It's hard to rebut a point I... didn't make. Like, I literally didn't have a post in this thread before the response I made to him and Nostalgium. I misread his point though, so, my bad XD. But, uh, you're kind of making up arguments for posts that don't exist here, which is a bit wierd.
Most legions raised in the late republic were raised ad hoc in response to a campaign and mustered out at the end of it, though the settled manpower provided an easy and quick source to reraise a legion as needed, as Pompey proved multiple times. The length of a campaign could, however, be extensive (and deliberately extended as Caesar in Gaul found endless excuses to keep finding enemies to fight). When Pompey finished his sweep through asia minor and the levant, his legions were mostly demobilized.
The period was quite chaotic and there were a long series of extensive wars that would provide a reason to keep a legion standing and ready to fight for an extensive period of time, but, to my knowledge of the period, only the consular legions were intended to be standing long term, and that would be a stark minority of all the legions being raised and fighting in the period.
Indeed, the term limit was mostly theoretical, with some of caesar's veterans serving much longer, while other legions could and would be mustered out much much sooner. The marian legions weren't intended to be standing for the most part, they were raised on a campaign to campaign basis (though this could mean multiple campaigns, and the difference between a legion that is supposed to be standing and one that just happened to be fighting a decade long series of campaigns in gaul is almost entirely academic) and the few that were were in a stark minority compared to all the legions raised in the generation between the reform and the end of the republic, because when oligarchs had the power to raise legions, they didn't really, uh, under do it. There's a reason augustus had to muster out so many legions at the end of the civil wars.
Look into the conflicts of the time and you'll note most of the armies raised were done so with permission of the senate (sometimes at swordpoint, and while the senate gave permission, several generals would refuse to disband their legions of senate orders) in response to a conflict or in preparation of a campaign. They weren't cycled around from different posts of already standing armies like the empire would do (except on those rare occasions where a legion would have to be replaced after a truly serious defeat).
The marian reforms honestly aren't super well modeled in the game, but I dunno how they could be. Like you'd have to give generals instant loyalty while also making them entirely self controlled to model just how chaotic and bad things got by the time of the first triumverate. This game really has no real mechanism for simulating the kind of civil wars the romans experienced from the social wars, to marius and sulla, to caesar, to augustus, and how this state of almost constant civil conflict shaped the legions. But the standing legion as stationed in the provinces of the empire is an augustine thing, not a marian one. The Marian legions were raised largely ad hoc for a campaign, theoretically mustered out at the end, though in reality often cycled to that general's next campaign, and often used entirely in defiance of the senate. Like, Sulla hardly demobilized his legions on command of the marian faction controlled senate like caesar hardly demobilized his on command instead of just, like, taking control of Rome. It is hard to stress just how often legions existed in defiance of the senate, at least until the general in defiance of the senate became the senate, as it were.
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