Another Age: I came, I saw, I started another Paradox Mega-LP

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Another Age: I came, I saw, I started another Paradox Mega-LP

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

# ¿ Dec 21, 2022 17:26

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 18:27

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

Shogeton posted:

Well yes, but it has the wisdom of goons behind it. Let me tell you about an island called Crete...

How well did that go in Al-Andalus?

# ¿ Dec 22, 2022 16:21

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

Jesus christ. Already?

# ¿ Dec 24, 2022 01:50

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

Look, if there's one thing Mike Duncan has taught me, its that the Romans don't know when they're beat. We can win this war, and then Rome will lick their wounds and come at us again in another generation with an even bigger army and an even bigger navy. It won't stop, because it can't stop.

So, Yes.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2022 04:02

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

Asterite34 posted:

You guys remember less than a page ago when we were talking about Rome's unique ability to absorb battlefield losses seemingly endlessly, and how their greatest enemy always seem to collapse them in times of relative stability when the rot sets in internally?

Maybe we should take some time to, you know, consolidate our gains and give the Romans a chance to shoot themselves in the foot a little?

As long as we exist, the romans are going to be able to unify over being angry we beat them.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2022 04:48

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

Chronometry posted:

I didn't know Revanchism was an Imperator mechanic!

Look, the Romans are history's sorest losers.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2022 19:34

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

Jesus loving christ, how strong are these Rome buffs?

# ¿ Dec 31, 2022 06:07

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

Honestly, I think this LP is in the running for "Shortest Time till goon voting led to disaster in a paradox LP."

# ¿ Jan 2, 2023 07:36

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

hashashash posted:

we'll be playing Imperator until shortly after the rise of Christianity, and then hopping over to CK3 -- I've got plans for how to deal with the intervening time skip, some of it decided by the thread

I've been thinking about starting CK3 at 600 AD so we can watch the rise of Islam play out too, but it might be more balanced to start at 700 and have the extent of Islam be decided by vote - still sorta undecided on that, we'll see

Would Islam even arise in this altered timeline? Unless we get loving bodied by Rome.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2023 00:49

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

Archaeology Hat posted:

Rome also seem prone to just randomly implode into incredibly destructive multi-phase civil wars in some games which can put a damper on them a bit in my experience. I think its to do with the Republic collapsing into Empire mechanics and Rome's missions sometimes directing them that way interacting with the character holdings mechanics.

so this is appropriate.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2023 16:18

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

hashashash posted:

huh, in that case I think one of the mods I've been using (the one that brings in historical characters like Caesar and Hannibal) actually made Rome much stronger, because it adds an event chain for Rome to become an empire and makes it impossible for them to do so any other way

Gonna give a controversial opinion: This mod sucks.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2023 21:50

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

Jesus loving christ. I expected the ROmans to just pull out another army, another massive army from nowhere, but we did it. We loving did it somehow.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2023 01:48

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

I choose C, for the basis of not wanting future historians to have to deal with even more Ptolemies named Ptolemy.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2023 03:17

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

By popular demand posted:

First poster to tell an interesting fact about the Phoenicians gets to tell me what to vote.

We're not actually sure what the Phoenicians called themselves.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2023 13:54

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

NewMars posted:

Speaking of armies... what the hell does the Carthaginian army look like?

Okay, so Carthaginian Mercenaries at the start of things were basically raised to deal with a specific problem and were usually comprised of pretty much all the people in an area related to it that they could buy up. Every single mercenary army was unique.

Obviously this couldn't last and had major problems. The only unifying factor to these armies was a tiny punic officer corps and a general.

The thing is though, many of these "mercenaries" weren't mercenaries at all as we understand them: they were from allied peoples under treaty where they were provided to and would be paid by Carthage. In fact, Carthage first produced it's own coinage just to pay them and these coins were basically stamped with FOR MILITARY USE ONLY on the back. (It reads something like "military camp"). Of course there were also many, many of the regular kind of mercenaries.

As you'd expect they tended towards woeful levels of uncoordinated tactics and tactical and strategic incompetence. In fact, it's only after they put a spartan guy in charge that they even started training the mercenaries. It was actually Hannibal Barca who transformed the army into something professional (it was even called the Barcid Reforms).

Given what we know and how we won, I think that the Carthaginian army is based around combined-arms tactics that wouldn't really be enshrined in our world until later, but at the same time lacks the idea of professional citizen-soldiers that Rome implemented in it's empire.

The structure might be that every colony contributes to the central forces, which are basically a professional core. In these forces, the generals handle the payment of their mercenaries and mercenary rates are standardized across the empire, with Carthage and it's mints holding the central treasury used to pay with. The major innovation here is that these rates are standardized not just in amount, but also in payment time. It's a gigantic innovation to pay your troops at a standard rate that is always met and never deferred. Every company of mercenaries is also supervised by a punic officer, not their own captains. Forces also always train together, giving them cohesion and the generals an idea of what their forces can do together.

The upside of this system is a loyal, professional army capable of carrying out levels of mixed tactics seen nowhere else, an incredible and overpowering force compared to others in the ancient world.

The downside is that this gives huge amounts of personal loyalty to generals, encouraging ambitous ones to do things that further fracture the empire. It also leads to massive problems if, for example, it becomes impossible to pay...

So I guess there's two new problems.

8. Ambitious generals with personally loyal troops either want to be in charge or grow more attached to their native mercenaries than their government.

9. Debasement crises lead to inabilities to pay the army on time causing huge disruptions in the mercenary-professional system.

Oh, wait, one more.

10. Mercenaries learn incredible, innovative tactics and carthaginian culture and take these back home, making them considerably more dangerous.

Congratulations. Can't wait till we end up with mercenaries from the Niger River Basin and Sahel making the resultant Sahelian Empire Cycle way larger and possibly more stable.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2023 23:05

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

Kangxi posted:

C C C

C for CARTHAGE

# ¿ Jan 21, 2023 21:52

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

Man, The church but with Pharonic Egyptian imagery instead of Latin seems like a cool idea.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2023 02:18

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

Its like i'm playing 3.5 D&D again because i'm all about BAB

# ¿ Jan 24, 2023 04:16

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

Buschmaki posted:

rip to sub-saharan africa

Its a Paradox LP- Paradox doesn't care about Africa and neither do most players.

In other words? Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2023 18:25

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 18:27

Fivemarks: Feb 21, 2015

Jesus Christ.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2023 15:55

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Another Age: I came, I saw, I started another Paradox Mega-LP