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Magna Graecia: A City State Quest

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Night_stalker said:
OK, so that's out.

Shame, like the idea of a floating temple to the God of the Sea. Any ideas how we could do something like that?
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Maybe a shrine on a pier? We'd just need to find a way to defend it because leaving something like a temple to one of the big three....and the most temperamental of them, somewhere easily attacked and sacked seems like a PHENOMENALLY STUPID idea.
 
Why not just create a small artificial lake inland and build a Poseidon temple on a pier there... Far more defensible.
 
Why not do what the actual Greeks did and build him a grand temple on a hill or cliff overseeing the sea. A ship is a rather meager monument that is more likely to be viewed as an insult. Never mind that the sheer break from tradition will have some howling for blood.

Also its not as if he's just the patron god of the seas.

Having small shrine alcoves on ships should be fine though, at least after building a proper temple.
 
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gutza1 said:
Why not just create a small artificial lake inland and build a Poseidon temple on a pier there... Far more defensible.
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Even I know that's too difficult for us.

brian boru said:
Maybe a shrine on a pier? We'd just need to find a way to defend it because leaving something like a temple to one of the big three....and the most temperamental of them, somewhere easily attacked and sacked seems like a PHENOMENALLY STUPID idea.
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No offense, but if it's getting sacked, we're already under attack, sooo.....
 
After doing some re-reading, I think I've found a solution to our serf problems.

To make a short story even more brief, I think that another tour of the adriatic might be in order. It was mentioned back in (end of turn 15) that pirate activity was increasing and that there was some incursion that the Etruscans had to beat off. We should inquire as to how denuded the north Italian polities are in slaves. Or maybe the pirate situation has ramped up quicker. There's also the constant wars Carthage has with the numidians. Slaves should be cheap there as well.

Thoughts?
 
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We could put small shrines to Poseidon on the triremes that participated at Fifty Masts. They commemorate the battle, the ships that sent many Liburni to Poseidon's depths, and honor the Earthshaker for the good fortune and calm seas that allowed Eusebios to smash the Liburni fleet to flinders. Having them be too large and ornate would hinder the ships' function as warships. Having small shrines aboard would inspire the marines to greater feats, and they are already known by some in the mainland for their contributions against the Persians.
 
I'm still very disappointed that you didn't all vote for my entirely historically authentic public lands leased to Metic tenant farmers to give us a large base of skirmisher borderers to help keep the barbaroi serfs down.
 
It would have been nice to have a population and tradition for elite slingers, considering Balaeric and Rhodian slingers constituted elite mercenary/auxilia formations through and into the Roman Empire. Archery would also be nice, and the Cretans and I believe the Sardinians had a strong archery tradition. However, the types of bows and arrows would be a significant limitation, since those groups did not use composite, recurve or longbows, which historically have had the best field performance and against period-relevant infantry armor.
 
Hmm, in the next century the Gastraphetes will be invented, and seeing as Chinese armies were very successful for millennia in the back of crossbowmen...
Heron identifies the gastraphetes as the forerunner of the later catapult, which places its invention some unknown time prior to c. 420 BC
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So hoplite citizens, crossbowmen urbanite metics! What could go wrong?

(Yes I always want greeks with crossbows, shame West Eurasian crossbow technology makes field army using it not possible until Late Antiquity... But East Asians manage to solve the issue in around 600BC anyway! So.)

More realistically, wasn't Epulia famed for having great land for horse, or was it just Tarentines?
Cavalry is a great force multiplier, though pre-stirrup, infantry can dehorse them easily (as we did to the barbaroi time and time again), but acting in support with our better-than-average infantry... I don't think having Metics in outskirts of our territory to be wise though.
 
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Cetashwayo said:
To be honest, most Greeks would find Eretria at best unnerving and at worst an uncanny valley of Barbarians pretending to be citizen Greeks. In almost every way the city's attitude diverge from the rest of Greece, and it is only the relative lack of comprehensive communication between Eretria and the rest of the Greek World that has prevented an uproar. Athens is the baseline for Greek radicalism, and Eretria surpassed that from the very founding of the city; its political performances are performative, the theater's role is marginal, its rituals are far more ad-hoc and less ritualized than in the rest of the Greek World, its cult scene is violently sacrilegious.

As I spoke to @100thlurker last night, there is a possible anecdote that can help reveal things. A prominent Hellene merchant who arrives in Eretria is invited to the home of Drako. Already terribly frightened by what he sees as essentially a city of Barbarians pretending to be Greeks, with all these bizarre, almost Italic rituals and just looseness which he absolutely despises, he goes to the home of Drako. He is comforted by the Hellenic style of the villa, the good behavior of the women and the servants and the whole Oikos, and indeed the food is good. But then he sees Drako, and he is struck speechless. Rather than wearing the curly beard of Greekness, Drako is wearing a thick chin curtain, looking rather more like Honest Abe than Themistokles.

At this point the Hellene merchant is in a full state of shock. He is unable to enjoy his meal. Everything is precisely as he would expect it to be in a Hellene city, and yet in front of him, in front of his face, sits a man who talks like a Greek, walks like a Greek, is by every account a Greek, and yet he has a beard that is not only not Greek, but must have been concocted by some particularly mischievous god as a joke. This is all particularly bad because the Hellene is not able to simply dismiss the city as a failed experiment, as some kind of not normal thing that is absolutely wrong, but must conclude that from its many victories it must have some support from the Gods, which is beginning to cause a blood clot to form in his brain. Apopleptic and absolutely furious, he leaves the home of Drako abruptly, only to be greeted by a cavalryman just on his horse trundling through the city, with a wide-brimmed hat.

Convinced that this cavalryman is a Barbarian, he runs to the gathering assembly to warn them, only to be pushed aside by more cavalrymen, all dismounting off their horses, still wearing their wide-brimmed hats, and jostling through the crowd. At this point already hopelessly confused, the Hellene is on the verge of vomiting as he sees a group of men carry what appears to be a stone idol of a horse to the center of the assembly. One of the cavalrymen approaches the horse, gets on top of it, and begins to address the crowd in perfect traditional oratory. Convinced at this point that at some point during his journey he died, and this is simply an interlude before Hades, the Hellene passes out from heat stroke.

When he awakes, he is immediately accosted by a woman without a chaperone, who tells him that his fainting is blocking the view to the speaking of the representative of the metics in the middle of the crowd. Although near fainting again, he manages to get himself up before seeing an Illyrian-capped man. Realizing that he must be in the midst of some barbarian takeover, he immediately tackles the Illyrian and is promptly arrested by citizens, who throw him in the local jail. Upon asking to be tried by the Metic Court, his troubles only grow more when he is informed that no such thing exists and the Citizens of Eretria will be trying him. Desperately trying to escape, he manages to climb out of the jail and run to the harbour, where he is immediately greeted by another group of merchants. Hoping at least to speak to some members of his class, he is accosted by them for his poor manner and informed that they are all aristocrats that are discussing matters of much import, such as the Carthaginian exploits of their current leader. A leader which left the city voluntarily, worked for accursed Carthaginians, and then was welcome back into the city not only as a citizen but as their new temporary tyrant.

At this point it's too much. He manages to beg a local fisherman to take him to Kerkyra so that he can go back the rest of the way himself. The fisherman smiles and takes him, and it seems like normalcy has returned. However, when the fisherman bizarrely attempts to strike up conversation, the Hellene merchant is informed that he is actually a major captain of the Eretrian navy. The Hellene merchant throws himself over board and attempts to drown, hoping that Poseidon will rescue him from this never-ending nightmare.

When he wakes up he is in Kerkyra in the care of the locals. He asks about the fishermen and they tell him he has gone back to Eretria. Panic-stricken by the fact that this was not in fact a dream, he attempts to form a rational conclusion. After some thought, he decides that somewhere in between their flight from Old Eretria and their arrival in Epulia, the Eretrians mated with centaurs in Illyria and their evil spawn produced Eretria Eskhata. He vows never to go back again and returns to Athens a broken man.



It's not going to work, no. And I'm going to be pre-empting this kind of talk for the sequel, to be clear. You're not going to get everyone to be citizens :V
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Sir, you're a tease. An utter, utter tease. Can you please make this into a fully fledged story?

Please? :cry::cry::cry:

*Puppy Dog Eyes*
 
Ironanvil1 said:
I'm still very disappointed that you didn't all vote for my entirely historically authentic public lands leased to Metic tenant farmers to give us a large base of skirmisher borderers to help keep the barbaroi serfs down.
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It's funny since since that argument I've become far more open to the idea of land held in public trust in that sense and can't remember why I opposed it. Such is the passage of time: It defeats all arguments!

inawarminister said:
More realistically, wasn't Epulia famed for having great land for horse, or was it just Tarentines?
Cavalry is a great force multiplier, though pre-stirrup, infantry can dehorse them easily (as we did to the barbaroi time and time again), but acting in support with our better-than-average infantry... I don't think having Metics in outskirts of our territory to be wise though.
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Cavalry's weakness is more a social thing. Although it's certainly true that horses got larger and better to ride, it was more that the cultural importance of horses was not enough to utilize them as well as later. There was some metallurgy involved, certainly, but then you have Makedon's companion cavalry, which was the best in the world and would be for years to come.

I mean, notice, that the Parthians come onto the scene with excellent cavalry despite it being before the stirrup, and same thing with the Achaemenid Persians; the only reason they're not more visible is because the Persians were fighting in Greece, which beyond Thessaly is a terrible place for cavalry.

inawarminister said:
So hoplite citizens, crossbowmen urbanite metics! What could go wrong?
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Early crossbows were not as useful as you might think, and in general we need to think about crossbows in the context of them being a crutch for societies where archery is not taught from an early age. Countries with tradition of archery like Persia never used crossbows much, but the Greeks and Romans heavily supplanted crossbow auxiliaries with mechanical crossbows because they needed to.

AvidFicReader said:
It would have been nice to have a population and tradition for elite slingers, considering Balaeric and Rhodian slingers constituted elite mercenary/auxilia formations through and into the Roman Empire. Archery would also be nice, and the Cretans and I believe the Sardinians had a strong archery tradition. However, the types of bows and arrows would be a significant limitation, since those groups did not use composite, recurve or longbows, which historically have had the best field performance and against period-relevant infantry armor.
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We should be wary of technological explanations for the ability of x bow or not. A lot of it is very much based on later narrative and puffing up. For example, the reputation of the Balaerics and Rhodians for slingers, while certainly true, has been exaggerated by the fact that in the classical sources the only place where their martial prowess is mentioned is here (besides Rhodes which becomes a major state in the hellenistic period). Imagine if our only source on Late Medieval England was that it had good longbowmen; we must conclude that England was the best place in the world for archery and also that everyone hired archers from England, but this is not really true and while longbows were an impressive weapon, did not actually give England her ability to strike at France (that were her semi-professional armies and deep tax base).
 
Navarque said:
if you like that kind of thing look up the parentaxis tactic

it a formation that use both the hoplite and the archer whit a great effect ( a bit like we mix our cavalery whit our special unite)
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Hmm I'm actually using that very much in EB2.
phalangitai + "cretan archer" (the only archer that is good in Hellas) + mercenary hoplite = dead dead deader enemies.

Cetashwayo said:
Cavalry's weakness is more a social thing. Although it's certainly true that horses got larger and better to ride, it was more that the cultural importance of horses was not enough to utilize them as well as later. There was some metallurgy involved, certainly, but then you have Makedon's companion cavalry, which was the best in the world and would be for years to come.

I mean, notice, that the Parthians come onto the scene with excellent cavalry despite it being before the stirrup, and same thing with the Achaemenid Persians; the only reason they're not more visible is because the Persians were fighting in Greece, which beyond Thessaly is a terrible place for cavalry.
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Well you're right.
Even Numidians, completely unarmoured, manage to win the fame of Hannibal's cavalry contingent.
(So you say if we had some reforms, Eretria cavalry could sweep over all the land?)
edit: just re-read the thread and I think 1000thlurker has some great points for cavalry:
100thlurker said:
No. Stirrups make learning to ride a horse simpler, are of great aid to missile cavalry who use bows, and eases the general physical burden of horsemanship. It is not a critical factor, however. Some of the world's best cavalry never fought with a stirrup, and even in the Napoleonic wars there are frequent accounts of regiments caught by surprise while watering their horses or bivouacked who quickly remounted bareback (no stirrups, in other words) and put their enemy to rout. The implication of fighting without stirrups is not mentioned as impressive in and of itself, where stirrups are even mentioned, but as evidence of how disciplined and alert the troopers were. What makes or breaks cavalry as a battlefield fighting force is their daring confidence first, discipline second, horsemanship third, and the quality of their horses a distant fourth. Even then, many of these are unnecessary qualities for excellent light horsemen, who needs only pluck and horsemanship. Stirrups didn't become popular in Europe/the Middle East until the Avars arrived in the 6th century. There are several millenia of very impressive cavalry traditions across Europe and Asia before then. The arguments that stirrups are responsible for a "cavalry revolution" are largely tautological.
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Cetashwayo said:
Early crossbows were not as useful as you might think, and in general we need to think about crossbows in the context of them being a crutch for societies where archery is not taught from an early age. Countries with tradition of archery like Persia never used crossbows much, but the Greeks and Romans heavily supplanted crossbow auxiliaries with mechanical crossbows because they needed to.
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Don't forget when increased armour makes traditional self bow archery unviable (too much poundage), which is why Continental Europe changed to crossbows and arbalests en-masse in OTL 14th century or so.
Since Hellenes don't like archery at all, and our enemies will not field maille-armoured infantry until 2 or 3 centuries hence... Yeah.
 
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inawarminister said:
Hmm I'm actually using that very much in EB2.
phalangitai + "cretan archer" (the only archer that is good in Hellas) + mercenary hoplite = dead dead deader enemies.
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and now that we have created a "Navy school" it will be easy to train some archer, first as a naval troops then as a "normal unit"

and actualy some hellene are decent acher whir have very few source on the subject
but we now that they had no less 4 different style of shooting and had a good impact on the battefield like
in 479 BC at Plataea where they excel against the Persian cavalry ( at 300 vs 2500 {i am not sur about the number})
but yes their bow were shit
 
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