Roman Civil War

[Celt Centurion]

Greetings,

As I just mentioned to Riman, I am presently playing as the Julii, and something very unusual has happened.

Night before last, about 80 or so B.C., there were only seven factions left on the map.

SPQR
Julii
Scipii
Brutii
Egypt
Britannia
Rebels

I had trade going on with all of them, except of course the rebels, who by the way kept trying to get a ceasefire with me. Have any of you ever been approached by the rebels wanting a ceasefire? They came to me at least a dozen times for it.

The Senate kept telling me to blockade Britania, but it was never really worth my while. My thought was, "Why attack somebody who is not attacking me, ruin a good trading relationship, simply to have games thrown in my honor at the Senate's expense?" It made no sense. I was quite content taking rebel settlements, and getting paid by the Senate for taking them.

I refused again to blockade Londinium, and at the beginning of my next turn, found that the Senate had "fined" me thousands of Dinare, and I went from about 7,000 in the black to over 20,000 in the red. Folks, that got me just a wee bit ticked off, and to compensate, I totally screwed up the dynamics of the rest of the game by "add_money 40000", and used it to get out of the hole, and built two urban barracks in Northern Italian Huge Cities. "I'll show them" I thought.

Then, about 15 or so turns later, Scipii attacked me with a blockade, and at the beginning of my turn, I read all the tiles about all the factions being outlawed, but, with a different twist, Brutii was still my ally. SPQR was against EVERYBODY.

I broke the blockade, and took Carthage from the Scipii, but the beginning of every turn showed the same, thousands of dinare in the red. I continued sending armies out to take Scipii Cities, and immediately sent ten Urban Cohorts with silver armor, augmented by 6 Roman Cavalry, and 4 Archer Auxilia to take Rome. I took it.

Then, my ally, the Brutii besieged one of my settlements, but when I went to break the siege, they still showed as an ally. I got the "Attack an Ally?" tile, with only an "X" as an option to continue. I literally could not attack a Brutii attacking my town, because they were still "allies."

"That's fine", I thought. I will train a diplomat at the next town, and send him to break the alliance. The next turn, that town was besieged too, again by the Brutii. My next act was to train about 6 more diplomats all around the place, hoping that one could get to one of the Brutii armies.

During that "end turn" cycle, they attacked at the first city, and fortunately, I was able to fight them on the battle map, and emerge victorious, but it was a near run thing. This settlement was up by the North Sea, and I did not consider it to be in any real danger, so I only had a small garrison of 3 units of archers, three cavalry, two light infantry, and one early legionary cohort. They, on the other hand were much better prepared, a full stack including two Urban Cohorts, but weak on missile.

The next turn, I had a lot of diplomats, but Brutii was still an "ally", and I got an idea.

Instead of breaking the alliance, I decided to "bribe" every Roman Army I could get close too. "Why not?" I thought. I've already screwed up the dynamics anyway. Naughty me. I started adding on money, and bribing both the Brutii and Scipii armies coming toward me. I know that I could beat them, but, why not use their own armies against them? So, for the past several turns, I've bought up about 30 armies, and retrained them back up to full strength and silver armor, (most of them were at partial strength with no armor) My diplomats are also bribing Brutii towns, and I now have reached almost to the Black Sea and Egypt as the Blue and Green shrink. When I run across one who won't be bribed, I send a full army with silver or gold armor, and destroy them. What is funny and sad at the same time, is that after I beat them in battle, the remnant usually bribes fairly easily. Too bad that I had to kill so many. I'm only getting a few badly depleted units rather than a full stack of full strength ones. What a waste.

So now, I still have trade with Britannia, Egypt and Brutii. On/off trade with Scipii. Britannia is confined to the large island of the British Isles, while I have Tara. Egypt is also down to two territories, surrounded by Scipii, so they probably won't last much longer either.

A recent alliance between Brutii and Scipii also prevents me from being able to attack Scipii even now. I keep getting told that I do not have support of the people to do this. so until they actually attack me somewhere, I cannot even attack them, but, their empire is shrinking, as mine stretches.

Have any of you had such crazy things happen, such as not being able to attack a besieging army because they are supposedly "allies?"

I've never seen some of these things happen before, nor have I ever seen all three of the three Roman Families so strong.

Strength and Honor

Celt Centurion