Hypothetically, if the developers asked for your input on the Legion before completed development, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-zCmO3KAkE&feature=related
I actually want to like the Legion, but I just find them to be too black and white.

1. Change the Voice Actor. He sounds like a fat Italian from Queens.

2. The Legion treats women with more dignity. No forced marriages or forced labor.

3. The Legion, much like the Roman model, leaves culture outside of the main Legion in respect

4. Territories and tribes conquered by the Legion have the ability to generate their own economy with paid enlistment, but must tip their hat to the Legion culture when asked and pay their taxes.

5. With paid enlistment, the Legion can focus more on advanced tactics and not a slave army.

6. The Legion army operates in effective large formations like the Phalanx. Melee in the front, Ranged in the Rear, and Centurians at the flank. This can be done with this engine.

7. Caesar is more pragmatic, does not preach to others that he is the Son of Mars. in fact there is no state religion except the state of the Legion. he takes pride in his intellect but also has a revealed proud history as a warrior.

8. Slavery is for males only. There are four types of punishment in the Legion administered by a conditioned Judge. For the lightest offenses, community service for females--forced enlistment for males, for heavier offenses it is punished by prison sentences giving prateorians more purpose than just guarding Caesar, the worst offenders become slaves or crucified based on the decision of a Judge or Caesar.

9. Legion prides itself on being an effective state based on the rule of law. No more ridiculous laws like using medicine is punishable by death, in fact there should be a corp. of doctors and caregivers who tend to soldiers

10. Legion follows the Roman and Greek model of combat. Every soldier looks out for each other, every soldier prides itself victory comes from strength and effective command, not careless casualties.

11. A quest given by Caesar against the NCR that has two paths: Frumentari or Centurian. Depending how you completed the quest, whether through espionage/stealth or brute force, you are given the rank of Centurian or Frumentarri, a Centurian armor outfit or Frumenrarri armor outfit, plus awarded Legion coin. If you chose the Frumentari path, you gain a lot of Legion fame and no NCR infamy.....if you chose the Centurian path you gain some Legion fame and a lot of NCR infamy.

12. A clear precise end game that brings total order everywhere in the Mojave. All remaining fiends, raiders, Brotherhood of Steel and powder gangers are totally decimated. While NCR kicks in full retreat via Mojave outpost the best Rangers are left behind to scout the Legion victory and carry out a covert insurgency against them that fails to do a heavy dent on the new settled Legion civilization.

A Legion town/city on the other side of the Colorado River, to show what type of nation Caesar is building.

To see women in a role not just as slaves.

To see Legion building and making art, not just destroying.

A quest with Red Lucy to have her agree to human battles in the Thorn. To have slave battles, maybe even kill Red Lucy and have somone else more legion friendly take over. This way we have a Legion presence close to the Strip. Mostly a way for the Legion to get spies into the area. We could convince her with a line like "But we all know the most dangerous animal in the wasteland is Man." The quest would take place after you do the one to get eggs of all the different creatures.

yeah, I really like all those ideas.

Alot of people also would have liked a Legion Companion.

The ones in bolded go against the reasons why the Legion is cool to us Legion players. The one in underline already happends. The NCR thing at the end would be a killjoy to us. The ones unaffected are pretty cool ideas.

All due respect, you don't own the Legion just because you like them. And I find the current state of them very uncool because Caesar himself prides himself in being a scholar yet has no clue about what he emulates. His state of the Legion is a mix of the worst aspects of the Mongolian Empire with the worst aspects of the Soviet Union. He seems to think that making a solely destructive force is what makes him effective and civilized when all it does it makes him nothing more than a thug barbarian hence being black and white.

What? I never said I owned them. He has done a good job of modeling the Legion off of the Roman Empire, even as a scholar his knowledge of the Roman Empire is still limited as to be expected in the timeline and so far his methods have worked seeing as the NCR is on its knees, so there is no need for changes. Caesar's grand vision for humanityand his intentions is one of the sources of "grayness" for the spectrum.

Of course if I wanted to make Legion better I would make so many changes to it that it wouldn't be Legion any more.

The Legion are the villain in this game. And as with all Fallout villains they have one major factor that makes them repulsive for most players and a factor that may or may not make them an unreliable long-term ruler. For Master's Army it was mutant sterility/forcing people to turn into mutants. The Enclave in Fallout 2 only allowed Pure Humans be spared from genocide. In Fallout 3 the Enclave was fractured and the moderate leader (Autumn) didn't want to cooperate with the player. The Legion is oppressive slaver nation which most likely will fall apart in a few decades anyway, especially if they lose.

This is the one thing that I would really like to change, as for everything else, those changes would make me like the Legion better, but it wouldn't really be the Legion anymore. I like the Legion's role in the game, and even though I do not support them, I wouldn't change them.

If they implemented all of your ideas, the Legion in FNV would no longer be the 'bad guys'. They would actually seem fairly sensible and even admirable, and make them a happily acceptable alternative to the NCR for just about anyone, not just to the mysogynists, sixists, and contrarians. But, what kind of game lacks a distinct 'bad guy', against which most players can feel like they can rally against and feel good about fighting? An enemy that truly feels threatening and worth resisting? If you have two seperate primary powers that are more or less equally 'ok' on the average person's scale of good vs. evil, then people just get confused. Gotta have an easily understandable villain, and that's the role the Legion fills handily, in its current iteration. Granted, NCR isn't exactly Snow White- but the institutionalized slavery, [censored] and mass murder being inexorably spread by the Legion, makes them seem a much more palatable option for most.