Slitherine

(Sorry for the long post).

It was well known, in a previous wargames rules that, republican / early imperial romans were a hopeless army, those few romantics who played with them, had to minimize the number of legionary bases and increase the number of supporting troops.

Legionairies were one of the worst troop types to play with.

FOG, has improved a lot the situation, but is still not enough to realistically represent these armies in a tabletop battle. It is strange that an army that conquered half of the known world and guarded an empire for centuries even though the numerous civil wars, is so little competitive in wargames rules (not just this one).

That roman legionaires have a hard time fighting cataphracts, elephants, knights, or catching skirmishers, I guess it is to be expected and I have no complaint there.

But it is with some surprise, that I see that the fight between pikemen and legionaries, gives the pikemen a small advantage:

In favour of the romans we have:
- “-1” in CT if pikes lose in the impact phase
- Don’t lose POA’s for not being steady
- Better all terrain ability
- Apparently legions that fought pikes were superior

In favour of the pikemen we have:
- +1 POA in melee phase
- Don’t lose a dice if they lose a base
- Better manoeuvrability, when turning 90º if in a group of 8, keep in optimum formation
- Army lists allow them many superior pikes (for example 24 later Macedonian, 16 later Seleucid), so they can also be superior.

Well, so pikes beat legions, by a small margin, or at least they are closely matched.

But, when we compare the interaction of these troop types with the remaining troops in the tabletop, we find:

- Pikes are better than romans against mounted. No problem here, they should be so.
- Pikes are always at better or equal POA’s against anyone.

Why should anybody use legions instead of pikes? For about the same points (per file), pikes are better or equal against all opponents.

Where they really that good? This is little strange, did they behave so well in the battlefield?

Well the romans systematically defeated them, decisively, in the Macedonian Wars and in the wars against the Seleucids.

Although Pyrrhus defeated the romans twice, these were bloody victories and can be attributed to other factors:

- The elephants, it was the first time romans meet them in battle and they were truly impressed with them, they even invented new weapons to try to deal with them, oth there is no report that they had to change their tactics because of pikemen.
- Pyrrhus was a brilliant general, so it would tip the balance to the Epirot army
- In the end the romans won the battle that decided the war (beneventum), curiously it was in this battle that the romans dealt correctly with the elephants, but no special mention to the pikes once again.

This bad interaction legion / pike is aggravated by a worst interaction between romans and armoured spearmen, this post is already long so I will just say that it is strange that the best infantry of the ancient world is at -1 POA in Melee, if the spearmen stay steady in the impact phase, not that hard considering the several ways to improve the odds of passing the test.

Is it really realistic to put roman legionnaries at a melee POA disadvantage against spearmen?

In other post, I already suggested to remove the skilled swordmen POA against foot swordmen (this would also help the interaction with barbarians), and add apply +POA for skilled swordmen against steady pike and spearmen.

Certainly there are other ways to improve the behaviour of the roman legionnaries, this is but one.

The roman legions is one of the more well known and representative armies of the ancient world, it is a pity that it is crap in the tabletop, when it was so efficient in the battlefield. It would be great that when one hears of a roman army, in a tabletop game, don’t think of a dominate swarm, but of what a roman army should be: Legionnaries.

Am I the only one who thinks like this?

The real reason the Romans did so well was their economy. Battles always come after that. However on the battlefield Legio had a very tough time v's pike. As for against other troop types legio do very well. They are great in rough going and will beat most MF, and really hurt other HF. They are good in impact against all comers, even knights. Once pike lose cohesion or bases they are toast.

Legions, IMO, are better.

VMadeira wrote:(Sorry for the long post).

It was well known, in a previous wargames rules that, republican / early imperial romans were a hopeless army, those few romantics who played with them, had to minimize the number of legionary bases and increase the number of supporting troops.

Legionairies were one of the worst troop types to play with.

FOG, has improved a lot the situation, but is still not enough to realistically represent these armies in a tabletop battle. It is strange that an army that conquered half of the known world and guarded an empire for centuries even though the numerous civil wars, is so little competitive in wargames rules (not just this one).

That roman legionaires have a hard time fighting cataphracts, elephants, knights, or catching skirmishers, I guess it is to be expected and I have no complaint there.

But it is with some surprise, that I see that the fight between pikemen and legionaries, gives the pikemen a small advantage:

In favour of the romans we have:
- “-1” in CT if pikes lose in the impact phase
- Don’t lose POA’s for not being steady
- Better all terrain ability
- Apparently legions that fought pikes were superior

In favour of the pikemen we have:
- +1 POA in melee phase
- Don’t lose a dice if they lose a base
- Better manoeuvrability, when turning 90º if in a group of 8, keep in optimum formation
- Army lists allow them many superior pikes (for example 24 later Macedonian, 16 later Seleucid), so they can also be superior.

Well, so pikes beat legions, by a small margin, or at least they are closely matched.

But, when we compare the interaction of these troop types with the remaining troops in the tabletop, we find:

- Pikes are better than romans against mounted. No problem here, they should be so.
- Pikes are always at better or equal POA’s against anyone.

Why should anybody use legions instead of pikes? For about the same points (per file), pikes are better or equal against all opponents.

Where they really that good? This is little strange, did they behave so well in the battlefield?

Well the romans systematically defeated them, decisively, in the Macedonian Wars and in the wars against the Seleucids.

Although Pyrrhus defeated the romans twice, these were bloody victories and can be attributed to other factors:

- The elephants, it was the first time romans meet them in battle and they were truly impressed with them, they even invented new weapons to try to deal with them, oth there is no report that they had to change their tactics because of pikemen.
- Pyrrhus was a brilliant general, so it would tip the balance to the Epirot army
- In the end the romans won the battle that decided the war (beneventum), curiously it was in this battle that the romans dealt correctly with the elephants, but no special mention to the pikes once again.

This bad interaction legion / pike is aggravated by a worst interaction between romans and armoured spearmen, this post is already long so I will just say that it is strange that the best infantry of the ancient world is at -1 POA in Melee, if the spearmen stay steady in the impact phase, not that hard considering the several ways to improve the odds of passing the test.

Is it really realistic to put roman legionnaries at a melee POA disadvantage against spearmen?

In other post, I already suggested to remove the skilled swordmen POA against foot swordmen (this would also help the interaction with barbarians), and add apply +POA for skilled swordmen against steady pike and spearmen.

Certainly there are other ways to improve the behaviour of the roman legionnaries, this is but one.

The roman legions is one of the more well known and representative armies of the ancient world, it is a pity that it is crap in the tabletop, when it was so efficient in the battlefield. It would be great that when one hears of a roman army, in a tabletop game, don’t think of a dominate swarm, but of what a roman army should be: Legionnaries.

Am I the only one who thinks like this?

I agree with you.

Without wishing to appear discouraging - this topic has been done to death as well.

There was lot's of statistics bandied about and lots of arguing, but basically there were two divided camps - one who thought Romans were better and another who though Pikes were better. Usually the people facing them though the other side had the advantage. Given the historical closeness of the match up this appears to be about right.

You could try searching for this elsewhere on the site - there was a huge argument about it. I didn't even need to get involved to fan the flames

I disagree the Roman army is not crap in tha game. In fact its preety good. I think I also prefer the legion to the phalanx.

Whenever I play the legion v Phalanx. I always feel like I have an extra BG or two of legionaires that can be well used to swing on to the flank of the Greeks. I usually think the Romans have an upper hand.

The Roman armies suffer mainly in game terms of speed-to-board size ratio. The enemy mounted wings about and the legion is stoic. The enemy rarely wants to test the legion until it is also on the flanks.

The Phalanx armies are similar And they need a boat load of phalanx's because the best way to protect one phalanx is to put another right next to it.

VMadeira wrote:
Am I the only one who thinks like this?

Not the only one, but I suspect you are not in a majority. Given the choice, I would take legionaries over pikes pretty much every time, even with even points battles.

In a straight up fight on equal frontage - which is what you are looking at I think - maybe the pikes shade it, but even that's debatable.

But in a game / battle situation (at a decent number of points / table width so lights and cavalry don't dominate the game in an a-historical way) a Roman army is IMO better - and the legions are better than the pikes across the range of maneuvering and combat situations they can get into for sure.

If something could be done about the Romans "wasted points" on skilled swordsman ability it would be even more a no-brainer choice for Romans IMO

It is not my intention to cause any strife, if the statistics guys say that legions are better, i can accept that they are a little better in the interaction between the two.

That's not the main point however, legionnaries struggle to beat even armoured spearmen, if the spearmen don't lose cohesion at impact...

And still there is the problem that, by almost the same amount of points, pikes will be better against almost every opponent than legionnaries, why should anyone pick them over pikes?

What I would like is to see measures taken to make Republican and Early Imperial Romans more competitive, so that they are playable in a tournment, using legionnaries as they're main strike arm, not a swarm of auxilias.

However on the battlefield Legio had a very tough time v's pike

Sorry, but when was that? The only occasion i can remember is against Pyrrhus...as i said above.

VMadeira wrote:It is not my intention to cause any strife, if the statistics guys say that legions are better, i can accept that they are a little better in the interaction between the two.

That's not the main point however, legionnaries struggle to beat even armoured spearmen, if the spearmen don't lose cohesion at impact...

And still there is the problem that, by almost the same amount of points, pikes will be better against almost every opponent than legionnaries, why should anyone pick them over pikes?

What I would like is to see measures taken to make Republican and Early Imperial Romans more competitive, so that they are playable in a tournment, using legionnaries as they're main strike arm, not a swarm of auxilias.

However on the battlefield Legio had a very tough time v's pike

Sorry, but when was that? The only occasion i can remember is against Pyrrhus...as i said above.

If you want to look at statistics then go to:
http://www.slithdata.net/files/fog/rankings.html

Choose:

Rankings -> army rankings,
ELO or Points Per Game (as you prefer)
Click here for more options -> Armies with 50 or more games (for statistical significance)

The stats will confirm your suspicion that Pikes generally do better than Romans.

VMadeira wrote:

However on the battlefield Legio had a very tough time v's pike

Sorry, but when was that? The only occasion i can remember is against Pyrrhus...as i said above.

Polybius, Histories book 18 wrote:Many considerations may easily convince us that, if only the phalanx has its proper formation and strength, nothing can resist it face to face or withstand its charge....

...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.

For more detail, see

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... apter%3D28

and click on the blue right arrow to see each subsequent chapter.

Thanks for the rankings, it indeed confirms that republican and principate roman armies are underperformers.

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).

Could it be the case that Polybius is praising the phalanx so that the roman victory would look even better? Caesar does that, concerning it's campaigns in Gaul and Britain...because that is not what the results of the battles demonstrate. And it is commom to see that kind of praises in historical texts, I believe.

Don't you find ironic that the army that won almost all batlles against a kind of opponent (pike armies), struggles so much to win in tabletop games ?

VMadeira wrote:Thanks for the rankings, it indeed confirms that republican and principate roman armies are underperformers.

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).

Could it be the case that Polybius is praising the phalanx so that the roman victory would look even better? Caesar does that, concerning it's campaigns in Gaul and Britain...because that is not what the results of the battles demonstrate. And it is commom to see that kind of praises in historical texts, I believe.

Don't you find ironic that the army that won almost all batlles against a kind of opponent (pike armies), struggles so much to win in tabletop games ?

For what it's worth....and it is a super after action report... if you haven't read this, then you should.

http://www.fieldofglory.com/features/1.html

...just for the fun of it. And even if you have read it, it's still fun.

VMadeira wrote:
What I would like is to see measures taken to make Republican and Early Imperial Romans more competitive, so that they are playable in a tournment, using legionnaries as they're main strike arm, not a swarm of auxilias.

The Republican and Imperial Roman legionarii are perfectly competitive, the issue with the Dom Rom swarm is that the auxilia are too useful for a number of reasons. The right way to rectify this is to address the issues around the auxilia not to apply a spurious boost to the legionarii.

If I were doing a refight of the major battles of the Romans against the Hellenistic armies I'd always put my money on the Romans. The reality of the fight is that Superior legiones have the advantage at Impact over the Average phalanx (these being, I think, the correct ratings for most of these battles) and if the phalanx drops a cohesion level it is toast. If the impact does not result in a cohesion drop for the phalanx the Romans are at a disadvantage, however, their better quality is usually enough to keep them going in a touch fight until the phalanx does lose a round and cohesion, at which point they cut through the phalanx.

IMO it is a nicely judged interaction which reflects the history rather well.

Nik's views match with what I have seen. The army I use most in FoG is Principate Roman. I disagree with Nik on the terrain rules but other than that the Legion v Pike interaction is much as he says. I always fancy my chances. Usually the key is actually the supporting cast. It's what protects the flank of the Phalanx that matters and how they are handled that tends to be decisive if the Legion and Pike go Mano o Mano.

Lets put is this way, I have a successor army to rebase from an older set to FoG:AM but so far I have not seen a reason to as I am happy sitting on the Legion side of the fence.

VMadeira wrote: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.

VMadeira wrote:Thanks for the rankings, it indeed confirms that republican and principate roman armies are underperformers.

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).

Could it be the case that Polybius is praising the phalanx so that the roman victory would look even better? Caesar does that, concerning it's campaigns in Gaul and Britain...because that is not what the results of the battles demonstrate. And it is commom to see that kind of praises in historical texts, I believe.

Don't you find ironic that the army that won almost all batlles against a kind of opponent (pike armies), struggles so much to win in tabletop games ?

1. But did the Romans beat the Hellenistics by frontal attacks on the phalanx in good order, or by outflanking or breaking up its formation (as Polybius describes), or by superior logistics and strategy enabling them to fight with a points advantage?

2. The rankings do not provide evidence that those Roman armies underperform versus pike armies.
They may be balanced against pikes but underperform against other kinds of army.
Historically, the early republican army that beat all the pikes did underperform against Gauls, which is why Marius reformed it.

lawrenceg wrote: 1. But did the Romans beat the Hellenistics by frontal attacks on the phalanx in good order, or by outflanking or breaking up its formation (as Polybius describes),

Both.

or by superior logistics and strategy enabling them to fight with a points advantage?

I think we ought to bear in mind a point that Sabin makes in "Lost Battles", that on the whole, unless forced by other circumstances, generals only fight where they expect their army to have a reasonable chance of winning. Therefore, armies in historical battles must have had approximately equal "fighting value" to each other, or be with an acceptable range at least. Not quite the same thing as wargames rules points which try and balance games across all the possible opponents in the rules.

2. The rankings do not provide evidence that those Roman armies underperform versus pike armies.
They may be balanced against pikes but underperform against other kinds of army.
Historically, the early republican army that beat all the pikes did underperform against Gauls, which is why Marius reformed it.

Erk! That last bit rather ignores the qualitative difference between Roman armies that may be around in the same period. The armies that inflicted most of the defeats on the Hellenistics would be based around what FoG would classify as Superior legiones, those that struggled against the Gauls are more like those based on Average legiones. Not all Roman armies are equal

nikgaukroger wrote:

lawrenceg wrote: 1. But did the Romans beat the Hellenistics by frontal attacks on the phalanx in good order, or by outflanking or breaking up its formation (as Polybius describes),

Both.

Actually, to be pedantic, the Romans never won a single frontal battle against a continuous phalanx in good order. They won it by hanging on until other factors (disorder, outflanking or gaps appearing) allowed them to get stuck in with the sword. I find the interaction between pikes and legions to be a nice balance with average legions + general + rear support or superior legions. IMO it doesn't need fixing.

And here's Livy's (32. 17) description of the siege of Atrax which illustrates nicely what happened when the phalanx operated with secure flanks:

"In the mean time, the consul found the siege of Atrax more tedious than he had imagined, the enemy making an unexpected resistance. He had supposed that the whole of the trouble would be in demolishing the wall, and that if he could once open a passage for his soldiers into the city, the consequence would then be, the flight and slaughter of the enemy, as usually happens on the capture of towns. But when, on a breach being made in the wall by the rams, and when the soldiers, by mounting over the ruins, had entered the place, this proved only the beginning, as it were, of an unusual and fresh labour. For the Macedonians in garrison, who were both chosen men and many in number, supposing that they would be entitled to extraordinary honour if they should maintain the defence of the city by means of arms and courage, rather than by the help of walls, formed themselves in a compact body, strengthening their line by an uncommon number of files in depth. These, when they saw the Romans entering by the breaches, drove them back, so that they were entangled among the rubbish, and with difficulty could effect a retreat. This gave the consul great uneasiness; for he considered such a disgrace, not merely as it retarded the reduction of a single city, but as likely to affect materially the whole process of the war, which in general depends much on the influence of events in themselves unimportant. Having therefore cleared the ground about the half ruined wall, he brought up a tower of extraordinary height, consisting of many stories, and which carried a great number of soldiers. He likewise sent up the cohorts in strong bodies, one after another, to force their way, if possible, through the wedge of the Macedonians, which is called a phalanx. But in such a confined space, (for the wall was thrown down to no great extent,) the enemy had the advantage, both in the kind of weapons which they used, and in the manner of fighting. When the Macedonians, in close array, stretched out before them their long spears against the target fence, and which was formed by the close position of their antagonists’ shields, and when the Romans, after discharging their javelins without effect, drew their swords, these could neither press on to a closer combat, nor cut off the heads of the spears; and if they did cut or break off any, the shaft being sharp at the part where it was broken, filled up its place among the points of those which were unbroken, in a kind of palisade. Besides this, the parts of the wall still standing covered safely the flanks of the Macedonians, who were not obliged, either in retreating or in advancing to an attack, to pass through a long space, which generally occasions disorder in the ranks"

Note that in this case the phalanx was using the synaspismos formation with each file standing shoulder to shoulder, a formation used primarily in defence. The offensive formation would have given more space to each file and was the one used in field battles.

VMadeira wrote:
In favour of the romans we have:
- “-1” in CT if pikes lose in the impact phase
- Don’t lose POA’s for not being steady
- Better all terrain ability
- Apparently legions that fought pikes were superior

In favour of the pikemen we have:
- +1 POA in melee phase
- Don’t lose a dice if they lose a base
- Better manoeuvrability, when turning 90º if in a group of 8, keep in optimum formation
- Army lists allow them many superior pikes (for example 24 later Macedonian, 16 later Seleucid), so they can also be superior.

Well, so pikes beat legions, by a small margin, or at least they are closely matched.

But, when we compare the interaction of these troop types with the remaining troops in the tabletop, we find:

- Pikes are better than romans against mounted. No problem here, they should be so.
- Pikes are always at better or equal POA’s against anyone.

Why should anybody use legions instead of pikes? For about the same points (per file), pikes are better or equal against all opponents.

This bad interaction legion / pike is aggravated by a worst interaction between romans and armoured spearmen, this post is already long so I will just say that it is strange that the best infantry of the ancient world is at -1 POA in Melee, if the spearmen stay steady in the impact phase, not that hard considering the several ways to improve the odds of passing the test.

Is it really realistic to put roman legionnaries at a melee POA disadvantage against spearmen?

In favour of the Romans is that their relative POA is the same whether they lose bases or are disrupted. Not so for the pikes. Plus 4 deep pikes are more expensive than two deep Romans - by 4 point a file (av, arm, IF, Sw vs av protected pike). The biggest problem pike have is that losing even one base really hampers them and so they are weak when overlapped.

Armoured spearmen can be good against Romans - if they stay steady. They're also good against pike, and are more likely to remain steay at impact against them. The problem here is anachronism: Romans and Hellenistic pike armies didn't face armies where the main troop type was armoured spearmen.

I've certainly had my armoured hoplites torn apart by legionaries. The difficulty I've found is that the impact is 6 dice vs 6 usually, the romans add a general and so frequently win by 2. So even with generals and rear support I'm frequently going to be disrupted.



[/quote]

I did some digging into the FoG database of tournment results - probably because I can be obsessive-compulsive about things like data.

Anyway, once you do that it becomes far less certain to make claims that the statistics from the database support a view such as the one above. Looking at the current rankings gives you a snap shot as of today. It doesn't give any information on how those results vary across players or in time. Fortunately, the database does provide the ELO history for the last 130 games for each army. The results for legion and pike armies are:

Army ELO Scores (Minimum, Maximum, Current)
Principate (1423, 1671, 1500)
Late Republican (1392, 1664 1507)
Mid Republican (1470, 1611, 1527)
Graeco-Bactrian (1419, 1657, 1538)
Later Ptolemaic (1468, 1603, 1595)
Later Macedonian (1473, 1640, 1571)
Early Successor (1497 , 1690, 1507)
Alex Macedonian (1540, 1692, 1601)
Later Seleucid (1422, 1635, 1558)
Swiss (1580, 1790, 1771)
Hellenistic Greek (1600, 1774, 1727)

At the moment most of the pike armies are very near their upper bound while the Romans are near the bottom end of their range. If the ranking had been sampled earlier this year the results would have been quite different.

Army (Games, Players) (Gold, Silver, Bronze)
Principate (338, 64) (1, 7, 2)
Late Republican (630, 106) (7, 6, 6)
Mid-Republican (279, 57) (7, 2, 1)
Graeco-Bactrian (217, 37) (2, 2, 2)
Later Ptolemaic (146, 25) (1, 2, 1)
Later Macedonian (72, 15) (0, 1, 2)
Early Successor (310, 56) (4, 4, 6)
Alexandrian Macedonian (528, 75) (12, 7, 13)
Later Seleucid (774, 118) (10, 9, 17)
Swiss (216, 31) (5, 3, 5)
Hellenistic Greek (58, 8 )) (2, 1, 0)

Total Romans (1247, 227) (15, 15, 9)
Total Pikes (2321, 365) (36, 29, 46)

At the very least this shows that a Roman army is a contender if played by an experienced and capable player. In particular, the Mid-Republican Roman army has more golds per game than any other army except the Hellenistic Greeks. One should note that the Hellenistic Greek stats are only based on 58 games over just 8 players while the Mid-Republican scores are over 279 games and 57 players. One thing I have noticed is that eliminating variance across players probably takes much more than 100 games. For example, the Christian Nubian army has 104 games recorded, but 22 of these games were due to a single player.

Lastly I looked at the performance of each Roman army against all Pike armies in terms of how many times the Romans routed the Pike armies and how many times they were routed by the Pike armies.

Army (Rout Pikes, Routed by Pikes)
Principate (9, 12)
Late Republican (26, 56)
Mid Republican (10, 11)

Except for the Late Republican army the results are pretty much equal (i.e., the differences are probably not significant). The same cannot be said of the Late Republican army. This army by far the most popular with as many games and players as the other two combined. One thing I did notice as I went through the detailed results was that a few Late Republican Roman players did very badly – often being routed in every game in a tournament. These players added a fair bit to the “routed by pikes” score even though they represented a small percentage of the total number of players. 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.

shadowdragon wrote: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.