Spain or Gaul 1st?

In every RTW game and version I've played, if I have cities in northern italy (playing as Rome), I fight and conquer gaul first. Quite often, the gauls all but force me to do so. Yet if I have my history right, this is way out of whack with what really happened. Gaul came much later than many other countries on the conquest list. Yet, looking at the map, it seems only natural to take gaul before spain. Gaul is a natural stepping stone to owning the west. I'm sure Carthage had something to do with Spain going first. Ok, so the question is, is my experience with this unusual? If not, can this be remedied? I mean, other than simply forcing myself to refuse to conquer gaul and unnaturally going way out of my way to do an awkward, risky naval invasion of Spain first? I always feel guilty when I take Gaul 1st on my list of conquests ... but the game seems to push for this.

Well, history or not, you shouldn't feel guilty, because after the starting point of the game, history is in YOUR hands. It's not supposed to play out exactly the way it actually did. You might ally yourself with Rome's enemies, historically speaking, and so on and so forth. The year the game starts is the year you start changing history. That's the point of the game, not a replay of the past.

I did once see the AI Romans launch an invasion of Spain while leaving Gaul untouched. But then i was playing the Germans and was at war with the Britons and Gaul. It would have been far too kind of the computer to attack Gaul from behind

Well, the Gauls had proven themselves to be a threat to Rome in their past. So I wonder, historically, why they didn't take out Gaul long, long before Caesar, instead taking far flung areas of the world, while ignoring a potentially dangerous neighbor. Was it that Gaul _couldn't_ be taken, until Caesar came along? Otherwise, I'd think that would have been a reasonable, valuable target just like it is in the game.

well, gaul was pretty strong and rome weakened after the punics, no?

Anyway, I think Gaul is underpowered in vanilla. Played Julii with Darthmod and was prety happy (and surprised!) when Gaul accepted my offer of protectorate so I could occupy myself in conquering the Iberian Penisula and strenghening my faction for the inevitable conquest of Gaul

Gaul was hardly a political union at the time; either way, the Romans did conquer large amounts of land belonging to the Gallic people to the south of the Alps before tackling Spain. If I've got my facts straight Rome was meddling in Spain before the second Punic war and conquered large parts of the regions when Hannibal came over the Alps. When in Italy Hannibal did try to get relatively recently conquered Gallic people living in the region to rebel against Rome.
Tackling Gaul directly wouldn't have been the best of moves for the Romans, anyway. Since the Gauls were pretty much continuously fighting among themselves all Rome really had to do was sit back and wait, then take out the (weaker) remnants.

The roman didn't have a coherent plan for world conquest, they anexed land as it came, without always planning it.
The fact is that they never had the occasion to try to annex northern Gaul before Caesar (but gallic land in Italia and on the mediteranean coast were under roman control long before Caesar).

Then as the Gauls weren't united, even if Rome attacked a gallic tribe that doesn't mean they had to conquer the whole gallic lands to end the war, just defeating the tribe or the confederation might do the trick.
However the game mechanisms work differently than real life... So when you start a war against Gaul it's hard to stop it before vanquishing them (at least in vanilla rtw).

A few extra thoughts on this:

1) Is it just me, or is crossing the alps a heckuva a lot easier in RTW than it would've been in real life? I mean, you keep hearing about how much of a big deal it was when Hannibal did it. So maybe getting on a boat to go around was the best bet for the Romans. And once you're on that boat, the difference between going to Southern Frnace or Spain is not as important.

2) Maybe the Romans didn't care or weren't prepared for the cold weather, and simply preferred Spain warmer climate. Plus their gold mines must've helped in the equation.

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Originally Posted by Keyser

The roman didn't have a coherent plan for world conquest, they anexed land as it came, without always planning it.

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This is a really, really good point.

You, as an RTW player, know in 272BC that you are going to try to conquer the world. The Romans didn't, and just took advantage of opportunities as they came to them. And the opportunity to take Spain just happened to arrive before it came for Transalpine Gaul.

1. The Celts were not one united nation .
2. They had territories in Northern Italy since the forth century bce
3. the romans fought the Celtic tribes of Italy for some 150 years , and got rid of them by 220 bce
4. The main scene of operations between the superpowers of the 4th' , 3rd' and 2nd' centuries bce was the mediterranean sea , so what the romans had to do in Gaul at that times ? Gaul was a land of "barbarians" for the romans , and they never were a threat to rome as Carthage (the Senones took rome in c. 385 bce and went after only 7 month , it was an invasion , not a conquest)
5. When , in the 270' , the conflict between Rome and Carthage began , the Romans had no option but to take the Carthaginian main base of operations - Hispania , and they did it by 206 bce . again , the Romans had no interest in gaul in these years
6. Marius took southern Gaul in 102 bce just because of the Cimbric and the Toutonic invasions
7. Caesar took Gaul in 52-50 bce for one reason - he wanted fame , he asked himself , who can I conquer ? there was only one answer - Gaul

Now , for the game to develop that way , we must have a trigger , that is , a conflict to emerge in 264 bce between Rome and Carthage (RTR have done it in 280 bce with the Phirhic invasion)

The trigger itself won't work, as most players in RTW would rather do Scipio's gambit and go straight for North Africa, especially in 270 setup, which has Iberia still pretty much unconquered. It would take Carthage conquering most of Iberia, and THEN starting a Punic War. Unfortunately, real life war has way too many circumstances to simulate in a game of as, relatively, simple strategy as RTW.

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Originally Posted by eadingas

The trigger itself won't work, as most players in RTW would rather do Scipio's gambit and go straight for North Africa, especially in 270 setup, which has Iberia still pretty much unconquered. It would take Carthage conquering most of Iberia, and THEN starting a Punic War. Unfortunately, real life war has way too many circumstances to simulate in a game of as, relatively, simple strategy as RTW.

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To attack North Africa when you have Celts in the North , Greeks in the South and Sicily in the hands of the Greeks and the Punics ? ~:confused:

I'm assuming Sicily and southern Italy is already conquered by that time, of course :) But, go for Iberia when you have Celts in the North and Greeks in the South, when you're fighting Carthage, not Iberians?
And of course there's the problem with diplomacy in RTW. In real life, the first war ended with capturing Sicily. Hard to imagine RTW Carthage giving up after such a minor defeat, isn't it? "We see no need to end the fight yet"...

~:confused: If you have Italy and Sicily and you are at war with the punics , so , yes , go to Southern Hispania and take it from them , if you don't have Italy , just fight the Punics (we are talking about them) in Italy and Sicily , btw , the romans invaded North Africa already in 256 bce !!! they were beaten !!!

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Originally Posted by Danest

So I wonder, historically, why they didn't take out Gaul long, long before Caesar, instead taking far flung areas of the world, while ignoring a potentially dangerous neighbor.

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In short timing.

As others have mentioned, the Gauls were not one united kingdom, depending on what period and region your talking about, they were monarchies, republics, oligarchies, democracies, totalitarian regimes, etc

Celtic power was still quite strong in the beginning of the 3rd C BC but much of the elite / professional warrior class ended up joining the campaigns in the east against Greco-Macedonia and Anatolia or rendering their services as mercenaries. So for starters, whilst Roman skill and experience was kept within the state, the Celts found theirs spread all over the Mediterranean.

In addition, the escalation in the scale of conflict at home (with large confederations and alliances fighting for dominance) only further reduced their pool of experienced and trained warriors. Scholars also believe that two other factors had a large impact on Gaul. Greco-Roman wine (from 4th C BC) and an onset of wide spread disease in the 2nd C BC. As a consequence, as early as the 3rd C BC the Celts were loosing their military power.

The Belgae, Northern Confederacy (under the Cubi / Bituriges / Aedui) and Southern Alliance (under the Arverni / Seqauni) all fought each other to a stand still. When the Arverni managed to win supremacy by the mid 2nd C BC and order was restored, both the Romans and Germans (eg. Cimbri) hit them. With the collapse of the Southern Alliance, civil war was again rejoined. This last and most costly civil war devastated Gaul. Very few of the nobles, little loan the experienced warrior elite survived… thus entered the Germans in the west / north and the Darcians in the East, who further ravaged their country (some parts completely destroyed eg. the desert of the Boii).

Into this mess came Caesar. Gaul was ripe for the picking. Alongside the tribal levies (farmers etc), old men and young green boys helped filled the ranks of the Gallic tribal armies, now isolated and picked off piece meal. Only some of the Belgae managed to retained numbers of experienced warriors and incidentally came close to defeating Caesar whilst literally fighting an uphill battle.

…. point of all this being, the Roman Senate was driven by war profiteering and attacking Gaul before they actually did would have been more problematic / costly / risky than other options that were available. They were an opportunistic nation and were happy to watch (literally in some documented cases) the Gauls hack each other to death and then march in to claim the remnants. The Gauls made an attempt at unified resistance under Vercingetrix, but it was already too late.