WeissYohji wrote:

Vizsla wrote:

Caesar legion. They seem so alien and apart from the other factions.
Most of the people will think they are just glorified raiders in football armor that charges machine guns with sticks and stones
But for me they were the promise of a faction capable of dealing with the chaos and disorder of the wasteland. That in time will transmute from a nomadic tribe in to a real society.
Once of corse Caesar has his new rome

The Legion still loses the wider war against the NCR. NCR still wins between them both with or without the Courier. The Legion is a bunch of misogynists and slavers, thus denying half their potential fighting force. They insist on bringing knives to gunfights, and when the Legionaries DO use guns, they don't maintain them. They piss all over Pre-War technology and medicine yet Caesar himself has no problem keeping an Auto-Doc in his tent.

Let's also remember that the Legion doesn't represent Rome at its height but the Western Roman Empire at its COLLAPSE. The WRE fell because they overexpanded, relied so much on recruiting outside mercenaries (who were less willing to fight for Rome than they seemed), and a little public health crisis known as LEAD POISONING. The Romans used lead as a sweetener, never mind the brain damage it causes by mimicking other metals that the body actually needs to work right. The Legion also doesn't have the longevity of the IRL Roman Empire. The Roman Empire lasted from 27 BCE to 1453. Not the old Etruscan kingdom, not the Roman kingdom, not even the Roman Republic, but the IMPERIAL government. Caesar's Legion has only been around for a few decades as of FNV's story, and Caesar himself is already in his late fifties. Speaking of Caesar, he's not going to be around forever. He'll eventually DIE. And while the NCR has contingencies in case anything happens to President Kimball, the Legion doesn't. Their whole "country" is based around the lizard at the top. And that longevity factor? The adults and teens of the Legion still remember the tribes, towns, and vaults they originally came from. It's only a matter of time before they revolt and recover their old identities. Even if Lanius can hold most of the Legion together through fear, he's still too incompetent of a politician to run a country. Even if the Legion does somehow manage to take Hoover Dam, they'll find fewer and fewer tribes to assimilate, with or without Caesar. The Legion will just devour itself and fall apart while the NCR comes out on top.

Also, THEY OWN SLAVES! How the hell does that make the Legion capable of surviving the wasteland and turning into a real society? Of all the people who could learn from the errors of the past, Caesar wants to throw it all off a cliff! He acts like this is some pre-ordained cycle that people are destined to return to 200+ years after the bombs fell.

Actually, Caesar's Legion is based (with some creative liberty) off of Julius Caesar's model of the emergent Roman Empire, by his own admission. That is quite literally peak Rome, at least in terms of military supremacy.

Edit: Also the REAL Roman Empire had slaves (as did the Grecian and Roman republics that proceeded it), and as you already pointed out, the Roman Empire had one hell of a life span.

Personally, I've always liked the NCR...but they're terribly flawed in their upper management, and definitely need to lose New Vegas (I usually let it go independent) in order to suffer a defeat, see themselves bleed, and finally start wising up. Then maybe they can actually move forward.