This is SPARTA!

[Wave]

Welcome to another Roman misadventure lead by me!
I just couldn't resist when Sarys asked for a Spartan AAR so here we go. This won't mean abandonment of my other AAR, Letters from wAAR, which is on pause for the summer. I will continue it when the schools begin again (in 3-4 weeks) but currently I don't have enough time or brain capacity (due no sleeping) to write anything that requires any bigger thinking.
Hopefully having 2 active AARs in one forum isn't against any rules and doesn't annoy anyone.


"Multiplayer" anyone?

Instead of writing this AAR alone I'd be happy if anyone else (preferably 2 players) want to join the project. Everyone would play 10 years on their turn, write one or two updates about it and then send the savegame to the next player who will do the same. If anyone is interested I'll be adding here some sort of rules and stuff to help us all so nobody wrecks the country and AAR.

---------

Nevermind this now, Sarys joined the AAR and this'll work fine with 2 players

Anything special?

Not really to be honest. This will be a gameplay AAR with a lot of "THIS IS SPARTAAAH!" shouting and image heavy updates. The start date is 475 AVC (not the usual 474) and that gives some extra trouble for everyone as Rome is allied with Carthage but more about that later.
I'm trying to make this as fun to write and play as the BSFA AAR I wrote last summer. Too much action, too big foes, living in debt and similar fun.


Table of contents

475 - 480 AVC Macedonian wars - Played & written by Wave
480 - 491 AVC Conquering the Greece - Played & written by Wave
491 - 500 AVC To the north and east - Played & written by Sarys
500 - 510 AVC Slowing down - Played & written by Wave
510 - 515 AVC 10 Years of peace - Played & written by Sarys
515 - 520 AVC Pontic wars - Played & written by Wave
520 - 526 AVC Lots of unnecessary aggression - Played & written by Wave

 

[Wave]

THIS IS SPARTA!!!
475-480 AVC
Macedonian wars​

Good Spartans of course like fighting so their national ideas mainly consist of military related ideas, discipline bonuses for horses and infantry. I chose civic duty over citizenship because as OPM I most likely will face a situation where my province lasting a couple of extra weeks under siege will save me.

My plans are to invade Macedonia while they are busy with Tylis, that is why I need a couple of powerful allies. Epirus should be handy in case everything goes like usually and Achaeans are more aggressive than Aetolians. The mission I got suits my plans very well too, Argolis is the first province I'm interested in as it'll make me a road to north if I don't annex the other minors.

Epirus wants help against Rome and Carthage, Pergamon and Achaea are offering trade.. I like Papyrus, writing and drawing increases IQ, (why would I otherwise do this?) so it may come handy later.

DaFuQ? I never thought the Romans would actually attack me as I didn't do anything against them. Luckily their attack with less than 10 units was quickly dealt with and they fled back to fight in Italy.

Here we go then, declare war on Macedon. Oh, -4 stability!? What about assassination then..?

But no. NOTHING happens even if I spam all kinds of harassment into their court.
.... EVER HEARD OF EXECUTING ASSASSINS MACEDONIANS?!!

Aight, let's count.. 1 +(-4) = ... -3. Sounds reasonable stability level. THIS IS SPARTAAAAAAH!!!

Now I need my muscles, they're up in Epirus, let's call 'em! YOU WHAT!? DO NOT JOIN IN OUR UTMOST ÜBER GLORIOUS WAR?!! RAAAAAAAHHHHGGG!!!

Luckily Tylis will keep Macedonians busy for a while. No? You make peace and take Thessaly?! ÄRRRÄRÄRRÄRÄÄRRÄRÄRÄR.... Damn. So it's me against Macedonia. 6 Units against 17 units.

First 100 days of war go smoothly, Argolis is taken but Macedonia won't cede it. At least not yet. Bummer.

Carthage lands their troops in Sparta and at the same time Sosthenes Antipatros (he must hate that Patros feta cheese...) surprises me with an attack from Euboea. Luckily the fool has only ~10 000 men in 17 units and does a landing attack. Macedonians quickly understand to walk back to Euboea.

Then we march back home where other green hippies are waiting. Let's drive 'em all outta here!

THIS IS SPARTAAH½!

The Macedonians had a good troop recovery and after a year the the tide of war had turned, all conquered provinces had been lost and I took bad casualties when Macedonians and the second group of Carthaginians attacked me at the same time in Sparta.

A side note: Pergamon annexed Bithynia it seems..

After retreating to the capital the damned Carthaginians came back. Despite our warhero being named Hero he was unable to win the battle. A nice change to this usual winning I suppose..

Overaggressive offence is the only defence in the situation where your capital is being sieged by 20 units. Argolis fell after an assault and I could take a breath. Carthage can't make a peace deal with me because we're both junior partners in war, Rome doesn't accept anything, Macedonia doesn't accept anything. What if I'll start paying tribute to Rome? Oooh yeah! Problem solved like a boss. Now we just have to get rid of the Macedonians...


Suddenly in June 478 AVC the Achaean League appears to be fighting against me... I was unable to call them to the war (There was simply no reason for that but I don't really care, this game has never worked so well that small things like that could be complained about...) in a while back but what's this..? Oh and Pergamon is fighting against me as well.. Just stay there and attack Pontus or something please.

Achaeans are beaten in a serie of ping-pong battles, also their 2 generals (martial 10(!) and martial 8) were captured. We need to build new prisons if we keep getting this many generals as POWs.

28 November 479 AVC Sparta is regained, after 2 years of being occupied by Macedonia. This chanted the warriors a lot and within 2 months all remaining Macedonian and Achaean troops have been slaughtered, half a year later the siege in Achaea is won and Achaean League annexed!

THIS IS SPARTA! DON'T MESS WITH US!!

6 months later, 1st December 480 Argolis is captured again and Macedonia is offered a peace proposal which they accept. (you can see in the screenie that I was even at war with Bosporan Kingdom.. never heard about that before...)

Macedonia cedes Argolis and Euboea, the mission is completed and the infamy from war is forgiven and forgotten.

 

[Sarys]

Not bad. I see we do have different ways of playing.

EDIT: I can continue your aar got my rome installed and working (at least I think so)

 

[loki100]

whow, that was a rough ride, well done for coping with the siege of your only province

 

[Wave]

Not bad. I see we do have different ways of playing.

EDIT: I can continue your aar got my rome installed and working (at least I think so)

Awesome! PM me your email and I'll throw the savegame to you. I don't think that the 10 years have to be very strict so no worries about that.

whow, that was a rough ride, well done for coping with the siege of your only province

For a while I just stood still and didn't do anything Luckily that didn't get costly. And nice to have you onboard as always!


I played a "recovery" game until 491 AVC because I went into a bad debt (treasury -22, stab -3) in the last war, you can see in the pictures how treasury is going down
Now everything is in a better shape. However "recovering from last wars" turned into "kick some ass so you can recover when you want to without fearing anything"


Here is a little teaser:

Stoopid font size... -.-

I guess I'll get the update done today

 

[Thandros]

Very Interesting. I'm keeping an Eye or Two on this.

 

[Wave]

THIS IS SPARTA!!!
480-491 AVC
Conquering the Greece
​

Nothing really happened at first. I was neck-deep in debt and because I already had -3 stability I didn't get the bankrupt event. Instead I was forced to sell away my temple in Euboea which gave 20 gold to treasury and helped me back to my feet. Six months later in July 481 I managed to rise the stability to -2.
Revolt risk levels were above clouds because negative stability gives double amount of revolt risk (ie. on -2 stab you get +4 RR) and when all nationality related revolts, war exhaustion and governors' possible troublemaking were added the total amounts were pretty high.

Immediately when the truce between me and Rome ended I quit paying tribute to them. Unfortunately it drops the relations -50 or something so my plans to ally one of the western powerhouses is pretty much limited to Carthage because relations with Rome are back in -150, Carthage is around -70 and getting better.

5th September 481 AVC Illyria annexed Macedonia (which gave me a bunch of refugee characters) and grew to the size of 5 provinces, Tylis had 6 and I had 4. A year later I spent the rest of my manpower (~6000 or something) to recruit new units and prepare for war against Aetolian League.

Here is my general potential. Should be enough for a few wars...

However when I started to think of it, all needed casus belli meddling and stuff, I realized that I can DoW Tylis without any penalties because of their low civilization level in Thracia.
In July 484 AVC after declaring the war I started to feel that I need an ally, just in case something goes wrong. Aetolians didn't accept the alliance proposal so I had to choose between Pergamon and Pontus, who happened to be at war against eachother...
Pontus was allied with Bosporan Kingdom and Pergamon was allied with Rhodes. I sent an offer to Pergamon (relations still +170 despite being at war for a while in the last update), Rejected. Dang. Then I sent an offer to Pontus, and they agreed. They of course called me to arms against Pergamon and Rhodes and I joined the party but called them to war against Tylis.

Tylis had 10 units waiting in Thessaly but they were quickly killed in a few fights. I was ready to settle the war after aquiring Thessaly but Tylis didn't accept my peace proposal so I continued marching north.
There I found Illyria having their Macedonia parked between me and my enemy. Typically they didn't grant me a military access so I declared a war on them (no casus bellis or stab hits here either) and within a few months they agreed to cede Macedonia and Taulanti to me.

Pontus and Bithynia were fighting a useless struggle over Bithynia and with a well-timed peace proposal to Pergamon I managed to make them cede Bithynia to Pontus (I became the alliance leader because I had one province more than Pontus) and thus Pontus was able to start helping me.
At some point I got an alliance proposal from Rhodes (which I had been at war with just a moment ago) and I accepted it. However I didn't want to call them to the war because then there is a risk that they won some sieges and I can't demand all provinces to myself.

Never fight in two fronts Gauls...

Tylisian war leading went utterly nuts when the army from Pontus crossed the strait. Tylis took their all units to push Pontus back to the black sea. This helped me because now all"Gauls were in the wrong side of the water and I was able to lay sieges without any distraction.
Or so I thought. Despite rising the stability as often as I had money the revolts started to rise. One of my 3 armies had to start cleaning the revolts while the other 2 kept sieging and battling the Tylisians.

3rd September 487 AVC all Tylisian provinces were under Spartan control and Tylis was forced to agree the peace terms.

For 2 years I sat watching how Roman armies desperately landed on Epirus and always got kicked back to the Ionian sea.. I have the mission to annex Epirus right? Yes.. Well, why wouldn't I try my luck too and steal the province from Romans?
The first attack to Epirus was a success. A couple of units were left there to siege the city while the others started chasing Pyrrhus down the greek countryside.

Two months later they did indeed catch him.

And half a year later the rest of Epirot army is destroyed and the city is taken under control. Without questions the country is annexed and Sparta is the Greek powerhouse with no match!

Now laaaadies and gentlemeeeen... We have a new story teller for you... Everyone give a warm welcome to Sarys!

 

[loki100]

you are doing impressively well, esp with such low stability. So Sparta is now Greece ... hopefully none of the big boys takes too much offence at you till you have completed wiping out the regional powers (Asia Minor next?)

 

[Sarys]

You have build yourself a rather nice empire there. I'm afraid I can't keep up with you. Since I don't want to riks losing stability. Oh by the way what kind of armies you have? I know odd question. It's just that Spartans didn't have horses and they didn't use archers. Aechers are for pussyes or at least thats what they Spartans say.

EDIT: I might play my that save game you gave me so my first part might come today or tomorrow.

 

[Wave]

you are doing impressively well, esp with such low stability. So Sparta is now Greece ... hopefully none of the big boys takes too much offence at you till you have completed wiping out the regional powers (Asia Minor next?)

Relations with Seleucids are +180 but that doesn't always matter, Rome doesn't like me much after stopping the tribute but Carthage and Egypt get along with me so I guess there is not much trouble ahead yet.

And yes, Asia Minor is my next target (after Aetolia and Thracia but they're quick, yet expensive sweeps) because that area alone is a source of almost 100k manpower and great wealth if you have Greek culture.

You have build yourself a rather nice empire there. I'm afraid I can't keep up with you. Since I don't want to riks losing stability. Oh by the way what kind of armies you have? I know odd question. It's just that Spartans didn't have horses and they didn't use archers. Aechers are for pussyes or at least thats what they Spartans say.

EDIT: I might play my that save game you gave me so my first part might come today or tomorrow.

It's not a problem if you don't like to play very fast paced game, especially now that there is very little space to continue rambling around as all minors have been annexed.

I think there is currently 2 cavalry units and one horse archer unit in the larger army, rest are heavy infantry and archers to keep the meatgrinding going nicely.
I didn't want to take the risk of getting annexed and thus didn't start to roleplay very much. Cohorts of 300 men shouting the name of their home country and swinging spears may not always be the best tactic in EU games...

 

[Sarys]

It's not a problem if you don't like to play very fast paced game, especially now that there is very little space to continue rambling around as all minors have been annexed.

I think there is currently 2 cavalry units and one horse archer unit in the larger army, rest are heavy infantry and archers to keep the meatgrinding going nicely.
I didn't want to take the risk of getting annexed and thus didn't start to roleplay very much. Cohorts of 300 men shouting the name of their home country and swinging spears may not always be the best tactic in EU games...

Agreed BTW what difficulty setting your using? just thought do I need to/should I use the same?

 

[Wave]

I think it's on normal because I usually play with it. However you'd need to modify the savegame to change the difficulty of this game I think..

 

[Sarys]

I think it's on normal because I usually play with it. However you'd need to modify the savegame to change the difficulty of this game I think..

Okay the I don't have time to play today anymore neither tomorrow so sunday I will play it so update might come on monday

 

[Sarys]

THIS IS SPARTA!!!​

To the north and east​

491-500 AVC​

So it was my time to play. I was trying to find something to conquer. First I checked Aetolia. Too great stability hit. Then I checked Thracia. Same thing... The I checked Illyria no stability hit. Perfect target and they had only one small ally Dacia. So I declared war agains Illyria.



I managed to take my troops to occupy two of their three ramaining provinces without resistance. Dacia tried to attack my provinces many times but barbarians drove them back to their own land.



Unfortumatly barbarians then attacked my provinces. But atleast I managed to occupy Scodra



Barbarians sure were problem....



But after barbarians were defeated I managed to take Dacia and Illyria easily. But for some reason I was unable to annex Illyria for some reason.



And rebels took my my confused state as their advantage....



They sure got some motivation from somewhere



And then barbarians too!?



After I got situation under control I made peace with Illyria. I let them keep Scodra beacause I was not allowed to annex them.



Those barbarians never learn do they.



After my truce ended with Thracia I stop accepting their gifts and declared war against them.



Thacia managed to colonize Corobobizi. And rebels and barbarians keept me busy.



But after they were dealt with it was easy to defeat Thracia.



Those barbarians never give up.



I still wanted to fight so I declared war against Iberia. For SPARTA!!!



Mesheti fell easily but since I only had one army and they had three provinces I was unable to win the war. I tried to send reinforsments but then rebels and barbarians kept me busy. But I still had enough time to notice that Carthaginian rebels were independent.





My 11 years have past so now it's Wawe's turn again to show us how it's done.

 

[loki100]

that is one impressive Sparta you are forging, and one major potential rival falling apart is always good news too

 

[Wave]

Excellent! Now I just have to clean the rest of Illyria and then it's time to consume Pontus (which has apparently grown even more) for extra manpower!

I'll be right back

 

[unmerged(271387)]

Sparta:Ruler of the world

 

[Sarys]

Sparta:Ruler of the world

Yup

 

[Wave]

This is SPARTA!!!​

500-510 AVC
Slowing down​

Interesting notes at the beginning of my turn:
* Illyria is a military tribe and their capital has the civilization value of 23, apparently the barbarians have paid a visit there as well.
* Egypt is Theocracy. Most likely because AI fancies changing to it even if it really isn't very beneficial.
* Carthage is collapsing, they're in civil war, Epirus has revolted in Syracusae and became independent again and Egypt and Numidia have take good chunks of their lands.
* Massilia has a colony in Vocontii despite their capital being owned by Rome
* Sparta has more provinces than Rome or Carthage! Despite our research points being much better than Rome's we are a lot behind them.. I don't know why, this always happens when I'm playing.

The 4th Stratos is alone in Iberia, 9 units against Iberia's 6 units. This shouldn't be much of a problem.
Almost immediately there is a couple of barbarian troubles but they're quickly solved. I started building one more 12 unit Stratos.

24th October 502 AVC the last troops of Iberia were killed and I started wide spread siege operations (ie. split the main army there and used 2 units to siege every province) and spent all my treasury to build a navy.

Our King Archidamus Eurypontid died 3rd December 502 and his son Eudamidas Eurypontid (f3/m1/c7) rose to the throne, right after I had declared a war against Illyria to gain land connection to our province in Dalmatae.
The war was short. Marching from Dardania to Scodra took more time than the actual fighting. Anyway Illyria was annexed exactly 4 months after the declaration of war had been sent.

THIS IS SPARTAAAA½!!!

7th August 503 AVC the last fortifications fell in Iberia and the country was fully occupied by Sparta. However I didn't (and don't) want any landlocked provinces very far from Greece because they'll just cause more harm than good. Thus I simply made them pay tribute to me.

War exhaustion was already around 5 so I decided to take a couple of years easy and do some precautionary barbarian killing in the north. A couple of mercenary militias were sent to barbarian lands to annoy barbarians. Once the uprising happened and the barbies arrived to Apuli or Daci they were welcomed by the 1st Stratos of 15 units and martial 10 general.

This fun didn't last long as Pontus, our dear ally, called us to arms against Rhoxolani and Colchis. Now that I think of it, it would have been wise to decline and end the alliance but I accepted and became the alliance leader because of our superior strenght and unmatched leadership.

The 4th Stratos was still in Pontus, marching back from Iberia, so they turned around and went to occupy Coraxi while Pontus sieged Phasis.
Not much later Pontus had used their great tactics and lost the province of Phasis to 700 men strong Colchisian army. I occupied both green provinces and had a chance to annex them. I offered them a generous possibility to pay me tribute but the fools rejected it. Balls of steel. Impressed by this suicidal act (and shocked to see war exhaustion rising again so fast) I offered them white peace and walked back home. Once again now that I think of it, it would have been ideal to annex them and thus gain a foothold in the east so I could have attacked Pontus in two fronts..

A year later Pontus had occupied a few provinces from Rhoxolani and I quit the fighting, Rhoxolani started paying tribute to me and ceded 3 provinces to Pontus.

All sorts of funny stuff had already happened in Africa but this was probably the best so far:
Some Ezena Setnid started a nation called Numidian League. Not very usual...

The last 4 years went nicely, I got some extra population to Thessaly due my awesome administration and in the end my civic magistrate died and there are no characters that are old enough to take the job.. A couple of years without the magistrate then I suppose.

And then I realized that "Hell, ten years are over! Gotta start writing the update and send the savegame to Sarys!"


Before & After maps of this session:

Before:

After:

 

[loki100]

you are doing well ... its just the yellow blob is rather ... well very large