Sea Movement and the Cimbri/Teutons Invasion

[cmacq]

As you may know I’m somewhat new to EB. Downloaded it late last month. I must say overall, EB is a vast improvement over TW-R. You’ve fixed all of the major inherent TW-R problems. Now, am I to understand that today, October12th, marks the introduction of a new (as I've read much improved) EB version? I’ve reviewed the changes and they're extremely well thought out. Great would be an understatement as I plan to download it soon.

Yet, I’ve two small additional questions?

(1) By the 4th BC sea movement within a 90 day period easily reached anywhere in the Mediterranean. In fact, this appears to be the sailing time for Greek merchantmen departing southern France for southwest Britain (please see Pytheas’ "Peri Tou Okeanou" [Latin font]).

I know all movement in the game has been abstracted and the basic maritime aspect comes from TW-R. Yet one can not traverse the Italian Peninsula in 90 days and it takes several years to cross the Mediterranean Basin? This seems a bit light? Rapid naval redeployment of their ground armies was critical to Roman expansion outside of and military maintenance within Italy (ie. Tolemon campaign, Punic campaigns, Cimbri/Teuton Invasion, Slave Wars, 1st century Civil Wars).

Has the EB design team considered increasing the per-turn range of some types of naval units? Also it seems that certain types of sea craft preformed well, as far as range was concerned, in one realm (general maritime region) but not in others. Finally, the end of the 1st question, have you considered giving loaded ground troops on ships the ablity to fight as marines to increase/enhance Roman naval attack strenght (see as this tipped the scale in the 1st Punic War)?

(2) I see you addressed a Swabian Military Reform and its association with the Cimbri/Teutons. As you may know one of the most significant events between the 2nd Punic War and the Civil Wars of the 1st century was the sudden appearance of Cimberi/Teutons late in the 2nd century on the north Euro. frontier. Because of the nature of their early history (Keltic capture of Rome, Hannibal’s Kelts, and reconquest of the north Italian Kelts) this event scared the holy be-Jesus out of the Romans (ie. terror cimbricus).

Forced by the devastation of their homeland due to one or more North Sea quakes and associated tsunami (see Strabo), the Cimberi/Teutoni invasion was finally halted by Marius in southern France and later northern Italy (yes Sulla is given credit here). This Cimberi/Teutoni invasion of more than a half million people resulted in the direct ruin of the northern Iberian, Gallic, and Boii (Kelto-germanic confederation) economies and politics; opened the door for Swabian dominance in Germany (and forced the mid 1st century Usipeti/Tencterian invasion of 450,000 people) and later attempted expansion in Gaul, and the outright destruction of several very large Roman armies.

Their final defeat also catapulted the career of Marius into the upper troposphere (helped Sulla as well), and flooded the Italian markets with many hundreds of thousands of slaves, which in turn contributed to the early 1st century Italian slave revolts and all that associated with the increased status of the Roman rich (cheap labor, lower costs, richer, bigger estates, fewer small farms, more landless young Latin men; better trained and larger permanent armies) and accelerated the end of the Republic. If Marius was not as capable as he was, Rome may never have become a world-class empire?

This event may be similar to the hordes demonstrated in TW-BI. I see you have inserted a simlar change called the Yuezhi Invasion. Has the EB design team considered including the sudden appearance of a Cimberi/Teutoni or so-named Eleutheroi horde in Denmark sometime in the late 2nd century?

If the EB team has already considered a naval movement change and a Cimbric Event please disregard.

[blacksnail]

Naval movement rates pretty much have to remain where they are because of the turn-based nature of the game. The same for overland movement rates. Otherwise everybody teleports everywhere and the AI breaks completely.

Also, there is no way we can modify the game to turn troops on ships into marines - hardcoding prevents us. Good idea, though!

[cmacq]

Thank you, I understand completely

[Zaknafien]

I have long been an advocate of a scripted Cimbri/Teutones invasion, but most of the team would disagree with me, with good reason, as EB doesnt re-write history, we merely set the stage accurately and let it play out. Who is to say the same conditions would exist in your EB game as to cause the tribes to migrate en masse?

[Legatus Legionis]

But so far i know the Yhuezi invasion doesn't take place if certain pre set conditions are met?
The same could be made for the Cimbri/Teutoni.

[Watchman]

Then again, the Yuezhi come out of a region beyond the edge of the campaign map, whereas the C&T would pretty much have to crawl out of the woodwork in what are more likely than not decently developed faction provinces...
It's not like they'd be suddenly rolling out of northern Scandinavia or anything after all. :sweatdrop:

[Legatus Legionis]

Rebells pop out from nowhere too. I would have no problem with this :)

[Watchman]

I'd say a bunch of rowdy mercs, troublemaking local warriors, major bandit packs, minor aristocrats with delusions of grandeur, disgruntled peasants etc. that the random-spawning rebel stacks represent were a bit different thing from a full-blown migration-cum-invasion tho'...

[Zaknafien]

I've often concepted dynamic conditions that would cause such a migration. Say, if the homelands of the Cimbri or Teutones were occupied by a non-Sweboz faction, or even perhaps the Sweboz if the right kind of government were installed, a mass exodus would spawn, with messages indicating such to every player in the region: "Imperator/Chieftan etc, an entire nation of people have begun to travel because of ..." and many (5 or 6) full stack armies would spawn.

Problem is, we cant make spawned armies do anything, and usually they just sit around. Maybe in M2TW.

[Foot]

Watchman is right on the money, the Yeuzhi invasion is absolutely fine to work with as the conditions for it appear outside of the EB map, where we assume that history takes its course as usual. The Cimbri invasion has conditions within the map, which makes things more difficult. Whilst dynamic reforms may be possible, as Zaknafien rightly points out, they wouldn't do anything (which kinda defeats the point of having them).

Foot

[Legatus Legionis]

Ok this might not be historically correct but wjatabput leting the Cimbri/Teutoni come from out of the map by ships?

[Zaknafien]

why on earth, for the sake of pete, would we ever do something like that?


We might as well make EB: Atlantean Invasion

[cmacq]

There is evidence that this event also set in motion the large scale de-Kelt/Balt-ification of much of Germany and the rise of the Nordic Swabian confederation. Second and first century BC Hellenic and Latin texts mention many of the tribes found in Germany, that are nearly all either gone from history or resettled west of the Rhine by the mid 2nd century AD.

I'm just saying it could be a kind of wild-card to keep the Romans and Greeks always guessing, and looking to the north as they did historically?

[Legatus Legionis]

why on earth, for the sake of pete, would we ever do something like that?


We might as well make EB: Atlantean Invasion

Hey no means to be rude. I was just brainstorming to have a moveable eleuteroi army.

[Foot]

How would that make them moveable anyway? I mean, they wouldn't even appear anywhere near where they historically appeared

Foot

[Legatus Legionis]

They could land in Jutland (the supposed historical homeland of the Cimbri) disband the ships and go on wandering and sacking througout europe.

[cmacq]

Don't forget the Usipeti/Tencterian Invasion of nearly a half million in the mid 1st century BC, which was caused by Swabian expansion within Germany, and slamed by GJC before it got off the ground. Right, Caesar saved the republic one more time just like Marius and Sulla about 50 yrs earlier.

[Zaknafien]

you dont see the problem--we cant make a scripted army, even on boats, go where we want them to go. Theres no telling if they will land in Jutland or in Asia MInor, or if they'll even land at all.

Like I said, this would be great, maybe we can do it in EB II.

[Legatus Legionis]

Ah ok. I understand. So the Yuhezi, too, would only emerge and then wander wherever the KI is pleased to go?

[cmacq]

Right spawned armies just set there? That would be a problem. No way of treating spawned armies as the crusader armies in M-TW? That is giving stacks random destination provinces in western Anatolia, Balkans, Spain, and/or Italy?

[Bonny]

Right spawned armys just set there? That would be a problem. No way of treating spawned armies as the crusader armies in M-TW? That is giving stacks random destination provinces in western Anatolia, Balkans, Spain, and/or Italy?

I'm sorry no way, this feature won't make it in EB1 but as far as i know MTW2 has greater modding possibilities in this area, so that this feature might be something that could be done in EB 2. imho it would add more depth to the game, especially in regards of the Marian reforms. We will see.

[Zaknafien]

in EB II, we can probably use the Jihad function to make spawned armies target specific territories, no?

[bovi]

I don't think rebels can crusade.

[cmacq]

Well then thats a rap on this subject. Thanks for all the info.

[Zaknafien]

Not all. I have an idea...

[cmacq]

Not to beat a dead horse too badly, but have another question concerning Roman marines (question #1, part 3, above). Could a naval commander be given a random trait (such as ‘grapple-drawbridge thingie builder’) that comes and goes which increases the chance an enemy craft would be captured if it attacks or defends against a Roman naval unit while transporting troops?

[Zaknafien]

Impossible. Its called a corvus ("raven") btw.

[cmacq]

right, ships cant be captured. I must have games mixed up?

[Watchman]

I always figured marine complements and the like were already factored into the warship stats anyway, boarding tactics being common enough. It's not like dedicated warships could actually carry that many men on top of their actual crew in the first place (not in the least given that most of them moved under oars in battle...), and conversely the kinds of ships that made for decent troop carriers tended to be, well, transports. Which is to say more or less designed to move stuff around cost-effectively, not fight.

Megalomanical weirdnesses like those crackpot giant polymeres nonwithstanding.

[cmacq]

Just finished some quick research on the marine-corvus combo. Seems it was only effective for a very short period of time. I didn't know that, so junk that idea.

[russia almighty]

Why not for EB 2 do a free peoples style faction ? That would allow them to jihad or crusade to simulate a migration .

[Geoffrey S]

It's been a while since I've played RTW, so bear with me if this is impossible. Can ancillaries be traded between admirals (did they even have them)? If so, is an ancillary possible representing a large troop complement which gives an advantage to that particular fleet, of which there's a limited number per faction at any given time?

[Bonny]

It's been a while since I've played RTW, so bear with me if this is impossible. Can ancillaries be traded between admirals (did they even have them)? If so, is an ancillary possible representing a large troop complement which gives an advantage to that particular fleet, of which there's a limited number per faction at any given time?

Admirals can have ancillarys, and afaik they can be traded, too.

[cmacq]

Not all. I have an idea...


Zaknafien, you have an idea?

[Zaknafien]

Well yeah, but its one I'm not going to tell you.:smash:

[cmacq]

then, that might be a good idea?

[Ludens]

Admirals can have ancillarys, and afaik they can be traded, too.
They certainly have ancillaries, but you can't have two admirals in the same stack.

[cmacq]

Just finished some quick research on the marine-corvus combo. Seems it was only effective for a very short period of time. I didn't know that, so junk that idea.

After more reading and some translating, which reminds me how much I hate the greek, I believe I’m a bit closer to the bottom of this marine-corvus/harpago subject. It seems that the western Greeks actually invented the Corvus/Harpago and it only became extremely effective after it was coupled with heavy infantry (marines). Despite what some sources claim (Wallinga 1956), the marine-Corvus combo was the decisive arm of Roman victory in the 1st Punic War.

The claim that the Corvus feature caused instability, and was the reason two Roman fleets were lost at sea (Camarina and Cape Palinurus) appears completely unfounded. In fact, the Romans of this period were very inexperienced and both disasters occurred as a result of horrific storms with high winds that forced ships onto rocky shorelines. The additional assertion that the Corvus devise was not used at the Aegates Islands because it was not mentioned, is baseless as well. At the time the Romans had been using the Corvus for about 20 years, it was no longer new, why would it be mentioned anew by the same author?

Ancient naval combat typically resulted in the desertion of most of the secondary actors and the ramming/sinking of a couple of the principles. Unless some type of ruse was employed, the capture of an intact ship was exceptional. However the ratio of captured Carthaginian ships at the Aegates Islands was much higher than earlier engagements in which we know the Corvus was used (ie. 41.17% [n=170] of enemy fleet captured-Aegates Islands in 241 BC and 23.84% [n=130] of enemy fleet captured-Mylae 260 BC). These ratios are impressive when compared to Artemisium, Salamis, or Actium where nearly all enemy losses were sinkings due to ramming.

In fact, the Romans appear to have continued to use the Corvus-type of boarding tech as it appears at Naulochus in 36 BC, were again the ratio of enemy fleet captured was high (85%). Here the device was called the Arpax. Caesar/D Brutus also used some type of grapple device and marines to great effect during his campaign against the Veneti (Brittany) during the Gallic War in 56 BC. The point here is not that the Corvus was a war-winner; rather the combination of some type of grapple device and well-trained, heavily armed marines was a decisive tool in the hands of the right commander.