competitive and these players usually play to win tournaments, so they won’t choose them.
- Because if we compare the price per file of superior legionnaires with average pikes (so that the romans, keep the slight advantage it was mentioned earlier in the thread), you have 28 points for the romans against 24 for the phalanx, considering that the pikes will be at better or equal POA’s against almost any opponent and the legionnaires are vulnerable to a series of opponents, why would anyone choose the legion over the phalanx ? they like playing with it and don’t mind losing? they are good players and like the challenge? they are poor players and didn’t understood they’re army stinks ?
- Because Roman armies are many gamers first armies and then when they start to play better and understand the game, change to a more competitive army?

3) "Traditional" Roman armies are difficult to play well for poorer / less experienced players.

Perhaps, but there are others equally (or more) difficult armies for these players, I would say Seleucids can be one of these, and they don't show so bad in the ELO Ranking.

[VMadeira]

What are their statistics against historical opponents? Threads elsewhere have a "save the warband from the legionaries" air about them.

That was why I decided to begin this one I believe it is not only the barbarians that need a little push.

[VMadeira]

Lawrence, i was referring to the results of the battles. Which with the above exceptions, always went in roman favour, several of them, being huge defeats for the pike armies (Magnesia, Cynoscephalae, but there's others).

And these were even points battles. Wow. The Romans must have rolled a lot of sixes.

Or their political and economic system was superior, enabling a more powerful military, and therefore more points on table.



Did the romans had a large good army because of the economy and political conditions, or they had a good economy and political conditions because they had a good army that conquered lands and riches and gave them trade advantages, compared to other peoples?

What comes first, the egg or the chicken



The former. The initial Roman system was no different to their neighbours. What they were good at was taking better weapons and systems they came across and making them their own and a steely determination that allowed them to take a heavy defeat and produce a new army. Contrast with the late successors who were still using pike phalanxes - fearsome frontally but weak if out manouvered - and gave up after a few heavy defeats.

Actually Carthage should have a very good economy, being the main commercial power in the Mediterranean, at the time.

Additionally I am not sure as the Roman Political system being an advantage:

- Their annual elections, meant that in many occasions battles were fought at bad timings, just because a consuls mandate was at the end and he wanted the glory of defeating the enemy.
- With the consuls term of 1 year it should be very difficult to make long term strategical plans.
- The daily alternation of command when the 2 consuls were present in an army, is something that violates any modern command theory.
- If the consuls were in two different armies, it was difficult to coordinate them.

[shadowdragon]

Actually I think the statistical data confirms what i say, quite well

You don't have to "think' it confirms your theory, there are mathematical tests for statistical significance.

I'm not saying your theory is wrong, but I am saying that taking a point estimate of an average (such as average points per game) or a number that varies in time (ELO) without taking into account variance in data is bad statistics. Maybe you don't have a background in statistics, but I assure it's bad use of statistics and is little better than saying, "I believe". Of course, you are welcome to believe in your theory, but if you say statistics "confirm" than you are on different ground which can be verified through mathematical tests. I've taken the time to go through the data and look at the details to see how well founded the statement of "the statistical data confirms". So rather than restating your believe and quoting the most recent point estimates, you are very welcome dig into the mathematics.

You don't have to take my word for it. Even though I do this type of analysis for a living you can verify "statistical significance" on your own.

Again, none of what I'm saying about the use of the data and statisical signficance means that your theory is wrong.

[shadowdragon]

1 - “The results are due to randomness”:

If statistics are worth anything, than the conclusions we draw for the roman armies are among the best we can have with these data, as they have more representative samples (because they have many games played, their statistics are more reliable).

It is true that as you have more and more samples the statistical average asymptotically approaches the true average. However, unless you understand the underlying probability distribution you don’t know if it requires five hundred, a thousand, ten thousand or more games to adequately reduce the effects of variance on estimating an average. Just because they are the best data you have does not imply adequate data for hypothesis testing.

The above assume that the process you are estimating is a stable process. If you have a time series with temporal variations in the parameters (e.g., average and variance) defining a probability distribution, you have huge problems. Given the young age of FoG, it’s not clear if we’ve reached a stable situation with respect to something like army rankings – even for the Roman armies as you can see from looking at their ELO graphs.

[shadowdragon]

2) Poorer / less experienced players are attracted to "traditional" Roman armies.

Indeed that could be one reason (and i believe it is). Next question would be why good/experienced players don’t play these armies. Possible answers, that I can imagine off...

That is called speculation.

[shadowdragon]

3) "Traditional" Roman armies are difficult to play well for poorer / less experienced players.

Perhaps, but there are others equally (or more) difficult armies for these players, I would say Seleucids can be one of these, and they don't show so bad in the ELO Ranking.

Either that's a contradiction in logic or you will have to define by what it means to "play well".

As I've shown above good players can do very well with ERR and LRR armies. If I do the same for the Macedonian / Successor armies, one can see that the top 20 players have played 39 games with these armies (only 3 more than "traditional" Roman armies). The details are Later Ptolemaic - 4 games, Alexandrian Macdeonian - 21 games, Later Seleucid - 11 games and Graeco-Bactrian - 3 games.

The results of the 11 tournments in which these armies were played are:

Later Ptolemaic: 1 X 4th
Alexandrian Macedonian: 3 X 1st, 1 X 3rd, 1 X 5th, 1 X 7th
Later Seleucid: 1 X 3rd, 1 X 4th, 1 X 7th
Graeco-Bactrian: 1 X 8th

Total: 3 X 1st, 2 X 3rd, 2 X 4th, 1 X 5th, 2 X 7th, 1 X 8th

For the Roman armies used by this group of players:

Total: 6 X 1st, 1 X 2nd, 1 X 3rd, 1 X 12th (for 9 tournaments)

While it may only be indicative, it does show that by “controlling for player influence” by using the same group of experienced, talented players that “traditional” Roman armies have actually posters that Roman armies are very capable.

[VMadeira]

3) "Traditional" Roman armies are difficult to play well for poorer / less experienced players.

Perhaps, but there are others equally (or more) difficult armies for these players, I would say Seleucids can be one of these, and they don't show so bad in the ELO Ranking.



Either that's a contradiction in logic or you will have to define by what it means to "play well".

You tell me, it was you who used first the term.

[VMadeira]

You seem to forget some other pike armies, like early successor (5 gold, 4 silver, 6 bronze), or out of period the Swiss (5 gold, 3 silver, 5 bronze).

I don't really have the time to go dig statistics that fit my beliefs, forgeting other that is not so favourable and calling other people speculators.

I opened the thread to draw attention to what for me is a problem in FOG, for me it is finished.