Comitatenses is a technology in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - Return of Rome that is unique to the Romans and available at the Castle once the Imperial Age is reached. Once researched, their Militia-line, Knight-line, and Centurions train 50% faster and receive +5 charge attack that takes 20 seconds to fully charge.
Strategy[]
Roman armies in the Imperial Age are heavily dependant on Legionaries, Centurions, and Cavaliers, as those are their strongest units, alongside their Scorpions. With Comitatenses, Romans gain half the effect of Perfusion to their Militia-line production, a better training time rate for their Cavaliers than Franks with Chivalry, and solving the drawback of Centurions, which is a relatively slow training time from Castles (putting their training time on par with other Cavalry unique units). While the charge attack gained improves their perfomance in melee combat, it is worth noticing that even with the charge attack, Roman Cavaliers are not as strong as Bulgarian Cavaliers with Stirrups or Malian Cavaliers with Farimba in melee combat. The charge attack is also not at the same level of effectiveness as Coustilliers, or even Urumi Swordsmen with Wootz Steel. The charge attack is more effective for Legionaries due to their lesser base attack and the attack speed improvement gained from a nearby Centurion. With the faster production rate, the Legionary becomes one of the finest infantry units in the game. The charge attack also gives Centurions the same damage output as Elite War Elephants in the first hit. However, the technology is very expensive and is often left as the last technology that Romans research.
Team bonuses[]
Portuguese: Researching Comitatenses is 25% faster.
History[]
Comitatenses is the Latin plural of comitatensis, derived from "comitatus" (company, in military context meaning 'field army'), from the root "comes" (companion).
The comitatenses and later the palatini were the units of the field armies of the late Roman Empire. They were the soldiers that replaced the legionaries, who had formed the backbone of the Roman military since the Marian reforms.
The troops that merely garrisoned in the "limes" (the border of the Roman empire that included, among other areas, the Rhine river or the Danube, the geographical areas close to Persia, etc.) received the name of limitanei or ripenses (meaning 'near the shores'), whereas the Comitatenses were mobile troops, whose function was to deal with invasions or large-scale military campaigns that could occur anywhere in the empire, so they were made up of soldiers with better military training and equipment than the limitanei.
In addition, there were second-line troops called pseudocomitatensis, other elite troops under the command of the Magister militum called Comitatenses palatini, and the scholae, personal guard of the Emperor of the Late Roman Empire.
Trivia[]
- Upon release, the technology also affected an unknown unit with an ID of 1813, which was not present in the game files. The order of the units affected suggested that the unit 1813 was a part of the Knight line, probably as an alternate upgrade to the Cavalier, like how the Legionary is to the Long Swordsman. When The Mountain Royals was released, the Savar was given the unit ID of 1813. Hence, the Savar was in works even before the release of Return of Rome.
- Roman Cavaliers are the fastest trained Cavaliers in the game, since the effect of Comitatenses (50%) is greater than that of Chivalry (40%) and the Hun team bonus (20%). However, unlike the two, the Romans do not get Paladins, so the other two still have the faster trained Paladins, as well better researching times, especially the Franks.
