Support Romans

In this chapter i muse about Support Roman position, on how and why to utilize them.

This is not a popular view among the players, but in my opinion you CAN produce attack armies from each of your villages the same way a defensive player does. Especially if you play Roman and especially if there are not enough Crop Locations available.

If your team have these kind of players, they can generate armies in all of their villages each instead of one larger army and paying x3 premum for Great Barracks and Great Stables. These armies can hit multiple locations for each player, and fake as many, and you wont need much Catapults to tune level 10 fields down in each wave not making them Catapult heavy either. Basically each attack threatens to reduce 8 (2x4) lvl 10 fields from one support village. What this means, is that you can produce more attack units than in one Crop Capital, and that if the opponent divides their defenses for Support Villages they have less defensive troops available to defend their Crop Capitals or Treasuries. The best part is, they will never know where you are actually going to hit, so more available targets makes it harder for them to guess. This can be a whole new pattern to them, not usually encountered. Additionally, these armies are good to hit any Oasises with in the early game, especially the ones with 0% defensive bonusess (crop oasises). 

If you are low on Catapults and wont have high Rally Point, you might as well gun down four of the Level 5 Resource boosting structures like Grain Mill and Granary in a single wave attack. You wont need many Catapults for this and will most likely not have to upgrade them, enabling you to have more Legionaires. So it is not necesarily good to go for Level 20 Rally Point and 80 or so Catapults in each of your Villages. Sometimes even Level 1 Rally Point and 20 or so Catapults is enough to be Threatening.

Again, people might say suppor villages wont matter, but any damage on them do end up hurting you eventually and you will lose lots of production you otherwise would not, especially if this is done on a larger scale. These support players can also have a crop capital (usually 9) where they produce a bigger army slow and steady without the help of Great Barracks or Great Stable (because of the higher cost in resources which is distributed to support armies instead). But every now and then they are ready to launch many smaller armies, which wont take a lot of time to produce so they are easily replaceable and do cause a lot of damage when left undefended. And if these kind of players are Romans, these troops are most likely Legionaires and eventually Equites Imperatoris or Cesaris, which can be used defensively in the same way than any other defensive player does. But the utility Legionaires bring is unmatched.

This is a different style of approaching the game and team aspect, offering different utility than what people are used to. I suspect, that no one does this and there are "reasons for it", but personally i see no reason not to and will never downplay an utility this kind of approach gives to you as a team. This support position is also one to produce Scouts if necessary. Just specialize one of the villages to Scout production instead.

The options what to do with this kind of setup is very numerous. You can also just fake the Treasuries from some of the Main Attack players Crop Capitols, divide the army and hit the support cities with a wave of Clubmen + Ram instead. So the real attacks are the support attacks and no real target might be hit at all. This way, if they defend those support attacks with lets say few thousand trooops each, it still wont matter as the Rams and Clubmen + possible Catapults will clear them, and the Legionaries + Catapults will further hit their infrastructure. Having as much as 100 Support Villages being reduced in one wave will hurt and as you didnt lose much of your troops, or if you did, they are easily replaceable which means, you can lauch a second wave soon or just fake them and hit the real targets instead. Or then again, continue to use your Legionaires on Defensive purposes.

These kind of attacks look really bad when you start to recieve them, especially when combined with fakes and reals from crop capitals. Instead of several locations, you can hit hundreds and most of them are real. The best part is, that you will still have the same amount of bigger armies (if maybe generally a bit smaller ones) than the opponent who do not utilize this strategy, but on top of them you have lots of 3 000 + Legionaires + (any possibe Cavalry) + some tens of Catapults type of armies too.

It wont hurt, to have even 10 or more of these players, who can either support the defense with heckton of Legionaires, or even turn them into numerous armies and fake attacks when needed. In fact, in my opinion its best to have 1/3 of Defensive (Gaul), 1/3 of this kind of Hybrid (Roman) and 1/3 of Offensive (Teuton) Governors. 

When Romans are used like this, they offer a lot of Utility and Legionaires for their defensive and offensive properties are the unit that makes them really shine.

Usual build may look like this: 

Capital: Legionaires + Equites Imperatoris / Equites Cesaris + Catapult + (possibly Ram)

Any City: Legionaires + Equites Imperatoris + Catapult (at least the first vilage, possibly more)

Any Village: Legionaires + Catapult 

One of the Villages: Scouts (Optional)

Support Romans will usually fill all the empty spots within the Kingdom Borders, and usually upgrade their possible cities within them. It is also possible to play a Support Roman having only one capital and only cities, all within the Kingdom Borders. When the crop consumption starts to get too much on the negative and there is no one to defend, just attack.

If necessary, any of the Villages can also produce Pretorians instead. And should the player be able to acquire a nice Crop Capital, produce Imperians in there. The important part is to pump Legionaires in each of the Villages and support them with Catapults, being able to Attack and Defend from all locations if necessary. In my opinion, this is the type of Utility that Romans are made to be used for making it easily the most versatile of the Tribes and an important part of any Kingdom.

When necessary, the Support Roman position can be converted to these, or similar variations depending on the situation around the Kingdom.

Capital: Legionaires + Equites Imperatoris / Equites Cesaris + Catapult + (Possible Ram)

Any City: Legionaires + Equites Imperatoris / Equites Cesaris + Catapult

Any Village: Pretorians

(If there are lots of Teotons around)

Capital: Imperians + Equites Imperatoris / Equites Cesaris + Catapult + (Possible Ram)

Any City: Legionaires + Equites Imperatoris / Equities Cesaris + Catapult

Any Village: Legionaires + Equites Cesaris + Catapult

One village: Equites Legati

(When needed some extra Punch and Utility. In this setup, some or all of the Villages might not even produce Troops, but be pure Support instead)