It is important to understand how Legion recruitment works in Expeditions: Rome. Since you can recruit multiple soldiers to bolster your army in the form of Centurions and Praetorians, you'll need to know how the different systems work, as well as the perks and options to look out for.
This Expeditions: Rome guide walks you through it all, telling you everything you need to know about Legion recruitment and the various soldier perks.
Expeditions: Rome Legion VI Victory Legion Explained
As you progress through Act 1 of Expeditions: Rome, you will take control of Legio VI Victrix. Since there is a lot to discuss, we advise you to consult our other guides concerning buildings and outpost improvements, conquests and strategies and pacification missions for a better picture of all that you will have to manage. as far as the legions are concerned.
Suffice it to say that what we will be focusing on in this guide are the Legion Barracks and its upgrades (the ones with the tent icon) in the outpost management screen.
First, make sure someone is assigned to the Barracks, preferably a character with the Recruiter perk. You'll hire Legion recruits with denarii, and you can check out the big tent in the middle of the camp to see these new recruits after a few hours in the game.
Hire a Praetorian or Hire a Centurion: What's the Difference?
When you hover over a soldier in the Barracks Recruit tab in Expeditions: Rome, you will see two options:
- Hire a Praetorian – Characters you hire as Praetorians will become regular party members. You can have up to eight generic soldiers in your squad.
- Hire a Centurion — Characters you hire as Centurions will be engaged in Legion battles against other armies (i.e. Conquests). You can select up to four.
You can review the characters you have hired by clicking on the Group tab. This is also where you can replenish army casualties, as well as dismiss any characters you've hired. But don't worry: they will still appear in the recruitment pool for the rest of the campaign.
Centurions will lead your army, although they won't necessarily be part of your turn-based battles. Look for these perks and options when hiring Centurions as Legion recruits.
specializations
Specializations relate to the types of Stratagems that Centurions strengthen when used in army battles. Examples include cavalry, infantry, logistics, and artillery. Since the schemes are drawn randomly from a pool, you might want to cover all your bases.
Reckless vs Cautious
The Reckless trait increases Aggression by 20%, but decreases Defense by 10%. The Cautious trait increases Defense by 20%, but decreases Aggression by 10%.
A physician
Medicus will increase victim survival rate by 10%. Simply put: a few soldiers will simply be injured and may eventually recover instead of being killed outright. Make sure you have a centurion with this perk and choose him to lead the army battles.
Class Options
Although the Centurion class does not play a major role in army battles, there is an important caveat that we will discuss towards the end of our Expeditions: Rome Legion recruitment guide. At the very least, try not to reject or replace those you love if you can help it.
Next, let's talk about the best perks for those you hire as Praetorians, your regular party members, in Expeditions: Rome. This is where you will need to be most selective when recruiting for the Legion due to various factors.
Class Options
Since Praetorians are the generic members of your party, you'll want classes that can complement your playstyle and team composition. Also look at the unlocked skills of a Praetorian. A recruit who has high level abilities unlocked in a single tree may be better than one who has a mix of level 1 and level 2 skills.
You can refer to our class guides for the Princeps, Veles, Sagittarius and Triarius for more information on the best skills.
Recruiter
The Recruiter perk is imperative if you want decent characters to spawn in your Barracks. Be sure to continually upgrade the barracks via the outpost management screen to increase the possible levels of generic soldiers.
Next, assign a Praetorian with the Recruiter perk so that the characters are level with your main character. You will need to reassign this person over and over again if you want to keep seeing a new pool in your barracks.
Freeloader > Reclaimer
A character with the Freeloader perk can be assigned to the Speculator Tent. They will provide additional free resupply for your tactical items. This perk is better than its counterpart, Scavenger, which only decreases resupply time. The character will leave this assignment when the process is complete.
Medic and other healing related perks are used to heal injured characters. We discuss this mechanic in more detail in our healing and injury guide, but the brief overview is that there are ways to heal and revive characters during battle outside of the default mechanics, and you want to ensure your Legion recruits have these benefits.
Characters who are downed or incapacitated become wounded or wounded. This status may at best keep them out of the next fight; it will lead to death at worst.
be smart
Crafty decreases crafting time in the Armory. The difference is minimal (about five hours of gameplay), so it's not as big as the other Legion Recruit perks, but it can be useful. The character will exit their mission once all items have been crafted.
Architect
Architect reduces the time it takes for new Stratagems to appear in your Workshop. The difference here is also minimal. However, if there are multiple schemes that can still be discovered, then the character will continue with that mission indefinitely.
Constitution
The constitution prevents injuries from deteriorating to a worse level. It's not that important.
Ascetic
Ascetic means Praetorians don't eat as often, which means you don't spend as many rations on that specific character. This too is not important.
Scout
Scout increases your movement speed on the world map by 5% for each character with the advantage in your army. It has a minimal effect.
Social
Social benefit can be attributed to the bath. A Praetorian with this perk will increase Legion morale by +4 every 32 hours.
Nice
Pleasant will cause a Praetorian to react more strongly to decisions they like based on their traits. Generally speaking, however, you won't really manage this mechanism.
Likewise, it is extremely unlikely that everyone in your group will be very loyal. However, we have yet to see any characters leaving our party due to very weak relationships. We cover this in more detail in our guide to Rhetorical Style and Loyalty.
Can I refresh the Legion recruiting page or retrain soldiers?
The biggest problem you'll have with your Legion recruits in Expeditions: Rome is that no one levels up at the same rate. Completing quests tends to award all characters the same XP. Unfortunately, most tactical battles only give full XP to those who participated in the fight; characters who did not participate will only receive half of this amount.
As a result, your unique characters may be at level 10, but your other Praetorians are still at level 8. Luckily, there are several ways to mitigate this experience disparity.
The first method is to save to refresh the recruitment page in your barracks. Again, make sure someone with the Recruiter perk is assigned to the Barracks. Next, leave camp, set the game speed to 3x, and press the play button at the top of the timelapse bar.
When you see the tent icon closer to the left of the bar, new Legion recruits are about to spawn. Save your game and enter the outpost. Check if you like the characters and recruit them.
Ideally, if you're level 9 or higher, for example, you'll want Legion recruits who have already unlocked high-level skills in a specific class tree. If you're not happy with the character group, just reload your save.
The second option involves Centurions. Even if they don't join your party's tactical battles, Centurions stay close to your main character's level. As such, you can fire characters as Centurions and hire them as Praetorians. It costs a bit of pennies, but you should have a nearly clean model to work with. Rehired soldiers will have the following quirks:
- They will have 0 XP for that particular level. If your main character is about to level up, try to reach that rank first so that the Centurion ranks also increase.
- They will only retain the skills they had by default when you originally hired them. You can allocate the remaining points as you see fit. You can see an example in the image below (a level 9 character with only two skill points spent).
This is basically what you need to know about how Legion recruitment works in Expeditions: Rome. Remember to keep an eye out for specific perks and options when recruiting Centurions and Praetorians, and if you need more generic troops closer to your level, don't be afraid to downgrade some soldiers. For more advice, consider heading to our Expeditions: Rome guide hub.
