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I’ve always wondered how the hell caesar’s legion actually existed and could grow as large as it did considering how a significant bulk of them use primitive melee weapons and shit protective equipment - not even mentioning they’re anti-medical science lol - in a world stuffed full of firearms, freakin’ lazer beams, and plasma guns. Like imagine if the RPG bullet sponge effect didn’t exist. The best those larpers could do is fight in skirmish and guerilla styles if they tried to really stick to their schtick, presuming they don’t yield to the harsh reality of their own material conditions and remodernize their tactical formations for actual war fighting. Now I get that the NCR fucking sucks and is spread so thinly that it can’t actually field a division or two to actually push these nerds out, but still the concept of a neo-roman military force that can struggles to even maintain an arsenal of standard issued battle rifles for their soldiers strikes me as an absurdity. Both in their impractical existence and the patheticness of the capabilities of their opposition
I think that part of the answer, is that like most fascists, Caesar and his Legion are lying about how committed they are to parts of their ideology. In particular about being anti-technology. Caesar has an auto-doc. The more senior in the legion, the better the guns and armour you have. The minute the Legion has a chance to capture artillery they take it.
So they lie to their new recruits that the legion is tough and doesn’t need fancy guns just spears and machetes. In part because they don’t have enough guns for all their new recruits, but also they’ve just kidnapped and brutalized most of their new recruits, giving them guns when they could rebel is not what they want.
Similarly for their tactics. They send the recruits in human waves to probe the NCR and use them to Skirmish. But when they’re really trying to kill you, if you’re infamous, they send dudes with real guns, armour and modern tactics.
Kinda like ISIS. They were like “western technology is forbidden but uhhh it’s okay for us to use it for the purposes of our holy war and then we’ll totally get rid of it. Pinky promise.”
So they lie to their new recruits that the legion is tough and doesn’t need fancy guns just spears and machetes.
Nazi Germany did the same thing claiming their soldiers were all 6’0” aryan gods, when like the average height was like 5’7” and malnourished
The Nazis did this thing in the 30s even before the war where they encouraged a low meat, low alcohol ascetic diet and lifestyle. Which was medically good advice but materially due to certain significant food shortages.
In my headcannon they’re kinda like the IDF, good at killing civilians with a horde of melee wielding psychopaths and storming the settlements of helpless tribes, but the minute they encounter an actual military force, out goes the ideology and in comes the firearms and presumably the hoard of weaponry collected from 87 tribes would be substantial enough to give the failing NCR a headache
Plus the Colordo river and Lake Mead are extremely defensible locations, even a horde of dipshits fascists could hold it for a while
Honestly I just chalk it up to the gameplay trying to add variety, and any lore that justifes that is just hand wavy nonsense
I think a big factor as well, on the meta side of things, is that the majority of the Legion’s planned content was cut in order to get the game out on schedule. Most people don’t even notice because people don’t usually side with them (nor have I, even though I’ve lost count of my number of play-throughs), but their whole side of the map is almost empty, and even the Brotherhood has more faction quests and everything. I think if that hadn’t happened, we would have seen a much more fleshed-out and interesting faction, and questions like this would be explained.
I think the idea is that before the NCR their enemies mainly were other small groups with shitty weapons, and the Mojave is just kind of uniquely stuffed to the brim with good firearms, or something.
But yeah they don’t really make any sense, and it’s always annoyed me to no end that video game conventions demand that in a Legion ending, Caesars incoherent plan to just magically transform the Legion into a real civilization after crossing the dam and taking Vegas, basically kind of works, rather than inevitably collapse when brain cancer or just regular old age takes Caesar and leaves the Legion with no leadership in a couple of years.
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