Somnium Apostatae Iuliani Discussion

[julianus heraclius]

Hello All Good People,

This is the forum designed to discuss all things IJ.

As most of you know this mod was developed from an original mod by Goth. With the advent of IBFD, I thought it was appropriate to resurrect this mod as this is an interesting period of roman history and from a playing point of view gives the player a chance to control the whole roman empire, something that can be quite difficult to achieve with so many enemies. I have to thank Ramon for all of this help with putting this mod together.

Anyway, please enjoy and I look forward to your comments. As always, this is a mod that grows with experience, especially from playing. Already there have been comments in relation to CTD's and I welcome any feedback that can help this mod to become better.

If you have any CTD's, please try to list the problem as clearly as possible. This always helps in trying to pinpoint the problem.

Of course, discussion on the man himself (Julianus) is always welcome.

Thanks

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Discussion about Julian - you mean this chap here?



Yes, it's a little preview from the Lazyges AAR - and I don't want to talk about it right now, thank you very much . . .

I'm still in shock . . .

[julianus heraclius]

What! Noooooooooooooo!!! Oh, sorry. He won!! Yeeeesssssssss

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

(I hate you )

[FaranBrygo]

Julianus Heraclius:

Have you ever thought of implementing a mission system like FRRE has? I would love to see Julian take Aquileia in 361 and gain the Roman east (assuming certain conditions were met) rather than having to reduce each city one at a time. The 355 campaign is my favorite and if missions were brought in it would take the game to another level.

[julianus heraclius]

Hmm,

I do like the idea, not sure how that would be implemented, apart from some scripting.

It could reduce the amount of freedom that the player has, though I suppose you can always ignore the mission, at your peril

I suppose the missions would be linked to the traits which may make the loacl populace either with you or against you.

Yeah, I'll check it out.

Cheers

[FaranBrygo]

Hmm,

I do like the idea, not sure how that would be implemented, apart from some scripting.

It could reduce the amount of freedom that the player has, though I suppose you can always ignore the mission, at your peril

I suppose the missions would be linked to the traits which may make the loacl populace either with you or against you.

Yeah, I'll check it out.

Cheers

I really don't want to chain the player down but give the player a bit of historical feedback and permit him to claim ERE in a more logical fashion.

I was thinking roughly something like this:

Intro:

For Julian to realize his imperial ambition he crush the Germanic tribes, the Franks and the Alamanni, to secure the frontier and gain prestige. Victory over the Franks can be declared if Colonia Agrippina is recaptured (I am assuming that you will have to plow through several Frankish armies to do this). Victory over the Alamanni can be declared if (there is really no historical way to do this so I am thinking if Argentoratum is taken?).

Victory over the Franks:
The Franks have been crushed and are no longer a threat to invade Rome!

Victory over the Alamanni:
The Alamanni are no longer a threat to Rome:


The Franks and Alamanni can be destroyed via script after the victory events.

With both victory events and it is 360:

Constantius II has demanded the transfer of some of your legions to the East. The legions have refused and have declared you Emperor. If you capture Aquileia all of Rome will be under your command!

Capture of Aquileia:

Transfer all ERE provinces to WRE, kill all ERE characters and resurrect the correct ones.

The scripting can do this I think.

[misplacedgeneral]

Ah, I am glad I checked today. Can't believe you've had the patch out for so long! Getting it right now.

The patches fixed the problem with Gaul, correct?

[julianus heraclius]

Ah, I am glad I checked today. Can't believe you've had the patch out for so long! Getting it right now.

The patches fixed the problem with Gaul, correct

You'll see the patch has fixed alot of things, and wait till V3.0 comes out with a whole new faction!

[misplacedgeneral]

It did indeed, but Gaul still causes a CTD. No problem, I just play with factions of the East.

[julianus heraclius]

It did indeed, but Gaul still causes a CTD.

Can you let me know what the problem is. I may be able to help. If your problem relates to the map, perhaps try loading the CA strat option and see if that helps.

[misplacedgeneral]

My best description of it is that once I scroll north of Burgidala, over the area of Gaul, the game simply CTDs. Even if there is fog of war over it.

Does the game start using the IJ strat map or the CA one? I have been wondering if that might be it. So I tried the IJ one today, but if that is what it starts with, I'll try with the CA one.

As I said, I decided that since everything else is quite clean, I decided to start an eastern campaign.

Top job.

[julianus heraclius]

The game starts with the IJ strat option. Try the CA option and see how you go.

Cheers

[misplacedgeneral]

It works! Now I can do my 355 Julian campaign.

Thanks!

[julianus heraclius]

Fantastic! Enjoy.

[julianus heraclius]

Hey I would like to get this discussion going by asking people what they think of Julian. I notice that the thread on Julian and Neoplatonism has received a number of viewings so I'm curious.

To me Julian is one of histories 'what ifs' stories, a brilliant mind, with possibly impossible ideas to achieve.

Any man who wants to fight back using intellect rather than physical force has my vote. bear in mind though, the intellect can be used for terrible deeds as well.

Any comments from the Gallery?

[misplacedgeneral]

As someone who has read Ammianus three times (and perhaps going for a fourth in the near future, with this game being played) I've always taken a liking to Julian.

I would say that, as far as we can understand how he governed, if he let himself be an emperor, he would have been a good one. Stability might be a question, though, since he had upset the Christians and even earned a bad word from Ammianus for not allowing them to teach rhetoric.

He has a few key flaws, though, which led to his biggest mistakes.

More or less, they all come down to him being a bit head-strong, and guided a bit too much by "destiny" in thinking that it would cure him of all ills and protect him. The Persian expedition was a terrible mistake, if anything, a small invasion force, moving in and perhaps capturing a city or two, would have been best. Along with this, while on the campaign, the burning of his boats was the greatest blunder.

Like you said, he is a what if story, and from the point of view of an onlooker, he had an ability to lead an army, and he was a fair governor. The greatest "What if?" to me is, "What if he didn't launch such a large scale campaign against Persia"

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

I would like to add that as an avid reader of Ammianus (in 2 different English translations, and also of Aurelius Victor and the other late Roman writers), I have mixed feelings about Julian which veer from hero-worship to contempt. I feel our age idolizes him too much and only in the last few decades has begun to seriously question his legacy.

Let me qualify this: as Caesar ruling against a paranoid but successful Augustus, Julian proved his worth as an aspiring emperor against the Christian adherents of Constantius who had been placed around him to watch over him. The victory at Argentoratum was deserving of praise, so too his tax exploits and general running of the diocese. In these circumstances, with Constantius as a figure against whom he could test himself, Julian was at his height.

I do not for one moment believe that his usurpation was forced despite Ammianus' protestations to the contrary and feel mostly strongly that the circumstances read too much like similar 'faked' stories of emperors being forced to don the mantle against their will. Call my cynical, if you wish!

Regardless, Constantius' death en route to facing Julian remains one of history's great 'what-if' moments and again is one I find awfully convenient and which has been rarely examined in detail by historians as to its 'naturalness'.

But the real issue is his role as emperor and his legacy. This is marred by several incidents which point to a person gradually feeling disillusioned and alienated from the imperial court and which might - given time - have led to a man prone to bitterness and vengeful acts. His toleration of Christianity weakened and moved towards practical persecution via the setting up of a similarly structured 'pagan' church; legislation against Christians teaching was reviled even by pagans; favoritism of towns which still held to the pagan creed became more pronounced. I have no doubt that had Julian lived, his attitude would have hardened and become more militant in time.

It should also be remembered that Julian's 'paganism' was a particular late Roman neoplatonism which was mystical and spiritual in the extreme and reflected an epoch increasingly obsessed with supernatural acts and therefore prone to mysticism and elitism. Julian's religous creed therefore was not the simple polytheism of the earlier Greek and Roman periods and should not be romanticized in that light. See, for example, Hypatia's fate as an icon of pagan nostalgia in the 19th and 20th centuries for a parallel to Julian's fate.

Finally, the Persian expedition was utter folly. If you read Ammianus, it is patently obvious that Julian was out-generaled at a strategic level and that despite reaching the outskirts of Ctesiphon itself he failed to comprehend the enormity of what he was undertaking.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=140078

Some of the posts in this discussion touch neatly upon the west's misapprehension of Parthian/Persian realities and show up neatly Julian's delusion. A delusion, I feel, brought on by his increasing awareness of a lack of appreciation by his fellow Romans and an increasing desire to re-capture the fame wrought by the Gallic campaigns years earlier. There is a real sense that towards the end, Julian even desires death as a coward's way out of facing the enormity of his blunder.

I hold Gibbon responsible for the beginning of the hero-worship of Julian via his anti-Christian bias in his monumental work and also suggest that both Constantius and the brothers Valentinian and Valens deserve in many ways better appraisal than does Julian and in fact stand taller as true Roman emperors.

Let the contention begin!

[misplacedgeneral]

I always found what Adrian Goldsworthy said about him in his piece, "In the Name of Rome, the Men Who Won the Roman Empire"

http://books.google.com/books?id=TdK...EQQnejllqCzTy0

Read from "Julian was proclaimed Caesar" down until the end of the paragraph.

I've always seen it as slightly unfair to Julian, but I do consider Goldsworthy to be one of the premier modern historians. So those words always hang about me.

[julianus heraclius]

I'v got that book. I found Goldsworthy's comments true but cruel. I don't think that Julian was an outstanding military genius in the mould of Alexander or Hannibal, but he certainly had a knack for relating with his troops.

There seems no doubt that he excelled himself during his Gallic campaigns and had the full support of his men.

He aslo showed how a well led late roman army could operate and was still a good fighting force.

His invasion of persia is another story and I get the feeling that he was out of his depth, and perhaps what SBH alluded to is correct, that in the end Julian had a death wish that would fulfill the prophecy that he would die in battle.

What a typical heroic tragedy that would have been, a great philospher-king dying while fighting the enemy, but not only that to die while in the middle of a discussion discussing the nature of the soul. Whether that happened is another story, but it is what legends and heroes are made of.

I still have a soft spot for Julian (but then again, I've always been drawn to tragic figures), for probably the last of his kind, a classical man in what had become the medievil world.