Spain or Gaul 1st?

[Danest]

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.

[Dooz]

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.

[zakalwe]

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

[Danest]

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.

[zemaniak]

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

[Geoffrey S]

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.

[PSYCHO V]

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.

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.