People Called Romanes Go The House (Romani AAR)

Romani: AAR

setup: after-action reports for EB1.2 VH/M campaign w/Alex, and the 'getting rid of the giant trees' map fix.

intro: I'm playing this loosely with only a semi-historical bent. The main focus will be keeping me, and hopefully you, interested, but I'll try not to venture too off the beaten path. The Romans, though it may not seem so by their advantageous starting conditions, are a spirited but beleaguered people. Rome must do all it can to hold on to her position among the people of Italy, and to keep at bay those threats which from every corner present themselves. If she should eventually be master of the world? Well...it would be a happy accident.

house rules: It is all too tempting to blitzkrieg across the map with blazing alacrity, but that's not my style. Too many settlements, too many armies, and the game gets awful tedious...so let's try to keep this going for a while. With that in mind, I've two general policies:
a) play defensive. We Romani are not savages!
b) don't "play" the economy.

By the latter I mean it is entirely too easy to be rolling in cash by 260. It's obscene, and I've taken drastic steps: demolishing and avoiding economic & growth buildings, avoiding trade rights, maintaining navies, keeping taxes high to populations down. Instead of farms I build temples, shrines to the augurs, and city garrisons. After all, Rome's Italian allies need symbols of Roman religion first and foremost, to assure them of their loyalty....

Rome itself may get her port back, someday...as I need to fund more armies, I'll look to ports and mines, particularly in smaller, more distant areas. I don't like exploiting exploding populations and the income that comes with it. Rome taxed only her far-flung provinces, not her own citizens! On the whole, I like it. It keeps the player from having a dominant overabundance of power and then having to hold back, and lets you do the best with what little you allow yourself to have.

272-260 BC: Magna Graecia and the Italian opposition

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I'm starting this AAR after a number of turns in, so bear with me while we catch up... In the very early going, a Roman consular army makes short work of the Epirotes at Taras. A series of skirmishes with their divided and inadequate forces culminated in the sacking of the city, and thereafter, courtesy of L.Cornelius Scipio, the brash rebels at Rhegion were justly subdued.

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The proper Roman response to Ivbell-ing of any kind!

For most of the next decade, the other consular army, in the north, was waylaid with inactivity, devoted primarily to discouraging rebellion. But rebellion did come, from time to time, the most serious of which occurred in the year 263, when central Italy was rife with capable discontent. After the early death of M.Curius Dentatus, it fell upon Cornelius Blasio to pacify the region. He did so, with two decisive and lopsided battles against evenly-matched armies, both within the year.

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Blasio laying down the smackus. (n.b., these were respectable 4-unit armies captained by Polybian cavalry, although I try to keep the battle advantage close to 1:1 if I can, to encourage my generals to advance. Blasio rewarded me by turning into a drunkenly extravagant lout.)

The Ligurians were punished for the boldness with which they tolerated the rebels, and Blasio reduced their population to slavery, so that the Romans may be surrounded by more reliable peoples. The settlement known as Segesta in Northern Italy remains Rome's only firm holding beyond Arretium.

259 BC: Sicily, and the Greek Theater - Setup

A lengthy peace to the north of Rome presently diverted the idling army to the South. For years, the southern army (under the erstwhile command of Scipio, and then of Cotta) kept a watchful eye on the transpirings across the coast. The Macedonian menace had threatened the city-states of Southern Greece, though Rome was in no condition to lend any real aid to the Koinon Hellenes. Instead, a peace with Epirus was conducted, and a naval fleet stationed at the port of Taras stood ready to deploy the Roman army to the assistance of (eleutheroi) Thermon, of the Aitolians.

It seems the specter of this army warded off on several occasions a Macedonian incursion. Had it not, a Macedonian Thermon seems but inevitable - the power of its own army weakened by successive sieges, perhaps never to regain its former strength. Rome had perhaps failed its friends here, by not taking an earlier military interest in Thermon's preservation.

But Rome only has so many armies, and ongoing in these same years were the tensions in Sicily. Despite a number of quite deliberate provocations, the Roman allies of Qart-Hadasht seemed intent on honoring their pledge. grumble, grumble...go on, make me the bad guy. Presently, however, the Senate, satisfied perhaps too early that the Thermon threat was at bay, sent Cotta's army from Taras to Rhegion, and then in 259 to Messana. The Romans tired of the, uh... perfidy of Ennychos, and moved to relieve their Mamertine friends of the grasp of so unworthy a despot.

Finally, this elicits from the Carthaginians a declaration of war. An early, poorly mounted siege of Messana by Hamalcar was repelled, but before the year was out a more serious force was on the horizon -- with even more on the way! The Carthaginian presence on the island was not insubstantial, and the Senate in Rome, conscious of this threat, send their best in Lucius Cornelius Scipio to lead the army down from the north against it. The younger and less experienced Cotta, and his secondary army were diverted to Taras.

If Cotta supposed he would supervise Taras in quiet, though, he was mistaken. A new, Epirote siege of Thermon began this same year. Cotta, without even the full strength of his forces, was forced to raise a quick levy and hasten to the shores of Greece. There, he was able to recruit to his aid a general of Athens and his small contingent of Koinon troops to join in beating back the aggressors. This would be Rome's first real test of her maniples against the full might of the phalanx.

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Concluding: The present state of the SPQR, 257

Possessing only two armies, both having been deployed on foreign soil and without the funds for a third, Roma itself lies vulnerable. The people and the Senate of Rome await with trepidation the results of two decisive battles in 257 -- the one, at Messana, under L.Cornelius Scipio; the other, in Aitolia, under C.Aurelius Cotta -- but fully confident in its success.

For, even should a northern threat emerge, Rome could in her hour of need quickly levy, under the able command of her early S/C/V generals, the devastating power of her citizen army. She wielded the unsurpassed tenacity of her people, which was the backbone of a military machine already unrivaled, though the world did not yet know it.