Best Campaign

[Good Ship Chuckle]

I would suggest attacking the Julii. You've already beat the snot out of them, so finishing them off shouldn't be such a big deal. Not only this, but it would open up a second front on the Dacians, which is your main source of contension at the moment.

[Barbarian]

It looks like you have all the strongest and wealthiest regions, execept Egypt.
Surprisingly, that Gauls still have so huge territory

[Quirinus]

Whoa, I've never seen Gaul fend off the Britons and convince them to expand into Germania. Most games, the Gauls are crushed between the might of Brittania, Germania, the Julli, and occasionally even the Spanish.

Anyways, here's the map for my Julii game. It is now 215 BC, and about four years after the Marian Reforms.

Quite a lot has happened since my last update. My veterans under Oppius Scarface and Valerius Scarface at the Illyrian front and the Macedonian front respectively have been pushing back the Brutii armies-- by this time, my armies are full of silver-chevroned principes. It took a while, but Valerius finally took Byzlora and then Thessalonica. Illyria took even longer-- I only captured Salona in 216 BC, and Thermon fell just before I took this screenshot. All looks well-- I have advances on all three fronts, but the Marian Reforms have start to hurt.

Other than not being able to retrain my veterans (who, faced with identical Roman troops, do die a lot), the troops made avaliable by the Marian Reforms virtually negated the advantage of veterancy I accumulated painstakingly throughout many, many battles. A greenhorn legionary cohort is already a match for my single-gold-chevroned hastati, or silver-chevroned principes. I will have to take a few more years to train up post-Marian troops. In the meantime, I am transporting the veterans of Rome and Tarentum by sea to backstab the Brutii in lightly-defended Sparta. Their faction leader is there.

But as I predicted, the Brutii don't really stand a chance. The combined military and financial might of Gaul, Dacia and Italy proved decisive.

But as this war is winding down, another major one, long looming in the horizon, looks to be flaring up. An Egyptian fleet, who has been skulking for quite a while in the Bosphorus, declared war by port blockade on Campus Getae. Just as well, I guess.

In the meantime, good ol' Tertius Victor up in Pripet decided that enough was enough, and led his army up finish off the Germans, leaving his 18-year-old son Gaius Coriolanus in charge. Just as soon as he left Pripet, the Scythians besieged Vicus Venedae and stormed it the next turn. Tertius was too late, but he took the sorry little hovel of a town back anyway, and personally (or at least, with his bodyguard) killed all three Scythian family members in the army. The Germans were put out of their miserable half-life by an army of greenhorn hastati from their former lands about five years later. Talk about irony.

Now, all the former Gallic, Briton and Spanish lands, as well as the core German lands, have Roman towns/cities, which never fails to amuse me.

One thing about both the Brutii and the Scipii-- they have no surviving Brutii or Scipii left. All their family members are adopted, sons-in-laws or descendents of them, due to assassination. =D

Though truth be told, this campaign is getting a little boring, and since I've started a Scipii campaign, I don't expect I'll be touching this for long while.


I'll post up my Scipii campaign later, I guess.



EDIT: And so... here's my Scipii campaign. I've never played as the Scipii before, so the results weren't too spectacular. I found it to be consistently challenging, though, quite unlike, say, the Brutii after the first ten years. And, unlike the Julii or the Brutii, the Scipii are not pigeonholed into expanding in one region.


It may not be immediately obvious, but I own Sicily, Sardinia, the Balaeric Isles, Crete, Rhodes, and all Greece south of Epirus and Macedonia, in addition to Punic Africa, Cyrene and a bit of Asia Minor. It is now 234 BC.

I started off the traditional way: take Syracuse, and then Carthage. I was building up Messana and then Syracuse for a long, bloody fight for Sicily but building Temples of Vulcan and troop-building facilities, but after a Carthagenian full-stack and then a half-stack were disposed with, Lilybaeum fell with a whimper. Before that I had backstabbed the Carthagenians on Caralis, which also fell without much protest.

I made peace with the Greeks after I took Syracuse-- I needed the trade. Soon after the Senate ordered me to take Thapsus, I also sent a half-stack of principes/hastati with two young family members to Greece to take Athens, because I remembered how hard the Brutii were to beat once they had been allowed to dominate and turtle in in Greece in my Julii game, and I wanted to prevent that. I was just too late. When I landed, the Macedonians were one step ahead of me and had besieged it with a full-stack.

So I turned around, and, seeing Sparta so undefended, figured that I might as well start from the bottom. The Greeks were not too amused, but they had the Brutii and the Macedonian all over them, so they agreed to peace almost immediately after that.

After a few turns,Macedonian-held Corinth, just less than a turn's march north, was looking terribly defenseless --only one family member-- and tempting, so as soon as I had built up a large-enough force to be able to feel confident about repelling the Macedonian full-stack, I attacked and occupied Corinth. After a couple of years, presumably because of the deteriorating situation up in Thessalia and Macedonia, the Macedonians moved half their stack out of Athens to send it north. Only to be bribed by my diplomat. =D So Athens too fell into my lap, albiet after a pitched battle.

In the meantime, I sent one of the aforementioned family members down to Crete, and then, once Kydonia was properly settled down, over to rebel-held Halicarnassus. Within a few months of its capture, it was raking in more than 1000d a turn, almost entirely from trade with Rhodes alone.

So I was rather reluctant to declare war on the Greeks again, especially since there was no more trade with the Macedonians. I ignored a few Senate missions to blockade Thermon and Rhodes. It was a Brutii siege of Thermon that compelled me to take Rhodes. The Brutii siege was beaten back, but still. After taking Rhodes, I didn't bother making peace again with the Greeks. The Senate ordered me to take Macedonian Larissa, so I finally took it (the Brutii could have taken it, but for some reason, a Brutii stack has been wondering around north of Epirus for ages, doing nothing). Thermon fell to a Scipii army soon after that too. That was the end of the Greeks.

In Asia Minor, Pontus attacked Greek-held Pergamum many times, until it finally fell. The Seleucids, now restricted to Sardis, was next. I bribed away a few large Pontic armies, and even gave money to the Seleucids to delay Pontus and to create a sort of buffer zone until I'm ready, but the Seleucids died without so much as a whimper anyway.

With the closing of the war in Greece, I moved my best diplomats, spies and assassins to Asia Minor. To make a long story short, I bribed Sardis, built it up, and was sending a teeny garrison to Pontus-held Pergamum just prior to bribing the city too, and the garrison inside attacked me.

Which isn't too bad, I had been gearing up for war against them anyways, I just didn't expect it to happen so soon. But then the Marian Reforms happened. Great timing, Marius, good job. SO I had to make do with a dwindling army of veterans while I quickly trained up a half-stack of early cohorts from Sparta, Corinth and Athens simultaneously. I had been teching up Corinth and Athens to prepare for the civil war anyway, so it wasn't too bad.

It wasn't as bad as when it happened in my Julii campaign, though. I only had two armies of veterans (one in Africa, the other in Asia Minor), and I had a bunch of troop-training cities very close to one another (in Greece), so I could put together a legion pretty quickly. Also, the civil war isn't happening anytime soon, so this means that by the time the civil war happens, I'll have lots of post-Marian troops avaliable. Well, actually, so will my fellow Roman factions, but oh well.

Once I got past that initial weaning period, the payoffs were spectacular. With my shiny new legionaries, I attacked a large army composed mainly of Eastern Infantry, with a few chariot archers thrown in, outside the gates of Nicomedia. It was, my general's pre-battle pep-talk tells me, about a quarter of Pontus' entire military might. There was no contest. Confronted by my legionaries, the eastern infantry melted away like so much snow on a hot morning. My general's bodyguard and the accompanying Roman cavalry had a field day. The battlefield, a gently sloping hill, was literally littered with thousands of Pontic corpses all the way to the red line. The view was magnificent. I took a few screenshots with FRAPS-- or thought I did: I forgot to run the application before starting RTW.

In North Africa (a virtual backwater these days, which shouldn't happen), my lone general, after conquering Numidian Cirta, was going south to take Dimmidi when there was a Senate mission to take Palma from the Carthagenians. As there was an almost-full stack in the city and another half-stack witha general just standing beside the city, I couldn't just send some hastily put together force, so I turned back up north and conquered the island. On the way back to Numidia, the Marian Reforms happened, but I went on anyway, though I recruited a unit of mercenary elephants just in case.

There were quite a few medium-sized armies sitting around Dimmidi, most of the with generals so that I couldn't pick them off with my diplomats beforehand. I conquered and enslaved Dimmidi, and killed all the family members, with the result that Tingi went rebel. Nepte, that grubby little town southeast of Dimmidi, I had bribed a few turns back.

Cyrene I attacked with a rebel general I bribed. The Egyptians have quite a few full-stack armies in Libya that, due to the chariots in them and occasionally generals leading them, I could not bribe. The Egyptians have been trying to extort me for ages-- asking for a few hundred denarii with ther terms "Accept or we will attack". They only made good their promise the last time, which was about a few years after Pontus declared war. So now I have both Pontus and Egypt at war with me, which is definitely not ideal.

So that's the situation as of 234BC. Incidentally, when I used toggle_fow a few times before to take screenshots, I noticed that Egypt had a rebellion in Egypt a while back-- Alexandria revolted and turned rebel, and Thebes followed a few turns later. Predictably, it was crushed, and, if I am interpreting the number of population correctly, exterminated. But still.

[The Wandering Scholar]

You might have inspired me to have a Scipii campaign, which temple is it which gives bonuses to legionaires? Vulcan?

[Quirinus]

Yep, that's the temple. A large temple of Vulcan combined with an armourer, which is not too hard to get to, gives silver weapons and armour. An awesome temple of Vulcan adds +1 experience to the bargain.

The initial fifteen years or so weren't that interesting-- it only got better when I took Sparta and then Halicarnassus. It may be just me, but the vast distances in Punic Africa means that it will never be anything but a peripheral theatre for me, even after the Egyptians declare war. As soon as the war with Pontus is winding down, I plan to build another legion to send by fleet to Egypt Proper, where I plan to burn Alexandria to the ground.

[The Wandering Scholar]

wow, the Vulcan...

Yh I find punic africa to be a bore. The only good thing is it changes a load of the map to your colour.

[Quirinus]

Haha, yeah, tell me about it. Before I took the Numidian lands and the regions in Asia Minor, my empire was looking pretty pathetic, especially when you look at the impressive chain of red in Southern Gaul that is the Julii. I mean, Laconia, Peloponessus and Attica combiend barely shows up on the unmagnified map!