@Stickers<br>
First, my apologies for not replying to this sooner; I have been away on vacation, and been quite busy since I got back.<br>
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<em>StrategyM I did not say that Scipio raised a Paerorian Guard - you seem to think that everyone must equate Praetorian units with the later Guard - I do not - the 2 are quite seperate.</em><br>
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Well, good for you. Everyone else will, though, so I don't see how that defends their inclusion as a unit. And my original point was precisely that Scipio did not raise, create, or found th Praetorians and - despite the "history" invented by some historians (there I agree with CA) - the regular usage of a Praetorian unit cannot be traced back further than the civil wars (by which time the extraordinarii no longer existed - thus making it logical that it had been replaced by a picked unit of some form).<br>
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<em>I also did not say that Praetorian units were battle-field bodyguards - I said they were HEADQUARTERS guards - the headquarters being a particular place in a Roman camp. I completely agree that Roman generals made their own arrangements for their battlefield bodyguards.</em><br>
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There is no distinction between a headquarters guard and a battlefield bodyguard. If you can point to any sources that distinguish, please do so.<br>
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<em>Later on, despite the propaganda you put forth, they ALWAYS accompanied the emperor on campaign - it was simply not true that they devolved to useles troops - as their batlefield performance shows.</em><br>
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Of course they accompanied the Emperor on campaign. I fail to see how that makes them into better troops. Very few emperors between Augustus and Domitian actually went on real military campaigns after taking office, which leaves long stretches of total inactivity for the Guard. Prior to the war of the 4 Emperor's, I think there are at least 50 years where the Guard is almost completely inactive militarily.<br>
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Of course they were useful under the General emperors such as Trajan and Hadrian; that is after all the nature of any unit you throw into batle - the weak and stupid die and the capable survive. After being thrown into battle for 5 years successively by Trajan (and no doubt having their ranks replenished from the Legions), obviously the Guard will be a capable enough unit.<br>
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But a few years of good performance does not change the fact that as a unit, for most of their history the Praetorians were anything but elite in their military ability when compared to the average legionary soldier.<br>
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<em>They were NOT as hardened as various border legions for sure, but neitehr were they soft sybarites who couldn't fight.</em><br>
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In other words - they were not as good as the regular legions. Which is all I've been saying.<br>
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You're the one calling them soft sybarites. Nice one; I'll see if I can use that in Imperium somewhere.<br>
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<em>Extraordinarii are not, AFAIK noted as being used for bodyguards - I'd be interested in your references for this.</em><br>
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Here you go: Polybius VI.32 (Emphasis mine)<br>
Quote:</em></strong><hr>Behind the last tent of the tribunes on either side, and more or less at right angles to these tents, are the quarters of the cavalry picked out from the extraordinarii, and a certain number of volunteers serving to oblige the consuls. These are all encamped parallel to the two sides of the agger,and facing in the one case the quaestors' depot and in the other the market. As a rule these troops are <strong>not only thus encamped near the consuls but on the march and on other occasions are in constant attendance on the consul and quaestor</strong>. Back to back with them, and looking towards the agger are the select infantry who perform the same service as the cavalry just described.<hr><br>
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Note the fact that in addition to the picked Extraordinarii, there were also volunteers serving with the Consul. Probably the only reason why we hear anything special about Scipio's bodyguard at all is because he "stretched" the custom for volunteers by bringing his own private army to Spain instead of the usual moderate number of clients that most Consuls would have had along with them.<br>
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<em>and they were generally Italians were they not?</em><br>
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So? The Caesars (including the first one) had Barbarian German and Gallic bodyguards; foreign bodyguard units are a common feature of this (and other) periods.<br>
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Finally, since your question was: What do you mean "modelled correctly?", I can briefly describe how I would model such a unit as the Guard in "Imperium".<br>
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Every unit type in Imperium has a "service period", which essentially determines how often troops are relieved from service and replaced with recruits. Recruits have different starting "virtus"/combat ability depending on the unit type. The virtus of a unit type generally increases from being in combat, and otherwise remains unchanged except for the gradual replacement of troops which will eventually average out the virtus of a unit to be equivalent to that of a completely new one.<br>
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Typically a Guard unit such as the Praetorians have a better quality of recruits (reflected by the virtus level), so a newly raised Guard would typically be better than a newly raised legion. In prolonged combat periods the Guard will eventually have the edge in quality over even veteran Legions, due to the higher quality of replacements. However, due to the shorter service period, the quality of the Guard will deteriorate faster when out of action than a Legion and thus a historical (lack of) usage of the Guard as in 14-69 AD will see them being little better than raw recruits if they are suddenly taken into battle. Which I think reflects their historical ability fairly well.<br>
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Anyway, that's how I would model it. But then again, I'm mostly interested in historical grand strategy, rather than RTS battle games.<br>
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Sorry for the length of the post; guess I got carried away again. <p>Strategy <br>
Designer/Developer <br>
Imperium - Rise of Rome</p><i></i>