How do you imagine Caesar's Legion going about engaging powered armored opponents?
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First of all, we know in lore that before the war, because of the resource limitations (according to the Fallout Bible this is the reason to focus on power armor instead of armored vehicles) the US military opted to develop the power armor as a means to, mostly, allow footsoldiers to carry heavy weaponry. We see the Brotherhood using gatling lasers and other heavy weapons, so we can picture a Brotherhood paladin or a prewar US soldier as a really compact, less durable perhaps (although a power armor may be more resistant than a WW1 tank) one man tank.
Irl we do have since WW1 anti-tank rifles, a type of anti-materiel rifle, and we do see high ranking legionaries carrying weapons like that, so the answer to how a centurion would deal with a power armored enemy is easy, but what about the common legionary? Or in close combat? I imagine they would have a hard time against an opponent in power armor, but I also imagine they receive training in how to deal and engage with heavily armored opponents. Now, while we don't have an irl analog to power armor, it's still, well, a set of armor.
The joints would be particularly weak spots that a legionary would be able to use to his advantage. Most people in the Wasteland wouldn't dare to go melee on a power armored individual, but we know how disposable legionaries are.
In New Vegas, when asking Veronica about the pulse gun she can also give us some hints at how to defeat an opponent in power armor:
Electromagnetic weapon from before the Great War. Experimental. It never saw mass production. But they were building it as a countermeasure to power armor, which they feared the Chinese were developing. [...] Imagine what it could do to the Brotherhood. We'd be on equal footing with any idiot with a gun.
Energy weapons seem to be the go to when dealing with power armor. Besides the pulse gun, before the war the Chinese were developing their own version of the Gauss riffle based on the German prototype. In New Vegas the Legion tries to strike a deal with the Van Graffs for energy weapons, so it's safe to assume they were preparing for the possibility of facing power armored enemies.
So, long story short, while veteran legionaries and centurions would be able to deal with an opponent in power armor in a way not too dissimilar to how the NCR or even the Chinese did, the common legionary would be in great trouble. A matter of hoping for a lucky stab in close combat, or a particularly well aimed shot with a gun of certain calibre at one of the joints. Mind you, this wouldn't be easy and this wouldn't damage the power armor, only the person inside. Even if you manage to stab through the joints that wouldn't guarantee killing the person.
Probably this is the reason for Caesar to wanting to unconditionally destroy the Brotherhood of Steel. We can say it's a matter of ideological incompatibility, but we're shown time and time again he's pragmatic when it comes to his ideas (autodoc in his tent, allowing a female courier to fight, the deal with the Van Graffs etc), so it's probably because we doesn't want to deal with potentially tens of men and women in power armor when the battle comes.
Thank you again for asking, I hope I made sense 🙏🏼 I had a few more thoughts but I didn't want to ramble too much. I may make a post about in the future
