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Magna Graecia: Titanomachia (A City State Quest)

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We have a pretty good foundation to make Eretria a, if not the, major power of the Adriatic and leave behind an Epulian cultural heritage of a uniquely Hellenising region.
 
Honestly we might already be the strongest naval power on the Adriatic.
I'm not sure what the Etruscan navy is like it seems to me that it's probably mostly on the other coast.
 
Admiral Skippy said:
Ultimately that's an interesting post @Secretariat, but I feel you may be slightly overthinking things. If we add more trade routes, then it's a pretty straightforward boost to our economy. That can represent a whole number of complicated things going on behind the scenes, like the fact that amassing more commerce in one place tends to sharpen comparative advantages via talent concentration, greater investment, and greater scale economies. But we don't really need to worry about what those advantages are all the time, unless we find it especially interesting to do so.

For example, if we built the bigger harbour, and got say, three more Salted Anchovy staple trade routes, probably what that would represent is us having developed a more efficient salting technique due to investment and cheaper salt from Salpia, and our fishing fleet having grown larger and better with a kind of net-weaving learned from the Illyrians... But how precisely it happens in-universe is not necessarily something we need to cry ourselves to sleep at night worrying out. Pretty reliably, we will find ways to strengthen our comparative advantages as trade accumulates, even if we're just a stopping-off-point.

This does not mean we will become some sort of Mediterranean-bestriding economic titan that outshines Carthage and Athens combined; this is the trade equivalent of the Pan-Hellenic League fantasy. But aiming to becoming a gateway for Adriatic trade is absolutely achievable for us if we want to, I think, although of course there will be challenges along the way.
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Yes. I'm not really interested in litigating the economics of the ancient Mediterranean. Suffice it to say that if I say players have a trade route, they have a trade route. Right now you have 3 trade routes with Illyria and that reflects the value Illyria has for Eretria. They can expect more trade routes in different directions depending on their choices.
 
NavySeel said:
Honestly we might already be the strongest naval power on the Adriatic.
I'm not sure what the Etruscan navy is like it seems to me that it's probably mostly on the other coast.
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Korynth is probably still a peer to us or stronger, navally speaking.

Even now since Athens has thoughtfully helped to give them an opportunity to rebuild their fleet with newer ships. :V
 
Admiral Skippy said:
Korynth is probably still a peer to us or stronger, navally speaking.

Even now since Athens has thoughtfully helped to give them an opportunity to rebuild their fleet with newer ships. :V
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Depends on whether Korinth has money left for new ships after buying back the crews of the old ones.

On a different subject, I keep bringing up things like Illyrian silver or Aquileian gold because of just how much of an advantage it would be to not have to pay to import bullion for coinage. The one big problem for us in terms of resources is that the only significant metal reserves in Epulia are bauxite deposits that we're over two thousand years away from being able to do anything with.
 
Secretariat said:
tags: alternate character interpretation

Without some kind of comparative advantage, trade empires are actually pretty hard to sustain -- and I really don't think Eretria at this moment has any long-term competitive advantages:
  • We're not really well-positioned to be an entrepot.
    • As a harbor, Eretria is good enough -- but Taras and Brention have better harbors that require less maintenance to handle more ships, and are geographically better-placed to profit from the intersection of east-west Med and north-south Adriatic trade.
    • The logical terminus of overland trade routes from Central Europe is somewhere closer to the head of the Adriatic.
    • We can build outposts to control the Illyrian trade, but there's no reason for ships embarking at those outposts to come to Eretria, as opposed to just sailing to where the demand is.
  • We don't specialize in the production of any single good. (This will change once we get the saltworks up.)
    • The Athenian trade empire is built on top of its mineral wealth -- without the Mines of Laurion, Athens is unable to bootstrap up to commercial dominance.
    • We don't have any particular advantage in shipbuilding, nor any institutional arrangements to particularly favor trade.
  • We don't have a large internal market which would serve as a destination for imports.
The closest thing we have to a true competitive advantage is private naval insurance, and that started last year. :V

This is a realistic quest with realistic consequences; if we start making money from the Illyrian trade, I expect Taras and Korinth to see us building outposts and start racing to build their own, driving down our profit margins and forcing some kind of military or political response to maintain state revenue levels.
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The whole point in dominating the Adriatic trade and doing so as early is possible is so that we establish ourselves as the middleman between it and the outside. The whole idea is to be the place where traders active in the Adriatic can come and sell their wares for a good price without having to travel vast distances and where traders from Athens, Syracuse and Co come to get access to the trade goods of the area without having to spend days/weeks going from small port to small port to get the wares they are looking for in large enough quantities. And don't forget that a lot of those traders, especially the smaller ones focusing on the local routes, will likely be ones associated with our city so it will only natural for them to base their activities out of Eretria. Like in modern times a lot of the trade in this era isn't point to point but through centres like the one we are/planning to become and we are ideally situated in regards of the inter Adriatic trade.

I also believe you underestimate our internal market, as a prosperous and large greek city we should be one of the more attractive markets in the region and easily a match for Taras and Co. in that regard.

And sure going that route means maintaining a sizeable navy to deter any to aggressive rival from stealing our business but I assure you that the wealth we make there will easily beat whatever we could make if we focused on internal development. We are never going to get rich through tribute from the Peuketti and Co. and I would argue that without the wealth from trade any dream of regional dominance is pure fantasy since it will be said trade that gives us the resources to do so.
 
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Admiral Skippy said:
Korynth is probably still a peer to us or stronger, navally speaking.

Even now since Athens has thoughtfully helped to give them an opportunity to rebuild their fleet with newer ships. :V
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That just gives us time to build a dam where the modern Rion-Antirro bridge is and drain the water behind it. They can't have a navy without water for a port. I can see no problems with this plan whatsoever! :whistle:
 
I'd love for us to evolve into Venice over time.

Anyway, I feel getting tremendous piles of cash is a better way to improve our culture than anything we would do to directly improve culture.
 
Ultimately the most valuable economic resource is human capital.

If Eretria has the canniest merchants with wide arrays of contacts, the best warehouses, skilled craftspeople offering a variety of goods, skilled and enterprising men and women capable of parting sailors from some of their silver as part of a pleasant evening, good merchant captains and sailors, and a variety of trade colonies full of people who know what they're doing, then we probably don't need to worry that Brention's geography gives it a nice natural harbour. To actually effectively utilize natural or geographic advantages is often much more challenging than simply possessing them. There can also be pretty strong first-mover advantages in establishing trade networks, which require armed force or decades of economic pressure to shift.

More importantly, trade is really not a zero-sum game, even if historically it was sometimes thought of that way. It's quite possible for us to do really well in Adriatic trade and our neighbours to do well also, both taking slices of an expanding pie.
 
For all the economic dreams, the most practical and effective at present is essentially the saltworks.
It brings the traders. Its near and defensible. Its a practically indestructible geographical advantage.
 
Since we're sharing dreams.
  1. Complete control over the Apulia region, as some kind of (post-citystate) republic.
  2. Eretria, cultural and economic star of the Adriatic.
  3. Creating a wonder worthy of joining the Seven.
 
Godwinson said:
Stabilize our immediate environs and work on building up our city and our league, rather than expansionist fantasies.
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I mean, basically the only actual object-level policy being proposed as part of the prevailing fantasy ("Italiote League") is "try to make nice with the other Greek city-states."

Which we'd have strong incentives to do anyway, since Eretria Eshkaia has become strong enough that it isn't directly credibly threatened by its immediate barbarian neighbors, so much as by other Greeks. Soothing Taras' ill will against us, and making sure the other Italian city-states view us less as a potential threat and more as a potential ally against threats they face, are both desirable.

Star said:
After reading about Illyra i think that Illyran coast should be our goal after we deal with Dunai and Messapi, advantages are just to good to be ignored.
After that though, personally we don't need to expand anymore and can just focus on trade and Leauge building.
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To be fair, in our position on the outer fringe of the Greek world, one of the best ways to build a league is to literally build a league- to found colonies that are then members of our league. It's a good way for us to convert metics into (other League cities') citizens. It's a good way to secure resources and gain outposts to secure ourselves against potential threats from barbarians.

Telamon said:
Gold and silver aren't half as valuable in antiquity as food. There's a reason the Romans valued Egypt and Anatolia more than Illyria. They were the breadbaskets of both Alexander and Augustus' empires, and on a smaller scale, taking the fields of Magna Graecia and Italy enabled Rome's famed manpower swarms. It's all well enough to pay for and arm an army, but if you can't feed them, that won't mean much.
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The catch is that once you have food security, gold and silver rapidly increase in value relative to food. Rome's political calculus was heavily distorted by the need to feed the gigantic imperial capital; grain imports from foreign lands had to reach Rome or the city starved and whoever was running Rome at the time would go down with it.

Until and unless Eretria becomes a city with a scale and power base to rival what Rome (in OTL) began to become in the late fourth or early third century BCE, we're not going to be in a comparable position. And a big part of how you get to that size is by having gold, silver, and more importantly the overall commercial infrastructure that permits you to import grain in the first place.
 
Is the dream of replacing San Marino as the oldest continuing polity in the world realistic? Or wanting want Eretria to make it to where the Eretrian citizen militia is having a standoff with Benito Mussolini's Blackshirt volunteer divisions.
 
kilopi505 said:
Is the dream of replacing San Marino as the oldest continuing polity in the world realistic? Or wanting want Eretria to make it to where the Eretrian citizen militia is having a standoff with Benito Mussolini's Blackshirt volunteer divisions.
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...considering how many butterflies we've already unleashed, the idea that there would be any of those things to stand off against is utterly mindboggling. Seriously, I get that utterly shitty alternate histories seem to think that you can massively alter societies and not actually alter anything, but what in the world makes you think that Cetashwayo is that sort of author? Is it the rigorous attention to ripple effects? The stern dedication to avoiding ahistorical injections of anachronistic concepts?

(The first part isn't objectionable at all, surviving for a long time is simply a goal, but the second one is... just what)
 
Cetashwayo said:
Not extensive at all. It would be worth expanding but that would require significant expenditures.
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A big project to tie all our increasingly extensive lands together after we've absorbed the Messapii and Dauni, perhaps. Having all roads lead to Eretria the Furthest can't be anything but good, both politically, culturally, and economically.

Can you define 'significant?' Like, 500 talents and a decade of hard labor? A thousand?
 
LonelyWolf999 said:
A big project to tie all our increasingly extensive lands together after we've absorbed the Messapii and Dauni, perhaps. Having all roads lead to Eretria the Furthest can't be anything but good, both politically, culturally, and economically.

Can you define 'significant?' Like, 500 talents and a decade of hard labor? A thousand?
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Dunno, I'd have to do some research into it. It's not as big a priority right now compared to the other great works.
 
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