Point of divergence: Meeting of the Roman Senate following the Mammertine request for military support
After the Mammertines at Messana requested the support of both Carthage and Rome, Carthage was the first to respond, placing a garrison in Messana. The Roman Senate debated on whether or not to respond with support, lest the dispute might lead to conflict with Carthage. The debate dragged on as senators weighed complex political implications; meanwhile, Gaius Duillis, an ambitious novo homo of the Roman army, gained popular support among some of his soldiers and, in an unprecedented act of defiance against the Senate, confiscated a fleet of fishing boats in southern Italy and embarked his fighters as sailors towards Carthaginian Sicily.
The ill-equipped, hostility-driven impromptu Roman fleet managed to reach Sicily unnoticed by the Carthaginians; the Romans, however, embarked two reactionary battalions in order to rout the rebels before conflict against Carthage could be incited. Duillis' men reached Messana first, however, and managed to attack the Carthaginian garrisoned citadel there. When the Roman army under orders of the Senate arrived, the siege was quickly stomped out as a combined force of Carthaginians, Mammertines, and Romans stamped out the rebellious breakoff army led by Duillis.
The furious Carthaginians then allied with the Mammertines to fend off the Romans, whom were misinterpreted as an invasion force. Despite desperate attempts by commanders in the "invading" Roman army to negotiate, Carthaginian politicians saw the conflict as an excuse to cripple Rome in the Sicilian sphere of influence, and the Carthaginian navy (and some rapidly embarked Numidian mercenaries) quickly cut off the supply lines of the Roman military. The legions in Messana surrendered to Carthage, and the Punic War began, as Rome scrambled to recuperate.
Rapid Carthaginian imposition on Roman naval centers decisively shut down the fledgling Roman navy, and before the conquests of Carthage could go any further, the Senate agreed to sign a treaty ceding a massive reparations fee as well as control of Sicily to Carthage. Additionally, Carthaginian embassies were imposed on several port cities in Roman Italy to ensure Rome would not develop naval military-- on paper, of course. The embassies were in reality a way for Carthage to control Roman ports, and Carthaginian control of the western Mediterranean became hegemonous. Carthaginian merchants monopolized the urban markets of key Roman port cities, and the Roman urban peasantry became poorer and poorer.
This growth in poverty in the Roman Republic, specifically in the city of Rome itself, contributed to growing urban discontent. As senators and aristocrats could be seen strolling about with leisure time, starving peasants began to revolt against the Senate. However, unlike before, the Senate was rapidly losing control of the military. As factionalization began to onset among the levy armies in the countryside near Rome, which was composed of the farmers most heavily subject to the Carthaginian tax, revolt after revolt crumbled the power of the Senate until an organized, armed riot led by the populist landowner Gaius Capito Pompilius finally toppled the state in favor of a peasant's electorate.
This new government controlling Rome was not unique in the splintering Republic. Around the country, peasants and armies, either together, separate, or sometimes even in direct conflict, were storming the aristocratic manors and seizing their wealth, considered a mark of decadence that supported the debilitating Carthaginian tax, and establishing new urban centers of power. In the years following the defeat of Rome by Carthage, the entire Republic crumbled into several different chaotic states, until on the fourth anniversary of the Battle of Messana, Carthaginian fleets arrived again in Italy to reinforce the embassies.
While the revolts were happening, many Carthaginian officials in the embassies had successfully negotiated peace of varying stability with leaders of the peasants. However, as the new urban governments finally began to reorganize themselves-- mostly in a far more egalitarian model than the former Roman republic-- these outposts found themselves more and more a target of popular hostility, or Inimicitas Populi. The official foundation of the Publica Senatus Nova in Rome, declared by Gaius Pompilius, sent a rallying wave of anti-Carthage sentiment through the factional urban centers. A Carthaginian landing in southern Italy provoked a renewal in mobilization, and on the anniversary of the seizure of Rome, key military leaders of some of the new governments in the country met with Pompilius in Rome to unite against the Carthaginian menace.
A short series of battles lasting about a year seized the Carthaginian embassies in every major city and expelled the invading army; the Carthaginian navy, which had suffered massive cutbacks in favor of funding land expeditions by Numidian mercenaries in Morocco-- due to complacency following the defeat of Rome-- was ill equipped to transport enough reinforcements to defend their claims, and signed a non-aggression treaty with the New Public Senate. The urban leaders that had joined with Pompilius in Rome quickly signed allegiance with the New Senate, and other new city-states followed suit, in order to gain security under the treaty from Carthaginian attacks.
In the following decade, the Public Italian government, as Pompilius' new government called itself, found economic and political footing in the establishment of Urbana Publicas in each major city, as centers for regional governance. The egalitarian regional nationalism that followed unified the country and brought new ideas and techniques to Rome. Archery improved influenced by northern traditions, and southern traditions improved shipbuilding. The rapid expansion of the Italian navy once again provided a source of worry for the Carthaginian hegemony in the western Mediterranean, and the Third Punic War found the Carthaginian navy destroyed by ranged Italian naval tactics. Flaming arrows shot by experts from the north, hidden behind sturdily built warships from the south, provided the Italians a decisive means of naval superiority: the Ignisnavi, or fireship.
ITALIA NOVA 
Roma
Resistance lasts twice as long when your cities are conquered. +15% 
combat bonus against any civilization you have at any time established an embassy with. 
Production increase towards 
military units for every 
gold, +25% 
food and +1 
ranged attack, at 
trade route (max 25%).
and +3 Gold 
) and an increased combat strength (15 
the experience bonus is doubled for newly produced units.
) but that's is true that he does point out a flaw which is usually somewhat irrelevant to the challenge or design at hand. I also found that word to be a little amusing Nataning, so here's this 
