AU 601: Chronicles of Rome under Nbarclius Caesar, Vol. III

[nbarclay]

AD 880, Detailed Battle Report

I’m going to be giving blow-by-blow reports of my war with Theseus, and in doing so, I’ll be using the following format:

4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Musketman, AW, 2/5 (promotion)

The first unit is the attacker and the second the defender, with current and total hit points for each. AW means “Attacker Wins” and DW means “Defender Wins,” followed by the health of the victorious unit at the end of the battle. If appropriate, “promotion” or “leader” will follow in parentheses.

If a retreat occurs, AR or DR will be used and hit points after the battle for the attacker and defender, respectively, will be given, for example,

4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Musketman, AR, 1/4, 2/4


The Battle of Phocaea:

4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Musketmen, AR, 1/4, 3/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Hoplite, DW, 3/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Hoplite, AW, 2/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 3/4 Musketman, AR, 1/4, 3/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 3/4 Musketman, DW, 2/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 5/5 Swordsman, DW, 1/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 3/4 Hoplite, AR, 1/4, 2/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/4 Musketman, AW, 4/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 MedInf, AW, 3/5 (promotion)
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/4 Hoplite. AW, 2/5 (promotion)
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Longbowman, AW, 3/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 1/5 Swordsman, AW, 4/4, City Captured

The Battle of Artemisium 8:

4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Musketmen, DW, 2/5 (promotion)
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Musketman, AW, 1/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/5 Musketman, DW, 1/5
4/4 Cavalry v. 1/5 Misketman, AW, 2/4

The Battle of Artemisium

4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Musketman, AR, 1/4, 4/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Musketman, AR, 1/4, 4/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Musketman, AR, 1/4, 2/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Musketman, AR, 1/4, 2/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 5/5 Swordsman, AW, 2/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/4 Musketman, AR, 1/4, 2/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/4 Musketman, AW, 3/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/4 Musketman, AW, 4/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 MedInf, AR, 1/4, 3/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 MedInf, AR, 1/4, 4/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 MedInf, AR, 1/4, 4/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 MedInf, AW, 4/5 (promotion)
4/4 Cavalry v. 3/4 MedInf, DW, 1/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Longbowman, AW, 4/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 1/4 MedInf, AW, 4/4, City Captured, cannon captured

Cavalry captures worker at Artemisium 2

The Battle of Pergamon:

4/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 Hoplite, DW, 2/3
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/3 Hoplite, AR, 1/4, 2/3
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/3 Hoplite, AW, 3/5 (promotion), City Captured

The Battle of Artemisium 4:

Captured cannon fires, hits.
4/4 Cavalry v. 3/4 Hoplite, DW, 1/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 1/4 Hoplite, DW, 2/5 (promotion)
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/5 Hoplite, AW, 3/5 (promotion)

The Battle of Mycenae

4/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 Archer, AW, 4/4

The Battle of Artemisium 1:

4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Hoplite, AW, 2/4

The Battle of Artemisium 3:

4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Hoplite, AR, 1/4, 2/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/4 Hoplite, DW, 1/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 1/4 Hoplite, AW, 3/4

Workers captured at Pergamon 3, 3-3, and 3-2

Phocaea Abandoned

[nbarclay]

News From the Front, AD 890

Greetings, Mighty Caesar,

Our campaign against the evil Greeks continues to go well. Indeed, we have penetrated even more deeply into Greek territory than I had hoped for. The Greek generals hoped to cause us problems using a scorched earth strategy, destroying their own cities of Delphi and Marathon in order to force us to move through the heavily defended city of Corinth. But luck was with us, and while we lost two cavalry regiments against a Greek army consisting of Hoplite, Sword, and Medieval Infantry units, and a third regiment against a force of Musketmen, we overcame the defenders and captured the city.

With Corinth in our hands, our glorious cavalry fanned out to capture Athens, Pharsalos, and Sparta (to which the Greeks had moved their capital after Athens fell). Greece's capital and its three largest other cities are now in Roman hands. None of our forces were killed capturing Athens or Sparta, but two cavalry regiments died in the battle of Pharsalos. Alas, one of them was an elite force that I had sent into battle against regular warriors in spite of its having lost forty percent of its strength in earlier fighting. I had hoped that its leader’s enthusiasm to charge into battle in spite of his casualties was an indication that he had the potential for greatness, but any such potential died with him.

Out of the fifty-four cavalry regiments that originally made up the First Strike Force, thirty-nine survive to press on toward victory. The largest single body, consisting of seventeen units, is located in Artemisium far from the front, but I have slaves working on a rail line to help them reach the front quickly once they heal in the city’s barracks. I have also used some of the gold you sent with me to convince some of the residents of Artemisium and Pergamon to leave those cities and settle some of the land the Greeks are abandoning. It will take them a little while to prepare, but once they do, we will have additional settlers. Better, the people who leave to settle elsewhere will not be formenting revolution in those cities.

The Greeks left a wounded Medieval Infantry force guarding two bands of Persian slaves where the Persian city of Hamadan once stood. (The slaves were too exhausted to flee after having helped build a road there – which, ironically, their badly wounded Medieval Infantry then had to pillage in order to slow our forces down.) Our regular legionary force that landed with the musketmen dispatched the enemy unit in a very bloody battle and captured the slaves, gaining veteran status in the process. Our second galleon on the Central Sea handed its contents over to the first, which then landed two rifle units and two bands of settlers at that site, and a new Roman city will take Hamadan’s place shortly. Then most of the units we landed can move out to help garrison our captured Greek cities, although if all goes well, the war may be almost over by the time they can reach the cities they are intended to garrison.

In response to your query as to whether or not Rome needs to continue building additional military units, my opinion is that you can now safely shift priorities back entirely to civilian infrastructure. Ten of the twenty-four cities the Greeks had at the start of the war have been either captured or abandoned, and our ratio of cavalry to surviving Greek cities has increased from 2.25:1 at the start of the invasion to 2.79:1 today. It is my hope that additional military forces will not be needed, and even if they are, diverting some guerillas, infantry and artillery from the Homeland Defense Force should provide ample firepower.

As per your orders, a detailed report on the battles will follow.


Your faithful servant,

Hadrian
General of the First Strike Force

[nbarclay]

AD 890: Detailed Battle Report

The Battle of Hamadan’s Ruins:

3/3 Legionary v. 1/4 MedInf, AW, 2/4 (promotion), two workers captured.


The Battle of Corinth:

4/4 Cavalry v. 11/11 Hoplite/Swordsman/MedInf Army, DW, 10/12 (promotion)
4/4 Cavalry v. 10/12 Hoplite/Swordsman/MedInf Army, DW, 8/12
4/4 Cavalry v. 8/12 Hoplite/Swordsman/MedInf Army, AW, 1/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Musketman, AR, 1/4, 2/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 Hoplite, AW, 4/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/4 Musketman. DW, 1/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 MedInf, AW, 3/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 1/4 Musketman. AW, 4/5 (promotion)
3/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 Warrior, AW, 2/4
4/5 Cavalry v. 3/3 Longbowman, AW, 3/5, City Captured


The Battle of Athens 6:

4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 MedInf, AR, 1/4, 4/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 3/4 MedInf, AW, 3/5 (promotion)


The Battle of Athens:

4/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 MedInf, AW, 3/4
3/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 Warrior, AW. 3/5 (promotion), City Captured


The Battle of Pharsalos

4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Musketman, AW, 3/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 MedInf, DW, 1/3
3/5 Cavalry v. 4/4 Horseman, AW, 3/5
3/5 Cavalry v. 3/3 Warrior, DW, 2/4 (promotion)
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/4 Warrior, AW, 1/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 1/4 MedInf, AW, 4/4, City Captured


The Battle of Sparta:

4/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 Warrior, AW, 4/4, City Captured


Workers captured by 4/4 Cavalry at Corinth 6-6-9 and Pharsalos 8

[nbarclay]

[I’m playing both sides in the war now, but it’s still interesting.]

Greetings, Mighty Caesar,

I fear that I have two minor setbacks to report. Greek forces temporarily recaptured the city of Sparta, although we were able to reclaim it quickly. Also, Persia now controls the former Greek city of Eretria, ending our hope that we might capture the entire Greek empire completely intact.

As my officers and I prepared to continue our offensive, we realized that Babylonian cavalry had wounded the hoplites guarding the Greek workers on the mountain in northern Greece. Rather than risk the Greek workers there falling into Babylonian hands, we decided to attack. The artillery unit just upgraded from captured a battery Greek cannons performed flawlessly, and we were able to capture the workers with no more than moderate injuries in spite of the two wounded defending hoplites’ best efforts.

In addition to retaking Sparta, we also captured six additional Greek cities: Thermopylae, Rhodes, Argos, Knossos, Megara, and the formerly Babylonian city of Zariqum. And we captured several additional Greek workers.

In other news, a band of the Greek settlers we hired founded the city of Gordion near the spice fields, while our own settlers built Arretium on the former site of the Perisan city of Hamadan.

As is customary, a detailed battle report will follow.

Your faithful servant,

Hadrian
General, First Strike Force

[nbarclay]

The Battle of Mycenae 9-9

Artillery bombards 3/4 Hoplite (wounded from a Babylonian cavalry attack), 2 HP damage
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/3 Hoplite, AW, 2/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 1/4 Hoplite, AW, 3/4, four workers captured.


The Battle of Thermopylae:


4/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 Hoplite, DW, 1/3
5/5 Cavalry v. 1/3 Hoplite, AW, 2/5, City Captured

The Battle of Megara:

4/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 Musketman, AR, 1/4,2/3
4/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 Hoplite, AR, 1/4, 2/3
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/3 Musketman, DW, 2/4 (promotion)
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/3 Musketman, AW, 1/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/3 Hoplite, AW, 3/4, City Captured


The Battle of Sparta:

4/4 Cavalry v. 3/5 Horseman, AW, 5/5 (promotion), City Captured


The Battle of Argos:

4/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 Warrior, AW, City Captured


4/4 Cavalry walks into Knossos, which is undefended.


The Battle of Rhodes:

3/5 Cavalry v. 3/3 Warrior, DW, 1/3
3/5 Cavalry v. 1/3 Warrior, AW, 1/5, City Captured


The Battle of Zariqum:

4/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 Musketman, AR, 1/4, 2/3
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/3 Musketman, DW, 1/3
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Swordsman, AR, 1/4, 3/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 3/4 Swordsman, AW, 4/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 1/3 Musketman, AW, 3/4, City Captured


Workers captured by 4/4 Cavalry at Rhodes 2-3, Thermopylae 8, 8-8, and 7-7

Workers captured by 1/4 Cavalry at Rhodes 3.and Eretria 9-9.

[nbarclay]

News From the Front: AD 910

Greetings, Mighty Caesar,

The dastardly Greeks killed the badly wounded cavalry regiment that we had sent to capture a band of Greek workers near Eretria. But we got our revenge, capturing four additional Greek cities and several workers without having any of our forces injured beyond their ability to heal. Greece is now reduced to two hill cities and the city of Troy along the Persian border. The first four of our musket and rifle units brought in for garrison duty have reached cities and been upgraded to infantry, freeing more cavalry for offensive use.

Your faithful servant,

Hadrian
General, First Strike Force

[nbarclay]

Detailed Battle Report, AD 910

The Battle of Ephesus:

4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Hoplite, AR, 1/4, 3/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 3/4 Hoplite, AW, 3/5 (promotion)
5/5 Cavalry v. 4/4 Swordsman, AW, 3/5
5/5 Cavalry v. 4/4 Archer, AW, 5/5, City Captured


The Battle of Miletos:

4/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 Hoplite, AR, 1/4, 2/3
5/5 Cavalry v. 3/3 Hoplite, AW, 4/5
5/5 Cavalry v. 2/3 Hoplite, AW, 4/5, City Captured


The Battle of Halicarnassus

4/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 Hoplite, AR, 1/4, 2/3
4/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 Hoplite, AW, 4/5 (promotion)
4/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 Hoplite, AW, 4/5 (promotion), City Captured


The Battle of Thessalonica

4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Musketman, AW, 2/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 3/3 Hoplite, AR, 1/4, 2/3
4/4 Cavalry v. 2/3 Hoplite, AW, 1/4

Several workers captured by cavalry units.

[nbarclay]

The golden age of the Roman Empire ended in the year AD 910. A decade later, the Romans discovered Industrialization and ordered almost all of their homeland to change production from prebuilds to factories. Viroconium changed its production from a palace prebuild to Universal Suffrage, which would presumably be completed just after the new millennium began.

The military situation was quiet in 920 because Germanic and Babylonian forces were in the way of attacking Nippur while a worker Persia had just captured from Greece was blocking access to the Greek capital. However, ten Roman cavalry regiments took up positions overlooking the Greek capital in preparation to attack.

[nbarclay]

Victory!

Greetings, Mighty Caesar,

I am pleased to announce that the last Greek cities have fallen. We suffered a minor setback when Rhodes and Pharsalos revolted against our rule, but elite cavalry quickly dealt with the rebels. Roman cavalry also captured Heraklea and Nippur, the last two cities that remained in Greek hands.

Your faithful servant,

Hadrian
General, Greek Garrison Force

[nbarclay]

AD 930: Final Detailed Battle Report

The Battle of Keraklea

4/4 Cavalry v. 5/5 Hoplite, AR, 1/4, 4/5
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Hoplite, AW, 4/4
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/5 Hoplite, AR, 1/4, 3/5
4/4 Cavalry v. 3/5 Hoplite, DW, 2/5
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 MedInf, AW, 3/4
5/5 Cavalry v. 2/5 Hoplite, DW, 2/5
5/5 Cavalry v. 2/5 Hoplite, AW, 1/5
5/5 Cavalry v. 4/4 Horseman, AW, 4/5


The Battle to Retake Rhodes

5/5 Cavalry v. 3/3 Hoplite, AW, 3/5


The Battle to Retake Pharsalos:

5/5 Cavalry v. 3/3 Hoplite, AW, 2/5


The Battle of Nippur:

5/5 Cavalry v. 4/4 Hoplite, AW, 3/5
5/5 Cavalry v. 3/3 Hoplite, AW, 3/5
5/5 Cavalry v. 4/4 Swordsman, AW, 2/5
4/4 Cavalry v. 4/4 Longbowman, AW, 2/4

[nbarclay]

Out of fifty-four cavalry that participated in the attack on Greece, twenty-eight, or just barely over half, survived the fighting. The war also cost the life of one infantry unit that was lost in a culture flip.

Rome's biggest problem at that point was that it had let civililian infrastructure lag, with not a single university or bank in the entire Empire (except, ironically, for one bank captured in Athens). That also carried over into Rome's cultural situation: plenty of temples, but no cathedrals and almost no colosseums.

But with the prophecy that Greece or Rome must destroy the other fulfilled, and with the Roman military the strongest in the world, the Empire could turn its full attention to civilian pursuits. Once the nation's new factories could be brought online, catching up in infrastructure - at least on the Roman side of the Empire - would presumably not be a problem. Catching up on the Greek side would, of course, take far longer.

[nbarclay]

In AD 990, Rome discovered Communism and completed Universal Suffrage. Caesar promptly ordered a change of governments to take better advantage of the Greek territories. Caesar also ordered Carthage to remove its wounded ships from Roman waters (where they had been sitting for eons) or declare war, and Carthage decided to declare war. Rome responded by signing up the Celts for an alliance against Carthage. With any luck at all, Carthage would be eliminated very soon.

[nbarclay]

In AD 1010, Rome signed a Right of Passage agreement with the Germanic Tribes in connection with an alliance against Carthage (whom the Germanics had recently allied with Babylon against). The idea behind tying the ROP with an alliance was so that it would end when the war ended. Germanic cavalry marched through, burned Carthage's second city to the ground, and captured Carthage itself. Caesar dispatched its remaining reserve settler with plans to cram in a city at Carthage 4-1 in between Carthage and Persian territory. He also started thinking in terms of building another settler once the nation was out of anarchy in order to replace the razed Carthaginian city.

[nbarclay]

In AD 1050, Caesar squeezed the city of Corfinium in between German and Persian territory. The down side to the new communist government was that using cash to rush temples was not an option, so it will probably be necessary to pop rush part of it when the city gets big enough. (The city can't grow very big without a temple to claim more tiles. ) In AD 1110, Rome completed its resettlement of Carthage (at least for the moment) by building the city of Mediolanum using a Greek settler from Mycenae. Caesar didn't really like where that Greek town was located, but had decided to try to get some settlers out of it before ordering it abandoned.

In regard to the research situation, Rome lost much of its technological lead during the eighty years of anarchy necessary to persuade people of the Roman homeland that a new form of government was needed to make the conquered Greek lands productive. But once the new government was firmly in place, research into Corporation (which was started by scientists while in anarchy) could be completed in forty years. Caesar had hoped that the new, rapid technological pace could last, but with no universities in the homeland and not even libraries in Greek lands, Steel is taking sixty years to research and Refining would have taken seventy. At the moment, after having just traded Industrialization to the Celts for Sanitation, Corporation is the only technology that Rome has all to itself.

[This brings up a very strange feeling to this game. Normally, in a game where I've done some conquering, I have AI cities that need hospitals. But Theseus's empire had cities packed together even more closely than mine did, so I have relatively few places where hospitals would serve any useful purpose.]

Rome had also built two additional cities in the former Greek area: Tyrus adjacent to the former location of Troy and Verona on some cleared marshland in southeastern Greece. Additional settlers would be built in case an opportunity to claim more land might present itself, but for the moment, Caesar was happy with the shape of his empire.

One last point that might be of interest was that Caesar took advantage of Rome's period of anarchy to send twenty of the nation's thirty-three bands of native workers to Greece by ship without losing as much productivity as would be lost during normal times. That would play havoc with the timetable for railroading the mountains in Roman territory, but catching the former Greek lands up in flatland railroads seemed more important.

[nbarclay]

By AD 1240, Caesar was getting nervous. His military was the most powerful in the world, but but the area it had to protect was the largest. Persia was of special concern because it bordered Roman territory on both ends, making Rome an obvious target if Xerxes decided to get aggressive - and the forces defending the former Greek lands were not as strong as those defending native Roman soil.

So Caesar decided to do something. He declared war on the Germanic Tribes and bribed Persia and the Celts into joining an alliance, with a Right of Passage agreement with Persia as part of the deal. Persia would almost certainly be strengthened economically by the arrangement since it would presumably seize the former Carthaginian lands held by the Germanics, but with any luck, its offensive forces would be bled down to a point where they would no longer pose any meaningful danger. There was also at least some possibility that Xerxes would be kind enough to raze a city or two instead of capturing, especiallly where Rome's cultural borders were strongest, in which case the Romans might be the ones with an opportunity to gain territory. (And there might also be an opportunity to sneak a settler or two into lands the Celts or Persians would capture in the Germanic core.)

In the opening stages of the battle, Roman forces killed numerous Germanic cavalry that were sitting along the border. They also captured eight Carthaginian slaves that the Germanics had previously taken, adding significantly to the work force available in the Roman homeland.