Magna Graecia: Titanomachia (A City State Quest)
- Thread starter Cetashwayo
- Start date
- Original Alt. History
-
- Tags
- ancient greece alternate history empire builder civ quest democracy gods save us granary management hubris it's an eretrian thing. let lose the weasels of war lithocracy lithocracy is my fetish maximum hellene my big fat greek divine wedding this granary aint gonna fill itself cetash unwinnable
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
Thurii has a navy as well as an army, and if you are able to negotiate with Metapontion they'll be able to come through.
- Location
- Southern Virginia
Well if we'd already had the Metapontine alliance it wouldn't be an issue. That said Eretria decisively beating Taras for hegemony is probably no more desirable for Metapontion than the reverse.
- Location
- Meycauayan, Bulacan, Philippines
@Cetashwayo...how good is the chance that we can attract SCYTHIAN metics, solely for their experience in horse archery and at least teaching our cavalry Scythian tricks...if we tried to advertise in Greek colonized Crimea? Or Thracian metics if the Thracian descended citizens of Eretria started using any old connection they have with Thrace?
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Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
Given that the Crimea is one of the most prosperous parts of the wider Greek world, with vast open fields devoted to farming grain to send to the mainland, I'm not sure why it would be a great place to get Metics from. The same with Thrace; none of your citizens have "old connections" in Thrace, almost all the Thracian-descended Eretrians were slaves, which means they lost their connections, and many of them would like to keep it that way; they do not treasure their old homeland but use their "elevation" from it as an example of just how Hellene they are.
[X] [Insurance] Allow the Shrine of Ploutos to handle merchant insurance with state support [-20 talent one-time fee to Shrine of Ploutos].
[X] [Tribute] Talents. Better to receive coin and kind from the Peuketii in order to help fund the city's ventures [Peuketii tribute increases to 13.1 talents per turn].
[X] [Collection] Have them come to us. We can maintain a bond of trust with the tributaries without impinging in their private affairs and expand the festival of tribute to build fraternal feeling. [-2 public subsidy upkeep per year].
[X] [League] Let us listen to the concerns of our Hellene allies [League Synedrion will be called next year].
[X] [Alliance] Better to conclude secret treaties with some cities without raising the specter of war with Taras.
[X] [King] Better to keep the Confederacy weak and potentially reliant on Eretrian direction.
[X] [Tribute] Talents. Better to receive coin and kind from the Peuketii in order to help fund the city's ventures [Peuketii tribute increases to 13.1 talents per turn].
[X] [Collection] Have them come to us. We can maintain a bond of trust with the tributaries without impinging in their private affairs and expand the festival of tribute to build fraternal feeling. [-2 public subsidy upkeep per year].
[X] [League] Let us listen to the concerns of our Hellene allies [League Synedrion will be called next year].
[X] [Alliance] Better to conclude secret treaties with some cities without raising the specter of war with Taras.
[X] [King] Better to keep the Confederacy weak and potentially reliant on Eretrian direction.
- Location
- Meycauayan, Bulacan, Philippines
Do you mean "Almost all the Thracians who became Eretrian citizens during the Landing were slaves, so the second generation Thracian Eretrians never had that connection"? as opposed to "almost all the Thracian-descended Eretrians were slaves"? The grammar confused me.
And I see. Hmm, that's a shame.
...how does the Peuketii peltast compare to the Thracian peltast in quality? Or is it negligible?
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Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
The former.
- Location
- Meycauayan, Bulacan, Philippines
So that means simple hiring of mercenary...drill instructor is impossible?
A Scythian horse man or a Thracian peltast to give our forces training in Scythian and Thracian skirmishing and cavalry tactics??
- Location
- Hell
I on the other hand see.the question as moot. I find it more likely that we get in a fight with all three of them at one time or another. We are all still Greek, our circles of influence clash, and we like to stick our nose in
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
Yes, it is impossible.
- Location
- Luton Airport
That's somewhat anachronistic. Just the idea of formal training itself, for your own typical way of war, is rather unusual to the Hellenes, so the idea of trying to systematically learn someone else's methods would be quite odd to most of them.
- Location
- Meycauayan, Bulacan, Philippines
Wait, wait, wait.
What?
The Ancient Greeks didn't have formal training in how to war Greek style? The same Ancient Greeks who created and used hoplite warfare?
So hoplite formations are 'monkey see, monkey do' affairs where new hoplites just copy what the older ones do?
...if we get some formal training set up...accidental largest hoplite formation trained pool of men by a single city in this setting without any mercenary padding?
Formal "training" in this context is kind of a tricky one because in pre-modern warfare a lot of what counts is being able to move in concert with your fellows and not lose nerve. Hoplites were often proudly untrained, because they were proud of their status as a citizen militia loyal to their polis alone, able to be used only for a specific objective vital to the polis. Professional armies were often (correctly) associated with mercenaries, and the tyrants who levied immense extractative taxes to support professional armies loyal only to them and coin.
However "untrained" here has a lot of connotations to us, as moderns, that essentially come from gunpoweder warfare in Europe and her colonies in the 17th-19th centuries; as this is where most of our base-level cultural ideas of fighting originate from. We imagine a rabble armed with ramshackle weapons either charging or firing too early or breaking at the first whiff of gunsmoke. It wasn't necessarily like that in the pre-modern world.
Festivals, for example, where all the men of certain ages have certain roles in the processions and dances? Are effectively training on how to move in concert and under adrenaline with the same men you will be fighting with in warfare. Almost all forms of games are also training for warfare in some respect; the marathon performed in hoplite panoply, wrestling for obvious reasons, javelin throwing, and so on. Most of the "leisure" activities of men of all social classes would have some aplicability to warfare, not through some deliberate design but because war was (male) society, and when the Greeks went to war, (male) society went to war.
This is why the Spartan men were famous throughout Greece for their music and dancing. Because this trains the kind of group coordination to move together in battle, and respond to musical cues from your unit's musicians. It is notable that as time went on, you do see some cities start to develop a more "professional" military ethos, Thebes for instance innovated a lot in this area. But it is a very evolutionary and messy process, most of the time.
In general, with any kind of pre-modern society, warfare and traditions around it are a hugely organic thing, and things don't tend to have just one purpose; there are about twelve purposes.
However "untrained" here has a lot of connotations to us, as moderns, that essentially come from gunpoweder warfare in Europe and her colonies in the 17th-19th centuries; as this is where most of our base-level cultural ideas of fighting originate from. We imagine a rabble armed with ramshackle weapons either charging or firing too early or breaking at the first whiff of gunsmoke. It wasn't necessarily like that in the pre-modern world.
Festivals, for example, where all the men of certain ages have certain roles in the processions and dances? Are effectively training on how to move in concert and under adrenaline with the same men you will be fighting with in warfare. Almost all forms of games are also training for warfare in some respect; the marathon performed in hoplite panoply, wrestling for obvious reasons, javelin throwing, and so on. Most of the "leisure" activities of men of all social classes would have some aplicability to warfare, not through some deliberate design but because war was (male) society, and when the Greeks went to war, (male) society went to war.
This is why the Spartan men were famous throughout Greece for their music and dancing. Because this trains the kind of group coordination to move together in battle, and respond to musical cues from your unit's musicians. It is notable that as time went on, you do see some cities start to develop a more "professional" military ethos, Thebes for instance innovated a lot in this area. But it is a very evolutionary and messy process, most of the time.
In general, with any kind of pre-modern society, warfare and traditions around it are a hugely organic thing, and things don't tend to have just one purpose; there are about twelve purposes.
[X] [Insurance] Allow the Shrine of Ploutos to handle merchant insurance with state support [-20 talent one-time fee to Shrine of Ploutos].
[X] [Tribute] Levies. More Peuketii allies in the cavalry and light infantry will serve to augment's the city's armies [+2.5% levy from the Peuketii, +654 Levies].
[X] [Collection] Have them come to us. We can maintain a bond of trust with the tributaries without impinging in their private affairs and expand the festival of tribute to build fraternal feeling. [-2 public subsidy upkeep per year].
[X] [League] We have already conceded much to the Metics. The league can afford to wait a few years [Special League policies in 349 OL election platforms].
Abstaining from the Messapii decision because I'm very uncertain about the right decision and it doesn't matter much at this point where my vote goes.
[X] [Tribute] Levies. More Peuketii allies in the cavalry and light infantry will serve to augment's the city's armies [+2.5% levy from the Peuketii, +654 Levies].
[X] [Collection] Have them come to us. We can maintain a bond of trust with the tributaries without impinging in their private affairs and expand the festival of tribute to build fraternal feeling. [-2 public subsidy upkeep per year].
[X] [League] We have already conceded much to the Metics. The league can afford to wait a few years [Special League policies in 349 OL election platforms].
Abstaining from the Messapii decision because I'm very uncertain about the right decision and it doesn't matter much at this point where my vote goes.
[X] [Insurance] Allow the Shrine of Ploutos to handle merchant insurance with state support [-20 talent one-time fee to Shrine of Ploutos].
[X] [Tribute] Levies. More Peuketii allies in the cavalry and light infantry will serve to augment's the city's armies [+2.5% levy from the Peuketii, +654 Levies].
[X] [Collection] Have them come to us. We can maintain a bond of trust with the tributaries without impinging in their private affairs and expand the festival of tribute to build fraternal feeling. [-2 public subsidy upkeep per year].
[X] [League] Let us listen to the concerns of our Hellene allies [League Synedrion will be called next year].
[X] [Alliance] Better to conclude secret treaties with some cities without raising the specter of war with Taras.
[X] [King] Better to keep the Confederacy weak and potentially reliant on Eretrian direction.
[X] [Tribute] Levies. More Peuketii allies in the cavalry and light infantry will serve to augment's the city's armies [+2.5% levy from the Peuketii, +654 Levies].
[X] [Collection] Have them come to us. We can maintain a bond of trust with the tributaries without impinging in their private affairs and expand the festival of tribute to build fraternal feeling. [-2 public subsidy upkeep per year].
[X] [League] Let us listen to the concerns of our Hellene allies [League Synedrion will be called next year].
[X] [Alliance] Better to conclude secret treaties with some cities without raising the specter of war with Taras.
[X] [King] Better to keep the Confederacy weak and potentially reliant on Eretrian direction.
Last edited:
ConfusedCanuck
Where did it all go wrong?
- Location
- Neverland
[X] [Insurance] Set large limitations on state insurance and have merchants pay a fee for insurance. [-2 public upkeep per turn]
[X] [Tribute] Talents. Better to receive coin and kind from the Peuketii in order to help fund the city's ventures [Peuketii tribute increases to 13.1 talents per turn].
[X] [Collection] Have them come to us. We can maintain a bond of trust with the tributaries without impinging in their private affairs and expand the festival of tribute to build fraternal feeling. [-2 public subsidy upkeep per year].
[X] [League] We have already conceded much to the Metics. The league can afford to wait a few years [Special League policies in 349 OL election platforms].
[X] [Alliance] Accept a full defensive alliance with the Messapii Confederacy.
[X] [King] Better to keep the Confederacy weak and potentially reliant on Eretrian direction.
[X] [Tribute] Talents. Better to receive coin and kind from the Peuketii in order to help fund the city's ventures [Peuketii tribute increases to 13.1 talents per turn].
[X] [Collection] Have them come to us. We can maintain a bond of trust with the tributaries without impinging in their private affairs and expand the festival of tribute to build fraternal feeling. [-2 public subsidy upkeep per year].
[X] [League] We have already conceded much to the Metics. The league can afford to wait a few years [Special League policies in 349 OL election platforms].
[X] [Alliance] Accept a full defensive alliance with the Messapii Confederacy.
[X] [King] Better to keep the Confederacy weak and potentially reliant on Eretrian direction.
- Location
- Luton Airport
Which makes stripping out the "military training" of another culture as a discrete thing near-impossible - to "train" like them, you have to live like them.
Yes, this is probably particularly true for a society of nomadic pastoralists like the Sycthians or other steppe cultures. There is a reason why the phrase "born in the saddle" exists, after all. Even for a more sedentary culture like Thrace, a lot of their "way of war" is probably taught in stuff like cattle raids against neighboring tribes, and games played by young men. Rather difficult to transport across cultural divides and geography.
If we were serious about trying to learn a barbaroi way of war, a route forward might be more cultural exchanges like the one between Memnon and King Gorgos. Have some of our young men from influential families spend time socialising with Pueketii young nobles on things like hunts, and perhaps even cattle raids. Eretria is remarkably open society, by the standards of a Greek poleis, and I imagine that the Demos Exoria in particular might push forward things like this.
If we were serious about trying to learn a barbaroi way of war, a route forward might be more cultural exchanges like the one between Memnon and King Gorgos. Have some of our young men from influential families spend time socialising with Pueketii young nobles on things like hunts, and perhaps even cattle raids. Eretria is remarkably open society, by the standards of a Greek poleis, and I imagine that the Demos Exoria in particular might push forward things like this.
- Location
- Luton Airport
One of the things I'd been assuming the Sideros clan had engaged in in the background was becoming guest-friends with some of the Canosan iron magnates and similar. I'd expect that sort of thing would increase as the Peuketti become increasingly Hellenised.
War among Ancient Greeks & Battle Mechanics
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
War among Ancient Greeks
I think that this is a good time to address how war worked among the Ancient Greeks, really worked, and the difficulties of fighting as a polis. It will better inform both the decision to go to war or not here, and military options in the future, as a polis. It can also serve as an educational primer on why things are the way they are, and why reforms or innovation are difficult. What I do not want to do is constantly be telling people no in a way that is not satisfactory. I would want my answers as to why something is not possible to be as comprehensible as why something is possible.
The first principle of Hellene Warfare in the classical period is that war is the province of male society. Male society is centered around the achievement of glory, wealth, and recognition, and all three are delivered in spades by war. Since war is the province of male society, in order to change how warfare is conducted, the society must be changed. The levies which Eretria Eskhata draws on are not from professional cavalry or professional infantry, but from smallholding farmers and large estate-owners. In a time where providing equipment to citizen-soldiers is very expensive when you already have to supply them and pay them campaign salaries (with campaign salaries being a recent innovation), the citizen-soldier provides their own equipment, their own horses. This also means that training for wartime is reflected through festivals; the Spartans were renowned as dancers in Hellas, but that is not just because they like dancing. The coordination required for dancing to a tune is also the coordination required for marching to a tune. Once again, the society and the military are one, and so the society provides the basis of battlefield training. This is why steppe nomads are horse archers; the skills they use for horse archery are used every single day.
The second principle of Hellene Warfare is that cities are small. Many poleis have a few hundred citizens or less. There are only a few dozen poleis which have enough people to gain real power in the Mediterranean, and maintaining this manpower is essential for their success. If warfare is the province of male society, then loss in warfare is a loss to the entire society. In 494 BCE Sparta defeated Argos. Why was this defeat permanent, ending Argos' ability to contest Sparta for the Peloponnese? It was permanent because Argos lost 6,000 men. 6,000 members of its citizenry, 6,000 fathers, 6,000 sons and husbands and workers and tax-payers. The depth of this catastrophe preventing Argos from challenging Sparta again until 421 BCE, when it built a coalition with Athenai and other Peloponnesian states to overthrow Spartiate hegemony. What this means is that cities cannot absorb losses for very long. Wars either drag out without much happening for long periods of time, or are ended in massive battles that destroy the lives of an entire generation on one side or the other. From this we are better able to understand Rome's success; here too was a citizen militia, but a citizen militia that by the time of the punic wars could call on an effective manpower of 750,000 Romans and Allies. This was so far beyond the scope of any other Mediterranean power that Rome's success can become obvious in hindsight, but even this massive reserve has limits, and the Second Punic War wreaked havoc on Roman society by killing so many men.
The third principle of Hellene Warfare is that it is bloody. We have been told by some historians that battles had casualty rates of anywhere between 5-10% for the victor and 10-20% for the loser. That does not seem like much to us at first. But once we begin to think about what that adds up to over time, we begin to realize the real weight of battle. Those are 5-10% of your men you will never get back. Those men could have been merchants, fathers, statesmen, heroes, speakers, but they are dead. And if you are the loser, casualty rates can go even higher, especially if you do not have a cavalry or infantry screen to protect you. Contrary to some arguments, the Hellenes took great pleasure in slaughtering the enemy when they began to flee. Xenophon called it one of the greatest pleasures of battle. The Polis is therefore perilously fragile; a single battle, if it is spectacularly unlucky, can undo decades of work. War is a high-stakes battle where states put their entire society on the line. Do not expect to leave even victorious battles unscathed.
All of this amounts to the final principle of Hellene Warfare, which is to protect your own citizens and slaughter those of the enemy. This is not the same thing as winning a battle; the main goal of the main portion of the battle, the push and pull of the phalanx, is to achieve that decisive break. Once the enemy is broken, the slaughter begins, and this is where there is a massive free-for-all in which men have their throats cut begging for mercy or are led into traps and cut down until the ground is sticky with blood. The goal of warfare is not just to achieve some strategic goal, or to win territory, but to make it so that the enemy cannot threaten you or your people ever again. If that means ensuring that you have created a desert called peace, so be it. It also means that innovation in warfare is discouraged in good reason; a bad innovation, or a foolish trick, can cost you everything.
The inclusion of sacred or elite units somewhat changes this calculus, but also creates new risks. The hieros ekdromoi and Kleos Exoria are capable of manuevers, formations, and feats that other units are not, but they are also priceless. You cannot continually replace the best of your men; eventually you will run out of best men, and the city's elite units will become a shadow of their former selves. In a crisis or a total rout, furthermore, the enemy may particularly target your elite units, with the intention of breaking the spirit of your entire city. At the battle of Chaeronea Alexander attacked the Sacred Band of Thebai, the heroic and famed elite unit of the Thebans, and slaughtered them down to a man. If the city were to replace the Kleos Exoria and hieros ekdromoi with new men, the institutions might remain, but it will take years to get them back to the same level of ability as they once had.
What this Means for Game Mechanics
All of this is to say that in the past, Eretria has faced relatively easy odds. Even when it has not triumphed, there has been little mechanical impact beyond political chaos or humiliation. Now, things are far different. You can expect that a single victory in battle against the enemy could secure you hegemony. You can also expect, however, that losses will hit hard. Eretria has one of the largest reserves of freemen in the Greek World, but even it is not limitless in its capacity, and throwing away the lives of both your own citizens and those of your allies will eventually empty your city and leave it recovering for a generation. When confronting enemies of near-equal strength, or greater strength, it must always be approached with a sense of caution and awareness that there will be few second chances. Every war, every battle, has the potential for catastrophe. It is strategy that prevents you from getting into a situation where you face a rout, and tactics that can rescue you from a bad numerical or geographical position.
With that in mind, warfare will work like so. First, players will select from a number of strategoi. All of these men have been serving with the city's council of generals for years, and can be trusted to be experienced in theory, though the years of peace means there are few among them who are true veterans. The strategoi will have their character statistics displayed, as well as their general plans to the assembly on how they seek to win a war. The assembly will elect that strategos that they feel has the best plan and the ability to enact it. The lead strategos will then be in charge of composing armies, leading them, and appointing from the other strategoi naval fleets or secondary armies. They will have overall command of the strategic vision of the city until such time that they are victorious, killed in battle, or recalled by the city due to some failure.
Battle will be composed of four phases, whose success is defined by rolls and modifiers. Modifiers will be extremely powerful, representing that although there is an element of chance in all battles, there are also fundamental realities of numbers or ability that moderate the randomness of fortune. There is the strategic phase. In this phase, armies will attempt to find a position advantageous to them and disadvantageous to the enemy. Light infantry, including both psilloi and allied skirmishers, as well as cavalry, are essential for this phase. Having superior cavalry and skirmishers in both numbers and skill will significantly improve the chance that you do well in this phase, placing you in a better position at the battle's start. Generals with some experience with skirmishing or the cavalry will help. Having a good position will give you permanent modifiers for the rest of the battle. There is one roll here with dependent modifiers.
Next is the skirmishing phase. In this phase, both armies' skirmishers and cavalry will attempt to drive the others from the field. Once again, this is where cavalry and skirmishers are king. Herodion the One-Eye was always best-known as a cavalry commander than as a leader of infantry, and his ability to win success in this phase was always unparalleled. The advantage of winning in this phase are three-fold. First, cavalry and skirmishers that are successful in this phase could flank the enemy, devastating their morale and cohesion. Second, if you win the battle, your cavalry and skirmishers have stripped away theirs and are able to slaughter their infantry with impunity, leading to massive casualties for the enemy forces that they might not recover from. Finally, if you lose the battle, your cavalry and skirmishers can screen and protect your infantry and reduce the number of casualties you take, allowing you to live to fight another day. There is one roll here with dependent modifiers.
Next is the collision phase. The main determinants of this phase are the quality, formation, and numbers of infantry on both sides. The majority of your citizens on the field of battle will be participating in this phase, colliding with the enemy in a phalanx pushing match that could determine the course of the battle. This phase ends when one side or the other routs, breaking; it is during a rout that most of the casualties occur, as men are stabbed in the back or as they try to strip off their armor and flee. In a hoplite battle, the best fighters are concentrated on the right flank, with the very edge of the right flank as the most honorable position due to its exposure. Maintaining cohesion on both flanks is important, and so there will be two rolls, one for the left flank and one for the right, with the right more likely to be broken and the left more likely to break through against the enemy. Then there will be a final roll, modified by the state of the two flanks, to determine whether you are successful in the collision phase.
Finally, there is the rout phase. This is the phase in which the true consequences of a battle will be played out, because once the enemy is broken your forces will begin to chase after them, and vice versa. If you are winning, your goal here is to leverage all of your success from prior phases (a good position, victory in skirmishing, victory in collision) in order to inflict as much slaughter and damage on the enemy as possible to ensure that this battle will be their last, and force them to make a crushing peace. If you are losing, your goal is to leverage any success in prior phases in order to protect and rescue as many of your citizens as possible from the impending slaughter. Doing so successfully here can be the difference between fighting another day and a humiliating peace. There is one roll here, dependent on modifiers from previous phases.
As you can tell, modifiers will begin to stack throughout a battle; winning each phase will make success in the next phase easier, until finally in the rout phase the only determinant is just how badly you inflict damage on the enemy. In the same way, losing each phase in succession will make things worse and worse and finally lead to a loss you cannot recover from. However, unless you are fighting truly powerful or impossible enemies, the reality is likely to fall somewhere in the middle, and Eretria Eskhata starts with several advantages over its neighbors, such as its loyal barbarian allies and its elite units which few in Italy or Sicily have yet emulated. But in the end it is Fortune and Victory who decide the outcome of war, and whether the city will see a triumphant return of its men or no return at all.
Examples of Modifiers
I won't spell out every single modifier involved in a battle, because although it isn't that complicated I don't want to show all of my cards and make people think too mechanically about battles. That being said, there are a few modifiers which are fairly obvious, and are dependent on a comparison to the enemy:
Naval battles have similar rules but only three phases: Strategic phase, collision, and rout, with the strategic phase and collision being the most important. It is much easier for enemy fleets to withdraw from battle, so most casualties are concentrated during collision and the subsequent washing up of sailors on shore, and the strategic phase is far more important. Skill and quality of your fleets, as well as positioning, also matters far more than numbers in a naval battle.
The overall goal of this system is to still have the visceral and terrifying feeling that battles often had when the game first started without involving citizens in every aspect of the battle. There is a great deal of fear involved, because you are ultimately trusting an NPC to conduct your battle for you, but at the same time this is also where all the advantages, good (and bad) choices, and efforts of the players finally come to fruition through the modifiers. It makes for a terrifying ride, but it can also be a more satisfying one than the choice I had made after I realized battles were too much effort to do with maps and voted-upon-phases, when battles were merely described with some off-screen rolls. Here, players will be able to see the step-by-step of the battle unfolding (though doing visuals would be too crazy) and follow the army as it fights towards victory or defeat.
There will usually be only a single battle in a year, merely because that is what most poleis can endure at this stage, and sometimes a single land or naval battle can win the entire war.
In the end, all of this may be summed up as:
Have fun and try not to die!
I think that this is a good time to address how war worked among the Ancient Greeks, really worked, and the difficulties of fighting as a polis. It will better inform both the decision to go to war or not here, and military options in the future, as a polis. It can also serve as an educational primer on why things are the way they are, and why reforms or innovation are difficult. What I do not want to do is constantly be telling people no in a way that is not satisfactory. I would want my answers as to why something is not possible to be as comprehensible as why something is possible.
The first principle of Hellene Warfare in the classical period is that war is the province of male society. Male society is centered around the achievement of glory, wealth, and recognition, and all three are delivered in spades by war. Since war is the province of male society, in order to change how warfare is conducted, the society must be changed. The levies which Eretria Eskhata draws on are not from professional cavalry or professional infantry, but from smallholding farmers and large estate-owners. In a time where providing equipment to citizen-soldiers is very expensive when you already have to supply them and pay them campaign salaries (with campaign salaries being a recent innovation), the citizen-soldier provides their own equipment, their own horses. This also means that training for wartime is reflected through festivals; the Spartans were renowned as dancers in Hellas, but that is not just because they like dancing. The coordination required for dancing to a tune is also the coordination required for marching to a tune. Once again, the society and the military are one, and so the society provides the basis of battlefield training. This is why steppe nomads are horse archers; the skills they use for horse archery are used every single day.
The second principle of Hellene Warfare is that cities are small. Many poleis have a few hundred citizens or less. There are only a few dozen poleis which have enough people to gain real power in the Mediterranean, and maintaining this manpower is essential for their success. If warfare is the province of male society, then loss in warfare is a loss to the entire society. In 494 BCE Sparta defeated Argos. Why was this defeat permanent, ending Argos' ability to contest Sparta for the Peloponnese? It was permanent because Argos lost 6,000 men. 6,000 members of its citizenry, 6,000 fathers, 6,000 sons and husbands and workers and tax-payers. The depth of this catastrophe preventing Argos from challenging Sparta again until 421 BCE, when it built a coalition with Athenai and other Peloponnesian states to overthrow Spartiate hegemony. What this means is that cities cannot absorb losses for very long. Wars either drag out without much happening for long periods of time, or are ended in massive battles that destroy the lives of an entire generation on one side or the other. From this we are better able to understand Rome's success; here too was a citizen militia, but a citizen militia that by the time of the punic wars could call on an effective manpower of 750,000 Romans and Allies. This was so far beyond the scope of any other Mediterranean power that Rome's success can become obvious in hindsight, but even this massive reserve has limits, and the Second Punic War wreaked havoc on Roman society by killing so many men.
The third principle of Hellene Warfare is that it is bloody. We have been told by some historians that battles had casualty rates of anywhere between 5-10% for the victor and 10-20% for the loser. That does not seem like much to us at first. But once we begin to think about what that adds up to over time, we begin to realize the real weight of battle. Those are 5-10% of your men you will never get back. Those men could have been merchants, fathers, statesmen, heroes, speakers, but they are dead. And if you are the loser, casualty rates can go even higher, especially if you do not have a cavalry or infantry screen to protect you. Contrary to some arguments, the Hellenes took great pleasure in slaughtering the enemy when they began to flee. Xenophon called it one of the greatest pleasures of battle. The Polis is therefore perilously fragile; a single battle, if it is spectacularly unlucky, can undo decades of work. War is a high-stakes battle where states put their entire society on the line. Do not expect to leave even victorious battles unscathed.
All of this amounts to the final principle of Hellene Warfare, which is to protect your own citizens and slaughter those of the enemy. This is not the same thing as winning a battle; the main goal of the main portion of the battle, the push and pull of the phalanx, is to achieve that decisive break. Once the enemy is broken, the slaughter begins, and this is where there is a massive free-for-all in which men have their throats cut begging for mercy or are led into traps and cut down until the ground is sticky with blood. The goal of warfare is not just to achieve some strategic goal, or to win territory, but to make it so that the enemy cannot threaten you or your people ever again. If that means ensuring that you have created a desert called peace, so be it. It also means that innovation in warfare is discouraged in good reason; a bad innovation, or a foolish trick, can cost you everything.
The inclusion of sacred or elite units somewhat changes this calculus, but also creates new risks. The hieros ekdromoi and Kleos Exoria are capable of manuevers, formations, and feats that other units are not, but they are also priceless. You cannot continually replace the best of your men; eventually you will run out of best men, and the city's elite units will become a shadow of their former selves. In a crisis or a total rout, furthermore, the enemy may particularly target your elite units, with the intention of breaking the spirit of your entire city. At the battle of Chaeronea Alexander attacked the Sacred Band of Thebai, the heroic and famed elite unit of the Thebans, and slaughtered them down to a man. If the city were to replace the Kleos Exoria and hieros ekdromoi with new men, the institutions might remain, but it will take years to get them back to the same level of ability as they once had.
What this Means for Game Mechanics
All of this is to say that in the past, Eretria has faced relatively easy odds. Even when it has not triumphed, there has been little mechanical impact beyond political chaos or humiliation. Now, things are far different. You can expect that a single victory in battle against the enemy could secure you hegemony. You can also expect, however, that losses will hit hard. Eretria has one of the largest reserves of freemen in the Greek World, but even it is not limitless in its capacity, and throwing away the lives of both your own citizens and those of your allies will eventually empty your city and leave it recovering for a generation. When confronting enemies of near-equal strength, or greater strength, it must always be approached with a sense of caution and awareness that there will be few second chances. Every war, every battle, has the potential for catastrophe. It is strategy that prevents you from getting into a situation where you face a rout, and tactics that can rescue you from a bad numerical or geographical position.
With that in mind, warfare will work like so. First, players will select from a number of strategoi. All of these men have been serving with the city's council of generals for years, and can be trusted to be experienced in theory, though the years of peace means there are few among them who are true veterans. The strategoi will have their character statistics displayed, as well as their general plans to the assembly on how they seek to win a war. The assembly will elect that strategos that they feel has the best plan and the ability to enact it. The lead strategos will then be in charge of composing armies, leading them, and appointing from the other strategoi naval fleets or secondary armies. They will have overall command of the strategic vision of the city until such time that they are victorious, killed in battle, or recalled by the city due to some failure.
Battle will be composed of four phases, whose success is defined by rolls and modifiers. Modifiers will be extremely powerful, representing that although there is an element of chance in all battles, there are also fundamental realities of numbers or ability that moderate the randomness of fortune. There is the strategic phase. In this phase, armies will attempt to find a position advantageous to them and disadvantageous to the enemy. Light infantry, including both psilloi and allied skirmishers, as well as cavalry, are essential for this phase. Having superior cavalry and skirmishers in both numbers and skill will significantly improve the chance that you do well in this phase, placing you in a better position at the battle's start. Generals with some experience with skirmishing or the cavalry will help. Having a good position will give you permanent modifiers for the rest of the battle. There is one roll here with dependent modifiers.
Next is the skirmishing phase. In this phase, both armies' skirmishers and cavalry will attempt to drive the others from the field. Once again, this is where cavalry and skirmishers are king. Herodion the One-Eye was always best-known as a cavalry commander than as a leader of infantry, and his ability to win success in this phase was always unparalleled. The advantage of winning in this phase are three-fold. First, cavalry and skirmishers that are successful in this phase could flank the enemy, devastating their morale and cohesion. Second, if you win the battle, your cavalry and skirmishers have stripped away theirs and are able to slaughter their infantry with impunity, leading to massive casualties for the enemy forces that they might not recover from. Finally, if you lose the battle, your cavalry and skirmishers can screen and protect your infantry and reduce the number of casualties you take, allowing you to live to fight another day. There is one roll here with dependent modifiers.
Next is the collision phase. The main determinants of this phase are the quality, formation, and numbers of infantry on both sides. The majority of your citizens on the field of battle will be participating in this phase, colliding with the enemy in a phalanx pushing match that could determine the course of the battle. This phase ends when one side or the other routs, breaking; it is during a rout that most of the casualties occur, as men are stabbed in the back or as they try to strip off their armor and flee. In a hoplite battle, the best fighters are concentrated on the right flank, with the very edge of the right flank as the most honorable position due to its exposure. Maintaining cohesion on both flanks is important, and so there will be two rolls, one for the left flank and one for the right, with the right more likely to be broken and the left more likely to break through against the enemy. Then there will be a final roll, modified by the state of the two flanks, to determine whether you are successful in the collision phase.
Finally, there is the rout phase. This is the phase in which the true consequences of a battle will be played out, because once the enemy is broken your forces will begin to chase after them, and vice versa. If you are winning, your goal here is to leverage all of your success from prior phases (a good position, victory in skirmishing, victory in collision) in order to inflict as much slaughter and damage on the enemy as possible to ensure that this battle will be their last, and force them to make a crushing peace. If you are losing, your goal is to leverage any success in prior phases in order to protect and rescue as many of your citizens as possible from the impending slaughter. Doing so successfully here can be the difference between fighting another day and a humiliating peace. There is one roll here, dependent on modifiers from previous phases.
As you can tell, modifiers will begin to stack throughout a battle; winning each phase will make success in the next phase easier, until finally in the rout phase the only determinant is just how badly you inflict damage on the enemy. In the same way, losing each phase in succession will make things worse and worse and finally lead to a loss you cannot recover from. However, unless you are fighting truly powerful or impossible enemies, the reality is likely to fall somewhere in the middle, and Eretria Eskhata starts with several advantages over its neighbors, such as its loyal barbarian allies and its elite units which few in Italy or Sicily have yet emulated. But in the end it is Fortune and Victory who decide the outcome of war, and whether the city will see a triumphant return of its men or no return at all.
Examples of Modifiers
I won't spell out every single modifier involved in a battle, because although it isn't that complicated I don't want to show all of my cards and make people think too mechanically about battles. That being said, there are a few modifiers which are fairly obvious, and are dependent on a comparison to the enemy:
- Numerical difference between components of both armies (How many more skirmishers do you have than them? How many more infantry?)
- Difference in quality between components of both armies (Is your cavalry better than theirs? Are you facing Spartan Hoplites who are generally known to be of a better quality due to their lifestyle?)
- Skill of the General in specific aspects of battle (Is this a courageous general who is willing to rally his men? Is he a cavalryman? How knowledgeable is he about terrain? Has he tried some crazy tactic?)
- Morale of the armies (Is this an army of mercenaries who have been swayed by the enemy to turn sides? Is there a specific humiliation or patriotic sentiment propelling one side to fight more desperately than the other? Is there significant civil strife which makes citizens less willing to shed blood for their city?)
- Phase modifiers (Did one army achieve a better position than the other? Did they win the skirmishing phase? Have one of their two flanks broken?)
Naval battles have similar rules but only three phases: Strategic phase, collision, and rout, with the strategic phase and collision being the most important. It is much easier for enemy fleets to withdraw from battle, so most casualties are concentrated during collision and the subsequent washing up of sailors on shore, and the strategic phase is far more important. Skill and quality of your fleets, as well as positioning, also matters far more than numbers in a naval battle.
The overall goal of this system is to still have the visceral and terrifying feeling that battles often had when the game first started without involving citizens in every aspect of the battle. There is a great deal of fear involved, because you are ultimately trusting an NPC to conduct your battle for you, but at the same time this is also where all the advantages, good (and bad) choices, and efforts of the players finally come to fruition through the modifiers. It makes for a terrifying ride, but it can also be a more satisfying one than the choice I had made after I realized battles were too much effort to do with maps and voted-upon-phases, when battles were merely described with some off-screen rolls. Here, players will be able to see the step-by-step of the battle unfolding (though doing visuals would be too crazy) and follow the army as it fights towards victory or defeat.
There will usually be only a single battle in a year, merely because that is what most poleis can endure at this stage, and sometimes a single land or naval battle can win the entire war.
In the end, all of this may be summed up as:
Have fun and try not to die!
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- Location
- Dreiländereck
[X] [Insurance] Allow the Shrine of Ploutos to handle merchant insurance with state support [-20 talent one-time fee to Shrine of Ploutos].
[X] [Tribute] Levies. More Peuketii allies in the cavalry and light infantry will serve to augment's the city's armies [+2.5% levy from the Peuketii, +654 Levies].
[X] [Collection] Have them come to us. We can maintain a bond of trust with the tributaries without impinging in their private affairs and expand the festival of tribute to build fraternal feeling. [-2 public subsidy upkeep per year].
[X] [Alliance] Better to conclude secret treaties with some cities without raising the specter of war with Taras.
[X] [Alliance] Accept a full defensive alliance with the Messapii Confederacy.
[X] [Tribute] Levies. More Peuketii allies in the cavalry and light infantry will serve to augment's the city's armies [+2.5% levy from the Peuketii, +654 Levies].
[X] [Collection] Have them come to us. We can maintain a bond of trust with the tributaries without impinging in their private affairs and expand the festival of tribute to build fraternal feeling. [-2 public subsidy upkeep per year].
[X] [Alliance] Better to conclude secret treaties with some cities without raising the specter of war with Taras.
[X] [Alliance] Accept a full defensive alliance with the Messapii Confederacy.
- Location
- Mists of Albion
...This makes me concerned. IC it is noted that our citizens, a good chunk of our army, are dissatisfied by the changes from the Metic reforms, now we're also going to do League reforms when they're tired of giving stuff away.
Right before we go into a war with a peer Opponent and need every advantage we can get.
I don't like it, I just do not feel like it is a smart idea to cause dissatisfaction in the city right before we have to rely on these guys to fight for us. It's a definitively bad idea.