Simulating early Roman Military Disaster

[Disco]

There doesn't seem to be a way to recreate the Cannae disaster, but that doesn't mean we Romans can't be masochists in the first few turns of the game!

I know many of you must play this way, and I'd love to hear your own take on this. When I first played this mod, I felt under a ton of pressure and it was hard. By now, after countless times starting over, it's easy to defeat Hannibal and Maharbal whether it's 0 or 1 Turn on H/H. So I like to spice it up, and really put my empire in peril just as the rebellion hits.

The Fabian strategy unfortunately doesn't quite work, since Hannibal and Maharbal take their toys and go home quickly, most of time. On other campaigns, I've found father and son Maximus to be a couple of very capable generals after just a little experience. So to hell with them, they stay on their duffs in Rome.


After Hannibal routs us in the ambush at Trasimene (taking great care to kill off Nepos of course), Hannibal and Maharbal will almost always take their respective armies to siege the two northern cities. We can scrape together enough troops from Young Scipio and the southern cities (and Sardinia and Corsica too, if we want) to make a respectable army. I bring up Varro to join them. The army assembles outside of Rome just before Hannibal and Maharbal can finish building their siege equipment.

So, we don't have Cannae, but we do have some good hilly terrain in the north, and plenty of opportunity to take our army and recklessly charge the center of the Carthaginian line, which holds well under Hannibal. If we're lucky, Hannibal attacks Paullus' city and we can kill off both him and Varro, and allow young Scipio to escape by the skin of his teeth.


The result of these battles is the loss of two northern cities, most of our troops, several of our generals, and a brewing rebellion that will throw several competent stacks our way quite soon. I bring Elder Scipio and some of the garrison from Dyrrachium to support Rome during the rebellion. We can either kill Hannibal and Maharbal now, or let them make their way back to Spain.


I find that playing this way or close to it, particularly by making sure that I lose badly a second time vs Hannibal, that my Republic is indeed in peril, very close to collapsing. Rome is barely saved and the whole affair takes some years.


So fellow Roman masochists, how do you make the start extra challenging for yourself? Do you have any tips on simulating the disaster that was Hannibal's invasion?

[Anthropoid]

Wow. You really love historical game play! You are to be commended! I can remember when I used to play War in the Pacific a lot and had more or less mastered the game, _thinking_ about possibly doing some stupid stuff to insure that I as alies suffered a tactical loss at Battle of Coral Sea . . . but I never actually did it. I guess my character is sufficiently low that I do somehow get self-esteem from whupping up on the hapless AI I DID however once defeat four capable allied human opponents in a War in the Pacific scenario for Civ3 Conquests. It was a definitive, crushing defeat and it was epic . . . but enough about me and my neuroses . . .

Contemplating these other games makes me think of an alternate, though for a masochist perhaps less satisfying gambit?

Instead of starting from 'the beginning,' before the Republic is in real peril, why not start from the point in its history when you feel it WAS in real peril. This could be accomplished a number of different ways I suppose.

The first would be to create for yourself (others might take an interest in helping or sharing too) sort of 'alternate start' campaigns. War in the Pacific I thought was exemplary in this. Rather than just the typical 'post-Pearl Harbor' start, the game featured, I seem to recall 8 or 10 alternate starting setups. Now granted in this case, the devs had not taken the loving care that the RS team have taken to develope player-faction specific campaign setups for each playable position, so it is not an entirely applicable solution. But in short, just the sake of example, if you wanted to play as the allies, you could start on Dec 6 (actually 7th), you could start immediately before Coral Sea, you could start immediately before the invasion of Guadalcanal, you could start immediately before Midway, and several other later starts going all the way up to 1943. This way, a wide-range of historical 'what-if' scenarios against the AI could be played out.

Second: Given the way the campaign game files are setup, I doubt this is really possible, but an alternate method that some games allow is: you startup as playing a faction that the AI will eventually play itself, play for however many turns you need to do to get the AI setup to be a challenge for you, then restart the game as the faction you intend to play through.

A third, though more random option could be to just hit 'ENTER' and let the chips fall where they may. In battles you can set your forces to AI control, so if you want to increase the possibility that you suffer an historical defeat, you strive to get that battle going and then just set everyone to AI control. As far as the campaign map, I suppose setting everything to AI control for a period of time is also an option?