Accurate Representation of the Roman Legionary

Age of Empires: DE I - Discussion
1

Hi Devs and Community,

First and foremost, thank you for bringing back one of my favorite games and the strategy game that started it all for me. I absolutely the approach you have taken with the remastered edition, it is quite simply breathtaking.

Having said that, I’ve always had one issue with the original Rise of Rome expansion and that was to do with the roman legionary representation. It was simply represented as the generic long swordsman unit with stat tweaks. The Legionary should have a very distinctive look with the iconic roman tower shield (scutum) instead of the generic round shield. The tower shield played a significant role in roman legionary tactics, the testudo formations or scutum charges were very common and effective and defined the era of the roman infantry dominance on the battlefield.

The forgotten expansion pack has done a great job modifying the generic Long Swordsman by incorporating the roman tower shield and making it accurate.

Generic Long Swordsman

The Forgotten Expansion Roman Legionary

Roman Legionary with Tower Shield

I am sure there is more important work ahead but this one really sticks out to me like an eye sore. :slight_smile:

Regards

2

Interesting never knew there were different mods for Legion appearances. Are the pink bits the scrotums? :slight_smile:

3

The game don’t try represent any history accuracy.

1068×464

4

The fact of the matter is that “Legion” is a unit available to quite a few civs - if AoE:DE had unique units a la AoE2, the tower shield change would be expected. But as tower shields are a noticeably Roman aspect, it wouldn’t make sense to give it to the Legion unit - and if they only give it to the Roman Legion, then that raises the question - why don’t we give other civs unique skins? This is a slippery slope of manpower, time and money that the devs are probably unwilling to pour into the project.