Letters from wAAR - An experimental Rome AAR with Epigoni mod

[dragonizer]

OH-MY Manius seems to have really put himself into a corner this time.

[Wave]

Hiding in a small shack in the woods? Things seem to have taken an ugly turn for good ol' Manius, but I suppose he kind of had it coming!

It's just a lesson to learn: Stealing from the state is often a bad idea because the incident may be investigated pretty well..

Poor Manius, I suppose he did walk himself into this one. No wonder the Consul was upset.

The war with Carthage is going terribly, Rome's generals are inadequate and the armies poorly selected for this kind of work, it seems. Hopefully those horse can make it to the front before all is lost, or Rome's reputation will be heavily battered..

The cavalry helped out a bit but the bad generals are still a pain in the buttocks so I'm suffering heavy losses (a few Pyrrhic victories), no matter what do I fight against. Anyway the biggest enemy I have currently is the stupid republic government that doesn't allow me to do anything.

OH-MY Manius seems to have really put himself into a corner this time.

That he really did. I had to focus on different things in this update so it may not look like that but there are still things hiding in the background related to the earlier troubles so Manius won't be just walking out of this easily.

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The diary of a madman
Chapter VI
Punic war #2 - Part 3




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My only chance was to use most un-Roman warfare and recruit cavalry from Africa. Luckily the horses proved to be worth the price as they turned a few hopeless defeats into Pyrrhic victories which then allowed me to defend one province instead of attacking the Africans. One bug happened and I managed to defeat 40 units with 2000 men, the enemy attacked with two armies and the first one (2 units) routed a day after the second army (38 units) arrived to the battle so the bigger one fled as well.



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I'm just doing whatever I can to harm the enemy. Carthage has only 8 ships against my +20 so I can do my business in the islands without problems.



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I looked at the map and realized that I'm actually leading in the warscore now. Carthage only has Thapsus under control and I've managed to effectively slow down their attack. In the mean time I have Corsica, Sardinia and soon Sicily taken. Despite this the only thing I can do is bang my head to the desk and curse, the senate has only 30% favour for peace and it'll drop even lower if the Carhaginians manage to break trough my (very hopeless) defences in Tritonis and then take a couple of provinces.



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Here's the current senate. Due the mercenary spam I've gone way over my forcelimits and then given the military faction a dramatical boost to the influence even if they have very little seats. Merchants are taking many seats as the defines modifier isn't nerfed at all in Epigoni and thus every country with over 10 provinces has enough trading to make them go crazy.

[loki100]

after a little while, our Manlius seems to have done a good job pulling himself together, once he worked out he wasn't stalking himself from behind a crate (sounds like the one of my cats who always chases his own tail).

the war sounds gruesome, and frustrating you are doing well enough that the Senate is all excited about future gains, not the strong possibility of defeat

[Qorten]

The civics aren't doing too bad either. A real gem, this one.

[Wave]

I have to announce a little break to this AAR. I'm currently working again (as the school's out for summer) and thus unable to keep up any sensible update schedules as people tend to need some sleep even if they're supposed to be on vacation

In any case I won't be abandoning the AAR but I can't promise many updates during the next two months, maybe I'll play and write the ending of the 2nd Punic war tomorrow and post it if I have time, who knows.

And huge thanks to readers for reaching +2000 views!!
- Wave

[Saithis]

Nice update and have fun with your summer job! I'll look forward to it when you get back.

[Wave]

I did it! I did it! After the struggle I won the stupid war and even more stupid senate!!

Update coming tomorrow if nothing dramatical happens.
Here a little peek about what happened in the last part of the second Punic war:

[dragonizer]

Looking foward to it.
welcome back

[Wave]

The diary of a madman
Chapter VII
Punic war #2 - Part 4





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I knew I can't hang on with the remaining army for long but I couldn't do anything else than hope that slowing the enemies down is enough. Once my army was beaten in Tritonis Carthage took control of 4 provinces within a year because the nearest army to be used was in Corniclanum without enough units...



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Then there was the one close and expensive victory that turned the tide of war. The battle was ~20 units against ~20 units and surprisingly they both were almost full. After this battle (lost 9000 men while the enemy lost 10000) my total amount of men in the armies was ~16 000



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A great costly mistake by me. I wanted to blockade the port of Ikosim because other ports were already blocked but I forgot my fleet there. I noticed it when they had attrition percentage around 12 and ships had remaining "health" of 4% so they were doomed.
And once again Manius is in trouble...



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Not much more to be said here. Map in the last post shows the gains and this tells the story well enough.

[loki100]

Blasio was pretty awesome ... and Carthage down to an OPM

but is our Manlius planning a revolt?

[dragonizer]

Great update well worth the wait!!!

[Wave]

First off, sorry about the very slow update schedule. I could blame hardware problems, school, relationship(s) or whatever but perhaps I won't, after all it's about me and about do I want to do this. Once again once it got rolling it's great to be back and doing this. Hopefully everyone haven't deserted the AAR!

The diary of a madman
Chapter VIII
When good plans go bad


It's not a very common event but it happens that a father kills his child because of dishounouring him so this isn't all due to my sick imagination
I also used some self-censorship in the "female-dog" word because many people may find it offensive. [1]



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Apologies, I've apparently forgot to resize this picture so the forum compresses it so it's a bit larger than the others..



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Stoopid typos, I should read my own texts before saving them as images...

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Get rich or die trying... Poor Manius.
This was the same event where he lost his ear last time, this time the 35% wasn't on his side though..
I have to admit that writing Manius' part of this AAR has been my favourite AAR ever and I hope I can continue having same fun with the next guy as well. It will however be a little shorter and very different to this and most likely to anything that has been seen around the AARland, or so I hope.

[1] A little question to moderators:
Are a couple of "damns" acceptable despite these are family forums because I know that people don't like to read very much cursing or offensive language here. English just isn't my first language so I don't know how "bad" certain words are and others aren't and I'm not very experienced with different powerful ways of expressing frustration or hate but I've kept all F- and S-words outside this AAR.

[Malurous]

A little question to moderators:
Are a couple of "damns" acceptable despite these are family forums because I know that people don't like to read very much cursing or offensive language here. English just isn't my first language so I don't know how "bad" certain words are and others aren't and I'm not very experienced with different powerful ways of expressing frustration or hate but I've kept all F- and S-words outside this AAR.

Well it isn't my first language either but I've used the "damns" and "darns" and "hecks" here and haven't run into any trouble. Think "hitto" in Finnish, you'd have to have quite a marginal world view to find that offensive. Also in character language that's used for a reason is generally less of an issue.

Even in character I'd leave out the worst stuff (the f-word or anything that can be seen as derogatory towards nationalities, minorities, women etc.). At a glance, that update certainly seems to be fine.

Great to see an update again, I'll comment more when I have the time to read it properly.

[Wave]

Well it isn't my first language either but I've used the "damns" and "darns" and "hecks" here and haven't run into any trouble. Think "hitto" in Finnish, you'd have to have quite a marginal world view to find that offensive. Also in character language that's used for a reason is generally less of an issue.

Even in character I'd leave out the worst stuff (the f-word or anything that can be seen as derogatory towards nationalities, minorities, women etc.). At a glance, that update certainly seems to be fine.

Great to see an update again, I'll comment more when I have the time to read it properly.

Nice to see you back here again! Good to know that I'm not in trouble, I just wanted to ask it because I read through the diaries and found myself using it very much in Manius' raging.

[loki100]

great update, I really liked (if that is the word) Manius' shift from self-righteous indignation, to glee at his cunning scheme to rage at the world. You've done a good job with developing his character.

language - that is fine. As Malurous says, keep out f- and anything that is derogatory to a people as a group (which is hard when you are cursing a female character but important). If you're not sure, pm one of the native English speaking mods, we'd be more than happy to advise if you are not sure.

[Malurous]

Brilliant. I really like how during that "operation" he goes from a scary slaver type to a comedy style get rich schemer and finally a different kind of scary absolute madman, and yet all of the stages seem to fit the personality you've built for the guy. Really well done.

[dragonizer]

great work waiting for next character.
it sucks when you get caught.

[Wave]

loki100: Thanks! I did my best to make it the über dramatic last chapter which allows then changing into a (more) sane character

Malurous: Thank you! To be honest I don't know what to say, I'm so rarely complimented on anything like this..

dragonizer: Thanks! The new character is right here waiting for you all And to be honest I kinda wished that Manius didn't survive the second chance because I wanted to change the character.


The end for someone is a new beginning for someone else and here we go! A new character and new tricks.
Biggest credit goes to my girlfriend who helped me out updating the look of Manius' diary for re-use after I found out that my photo-editing skills are rather limited. Thanks Minna!

War poetry
Chapter I
Backgrounds




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This chapter is basically one long diary note so that's why there is no dates in all pages and no spaces between the pictures.

[loki100]

very intriguing ending there and neat that Manius gets chucked into the cell he is just vacating ...

[Wave]

very intriguing ending there and neat that Manius gets chucked into the cell he is just vacating ...

Oh... I actually didn't mean it to be that obvious

Anyway I have one more ace in my sleeve related to this chapter and I heavily doubt that anyone will notice it but everything will be revealed eventually..