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 Huge City with the italy hidden resource (the region "Latium" excluded) is occupied by a roman cultured faction. This usually happens when the Romans build a Huge City in Italy, but can also happen if the Romans conquer a Huge City in Italy held by a non-Roman faction. Note that although rebels are technically a Roman Culture Faction, Rebels cannot trigger the Reforms.

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_activated

to the top of descr_strat. This is useful for multiple campaigns in different eras using the same EDB.

In addition to changing available units, the Marian Reforms upgrade the Generals bodyguard of all factions to the late version.