Reply To: Does the historical period dictate the minimum and/or maximum size of a battle ?

[captainventanusParticipant 4936xp 2]

The century wasn’t quite the smallest possible organisational unit. Then factor in that more often than not units would be understrength anyway and operate in detachments in imperial frontier regions or during times of troubles. Particularly where there are fixed frontiers like in Germania small units will be patrolling on the rivers, manning observation towers, outlying forts etc..

So for the skirmish scale represented by Infamy, Infamy or SPQR or adapted Lion rampant there is plenty of rational to have these sized forces And that’s before you get standard scenarios like forces foraging for supplies, protecting a supply wagon or tax collector type narrative VIP – which work for near every era.

When you get smaller down to say 10-20 men e.g. Mortal Gods level you might have to narrow down options a little if you wanted to keep it as realistic as possible. The main issue I see is not so much that Roman skirmish is not historically feasible as such just that often troop types are incorporated that wouldn’t be available in such regions or operate in small detachment. Often the elite type units in army lists such aren’t appropriate for skirmish level gaming.

For Roman frontier warfare auxiliary units would predominate, but that doesn’t preclude legionaries operating there. When you start to field proportionally oversized detachments of ‘heavy’ Roman cavalry just because the units are in the list then that’s something different.