Roman Pila Storm

By Ace_Cataphract

I was recently wondering to myself what is the Roman Legionary class infantry’s strength. Is it their impressive armor ratings – No, factions like Carthage and Greece have infantry with similar ratings that get torn apart. Is it only because of the fact that they can be invulnerable to missiles in a pinch – no, they get tired to death while in the testudo formation. Could it be because they use their missile attack for melee – well yea, I guess that’s a large part of it. But then I realized. This can’t be the only thing that makes Legionary infantry as amazing as it is. Then I looked to the root. It’s the pila. With them, Roman infantry can cripple a charge from the enemy, basically obliterate phalanxes, due to their slow speed, when advancing to attack and mess up any oncoming formation. Then I started playing a while, and realized that I wasn’t getting the most out of my pila. It became apparent to me after getting my front line charged by a mess of barbarians on multiplayer. Sure the last rank got it, but the first rank basically didn’t do anything. They couldn’t even throw their pila in time. I then decided that I had to find a way to get the most of out these devastating weapons.

I decided to go for a mix between Marius’ reformed, cohort based Legion and the original Mandipular Legion.

Composition:

This army is good for 15K+ budgets. You should buy a core army of 4 units of Cavalry. If I’m pressed for money I’ll buy 2 Praetorian and 2 Legionary Cavalry. Basically they’re only for the sake of your general not being infantry and for supporting your main infantry line. Now to the all-important infantry. You buy 3 Legionary Cohorts, 3 Praetorian Cohorts, and 4 Urban Cohorts. You also buy 4 units of Archer Auxilia. I purposely only listed enough units to get to 18. Well, now you must decide whether to add in 2 more units of Cavalry, Archers, or whether you want Onagers instead. If Onagers are allowed, I usually buy 3 pieces and an extra unit of Archer Auxilia, going with only 4 units of Cavalry. Also, if you’ve got a ton of money like in a 25K+ budget, feel free to replace all of the Legionary Cohorts with Praetorian Cohorts, or even Urban Cohorts.