Age of Strategy Forums

just a short topic to mention the great mod for rome 1 total war: europa barbarorum
just started playing it and noticed great deepness in their research and well, there rome has 4 stages and 3 reforms

the four stages are:
camillan: i think it is early republic roman army, with the classic hastii, pincipes and triarii, as well as veles, equites and itallic alies

polybian: here veles become velites, the classic trio (hastatii, principes, and triarii) gets a reskin as well as new stats and allies are reduced in variety and power (i supose it is because of the citizen rights that were evolving and expanded beyond the city itself)

mariam: the famous mariam reform, here the trio disappears, allies disapear, now there are cohorts in the mariam way (late republic)

the last stage is the imperial rome itself: cohorts evolve like pokemons and the apparition of the praetorian guard (wich makes sense since praetorian existed to protect the emperor)

im not saying aos must have this deployyment of roman techs and units, but i do think that roman adaptability can be represented by an additional reform tech like the imperial to make it worth using for longer...maybe not a stage tech but a upgrade tech for legionaries, the imperial tech could unlock praetorian guard with a reabalance, idk just more ideas

I am pretty sure skirmishers under Camillan system were leves, rorarii and accensi. Veles is just singular form of velites.
Hastati were fighting with only spears back then, thus the name from latin hasta - 1.5-1.8m short spear, not made not be thrown.

Polybian system mainly changed categorisation of troops.
Under Camillan they were categorised by wealth and had a requirements of the equipment (as they could afford it). Not clear if official or only social, but anyway equipment was similar.
Army system as described by Polybius categorised based on experience, so by then roman armymen must have been paid and probably provided fully unified equipment.
Gladii and pila were also added - for Hastatii and Principes - replacing hastae.

Imperial Rome didn't add anything special to either equipment or organization of legionaries.
Advancements were rather steady and most changes were only temporary for specific military campaigns.
Most of what changed was access to new types of auxilary cohorts, basically replacing mercenaries in many cases.

Pretorian guards or simply pretorians existed well before Roman Empire.
The name itself probably comes from preators, which they guarded - military leaders in early republic or maybe even back in kingdom time.
Later on pretorians were guards of high military officers.
There are written accounts of the personal guards of famous generals being them.