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Magna Graecia: Titanomachia (A City State Quest)

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Godwinson said:
Alright.
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To elaborate, Skantarios is aware that the barbaroi can be useful, and he doesn't mind the Peuketti or others who have submitted in a familial manner to Eretria (see the Peuketti-Messapi spat fifty pages ago) but he leans more towards the Antipatrid view than the Exoria. And he is definitely a Hellene.
 
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Satar said:
To elaborate, Skantarios is aware that the barbaroi can be useful, and he doesn't mind the Peuketti or others who have submitted in a familial manner to Eretria (see the Peuketti-Messapi spat fifty pages ago) but he leans more towards the Antipatrid view than the Exoria. And he is definitely a Hellene.
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Yeah, no, it being in character is a completely expectable sentiment, but you'd originally put down nothing to indicate it was in character, and had "tbh" in there, which strongly indicated it was, well, your sentiment. I went ahead and struck-through the statement in my post in light of the clarification and edits.
 
Godwinson said:
Yeah, no, it being in character is completely expected, but you'd originally put down nothing to indicate it was in character, and had "tbh" in there, which strongly indicated it was, well, your sentiment. I went ahead and struck-through the statement in my post in light of the clarification and edits.
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Perils of posting too quickly!
 
Regardless of whether it is in character or out of character let's try to keep these kinds of statements out of the game. As I told Bryanfan, I am well aware of the realities of the era but would prefer players specifically stray away from explicitly genocidal or bigoted rhetoric because it creates a poor thread atmosphere and can stop being roleplay very quickly.

It is far easier for me to handle it than players because I explicitly speak with multiple voices and am a narrator, not a character. To someone new to the thread, these kinds of statements can get uncomfortable fast. If you want to discuss it do it out of character with a neutral voice.
 
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Deadly Snark said:
Linos's position is a very just one. One that we inherently sympathize with. He is also very obviously being a manipulative politician. His dialogue was clearly designed to tap into Drako's words at the end of the Iapyian war. But where Drako was moved by sincere empathy. Linos was moved by both military reality and political acumen. Because while what Ireanos did was wrong, the propganda Campaign by Linos that forced him out hurts Eretria for the sake of his own glory. As it lost us the service of a proven general and all but assured Linos the complete control of the navy at a time period of titans clashing.

But the point is that Drakonid ads aside. There is a reason we were told the dialogue is going to be important. Not because of right or wrong but because it touches upon the deeply divisive founding of Eretria and the hypocrisy of our beliefs. Where Ireanos represents Herodion, Eusebios and Antipater in their adherence to the rule of blood. While Linos is the heir to Drako.

Exiling Ireanos is not only pointless and loses us a commander perhaps permanently it also misses the point. Exiling him won't make the seeds of philosophy grow. It will just exasperate the situation and create a divide.
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I agree with this analysis. Specifically, putting the just-war discussion aside, I'm dubious of Linos' ability to win a war without the support of more aggressive subcommanders. Every war he's been in, his strategy hasn't quite worked. In the Sallentine campaign he failed to bleed the enemy enough in a guerrilla campaign, and couldn't stop the war devolving into a straight-forward hoplite clash that we would've lost if not for a risky last-second trick. Likewise, in this campaign he managed to capture a few islands, but if Irenos hadn't managed to force the Liburni to sally, Linos could've been stalemated.

Next campaign, let's elect someone else to be strategos. We need to maintain a talented roster of good generals with diverse strengths.

Cetashwayo said:
Regardless of whether it is in character or out of character let's try to keep these kinds of statements out of the game. As I told Bryanfan, I am well aware of the realities of the era but would prefer players specifically stray away from explicitly genocidal or bigoted rhetoric because it creates a poor thread atmosphere and can stop being roleplay very quickly.

It is far easier for me to handle it than players because I explicitly speak with multiple voices and am a narrator, not a character. To someone new to the thread, these kinds of statements can get uncomfortable fast. If you want to discuss it do it out of character with a neutral voice.
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I hear and obey!
 
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Tally:
Adhoc vote count started by gutza1 on Jun 18, 2019 at 1:40 PM, finished with 376 posts and 67 votes.
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Satar said:
I agree with this analysis. Specifically, putting the just-war discussion aside, I'm dubious of Linos' ability to win a war without the support of more aggressive subcommanders. Every war he's been in, his strategy hasn't quite worked. In the Sallentine campaign he failed to bleed the enemy enough in a guerrilla campaign, and couldn't stop the war devolving into a straight-forward hoplite clash that we would've lost if not for a risky last-second trick. Likewise, in this campaign he managed to capture a few islands, but if Irenos hadn't managed to force the Liburni to sally, Linos could've been stalemated.

Next campaign, let's elect someone else to be strategos. We need to maintain a talented roster of good generals with diverse strengths.
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Yeah. Like Linos is a good commander don't get me wrong. But him taking the political opportunity to fuck over Ireanos, an aggressive commander who was instrumental in his victories seems shortsighted.

Sure. He has one less rival. But he also lost a proven veteran and talented officer. And due to the long period of peace, we do not have many of those.
 
Hmm. I have a question. How are the timeline's butterflies affecting mainland Greece? If they become serious enough, we could see Macedonia never conquering Greece, meaning that you have no Alexander the Great's conquests, meaning that the entire Hellenistic Period in the East never happens. That... changes the entire history of Eurasia, as it was Alexander's conquests that helped create the strong trade links of the Silk Roads.
 
gutza1 said:
Hmm. I have a question. How are the timeline's butterflies affecting mainland Greece? If they become serious enough, we could see Macedonia never conquering Greece, meaning that you have no Alexander the Great's conquests, meaning that the entire Hellenistic Period in the East never happens. That... changes the entire history of Eurasia, as it was Alexander's conquests that helped create the strong trade links of the Silk Roads.
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Fuck if we know. Right now we only have two prominent Athenians running around that didnt exist in OTL.

The son of Perikles who might become a major politician.

And the leader of Athens' cavalry who seems to be a dark mirror to Herodion and Eusebios. Naturally talented in one aspect of warfare and taking a dark joy in savaging his foes.

Alciabides' success in Sicily and our presence should negate the Sicilian expedition. But who knows.
 
Professor Vesca said:
That sounds like a terrible plan.

We dont know the territory of the campanian plain. We know the territory of the Oscans even less. You want to send our Kleos Exoria into unscouted territory on the far side of Italia and have them wander around hoping they run into villages and towns where the food is in a place that they can actually get to? You also want to hope that they are not pinned in a valley or canyon where the only way out for them is through the army that just bottled them up and is now advancing on their rear.

You don't know where the towns and villages are located, you don't know how and where they keep their food supplies, you don't know if the food supplies is in a form that can actually be used by the cavalry, you don't know the terrain and where the passes are or where an Oscan force can get behind us and trap us. You have no way of actually getting the cavalry back once you send them off because you would need them to return to a pickup point at a specific time and place. You would also need them to not be chased around by an army at that point so that we actually have time to load the horses and men onto our ships and not be swarmed by people on the beach.
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We know Campania via Kymai and the other Greeks who live there, and can get better information over the course of the year we spend sorting out the Dauni. Samnium we don't know as well, but between the Dauni and Peuketii we should at least be able to get a basic idea of the terrain, and that's assuming we don't send in any scouts ahead of the expedition; Dauni "fleeing the Eretrian takeover" would be a good way to slip a few spies into Samnium who can get the lay of the land for us.

The food is going to be in one of three places: in the fields and orchards, in the flocks and herds, and in the towns. The first two are what we're targeting; the last we only go for if the towns either have no walls or can be taken by coup de main before the gates are shut, and if we'd have to siege them down we just bypass them and move on. Our horses, meanwhile, can graze locally, since we're not staying in any one spot for an extended period; if the foraging goes particularly well, we can supplement that with grain and produce taken from the Samnites.

Furthermore, since these are cavalry we're talking about, we can maneuver freely around pretty much anything that shows up and keep going. Ambushes are much harder to blunder into when your entire force is effectively composed of scouts and you can simply wheel around and leave if you see enemies that you can't beat without excessive losses or that form obvious bait for a trap.

Towns and villages can be located partly by sending in scouts before the actual campaign, and partly by following local water sources. Given that the Samnites are currently sending their youth off to invade the neighbors rather than setting down new villages in their own territory, however, I expect that most if not all of the decent agricultural land in Samnium is already in use and therefore there aren't going to be many true wild lands left in any place that isn't too rugged for cavalry; I therefore don't see it as likely that we'll end up wandering around lost in the wilderness until we starve.

Also, we'd be bringing along more than just the Kleos Exoria. This isn't a "fifty guys against all of Samnium" plan, this is a "let's gather up our cavalry, the cavalry of our allies, and as many Italiote cavalry as want to come and go on a good old-fashioned chevauchee" plan.

And as far as where we go to pick them up? Kymai. If that isn't viable on account of the city having fallen, the cavalry can just head south roughly parallel to the coast until they reach Hyele, continuing to maraud until they reach Greek territory. At that point we can pick them up pretty much wherever.

So while it's not the most simple plan, I think you're vastly overstating the actual risk to us. This isn't actually the Second Samnite War and we're not the Romans being lured into the Caudine Forks by a putative immediate threat to a local ally we don't have. It's a large-scale raid intended to disrupt the siege of Kymai for long enough to finish evacuating the city. We show up in a place, we loot it of everything that won't take a siege or a hard fight to grab, we move on; lather, rinse, repeat until we're in Campania and we can start augmenting this with deliberately picking off any Oscan detachments small enough and isolated enough that we can smash them with minimal effort and be gone before help arrives. And if this forces the Oscans to concentrate their forces it makes our job easier, because that means they'll have even more trouble keeping themselves fed, they won't be able to maintain as thorough a siege, and our raiders will have an easier time avoiding any attempts to catch them.

Professor Vesca said:
I think Pharos is just better placed for long term growth, while Issas is limited by the aerable land on the island. Issas is also in less danger from local Liburni.
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gutza1 said:
Pharos has better potential to grow as a city.
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Pharos's usefulness will be superseded the instant we colonize Salona, which is a) a better harbor and b) will have a much easier time connecting to inland trade routes by virtue of being on the mainland. Issa will remain useful until it becomes possible to cross the Adriatic in a single day, which is centuries into the future of the quest.
 
Orisha91 said:
That makes Romans more boring though.
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Nah. It's actually really interesting how little Romans looked towards crafting divine mythologies. Their mythology basically extends to the founding of the city, be it under Aenas or Remus and Romulus. Which is remarkably telling, that Rome itself was not only the center of religion, but also literally the center of religion.
 
Ironanvil1 said:
@The Sandman, venturing deep into the interior to chase Samnites is a very, very bad idea.
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It is if we're trying to take and hold territory, which is what the Romans were doing. And if we were doing this about a century from now, after the Samnites have gotten quite a bit more experience at warfare beyond the level of "throw a few thousand young men at it to see what they can grab".

But this isn't a century from now, and I'm not suggesting we take and hold territory. It's just a cavalry raid through the part of Samnite territory between us and Campania, after which we start raiding and harassing the Oscans in Campania until it fucks up their present siege of Kymai and we can extract them via the port there. If Kymai falls before that happens, our cavalry heads south along the coast to Greek territory where we can pick them up.

We aren't going deep into Samnium, because the point is to just do as much damage as possible while traveling between Dauni territory and Campania.
 
Professor Vesca said:
I think Pharos is just better placed for long term growth, while Issas is limited by the aerable land on the island. Issas is also in less danger from local Liburni.
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Leukos:

"Moreover, perhaps it is best if the greater, and therefore stronger, settlement is in the place more likely to be attacked by the barbarians. If 600 Epulians and 600 Lycenes* settle Pharos, then with their numbers they may hope to quickly erect a palisade for their defense against raiding, and by strength of arms deter any but the most reckless assaults. Until some chieftain among the Liburnii rallies their entire people for war against us, Pharos will be, if not safe, at least a hard shell for the Liburnii claws to crack. And Issa, a more distant target, will draw less of their eye.

But if 400 Epulians and 200 Lycenes settle Pharos, while the rest go to Issa, all is very different. Issa may then sit safe, doubly guarded by the number of its people and the breadth of the sea between them and the barbarians. But in the minds of the Liburnii, Pharos will be both easier to strike, and the weaker of the two towns. The Liburnii may dare much more against six hundred Hellenes than they would against twice that number.

Though not all the strength of a polis lies in the number of its men, much does. Perhaps we should ensure that the polis most likely to be threatened by the barbarians will be the greater of the two, more able to withstand attack, and not the lesser.

Some may say that if there is some disaster at Pharos, this will double the number of the dead.

[makes a gesture to avert the evil omen]

But I reject such grim thinking! Any act of men can be fended off by the strength of men. The Liburnii, being wounded in war, will take time to recover and muster a great attack, even upon Pharos, let alone Issa. We have only to fear the actions of a few of them at a time, or of the many in years to come when many colonists have gone to Pharos to strengthen it further.

Until then, against the acts of a ship or two full of Liburnii malcontents, the twelve hundred will be safer than the six hundred!"
______________________

*(Lykai-ans? I dunno...)
 
The Sandman said:
It is if we're trying to take and hold territory, which is what the Romans were doing. And if we were doing this about a century from now, after the Samnites have gotten quite a bit more experience at warfare beyond the level of "throw a few thousand young men at it to see what they can grab".

But this isn't a century from now, and I'm not suggesting we take and hold territory. It's just a cavalry raid through the part of Samnite territory between us and Campania, after which we start raiding and harassing the Oscans in Campania until it fucks up their present siege of Kymai and we can extract them via the port there. If Kymai falls before that happens, our cavalry heads south along the coast to Greek territory where we can pick them up.

We aren't going deep into Samnium, because the point is to just do as much damage as possible while traveling between Dauni territory and Campania.
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That sounds like a great way to lose our cavalry.
 
If you're wondering, I got that prediction from the excellent The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan, which explains the impact that Alexander's conquests had on Eurasia.
 
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