Hey, kind of a new guy to the Forum but I have been playing alot of Paradox games and I love that they are making another Rome game and everything looks great so far except for one minor thing I think they should look back on about certain pops, specifically Freemen and Citizens.



I still don't like that manpower comes from "freeman" pop exclusively, and the fact that freemen "only" serve in the Army, like hmmmm. Pretty sure freemen did ALOT of things given they were the majority of almost any country. They should also be allowed to pay taxes/work in commerce.



But going back to the military aspect, the majority of ancient armies used citizen soldiers, people who had political rights and deep investment in the idea of their country and political structure, which often gave them deeper incentive/pride to defend their land. Freemen didn't really have that incentive/drive to take up arms(which they most likely couldn't afford to buy) to protect against invaders. In fact, one of the major ways Rome was able to get Freemen to join Auxiliary Cohorts was by promising citizenship upon retirement.



And even when Rome started providing arms and armor to her soldiers, Legionaries were always citizens. Maybe they should have two manpower pools and two unit "classes", not types, but classes. You can have the "Citizen soldier" class and the "Auxiliary soldier" class, each with their own benefits and drawbacks. Also, maybe certain unit types are limited to a certain class, like in Rome's case, maybe citizen soldiers can only be heavy infantry while auxiliaries can be everything else except for heavy infantry.



Additionally, I find it odd that the game depicts "standing" armies, when in fact, most countries in antiquity didn't have standing armies, mostly due to the fact, that again, by having citizen soldiers, their "soldiers" lived normal lives as economically and politically active civilians, and were only mustered during times of rebellion or war. Perhaps Paradox can add a mechanic that allows for "shadow armies" to exist, which can be built and modified but don't exist on the map, at least not until your country is in a state of rebellion or war. And raising these "shadow armies" into actual controllable armies shouldn't cost a large amount of money to raise but maybe a decent amount to upkeep due to the fact that citizen soldiers were expected to arm themselves but the state did pay them stipends due to them being away from their civilian jobs. At least in Rome's case.



Anyway, these are my thought so far, in all honesty, most of my understanding of antiquity relates to ancient Rome and specifically, in how she conducted politics and warfare. How this has been good constructive criticism and I hope to hear honest responses!