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Lofman

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Mar 14, 2002
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A Puny AAR

Greetings all, and welcome to this AAR. Country to be played is Carthage, starting in the year 490 AUC (or 264 BC) at the beginning of the first Punic war. I will be playing my own mod, has been a while since last. As for why 490 rather then as early as possible, well Carthage in 474 will be easier as conflict with Rome is not only avoidable, you have a decent amount of time to prepare for it so if it does come it should not be too difficult to avoid defeat. Anyway, how does things look as we start? Well here is Carthage.

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Not bad, Syracuse and Utica are allies and in addition Theveste and Massyli are reasonably friendly. No real enemies apart from Rome actually. And we have a bit more territory to the west, but let us ignore it for the time being. Suffice to say that the iron in Hispania will be needed, but that is for later (if I had started at 474 the easiest way to get iron would be to trade with Rome, they tend to agree to it as relations are reasonably good at that start).

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We are at war with Rome. They good news is that we are slightly richer. The bad news are that they have a somewhat stronger army with heavy infantry that is not only slightly larger, their manpower reserves are much greater then ours as well. We do have Syracuse on our side, lucky us (the Romans have Massilia as an ally, one which they quickly asks to join them, but who cares about Massilia). Obviously maintaining naval superiority will be very important if we are to achieve victory.

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Our starting ideas (as it is my mod, they are already selected at start) and some modifiers, Hellenistic warfare (Rome have a different one, giving them cheap heavy infantry among other things) which we share with many other civilized countries and Administrative Inefficiency which is something we have to live with. Basically the more provinces you have the greater the administrative inefficiency will be.

Well onto our plans. First ship our army in Africa to Sicily and try to prevent the Romans from taking Syracuse. We should also train troops and build ships. Our first battle with Rome is a naval one near the African coast. We win (had a great admiral) and sink many Roman ships, but they manage to flee back to Rome with their few remaining ships. Unfortunately they do manage to get another army to Sicily, but we are victorious in the battle that follows.

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There are additional fighting, we lose some battles (though never with heavy losses) and win some, and in the end manages to destroy one of the Roman armies (they lost many men in fruitless attempts at assaulting Syracuse). The other Roman army remains though, and we have no manpower left. Luckily the Roman army is appearantly in a bad shape as the Romans leave Sicily a few months later, unfortunately our allies from Syracuse are the first to reach Messana so they control the siege.

The next year the Roman navy shows up again, outside to eastern coast of Sicily they are defeated in an indesicive battle, we pursue them a bit but turn back to prevent a vast Roman army from crossing the straits to Sicily. It would seem they tried to lure my fleet away so they could return, clever. It didn't work but still. The Syracusans are scared enough to leave Messana so I send in a small army to start a new siege, one where I am in command.

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As the siege continues I look around and notice that Roman expansion to the north caused some unexpected troubles. Some Ligurians managed to take over northern Etruria and cut off the newly established Roman colony in Liguria from the rest of Rome. Interesting development.

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As expected I eventually capture Messana but obviously that is not enough to get the Romans to accept peace. So here is how it looks, Rome have a larger army with lots of manpower (as noted my manpower is already exhausted). I am building ships (as do the Romans, and seemingly at a similar rate) and basically try to figure out a way to gain victory. And the populists are gaining support. Could be difficult.

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And some of you may be interested how it looks beyond Rome and Carthage two years into the war.

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Good stuff. I've been wanting to dust off my copy of Rome and following this should get me back into the swing of things. The mod seems very interesting, I'm going to give it a look. Good that you have managed to secure some decent early results in the war against Rome, hopefully you are able to force them to accept peace sometime soon.
 
As others have said, AWESOME to see someone doing Rome AAR as it has been very quiet after the summer.

I've thought about doing Carthage AAR but my campaigns always end up in being gangbanged by Egypt and Rome so I hope that you'll manage to build an empire and avoid being walked over by other major powers :p
by the way, do you have any special goals set for campaign already?
 
ah great to see an active Rome AAR ... looks a tricky start since you could be trapped into a rather long war with no easy peace option?

Which is why I picked it rather then 474 with eternal peace until I decide not to. After all failure can be as interesting if not more so then success.

Good to see another Rome AAR, and another Lofman-AAR at that.

Good to hear, hope you will enjoy it.

Good stuff. I've been wanting to dust off my copy of Rome and following this should get me back into the swing of things. The mod seems very interesting, I'm going to give it a look. Good that you have managed to secure some decent early results in the war against Rome, hopefully you are able to force them to accept peace sometime soon.

Yeah, the Romans are though in this start (they are always strong but in earlier starts not quite as strong).

As others have said, AWESOME to see someone doing Rome AAR as it has been very quiet after the summer.

I've thought about doing Carthage AAR but my campaigns always end up in being gangbanged by Egypt and Rome so I hope that you'll manage to build an empire and avoid being walked over by other major powers :p
by the way, do you have any special goals set for campaign already?

No goals set. Luckily I don't need to worry too much about Egypt, they rarely, if ever, fight Carthage in my mod, have at least not seen it for a very, very long time and many, many versions ago. Still if I fail miserably they might decide to try anyway, one can never be sure.
 
A Puny AAR

A plan is formulated. Gather the army in Messana, withdraw the fleet and then defeat the Romans as they cross. The only possible plan that I came up with that has some chance of success. The Romans decide not to wait though, their navy attacks ours and they use this as an oppurtunity to cross the strait, arriving before our main army has arrived! But luckily it does arrive and we manage to score a great victory against the evil forces of Rome.

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Our navy defeats theirs and block the retreat, resulting in another battle and the complete destruction of that army. Unfortunately our attempts to cross the straits ourselves is foiled by a small Roman army that reaches Rhegion and drives us back. Now two years of doing nothing but building ships (and sending part of the army back to Africa to quash a rebellion in Sabratha). Syracuse decides that the time for peace have come and signs a white peace with Rome, we are still at war with the dastardly Romans though. The Romans once again try to cross over into Sicily, we win at land but they at sea, the fleet we had there is for all practical purposes gone (only a small handful of ships left).

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As we have nothing to prevent them the Romans make another attempt a few months later, it fails as well. We do however occupy Massilia (was a mission, I sent part of my Iberian army and got some gold from it). The next attempt by the Romans to cross into Sicily is a success for them unfortunately.

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The war is clearly in their favor by now, especially as our one good general dies from his wounds. Luckily after a few tries we do get the Romans to accept a peace in which we pay them 30 gold. It was either that or wait until we had to cede provinces for peace. Complete another mission as well, always nice with missions that want you to do what you would do anyway.

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Short version of what happens next, recovery. As you might want to know more then that we also form alliances with the Numidians and Mauri, and establish trade with Rome (why not, it is not like we are ready for another war). Then there is the question of Syracuse, we are their only allies. We do not want Rome to conquer it. Luckily Rome is busy fighting the Illyrians, so no risk of Roman invasion until our truce has ended and we can join our allies if necessary, so no immediate need to do something foul and untrustworthy like the Romans would do (dissolve alliance and then invade). And here is the state of the wider world in the year 501 AUC.

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Great to see a new Rome AAR, and one by such a quality authAAR as well.

Fortunately you got that peace - the naval matters swinging to Rome's favor in the middle of the conflict was a bit too reminiscent of the real world First Punic War. :p
 
Aaw.. No green italy yet :(

Well, there is over 200 years left to kick Roman ass so good luck :p
 
Very good results in the battles of Messana, a pity your navy suffered defeat though. With that in mind the peace deal seems reasonable. Hopefully this period of rest and recovery will leave you strong enough to challenge Rome once again sometime soon.
 
Great to see a new Rome AAR, and one by such a quality authAAR as well.

Fortunately you got that peace - the naval matters swinging to Rome's favor in the middle of the conflict was a bit too reminiscent of the real world First Punic War. :p

You can say that again. The navy is the most important thing as I simply do not have enough manpower to really take on Rome head on.

Aaw.. No green italy yet :(

Well, there is over 200 years left to kick Roman ass so good luck :p

It will probably take some time for that, considering their manpower seem to hover around 120k, while I can have at most 35k.

Good work on the First Punic War, you havent lost any territory.

What version of the game are you on?

The latest version of my mod (well, one small bugfix (Nabatea and Palmyra had a law they could not get due to it requiring having more then one culture) but that is about it) on the current (as time of writing) patch (2.32).

Very good results in the battles of Messana, a pity your navy suffered defeat though. With that in mind the peace deal seems reasonable. Hopefully this period of rest and recovery will leave you strong enough to challenge Rome once again sometime soon.

Well, if all things go as planned that might very well happen. Let us hope so (or if it doesn't that it fails to do so in an entertaining manner).
 
A Puny AAR

As we look at the state of Carthage we see that our manpower has not yet recovered, though we will not have to wait too long until we can afford some foreign adventures, provided our opposition is not too strong.

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And our mission is to colonize two provinces in southern Iberia, one of which (Bastetani) has iron making it a reasonable choice even if we had not had the mission. We need to either wait until the civilization values in Gadira and Malaka reach 50 (it starts at 49 so that Carthage can't go and colonize immediately) or just conquer Turdetani (they have 50 civ at start and as they pay us tribute it does rise rapidly, in fact leaving them will speed up the rate we gain civilization in those previously mentioned provinces). As we have plenty of time there is no need to rush it.

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Well after five years of building ships, sacrificing to increase stability and building the occasional building, we have a decent enough surplus of manpower to make war a possibility. We decide to go after the Turdetani, tribute is cancelled and later war is declared. There is one battle early in the war, it does not end well for our general (a useless populist).

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However our main army (we had two armies in Iberia, the small one that the populist led and a larger with a more competent and most importantly non-populist general) is large enough to scare the Turdetani to hide in barbarian territory. They do however convince some other Iberian tribes to join them. Had not though of that (but should have).

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It does not save them though, they are annexed, and before we actually have to fight any powerful barbarian army we pay them off and focus on colonizing Bastetani (the province with the iron).

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A few more years in peace and we end up at the year 510 AUC. Rome is still at war with the Illyrians, but have managed to get peace with a number of their allies. The next goal is colonizing of Cynetes and actually reforming our army (as it is now in Iberia we have lots of militia with some heavy infantry, in Africa a tiny army consisting mostly of cavalry with some militia and archers, and in Sicily an army of mostly militia and archers with some supporting cavalry).

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Hmm, certainly a mission that made sense to do. :)
 
Some useful gains. Nice that the Illyrians are still keeping Rome busy, long may that continue. Then you can strike when you are good and ready.
 
The manpower is seriously going to hurt if you don't use historical ways and fight Rome with mercenaries :p How good is your economy? Good one might allow pulling some ace from under the table
 
looks like manpower is a real constraint on your actions, presume if you can you need a really decent reserve before round #2 with the Romans?

Certainly.

Hmm, certainly a mission that made sense to do. :)

True that.

Some useful gains. Nice that the Illyrians are still keeping Rome busy, long may that continue. Then you can strike when you are good and ready.

Yeah, Rome could deal with them, if they didn't have their fleet divided and all over the place and their armies too large to transport with what they have available.

The manpower is seriously going to hurt if you don't use historical ways and fight Rome with mercenaries :p How good is your economy? Good one might allow pulling some ace from under the table

Pretty good. Carthage is after all one of the wealthiest countries. That and the fleet, well I feel cautiously optimistic.

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@All: Can note that I have downloaded the beta patch. there was some issue when it crashed a few months in, but I am not sure why (have some suspicions), but I did manage to get past it (loaded as Rome as it seemed to be when barbarians destroyed their colony in Liguria, made a diplomatic mistake so the Insubres destroyed the barbarians, resigned reloaded had no problem when the colony was destroyed, resigned reloaded as Carthage and played what is todays update). Anyway, the main difference will be that for now on there will not be any cascading alliances, it may make it easier for me to conquer Iberia, but it will also make things easier for Rome so it sort of evens out.
 
A Puny AAR

As planned we colonize Cynetes and complete our mission. Our new one is to build up a manpower reserve, which is what we were planning to do anyway. Sensible missions that we are going to do regardless are definately the best missions. Only thing that could be regarded as a problem is that we can't do any short simple and fast wars until done.

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Well peace is very nice, but it does not mean that diplomacy stands still and reasons for future conflicts are not sought. A border dispute gives us a core on the province Oretani, it will certainly be helpful in our quest to bring civilization (and with it Carthaginian rule) to the poor barbarians of Hispania.

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A few years later our recovery has gone far enough for us to train a unit of elephants. Elephants may be expensive but they are fairly good in battle and we have the money so why not. And after a few more years our manpower has recovered enough for the mission to be completed. The new mission does not look like one we will be bothering with though. Seriously putting a populist in such an important position. Allow me to laugh. Ha ha ha. Silly populists. There are good reasons why they are not respected.

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As we near the end of the year 517 AUC I decide to end it for now. War in Hispania is being prepared, the Carpetani are currently at war with the Ilergetes, but I think I will wait for two reasons. First is that I do not want any local power to grow to strong, which could become more likely if we attack the Carpetani immediately. The second reason is that the next year a promising general will become available, and why not let him lead our army to victory over the barbarians?

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Some peace and recovery time I see. Makes sense since there wasn't much of that immediately after the Roman war.

Nice opportunity with the boundary dispute, seems like the obvious next step.