[MOD] 129 BC (The Late Republic)

[GloryGloryByzantium]

Over the weekend I spent some time looking at the mod and noticed that in the haste to release a beta, there was pretty tremendous oversight with the Gracchan mission tree, with several of the tasks being broken or unachievable. I took the time to fix these issues so that the tree should be playable:

Here you can see that I've verified many of the tasks myself. The only potential issue is that the final task of adding the Gracchan law requires a tech level too high for the start, because I have not yet boosted tech to match the start date (but plan to do so, soon).
Additionally, the careful observer may notice the reference to Appian. I'm considering adding his quotes along with those of Sallust and Plutarch to give context to the mission tasks and why they've been included. On the one hand, this should add to the immersive experience, as it gives the additional historical context; on the other hand, quoting an author who is decades or centuries removed from the event could be considered anti-immersive (as it treats the events as 'history' rather than something current). My inclination is to include it, but I'd like some feedback from the players.

 

[GloryGloryByzantium]

The next tasks on the Marius mission tree are related to the events surrounding the Cimbrii invasion. This war broke several social norms, including Marius' continual consulships well beyond the second term and also the military reforms required in order to get enough manpower to fight off the invasion. The first aspect, of course, is to trigger these events with the necessary war. This is a unique technical challenge, as there are barriers to forcing the AI to uproot and migrate to other lands. However, if it's done right, this could open the door to scripting other historical invasions with other mods. For now, I'll leave a teaser:

 

[GloryGloryByzantium]

χαῖρε! I'm back again to give another update on the mod. As seen with the Cimbrian war above, I've had invasions on my mind the past few weeks as I've also taken time to work on the Galatian invasion for the Invictus mod. I'll be continuing to work on both mods (in addition to my philosophy mod), so development is slower than ideal, but I hope to have alpha-level playability for Marius and Sulla this fall. That said, I have some exciting plans for content to discuss today.

The first involves the Marian reforms event. In the vanilla game, there are two ways to obtain an unlimited amount of legions, either by innovation or accepting military reforms via event. This latter event is a reference to the Marian reforms.

In fact, here's the section of code related to it:

Spoiler: Marian Reforms Vanilla Headings

# Marian Reforms(?)
# Can trigger for non-republics

###Crisis
ip_republic.45 = { #marius-candidate appears
    type = country_event
...

It triggers randomly, but is weighted so that Rome typically gets the reforms first.

Spoiler: Military Reforms Trigger

(depending if your military tech is high enough, or a neighboring nation has undergone the reforms, allowing for a natural spread, or you are Rome and it's after 520 AUC; There are further weights to increase chances if you are Rome and as the date increases.)

The event will then select a character with high martial or else create such a character, or if you are Rome, will create a high-martial character named Marius! The event is well-made and so I will leave it mechanically as it is with the important changes that a) it will trigger from the mission task in the Marian tree when the Cimbrian invasion is active, b) it will utilize the existing Marius character that the player is using for the Marian missions and c) it will give promises (via modifiers) to Latin cultures and Latin feudatories for manpower in exchange for political advantages. This last feature is important as it historically tied into the conditions which led to the Social War (more on that later).

Before moving on, there's another flavor aspect related to the Marian reforms and a standing army: settling veterans. This topic came up a few weeks ago with a suggestion by @IsaacCAT. While many changes were proposed, one feature that seems feasible would be that of ticking war exhausting when legion veterans have not been rewarded by a retirement to farming state in exchange for their services to the state. There are many potential paths to implement this effect, but in order to prevent large-scale reworks and balancing issues, I have chosen to make the designation of state-owned farmland and then the allocation of that land to veterans to be one-time events related to mission tasks. Here's the vanilla events for reference:

Rather than make this event random, it will be triggered through the mission tree and will allow for certain conquered areas outside of Italy have pastures designated for state farming. Later, another event will follow which is triggered by event / mission task / or from the legion interface (TBD):

In the original event, the top option does nothing but is malus-free (unlike the other two options) and is only available if state-owned farmland can be dispensed. The options will be reworked such that farmland can be given to veterans to relax the ticking war exhaustion while lowering manpower or cohort numbers. The maluses from the other options will be retained but perhaps with further consequences..

Speaking of consequences, once the Cimbrian invasion is over, the Latin allies will want to be rewarded (remember the saved culture modifier from above). This is the context of the Social (from Socii) war. To maintain historical accuracy, I'm considering modifying the setup to reflect the feudatory status of Rome's allies. See these maps and thanks to @DiegoIdePersia for helpful discussions and maps.

Keeping the theme of the day of reworking vanilla events (which I'm utilizing to save work but also to highlight the amount of hidden flavor that the base game has in it), here's the event for 'Soci-al Tensions'

The options here currently only involve ruler popularity, subject opinion, and treasury handouts. However, the reworked event greatly raises the stakes, forcing the player to choose between cultural integration or open war. Choosing the 'easy' option of integration will be contested in the senate and, ideally, trigger a debate based upon the success of the player's political party (populares or optimates) sympathy. Historically, the debate regarding the Socii was not only an issue of inter-Latin strife between Romans and Sabellians but also that of intra-Roman strife. These are the features of internal management I hope to carry out in this mod.

This leaves me quite a lot to script and completes most of the arc of Marius' political career prior his crowning seventh consulship which occurred amidst his rivalry with Sulla boiling over into civil war. Having reached this point, the next major focus on the mod will be enticing for optimate sympathizers who are ready to try their luck playing as the one nicknamed Felix.

 

[GloryGloryByzantium]

The era of the late republic offers many fascinating changes to consider when trying to recreate a similar context for this mod. Some of the above missions and events have highlighted several of the wars and political changes going on in this time. As I have spent time away from scripting on this mod to focus on other aspects of my life (the ones that pay), I've reflected upon some of the reading I've done with Plutarch, Appian, and more recently by the late historian Howard H. Scullard in his From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68. These works highlight deeper social and cultural issues which drove the political instability of the period. These changes would require larger mechanical changes to the game beyond merely adding mission tasks, events, and wars. But I think Imperator is the best game to attempt such changes given its robust pop and cultural system. In what follows, I will highlight a few historical changes and opine on the changes in game mechanics required to represent these issues. I am not stating them with the intent of adding such changes to the game yet, but only to generate ideas and conversations about their plausibility.

1. Commerce and Class.
It has always been a slight bother of mine that upper class pops were structured in such a way that citizens were essentially weak nobles. You want nobles for trade and research; just stack the noble buildings and get lots of them. This ran against the notion I had that ancient aristocrats were agrarian and that commerce was committed by people who would have been deemed "lower" than them. Reading Scullard confirmed not only this convention in Rome but as a policy enshrined in law:

"Between the Senate and the People there grew up a Third Estate, that of the so-called Knights (Equites). they owed their rise partly to the fact that senators who formed a landed aristotcracy, were forbidden by law (the lex Claudia of 218 BC) to take part in any commerce: a sharp distinction was drawn between the land and trade, between the governing and the commercial classes." - Scullard, pgs. 8-9​

This structure then allows for a genuine class warfare such as played out by the Gracchi. Primary sources tell us that the land had been bought up by all the nobles who then filled them with slaves to work the fields. This forced the freemen out of work and it is these freemen who are the "poor" that the Gracchi sought to help / use in their political endeavors.
So what does this mean for the game? I am toying with the radical idea of removing the trade routes from nobles and putting them on citizens and then attempting to reroute some of the tax income back onto the nobles. This would then affect the balancing of freemen and slave pops. I'm not sure what the numbers would look like, but the desired effect would be for the player to chose whether to favor nobles or citizens. Further, I would like to see a natural progression in the game where states have incentives to favor a class based upon their main economic source of income. Agrarian societies should have more nobles and freemen while commerce based polities should favor citizens. This should also tighten the relationship between pops, government types, and laws which regulate pop ratios and promotions. Speaking of that..

2. Law Changes.
Aside from the occasional senatorial objective, spend some PI and stab and you can pass whatever you want, right? There should be far more consequences to consider including the political party in power and also the pop percentage and happiness. If you have a state filled with angry citizens and a senate full of populares, you shouldn't be able to pass a law favoring aristocrats if you have enough "influence" and can afford the stability hit. The proposal here is that just as Princeps Civitates requires the ruler to be the from the populares, so many other laws should have social stipulations attached. They might even require certain privileges to be attached such as those found in..

3. Cultural Decisions.
This mechanic is underused but has great potential. One immediate change would be ultimatums for primary cultural decisions to be taken which the player would otherwise never use. Some of them are maluses because they grant privileges to certain classes. The player as the "spirit of the state" would never take them because the do not benefit the state long-term. But human reality is that selfish and corruption actors would indeed lobby for such privileges. Finding a way to bestow these ultimatums upon the player without railroading or adding great frustration may be a challenge. (But you probably don't want to play this mod unless you want to be bogged down with internal strife while trying to expand, so I am open to frustration.)
Secondly, I have always had fun adding cultural privileges along the way to cultural to placate them or speed up the integration process. I sense that many players bypass this effect but I somehow want to make this more necessary without outright requiring it. The cultural confluence of Greek ways into Roman life brought many forms of reactionary attitudes with assimilation. I am unsure at this time how to make this affect pops of primary cultures with adding boring unhappiness modifiers. There are some interesting stories to be told about Stoicism as well.

These trajectories offer strong opportunities for more immersive gameplay in the way that I believe the game was designed to facilitate. Some of the earliest trailers tease having to manage internal affairs well to survive. The scripting on this project will likely remain slow for the immediate future unless I can recruit some help, so please return comments if you like or hate any of the proposed changes listed above.

 

[TinWiz]

You have some good ideas, there is just not enough time and not enough modders. I especially like the idea to make nobles actually like the historic noble land-owners. When noble pops were added for 1.5 the citizen pops became an awkward and redundant hybrid. I had thought the characters were actually the noble, upper-class, which is why they have land holdings.

 

[GloryGloryByzantium]

I guess even the vanilla game recognizes citizen pops as the merchant class:

 

[GloryGloryByzantium]

Apparently, there's a vanilla event about an assassinated senator who had advocated for minority rights. If you chose to give out the rights in honor of the fallen, it can lead to a civil war. If you chose to deny the rights, then there's massive pop unhappiness for unintegrated cultures which would (and did in my game) lead to mass revolt. I cannot help but sense this event was inspired by the Gracchi.

 

[BlockbuilderG123]

Wow this mod looks good! Any more progress?

 

[yenot]

Apparently, there's a vanilla event about an assassinated senator who had advocated for minority rights. If you chose to give out the rights in honor of the fallen, it can lead to a civil war. If you chose to deny the rights, then there's massive pop unhappiness for unintegrated cultures which would (and did in my game) lead to mass revolt. I cannot help but sense this event was inspired by the Gracchi.

Funny, first I was listening to a podcast on the Fall of the Roman Republic, then got this event in game just yesterday, now stumble into it being mentioned on paradoxplaza.

My impression is that this is a reference to Marcus Livius Drusus. He was murdered in his home and AFAIU his death removed the last chance to avoid the Social War. Gaius Gracchus fits as well, maybe it is kind of a mix between the two.

 

[rakovskii]

Thanks for posting this, GloryGloryByzantium. Can you please tell me if your Mod covers the first century to second century AD? I am guessing that the answer is No, because rule in Rome in the 1st century AD was less Republican in form and more dictatorial with more power by the emperor.

I notice that the ruler of Judea at the Mod's starting point is "Dositheus Zadokite." Historically however, the Zadokite priesthood dynasty that the Greeks put in charge of Judea went into exile in the early-mid 2nd century BC.

The Jewish Virtual Library describes the history of the end of the Zadokite dynasty's position of power in Jewish religious society in the early-mid 2nd century BC:

ZADOK (Heb. צָדוֹק, "righteous"), priest in the time of king *David. Zadok established a high priestly dynasty which continued until approximately 171 B.C.E., both in the First and Second Temple periods.
...
Josephus and the Book of Maccabees make it possible to trace the line from Onias I in the middle of the third century B.C.E. to Simeon the Just and to Onias III, who held the office of high priest when Antiochus Epiphanes succeeded to the throne c. 175 B.C.E. His son, Onias IV, was too young to succeed to his father's office, to which Jason II Macc. 4:7,20) and Menelaus (II Macc. 4:23–26; though not a priest) were successively appointed by bribing the Seleucid ruler to appoint them.

After the death of Alcimus in 159 B.C.E., the office remained vacant for seven years (Jos., Ant., 12:413, I Macc. 9:54–57), until the Maccabean Jonathan was nominated high priest by Alexander Balas. But only in the early years of Simeon, Jonathan's successor, was the high priesthood irrevocably transferred from the Zadokites to the Hasmoneans.