Slitherine

deeter wrote:I really doubt Romans could field that many superior troops against Hannibal. The rate at which he slaughtered them and the huge expansion of the legions to deal with him would suggest hastily trained and randomly equiped troops.

Admittedly, the Romans at Trebbia were trained to the normal standard, but they were exhausted, starving and freezing before they even engaged. GBoH rates the infantry as average to poor as a result.

FoG 2.0 TT rules are taking steps to lessen their effectiveness against warbands, which is good. Hope this makes its way to the PC.

Deeter

Presumably the superior legionaries represent veteran troops either from later in the Punic War, e.g. under Scipio Africanus, or else for the wars with the Macedonian and Seleucid Successor states. The same list covers the SecondPunic War plus these later campaigns and therefore allows the high quality troops. It also allows the use of average and poor legionaries to represent the less experienced and less well trained troops from earlier in the Second Punic War.

Chris

Ok, let me add some of my own opinions (to those follwing this discussion, I live with Ardashir and we both play the game, but the expansions are coded to my account so we will likely be making post with my *Sabratha* account).

ROME:

I think the mid-republican Roman armies in the DAG actually can be represented somewhat better. First of all, the protected status of Hastati is a good idea. However, in DAG we can still build a legion of just princepes without any hastati. I think there should be a fixed rule of "minimum 1 hastati unit for every principes unit". Plus the amount of veterans available is still rather high. So in a random DAG scenario many players just buy all princepes for the extra armor, and max out on veterans which is rather unhistorical.
Perhaps there should be a separate "Scipio's veterans" army list (like the Carthaginain Hannibal one), while the maximum amount of veterans for a "regular" mid-republican roman army should be lowered?
Another element about mid-republican rome list I don't particularly like is that all italic allies are depiced as "Medium foot, light spear". We know that allied units often fought in the same manner as romans did. Thus I'd like to see an option to have some "Protected, drilled, impact foot, heavy foot average/poor" allied legion. I usually use the "penal legions" for taht purpose, but they come only as poor, not having an "average" option.

CARTHAGE:

As for the carthaginian infantry, I still think that regular (non-hannibal) Carthaginian lists should have an option to pick the protected african heavy spearmen as superior. These were "professional" soldiers, experienced libyphoenician mercenaries who held their own against not only siciliot greeks or spanish and celtic tribesmen, but proved a match for the legions even in lost battles in Spain (Illipa).

Thus I believe we can get close to a historical "2nd Punic war in Iberia" DAG battle if the roman player sticks to the "minimum 1 hastati for every principes" rule, while the Carthaginian player has his african spearmen as "protected &uperior".