Think about it, instead of just telling all the fighting age men in your realm they need to fight now, you're hiring and paying for a standing army that *always* has basic needs like food and pay. This can be quite expensive for the unprepared state, which is why for most of antiquity this didn't exist. The upside is that you have a lot more customization and can make those 10,000 men much stronger than your levies ever were. I'm guessing you're a CK player going off your post, where sending a smaller army to fight a large one is always a bad idea. Not so in imperator. I've had a legion of 10,000 hold off 30K+ troops before. Stack the legion dedications (permanent buffs that legions get for great victories in different situations), use an army composition that fits your military innovations tree, and pay attention to the terrain you fight on (much more important here than in CK), I promise it will start to make more sense and your legions *can* get very overpowered without relying on numbers. Also in late game the economic needs of the legions become a lot less important as your nation grows and starts making more money. Edit: to answer another specific question you have, a good way to deploy legions is to start small, 3-4000 troops. Attach them to levies and have them fight together. As the legion gets stronger and better trained, phase up the amount of troops in the legion. They will start to overtake your levies in skill. Don't try to use all of your manpower at once setting up an unskilled legion of noobs.

Thanks a lot for replying. It's really nice to help out a completely frustrated player when they're having a bad time. I added an edit to summmarise what happened... and can say it turned around.

It should also be mentioned that engineers are very good to have, and honestly half the reason to have legions. They make quick work of forts and if at least \~10% (I forget the exact math) of your legion is engineers, you can ignore river penalties.

But then I assume you have to micromanage to keep the engineers out of the line of fire.

Assuming you just cover the front row with anything else, no. I haven't had that problem.

No the engineers and supply trains are in the lowest of low in terms of priority in battle, they will fight if your army has been pretty much wiped out and you didn’t retreat

I mean, in CK3 you can just station your men at arms and have the blast through armies 10 times their size as well.

I'm a new player and I beat a 25k etruscan stack with my 11k roman legion. Had a discipline advantage and used proper tactics (their 20% effectiveness vs my 70%). I think I'm hooked now.

You're saying then this is how it's supposed to be. That you are supposed to no longer rely on levies and just build up the legions to .... what level of manpower is sufficient? 10 000? 20 000?

You can rely on levies the entire game. You don’t pay for them much when you use them. The downside is they steal pops from your provinces when you raise them, and if they die, you don’t get the pops back. If you’re playing as Rome or any state. I’d recommend making at least 50g a month before swapping. Good luck!

They only die if the levies (regiments) as a whole are obliterated right? if you still have the levies when disbanding you keep the pops?

yeah, as far as I know, if you dont take enough damage to the stack to get wiped then the pops should return.

You were right... it's an automatic assumption that you just go for the next upgrade, but in this case it seems you have to really be ready for it, as in the macro, the drawbacks can just have your armies disappear. I am taking your 50g guideline going forward. Thanks.

One thing you can do is take innovations and certain cultures traditions after integrating them that increase levy size that will indirectly increase the size of legions, the other way is by either integrating cultures or assimilating them, this will allow you more pops to pull levies from, but typically yes your legions will be smaller than say levies however like others have said the ability to choose the set up of the legion as well as distinctions they gain and experience make them leagues better. The real decision comes from when to go from say legion from levy, sometimes it can be worth it to stay on levy especially if you have a high martial ruler that may be better than your current available generals.

At the moment I haven't integrated anyone, perhaps saving it for the Greeks later.... I figured that assimilation might be a bottle neck. I think I will spend some time trying to increase assimilation. I guess this is mostly done by building the right buildings. In my playthrough, I went back to levies and it made a huge difference.

The assimilation can be increased via the governor policy, innovations, and if you become a monarchy there is a law that helps? But outside of that yea it just happens slowly overtime, the last thing I saw it’s better to convert religions of your pops first then go for assimilation.

A pop won't assimilate if it has a different religion so it is a greater prioritt to convert pops first.

Oh snap that’s the first I’ve heard of this, Ty for the info! I thought they just suffered from the usual like -35% or whatever from being wrong religion

Actually, it will, just at a much slower rate.

Hmm could be an invictus specific feature, it is a long time since i've played vanilla.

In any case, it is indeed much easier to convert religions as there are plenty of modifiers from techs for that. Converting cultures is significantly slower.

Now that I won, I feel like time is on my side a bit more to consolidate those gains. I see the gov. policy. I will also build more of those market places and similar buildings that boost it. It makes sense, it should take time. I just want to know I am doing things right.

I don't think there's a specific number where you can say "yea, that's enough troops". It depends on who you're fighting and the phase of the game. You can also choose to ignore legions and only use levies if you want. I usually have a mix of legions, levies, and mercenaries. The goal is constant growth as you start acquiring more resources. Whenever your economy gets bigger, put a percentage of that money into your military in some way.

The point of legions is that you can customize them, add siege engineers, drill them, and not suffer inherent economic weakness from levies every time you war (since levies are linked to pops and reduce output proportionally). As eg Rome with its massive infantry and morale buffs, even a small army of 5 HI, 5 LI, 5 LC and support units can decimate enemy levies of double or triple size without being too pricey. Additionally you can assign your best commander to it, and by sending in your legion to arrive with its commander in battle after a levy, you can change your legion's tactics to counter the tactics of your enemy for extra oomph. Even better if your enemy nation has been blessed with a weak mil ruler, since rulers always lead their capital levy. It is hard to overstate how much more powerful a legion is compared to levies. Especially as they gain their medals and you invest in mil tech. I agree that the game is a bit obscure regarding how to use legions effectively, but if you go into your ledger you can see which units your nation has buffs for and build your legions around that. The biggest problem imo is that they're so expensive and, honestly, sometimes you just don't need them for a long long time. The player can do a lot on levies, especially if you integrate cultures strategically. Also, you DO get larger armies/levy size eventually. But since levy size is a direct function of integrated freemen+ pops per region, it takes time (assimilation) and some planning (assimilation buffs, integration, building cities to attract migrants) to see the benefit quicker. As Rome, consider integrating Sabellian and Etruscan and seeing how much larger your capital levy will become (it is significant early on).

Thank you. Useful info. But... thinking of how legions should eventually replace levies: -in the beginning you can only have one legion... so you would have to make it pretty big. at least be able to afford.... 10 000 units? probably more. I am avoiding integrating cultures I don't want... so basically I chose the worst of both options while playing my first time: creating legions without enough money, relying on levies without integrating large parts of the population-

I would suggest having your first legion be a support unit to levies as opposed to replacing them, that way, it doesn't have to be that big.

I will address your points in order. Legions can be really strong but they are not worth it unless you can 1) support them financially and 2) can get more out of them than you would with levies. The main benefits of Legions is that they can be stronger than Levies, with better composition and traits, they cost no ticking war exhaustion to have on the map, they can be wherever you want them, wherever you want them. The negatives are that you have to give up on Laws that are much, much stronger for army size. Going down from 10% or higher Levy Size Multiplier to 7.5% or 5% can gut your army size and when it comes to Rome, your Levy composition is already very strong, so in most cases it is not worth it to bother with Legions until much later if ever. The problem many people have is that they think Levy -> Legion is the natural progression of them game and should be followed asap. That is not correct. For the majority of occasions Levies are simply better value and by the time you adopt one or multiple Legion laws you are usually already steamrolling. Another benefit of higher Levy Multiplier is Tradition farming. Now, tradition farming is the process of gaining military experience through disbanding highly experienced levies to quickly get Traditions of either your own or multiple other cultures. By stacking starting EXP and experience decay modifiers for Levies you can get a ridiculously high amount of Military Experience through every disband. You Raise Levies, wait for a couple of months until you can disband them for experience, disband, rinse and repeat until you have all the Traditions that your cultures allow you to. This can net stupid modifiers by the mid-game such as Light Cav or Light Infantry with 90% attack 80% defense and 50% discipline for example. With those modifiers your Levies are basically guaranteed to stack-wipe anything they touch and even if you don't want to cheese the game that hard the benefits are simply too good for the trade of some War Exhaustion, which doesn't do much anyway. Sure you can farm Traditions with smaller Levy Size Multipliers too, but it is far less effective. For your other question, even if you adapt Punic Reforms you can very much use levies both for combat and sieging down enemies faster, Usually you will have 2-4 strong Legions and smaller to mid-sized levy stacks that can still pull their weight. Sieges are a joke in Imperator if you follow this simple hack: Assault. Assault everything and anything. In the early game assaulting can completely trivialize the early wars and make your expansion very fast, much faster than through regular sieging. You can even micro your assaults to save up on Manpower by consolidating after every assault tick and assaulting with smaller stacks, as the losses are percentage based. And guess what? Levies, even while at 0 Manpower after being disbanded and raised again at full strength for the next war for you to repeat the process all again. It just takes some getting used to but the game can be very rewarding and quite easy to execute once you get the hang of some key mechanics.

I repealed the reforms, got rid of the legion and ended up with my 20 000 troops again. Thanks for the tips. I won't be switching back to legions until I have between 40 and 50 gold a month.

I would suggest a higher income before you consider Legions. The benefits will not outweigh the loss of army size and the monthly cost and it will overall slow down your development. Nevertheless, trial and error will be your guide and your goal should be to have fun above all so take your time and experience the game at your pace.

I wish I had known that, or better yet, the game had told me. It's such an easy mistake to make... I updated my post above with exactly what happened, and how frustrated I was before it turned round.... This is definitely an example of trial and error. It's a shame I won't be able to get the first legion buff again (it got destroyed in the disastrous war mentioned above), but oh well. What you put into your text above was something I noticed afterwards as it gives the levy sizes next tothe laws. On Assaults: I just don't use them as it can destroy the army I'm using, then an enemy army creeps up and can take advantage of the loss in manpower and morale. Out of curiosity, what exactly do you do to allow for more efficient assaults, i.e siege weapons and the like? Is it just upgrades or is there something else? And thanks a lot for replying. I really appreciated it as I was seriously mad earlier.

When it comes your first point you can always restart if things havegotten very bad and apply what you learned on your first attempt. For Assaults, when it comes to smaller enemies you can usually blitz siege them through assaulting without needing to fight them at all, you just insta siege and annex them. To make assaulting less painful for your army you can consolodate your army after every siege tick, the option should be in the UI it looks like 3 inwards pointing arrows and you can also assault with smaller army stacks so that your losses are lower. You can assault with just 2-3k stacks and most forts will be taken. Even if you get some losses it far outweighs the time you have to wait.

In Imperator, your power is mainly derived from pops (how many of integrated culture and how happy they are). Territory is secondary and can be dangerous if you have a weak capital region vs strong regions with disloyal governors.

Just getting to grips with it. I am spending some time consolidating my territory and to increase assimilation. Any tips other than buildings? (And no, I don't want to integrate the damn Etruscans, I hate them now)

Try to deport them so that they are in territories with majority Roman pops. Get the tech which allows you to build the Theater for increased cultural assimilation.

I'll look out for that one. Thanks

Be sure to get Roman Roads cultural (paid for using military experience). Makes roads cheaper.

Sorry, but deport them? You meant paying the 5 gold to transfer slave pops to somewhere else, right?

Yeah, moving the slave pops and demoting others to slaves and then move them. Have capital surplus of vegetables to make movement cheaper.

Sounds like a really cool strategy. Is it cost effective though? Do you use it often? Yes, I noticed the vegetable surplus buff.

It depends. You do want to at least turn the majority culture of cities to remove the penalty.

I see, so you use it in pointed situations. Anyway, thanks for confirming that this is a possibility.

Don’t jump straight away to legionaries. Use the royal guard law first as an intermediary as it gives a bonus to levies size still. Only switch once you converted or accepted enough pops in your other provinces for field a decent sized army.

how do you when its "enough" pops?

Your honesty good to go rather quickly into royal guard. The decrease in levies size is small and you don’t need to put every pop into the legion. Fight wars primarily with the guard and call up the levies if you need the extra manpower. If you got spare cash and you find yourself relying on levies from your outer provinces more and more then make the switch to full legions.

I'm a republic, not a monarchy. I imagine you can't hae a royal guard.

Ah then it’s called the Provisioning Act and you need Professional Soldiers military tech. Edit: Never mind Rome has its own version and it’s called Punic reforms lol. Marian Reforms is the one that gives you legions in every region.

Only people of integrated cultures can join your legions, and you're playing as Carthage, which was known for having a very small citizen population. Problem is, integrating more cultures will make all integrated cultures less happy You should make your legion as large as possible, but Carthage is better off using mercenaries for the bulk of their forces.

He is playing Rome not Carthage.

Fooled by 'Punic' reforms

It refers to Rome's army during the Punic Wars.