Question about Roman subjugation area

[Imperator]

@Watchman: Is German soil really much harder than, say Belgian or English to work? We know the Romans did fine there. (That's actually a serious question, I'm not using rhetorical questions or anything)

The type II governments don't just mean "What they conquered" or "What they nearly conquered". If that was the case, how would Epirus have ANY, since they died out around 270 BC? We need to improvise a little or factions that remained static (Ex- Saba, Armenia, Seleukids, Makedonia, etc) wouldn't have ANY outside their basic homeland area.

[Watchman]

@Watchman: Is German soil really much harder than, say Belgian or English to work? We know the Romans did fine there. (That's actually a serious question, I'm not using rhetorical questions or anything)

Far as I know the Celts pretty much made a point of nicking all the good farmland around there back in the day. (Or Celtic culture spread onto such regions, however that now went.) The British Celts and Belgae were AFAIK quite clearly noticeably more wealthy than the Germans on the average, which in turn suggests their lands were of the type that yielded good harvest with the tools and means of the time, which in turn the Romans had no technological problems making use of.

The Germans were left with the northern woodlands not nearly as well suited for agriculture, partly AFAIK just because lot of them were of the heavy clay-soil type the light plows of the period flat out didn't make much of an impression on. Ergo, sparse habitation and reliance on largely ecologically self-sufficient tribal levies as there simply wasn't enough of a surplus to maintain a specialist warrior class in the Celtic fashion.

[Sakkura]

The type II governments don't just mean "What they conquered" or "What they nearly conquered". If that was the case, how would Epirus have ANY, since they died out around 270 BC? We need to improvise a little or factions that remained static (Ex- Saba, Armenia, Seleukids, Makedonia, etc) wouldn't have ANY outside their basic homeland area.

The way I understood it is those areas are the ones that were or could have been conquered and in some way incorporated into the realm for longer periods. So a Hellenic faction would have been able to incorporate basically all the areas of the Diadochoi, other places with Greek settlements and perhaps some other areas with peoples they had some proper way of incorporating.

The Romans just make it a little easier to "guess" which people they might have been able to incorporate by having historically done it to such a huge area.

[Imperator]

@ Watchman- Excellent point. Besides, I just now remembered that passage from Caesar about how much wealthier the Gauls were from trade/better land, which made them more civilized, while the Germans were real savages, living off hunting at subsistance level. Probably untrue, but reveals that there must have been a rather large wealth disparity between Gaul and Germany.
Learning is cool!


All that said, I still think the Romans had a decent shot at occupying Germania successfully.

[Watchman]

If the actual inhabitants of the place could barely support themselves, I find it somewhat difficult to see how you could maintain a standing army there more or less permanently. If the region itself could not produce the surplus food (and sundry other necessities) required those would have to be hauled in from somewhere else - and land transport of bulk consumables like grain was just plain Right Out over any real distance.

Coastal regions are another issue, especially if there's a river, as sea transport was viable. It'd obviously have been largely out of question for much of the Germanic hinterland, but as I understand it the Romans were chiefly interested in the northern coastal regions near Denmark - doubtless hoping to get their greedy mitts directly on the Baltic seatrade.