Marian reforms
Historical Information
See Marian reforms on Wikipedia for some historical information regarding this event.
Total War Game Play
The Marian Reforms trigger the ability to build improved troops for the Roman armies, some earlier types of unit become un-available after the reform.
Modding Information
The Marian Reforms are a hard coded event in Rome: Total War, they occur when a city with the italy hidden resource (the region "Latium" excluded) becomes a huge city while it is occupied by a roman cultured faction.
Which units are available pre and post reform are determined by the use of
and marian_reforms
or
and not marian_reforms
in export_descr_buildings.txt at the end of the recruit line.
The marian reforms event can be made to occur in Barbarian Invasion by removing the
marian_reforms_disabled
line from the top of descr_strat.txt and adding the italy hidden resource to appropriate cities.
From testing in BI only a roman cultured faction can trigger the reform, but the marian_reforms requirement can be applied to other cultures units, they will get the ability to train the relevant units if the roman faction triggers the reform, but they will not get the "A new man:Garius..." message when the reform happens. This is the same in RTW.
The marian reforms can also be set to active from the beginning of the campaign by adding the line
marian_reforms_activeated
to the top of descr_strat. This is useful for multiple campaigns in different eras using the same EDB.