[RFC] Rome, the Conquering Empire

[christos200]

No problem, it's a general lifesaver solution for most civilizations.
Also, beeline Railroad after Fascism to help your Economy; that should solidify your position.

Again, with the France picture, only for Tycho's eyes unless you want to see a crazy China:

Spoiler :

Both from old versions of DoC, but same should apply for any civ. Having lots of vassals kills two birds with one stone. It ramps up your stability a lot (with Viceroyalty) and provides huge buffer zones for waging phantom wars to keep your stability floating with the Nationhood civic. As you can see, I've colonized numerous areas that would otherwise be killer for China's stability, given their poor stability map. The Euro colonial civs can make even greater use of this strat as well given their generous stability maps. Hopefully, we'll be seeing you create a Rome that goes into unthinkable places as well, with the power of communism.

Chinese england????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

After the first time I did it, I realized what kind of strategic potential could be had with invading and holding England as China/Japan/India as opposed to any other European power. You won't risk getting assaulted by terrestrial armies thanks to being at sea, and you won't risk getting culture choked as well. If you're going Conquest/Domination, you also get rid of an annoyance to hunt down (England seeds colonies everywhere). On lower difficulties on vanilla, I'll sail a bunch of Galleys filled with Knights all the way to Europe and kill off England while they still only have Longbows. In DoC, Leoreth added capes, so I try and rush Galleons+Curassiers and rush England while they have Longbows. After that, I use it as a base to spawn spies and galleons to steal techs from France & Germany while also meddling with their stability by making them constantly switch civics/religion.

The converse also applies for Japan. You can use it as a safe staging point to harass Mongolia/China.

 

[Tigranes]

The cost of switching civics and religion is unrealisticallly low. Imagine any spy who could change religion of any medieval European country. SoI removed that mission completely...

 

[Tigranes]

Tycho, what is the aesthetic reason for you to turn on the tile yield info on all your screenshots ? IMO they overburden the pictures and viewers...

 

[clearmurky]

I agree.

 

[Tycho]

Tycho, what is the aesthetic reason for you to turn on the tile yield info on all your screenshots ? IMO they overburden the pictures and viewers...

I agree.

No aesthetic purpose truly, just information if one was interested the amount of commerce or food a tile is generating... but now since I captured about twenty five hundred screenshots I'll have to page back through and see which ones do not have the tile yeild. Probably somewhere about the midgame or later.


Thank you for telling me fellows, I will be keeping that out of the way next time I make a story.

 

[Tycho]

Last week on Rome: The Conquering Empire-

For god's sake stop it now!

But... my job...

Just let me handle this, okay?

With the port city of Portus Cale now in Roman hands, the Romans have yet another valuable Atlantic sea trade route that can be utilized with the English and the Vikings to the North. The Portugese royal family was mosly butchered after the heavy battle for Portus Cale, but a few members of the royal family escaped. The Emperor has already sent assassins to try and kill the remaining members of the Royal family.

On the homefront in Roma, everything is relatively peaceful. Scipio Africanus, a great general of the highest variety who fought in the Roman-Portugese war just a few years before, retires and spends his time training new levies and military units prepared in the capital city in case the time for war arises again. His death many years later has his sons and daughters taking up the family tradition of leading and drilling troops in order to toughen them for battle.

Many of the Africanus dynasty will become officers and generals in their own right within the Roman army, as well as advisers to the Emperor and members of the higher military brass.

On the homefront still, massive building projects are under way in order to improve the life of the Roman plebian and to expand the infrastructure of the nation as a whole. Roma never wants to be unprepared for something like the French uprising ever again, and seeks to expand it's military power through a variety of means.

More banking institutions established by patrician families extends a web of wealth and power all throughout the Empire with money from other nations held within their coffers as well. The Turks, the English, the Vikings, and the Ethiopians all have currency invested with these banking institutions as well as the Emperor and the Roman State itself.

Spanish miners northward of Madrid find a rich source of iron in the hills. Large scale efforts to mine this iron for war material is underway in order to provide more arms to troops and to prepare more soldiers. The Emperor is instituting a plan that will span the course of several hundred years and is both absurdly dangerous and lovingly beckoning towards the Roman sense of a need to conquer anything that moves.

A Summer Palace is built under orders from the Emperor himself in order to give the people of his court and his own family a reprieve from some of the dreadful summer heats of Roma. Rheims is also a fine town, with many winepresses and bottling facilities located their in the pursuit of providing fine Gaelic wine to the people of the Empire.

The Emperor dies, to be succeeded by Maximus IX, the new Roman emperor. Maximus IX is much different from his predecessors. The light of Roman scientific and intellectual achievement has dwindled over the years and is slowly dying off, with the coffers of the Roman empire following closely. Maximus orders a rebirth of learning and the sciences to ensue, starting up the largest educational building programs and whatnot never seen before in the Empire.

A German printer by the name of Johann Dynvahn comes to the Roman court in Roma to try and persuade Maximus that his idea of a "printing press" could be used to print off a large amount of books for learning and religious purposes. The Catholic Church in Roma has taken blows in recent years for being too staunch and heavyhanded with inquistors sent out with the slightest word of heresy in the provinces, and the Protestant reformation in the North seeks to stop that.

Maximus agrees to fund the idea.

In one regard, Maximus is much like his predecessors; he seeks to better Roma and it's outlying provinces through a policy of public works building. Banks are built alongside schools and churches, ghettoes in the old cities are torn down and housing is given to the poor for free; Maximus is beloved by many of the lower class people, but the patricians fear he is destroying their way of life. Heavy taxes have been placed on the rich and their banking empires, as well as the shipping and trading companies on Roman soil that have severely hurt imports of fine resources into the Empire.

Patricians feel that there is something that they can do to further some of their aims; restore their old life without much taxes, conquer another nation, and get the meddlesome emperor out of their hair.

The Netherlands are the perfect catalyst for the fire they are about to ignite.

 

[clearmurky]

Wipe the Dutch scum out! (Sorry to any RL Dutch)

 

[Tycho]

The Dutch are going to have one tough bastion to attack though. Should be fun!

 

[thecaesar]

The dutch are next!

 

[hoplitejoe]

They gonna need a lot of suicidal catapults.

 

[Tycho]

The Dutch are indeed next... and with those suicide catapults, did not realize that I needed them until it was too late... Amsterdam is a tough nut to crack.

 

[mayor]

hehe, we are a hardy bunch

EDIT: well... except if one of our cities is bombed that is......

 

[thecaesar]

According to history, the Dutch weren't much good in a war... However, they were very, VERY good at making/getting/saving money.

 

[Tycho]

Time: August 22'nd, 1330 AD
Place: Amsterdam
Location: Capitol Building of the United Netherlands Sovreign Nation

August 22'nd started out as many such days in a crowded capital building with one key displacement. The Emperor Maximus IX had arrived in the Netherlands to work out a massive trade agreement that would be mutually beneficial for all parties involved.

On the way to the third day of meetings hosted between King Adelbard and Maximus IX, Maximus proceeded alone to the building unescorted by bodyguards.

A fatal mistake.

Barely two hundred meters from the plaza into the Capital Square, Maximus was attacked by seven assailants of unknown origin. Maximus was stabbed ten times in the gut, but managed to wrench the sword out of an assailant's hands and kill two of them before having his left arm cut off in a savage strike. Maximus proceeded to kill the assailant that did that piece of work, and strike at another, with the onslaught physically breaking the sword. Two assailants retreated quickly, with Maxiums strangling the fifth to death and hobbling after the other two attackers before falling down to the ground and dying due to blood loss.

Or as he preferred to call it, murder fuel.

In a cruel twist of fate, Maximus's own tomb had been finished that very day and ready to accept the Emperor's body upon his death.

Needless to say an investigation followed rather quickly into the matter of the assassination of one of the world's most prominent leaders.

An investigation headed by Marcus Vasshus of the upper Patrician class in Mediolanium discovered that the assassins had been radical Dutch militant mercenaries. A paper trail also discovered by Marcus and a party of patrician members led back to the highest echelons in the Netherlands government.

This gave the perfect cassus beli to attack the Netherlands Dominion.

A merchant caravan traveling across the Middle East with the son of Emperor Maximus, Tiberius, is stopped and told of the news from the West. Tiberius quickly goes back to Roma to prevent political factions from doing anything reckless.

There is reason to believe that at this time, Marcus Vasshus and other patricians had the Emperor Maximus killed because of his policies and miscellaneous ventures into taxing the upper class and restricting their power. At the time though, many people believed that the Netherlanders had been responsible for the attack. Roman troops march forward in the name of their dead Caesar.

A giant Roman army numbering in the hundreds of thousands sits outside of Amsterdam, waiting patiently for the people of Amsterdam to starve. The Netherlands however is receiving outside support from third party Viking and English merchants interested in protecting their assets in Amsterdam from the Roman policy of seizing any third party goods found in a captured settlement.

Tiberius is personally leading the men as Emperor Tiberius I, eager to bring Dutch blood out and center upon his sword.

The First Battle for Amsterdam swings in favor of the Romans for this time, though their success has been met with a bloody price. Five Roman generals are killed, as well as a tenth of the officer corps and the centurions. Tiberius himself has three swallow tail arrows embedded in his skin that are forced through the body because the tails would literally cause bigger exit wounds than the entry wounds with their cruelly curved blade tips.

Roman losses:
23,000 infantrymen
(Legion IX, XIII, XIV, wiped out. Legions XXIX, IV, III, XXXI suffer fifty percent losses)
4,000 cavalrymen
42 Siege Engines
5 Roman Generals
(Marcus Vasshus, Lyle Crassus, Pierre Capalone, Hans Delgado, Geoffrey Burnse)
1 wounded Emperor

Netherlands Losses:
56,000 infantrymen
7,564 archers
120 light cavalry scouts
7,000 civilians
4 fishing boats
around 60% of officer corps
2 generals (unknown)

While fighting grips the front, people pour their determination and last obligations to the dead Emperor Maximus IX and build the construction projects he wanted to have built in these places.





Next time, on Rome: The Conquering Empire

The fight for the Netherlands heats up as contesting rivalries between the remaining Roman generals heats up, and tempers flare as heavy losses on both sides continue.

 

[clearmurky]

What will you do about the Ottomans?

 

[thecaesar]

That random picture of the Ottomans is a pretty awesome "declaring war on the dutch" picture.

 

[Tycho]

What will you do about the Ottomans?

Eliminate them in a massive blitz as soon as possible.

That random picture of the Ottomans is a pretty awesome "declaring war on the dutch" picture.

You mean the caravan picture? Why yes it is. I believe around that time the Ottomans and the Arabians were hitting each other rather hard.

 

[mayor]

According to history, the Dutch weren't much good in a war... However, they were very, VERY good at making/getting/saving money.

well... yeah... but..eehmm...shuh, wil you

but we are rather annoying to occupy well.. sort of... only if you try and limit our ways of making money

btw: we have won a few wars, though... we even managed to succesfully invade England (UK) (and yes I do know the whole story )

 

[Tycho]

well... yeah... but..eehmm...shuh, wil you

but we are rather annoying to occupy well.. sort of... only if you try and limit our ways of making money

btw: we have won a few wars, though... we even managed to succesfully invade England (UK) (and yes I do know the whole story )

Wasn't it also the Dutch that made themselves some sort of huge land fort through interlocking canals and channels to make themselves impervious to invasion from France and Germany during the 1700s?