Slitherine

I wouldn't quite agree with that. They certainly won the majority of the recorded battles of this era, and although propaganda and exaggeration are almost certainly part of the picture, I don't think we would expect a whole host of Cannae-like defeats to somehow have not been mentioned somewhere.

But I do suspect that Romans both won and lost a much larger number of smaller battles that we never hear of. A typical pattern would be "Barbarian" raiding party/small army crosses the border and defeats the immediate border troops piecemeal. Provincial governer might gather together other border/garrison troops and form a scratch army, which might be enough to defeat the invaders, or it might not. If not, that's when we hear about the Emperor dispatching a "real" field army, which is usually strong enough to resolve the problem...until we get to the later empire when it all starts to go a bit (and forgive me for using an obscure technical term) poo.

grahambriggs wrote:
But to mock someone for saying it about the Romans speaks of too slavish an adherence to trendy revisionism.

I think his point Eques is that we have had this discussion several times and it has become a bit tired. You have one view, some don't share it. And clearly the authors felt, with some justification in my view, that a ++ against barbarian foot didn't allow for the battles where the Romans lost.

I wasn't complaining about being mocked per se. I was complaining that the mockery centred around my belief that legionaries were superb soldiers, as if that were some sort of absurd, off the wall theory.

And my OP was very mild, actually. It was some of the responses that were insulting.

Anyway, we'll see now the rules are out. If we see Romans consistently slapped around they table by war bands we'll know it's broken. If a decent Roman general wins but with a loty of hard fighting that'll be about right.

My query was not at army level. I certainly would not want to see Romans winning all their games. My query was with regard to the interaction between 2 particular troop types (legionaries and tribal foot). My argument has always been that the game should be about maximising one's strengths and minimising one's weaknesses, rather than just making all troops good at everything.

Barbarian commanders, even the good ones, tended to throw their warriors headlong at the Roman scutums. That's not to say FoG players have to do the same.

And yes with regard to the Persians I should have specified Hoplites versus Sparabara rather Greeks versus Persians. I would be more than happy to see lots of Persian cavalry victories. I would just be concerned to see Hoplites get shot to pieces by the Sparabara in the impact phase as in reality when these two troop types met at impact the Spara might as well have been made of paper.

One thing I do like about the changes to Armour interactions is that it kicks in if PoAs are level, thereby guaranteeing the legionaries a plus one against most troop types, which probably is accurate, except for the enhanced status it gives to the humble Thracians.

ShrubMiK wrote:I wouldn't quite agree with that. They certainly won the majority of the recorded battles of this era, and although propaganda and exaggeration are almost certainly part of the picture, I don't think we would expect a whole host of Cannae-like defeats to somehow have not been mentioned somewhere.

Indeed, the small number of defeats like Cannae and Carrhae were recounted in all their highly embarassing detail by supposedly biased Roman historians.

Even down to the fact that the Romans outnumbered the Carthaginians.

Eques wrote:

grahambriggs wrote:
But to mock someone for saying it about the Romans speaks of too slavish an adherence to trendy revisionism.

I think his point Eques is that we have had this discussion several times and it has become a bit tired. You have one view, some don't share it. And clearly the authors felt, with some justification in my view, that a ++ against barbarian foot didn't allow for the battles where the Romans lost.

I wasn't complaining about being mocked per se. I was complaining that the mockery centred around my belief that legionaries were superb soldiers, as if that were some sort of absurd, off the wall theory.

And my OP was very mild, actually. It was some of the responses that were insulting.

I suspect the reality of the situation was that many Roman legionaries were well trained and well organised but not really in the 'superb' category. After all, in the Empire period, they were widely spread and, largely, not doing a great deal. And they didn't have particularly good generals. There is a bit of a pattern it seems to me when a serious threat emerges. The business as usual force is put out - a couple of average legions with an average general. If they are good enough to beat the threat, fine. If not, you usually find the best generals arriving with lots of the best troops and resources which usually does the job.

Exactly - it's very common for the Romans to lose the first battle in a campaign. It happens sometimes that they lose several battles. But they always win the last one - hence my comment.

And Eques, you keep giving the impression of failing to listen. Or to put it another slightly more pretentious way, constructing straw men to argue against.

I don't think many people round here have seriously argued that a large chunk of Roman legionaries were anything other than superb soldiers. Many people here would also I think agree that, for realism, a Roman army should seldom consist of all Superior legionaries (although in many cases you will find that such a belief plays no part in how the army is actually chosen from what is available in the list when it comes time to play a competitive game;). People including myself have argued that 1 and half POAs of superiority against your typical unwashed hairy foot is plenty to represent the observed historical advantage, whereas 2 and half POAs is too much.

Perhaps you should focus on providing some actual analysis/evidence for why one and a half isn't enough to represent what the sources tell us typically happened?

(Or to be fair - a one POA advantage if we go with the idea that a reasonable chunk of your typical Roman army should be average not superior. But then again that's kind of beside the point, because neither the armour or skilled sword changes affect how that matchup plays out)

ShrubMiK wrote: Perhaps you should focus on providing some actual analysis/evidence for why one and a half isn't enough to represent what the sources tell us typically happened?

This would be unique in game rule arguments.