- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Count the votes before calling people idiots. I think there's been some misunderstanding of what the plans entail, too, as I discussed above.
Res Publica: A Quest of Ancient Rome
- Thread starter Telamon
- Start date
- Original Historic
- Location
- At your local SPCA
[X] Plan Digging In
- Location
- Texas
I only just saw this now, but I must admit it's making me raise my eyebrow. By 'Urban Cohorts', I assume you mean an internal police force.
Rome...doesn't exactly have a great track record with armed men under the control of a single man running around the city. From the mobs of the Senators to the Praetorian Guard, it always ends with an egomaniacal warlord seizing absolute power and attempting to usurp the state.
Nothing was politically unaligned in ancient Rome, and especially not armed men. Even if you managed to start it off that way, it's almost certain that it'd fall prey to one of the waves of bribery, corruption, or demagoguery that swept Rome like clockwork.
Now, nothing's impossible, but what you're imagining will take a lot more sociopolitical reform than you're probably imagining.
Roman psychology naturally.
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- Mid-Atlantic
Yeah.
Aside from Cato the Younger (who is insane), I don't know of a single prominent Roman remotely qualified to run a politically neutral police force.
It was suggested that we might do better to try and create a city-funded firefighting corps instead of a police force. It'd be more likely to stay neutral-ish, much much much more popular, and if things went very well over, say, a generation or two, might evolve into policing functions.
EDIT:
I'm not sure if the person talking about this realized it at the time, or for that matter if I realized it at the time, but that's preeeetty much what happened in real life with the vigiles founded by Augustus. Which, yes, suggests that to create politically neutral-ish enforcement agencies in Rome, we'll need to transition Rome to an empire. At which point the enforcement agencies are politically neutral insofar as there is only one political faction of any consequence: the Emperor.
Aside from Cato the Younger (who is insane), I don't know of a single prominent Roman remotely qualified to run a politically neutral police force.
It was suggested that we might do better to try and create a city-funded firefighting corps instead of a police force. It'd be more likely to stay neutral-ish, much much much more popular, and if things went very well over, say, a generation or two, might evolve into policing functions.
EDIT:
I'm not sure if the person talking about this realized it at the time, or for that matter if I realized it at the time, but that's preeeetty much what happened in real life with the vigiles founded by Augustus. Which, yes, suggests that to create politically neutral-ish enforcement agencies in Rome, we'll need to transition Rome to an empire. At which point the enforcement agencies are politically neutral insofar as there is only one political faction of any consequence: the Emperor.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Screw running it, think populating it! The unemployed of the city are the base the populares draw on. Good luck building a police force not riddled with people with Very Strong Views.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I think we miiiiight be able to damp the politicization a bit, but it's woven into the Roman political fabric so tightly that I agree we'd find it nigh-impossible to remove. The Romans just don't have the political ideal we now understand of government that enforces laws independently of the opinions of the powerful men running the government. I honestly think that concept must have emerged out of a combination of medieval Christian underpinnings (and religious law independent of secular rulers), and then the Enlightenment taking that whole notion and draining the religion out of it by creating abstract, de-personalized philosophies of the State.
- Location
- Aotearoa
Plausible analysis. The modern notion of a 'nation-state' is recent, after all. Of course, there was the odd objection raised to this iniquitous trend towards impersonal power. "L'état, c'est moi".
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Pathetic King
"I Speak To The Audient Void."
- Location
- Colorado
[X] Plan Digging In
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Oh, the inability of powerful men to clearly differentiate between the machinery of the state (of which they are executives) and their own personal resources is hardly gone, I agree.
But as far as I could tell, it was barely even a thing for the ancient Romans, and insofar as it was a thing for them, it was so as a result of ancient Republican traditions that had no force beyond being traditional.
Actually the best way we could help people would be to run a company that provides civil services and get the contracts by lobbying.
Such as providing a fire service that has a progressive service depending on what district you are in. The rich pay more and the poor pay less. Than we buy the land at a steal for any buildings we don't save. Like Crassus but we won't do it on purpose like Crassus.
Or we create a freeman construction company that does quality Roman work. No slaves or foreigners. Just old fashion Romans building the infrastructure for the republic. Really ham up the freeman and Roman thing. Than we lobby for infrastructure repair and give kickbacks to our supporters.
We could also get some former veterans and for a tax collectors company than bid on contracts. I am stealing some things Crassus did.
Such as providing a fire service that has a progressive service depending on what district you are in. The rich pay more and the poor pay less. Than we buy the land at a steal for any buildings we don't save. Like Crassus but we won't do it on purpose like Crassus.
Or we create a freeman construction company that does quality Roman work. No slaves or foreigners. Just old fashion Romans building the infrastructure for the republic. Really ham up the freeman and Roman thing. Than we lobby for infrastructure repair and give kickbacks to our supporters.
We could also get some former veterans and for a tax collectors company than bid on contracts. I am stealing some things Crassus did.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Well, the tricky bit is that there were economic reasons why huge slave conglomerates took over the Roman world the way they did; we'd be competing against a well-paying business model backed by powerful, obnoxious men.
- Location
- Texas
Like pretty much every other underlying problem plaguing the Republic, Augustus fixed it so well it worked for the rest of Roman history. He instituted freedmen (former slaves) as administrators and paper pushers, creating an impersonal bureaucracy that would keep chugging regardless of who was actually in power, essentially removing the ability for greedy and ambitious men to destroy the state by being greedy and ambitious by handing the reins to greedy and ambitious men in whose best interest it was for the state to continue.
This is arguably the greatest and most influential of Augustus' reforms, because it prevented Rome from collapsing during the tyrannical reigns of Nero, Caligula, Commodus, and their ilk, or from imploding (which it still very nearly did) during the Crisis of the Third Century. It still required an Emperor to function properly — but the system could function without an Emperor, which is how the Empire could have some twenty-odd men running around declaring themselves emperor and still maintain some semblance of cohesion. War, blood, anarchy, disease, it didn't really matter — the taxman still came, and as long as the taxman came, Rome survived.
The Republic could never have instituted this system. The bureaucrats of the Republic were young men rising up the cursus honorum — men, by definition, whose ultimate hope was to be more than bureaucrats, who saw financial or administrative positions as a mere stepping-stone for personal power. Even worse, taxes were run by private companies who would bid to the senate to tax an area. The highest bid would win, and the company would pay the Senate, then go tax the area, with all the money they made above what they had bid being their profit. This incentivized corruption and bribery, made greed and selfishness not just the smart options, but often the only real options.
In the ancient Republic, before the fall of Carthage, Rome was small enough for this to work. But as she grew and became larger and wealthier, the extent to which ambitious men could and were willing to milk the provinces only grew. More money meant more corruption meant more money, and Rome, as her poets would later lament, strangled in the strings of the purse. Rigid adherence to ancient traditions was the only thing holding it all together, and when Marius, Sulla, and the Gracchi smashed those traditions with a hammer...
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah Rome was interesting, but it was also fucking horrible in almost every regard.
- Location
- Europe
Well, the late republic is corrupt to its core. I'm currently reading Robert Harris' Cicero trilogy and the republic suffers under a senate which is completely unwilling to give into any kind of reform which might weaken it, it suffers from corruption on every level from elections to the governance of the provinces, strongmen breaking the law when it pleases them, moral decay and my personal favourite, courts which are more about showmanship and snark than actual justice.
I think the "best" way to establish a somewhat effective police is either go with a multi-person, multi faction leadership with the idea the various interest groups cancel itself somewhat out. Or go the Athenian route and hire foreign mercenaries to do the job (might be impossible for the whole city (from a number perspective) but if we are talking only about the forum and other key events were most of the violent events often happen I think it something worth considering). And honestly while we are unlikely to implement anything near a perfect system I would argue that having something like a police force is till better than having nothing, and of course establishing something like that would have the nice benefit of probably significantly expanding our own political influence.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That's going to make a lot of Romans really REALLY mad.
- Location
- Central Europe
Definitely a valid position, and while I think that giving the Samnites more time could lead to even more of them abandoning the city, I see the appeal of voting for Pomolussa's stratagem.
@Simon_Jester I see your line of argument against the Carcellan stratagem, and it is well thought out. My main issue with it is this: Between us players advising (read: choosing) the strategy here and Meddix then coming out to ambush the 'blocking' cohort you leave no room for Sertorius to mechanically influence the outcome. This is his campaign not ours. I doubt that the QM would offer up strategies that Seratorius thinks aren't viable.
In my opinion the underlying narrative choice here (with lots of mechanical implications for the future, of course) is: Assault, Siege or Wait.
Wait, being the Carcellan stratagem, postpones Siege/Assault to next year. Depending on how well we/the Samnites roll over the winter our circumstances next year could be better (Samnites starving & deserting) or worse (Samnites reinforced/blocking Cohort bloodied).
For me the Carcellan stratagem is not some kind of trap option, it has drawbacks (lost initiative & time) and benefits (secure logistics over the winter) just like it's alternatives.
Here are the risks I see with 'Digging In':
- If 'Outriders' fails, our strained logistics will be under constant harassment.
- This plan fails to secure a local food supply. Even without rebel activity supply shipments can get cut off/significantly reduced by snow and harsh weather.
- If A Matter of Allies fails and the supply situation gets bad, the Hipirni might just go home (or worse...).
To be honest I actually agree with you that Plan 'Digging In' has a higher chance of success, but what stops me from voting for it are its much higher costs in case of failure. I don't wanna be blamed, if we have to break off the siege during the winter because our legion is starving and the Hipirni abandoned us. I'd much rather sit in Beneventum and be angry about the fact that Meddix has managed to strengthen his position over the winter.
If everything goes well, then Plan 'Digging In' will end this campaign over the winter by starving the Samnites our. Then again IF everything went well with Carcellan, then the looser siege around Nola could lead to many warriors abandoning Meddix. Who knows? (The QM, obiviously
)
- Location
- Norway
Allow me to offer a second opinion: the Enlightenment was largely orthogonal to that understanding of government, and the medieval Christian underpinnings contributed but had to work their way through the Wars of Religion first.
Up until around the Peace of Westphalia, there was also a significant inability on the part of powerful men (or organizations) to differentiate even between the machinery of their own state and that other state over there when it came time to decide that said machinery was in need of repair.
Prior to the various Wars of Religion, culminating in the Thirty Years' War and the Peace of Westphalia, there exists a precursor of today's "International Community" purporting to dictate the moral standards of the world. The late medieval International Community goes by the name of the Universal Congregation, or as some of us know it, katholiki ekklesia.
(That's "Catholic Church" for those who don't get the joke.)
30YW and Westphalia are tricky to describe fairly, because a significant part of what's being fought about is precisely the relative status and merit of some of the parties involved. Before the 30YW, one common framing is that the International Community is organizing a multinational humanitarian intervention to stop the spread of crazed religious fanaticism, with one party being the reasonable world order and the other party being a bunch of violent nutty zealots. After the 30YW, the same events are framed as Catholics persecuting Protestants, with the two parties being competing religious branches.
The Peace of Westphalia establishes the principle that the 'nation-state' is the proper actor on the international stage, nation-states get to pick their own religion, other nation-states shan't interfere, religious truce initially between Catholics and Protestants, the idea quickly spreads and picks up several more parties who are on board with the idea of mutually ceasing to persecute one another as long as they can have their own corner guaranteed.
Then the truce itself metamorphoses into a quasi-faction and position of neutrality in its own right to be held by states and organizations, which is a large contributor to impersonal state power. Power not held by the Catholics, or by the Protestants, or by any faction in particular, but a neutral referee. At least in theory.
So, to bring things back around to Rome, what you need to do is have a civil war of some sort that's ideological rather than personal, ending in a bloody stalemate so that both factions are convinced to live and let live, and set the government up as the enforcer of this truce.
Second opinion: Another of the multiple causes of modern nominally-neutral impersonal government is, ironically, absolute monarchs trying to centralize power. Because an absolute monarch can't run all policy personally; one of the things that characterizes the growth of "absolutism" is the King redistributing power from the lords, replacing the intermediate noble layers of feudal society with an impersonal bureaucracy of employees who work for the king and can be fired by the king, rather than dukes and counts with personal rights and personal armies and personal swathes of land.
Once that bureaucracy is in place, though, people start to wonder why they need the King at all. (Answer: to fire bureaucrats. Unfireable bureaucrats are the worst.)
"L'état, c'est moi", on this view, is the statement of a man who has removed everyone else's personal power and is just fine with the trend so far.
- Location
- Hawaii
In essence, the Carcellan stratagem does not overly endanger any of our forces. It is the sub-options within which deploy token forces near Nola and far from the rest of the legion. Since the plan using the Carcellan stratagem do utilize a sub-option, they leave small units exposed and beyond reinforcement range, beyond even mutual reinforcement, since Romans built roads radiating away from cities, rather than in parallel. This is the problem with encirclement; unless you have a ridiculous numerical advantage, the encircling force is going to be spread out to enact the encirclement, and the encircled force can potentially achieve local superiority and execute a defeat in detail. Since I am a fan and the Legend of Galactic Heroes remake is airing now, I will compare the Battle of Astarte: one force outnumbers the other 2:1 and attempt double envelopment, leaving the three sub-units beyond mutual reinforcement range. Surrounded force has local superiority to any of the three surrounding forces. Surrounded force proceeds to mulch the surrounding sub-units in detail until forced into a stalemated battle of attrition. Both forces break off to limit casualties for no further strategic gain.
- Location
- Budget Quota Hell
We're in agreement that there are no trap options, but I do wish to address the reasoning behind several of your statements.
Plan Digging In relies on starving Medix out, or forcing Medix to engage on our terms. Thing is, our supply lines are already relatively secure assuming Beneventum is relatively close, while we cut off Nola's supply lines. Outriders isn't to secure our supplies, but to further deny Medix's.
Your primary criticism of Plan Pompolussa is our supply situation. While you're right that snow and harsh weather can fuck us over if we take Pompolussa, given how close Beneventum is, I feel that we can stomach those risks. Finally, do remember that whatever supply problems we have, Medix will be facing worse, as he has less disciplined soldiers and civilian mouths to feed.
How exactly does this happen? I would argue the opposite will happen actually.
Think about it, from the point of view of Medix's men, despite being outnumbered 3 to 1 and besieged... the Romans ran away. With plan Carcella giving Medix space and time to manuever and send messengers, he could very well leverage this to show that Rome isn't invincible, that even with what they have, they can defy Rome, and with potentially more men they could win.
Medix is an epic hero and the face of Samnite resistance. We are fighting in Samnium. Give him time to swell his numbers and strengthen his support and we may not even be able to besiege Nola come Spring.
In contrast, in Plan Pompolussa, we starve him out. We wait til hunger pangs at his men and civilians. I see more Samnites abandoning Medix due to hunger than a nonexistent siege.
Plan Digging In relies on starving Medix out, or forcing Medix to engage on our terms. Thing is, our supply lines are already relatively secure assuming Beneventum is relatively close, while we cut off Nola's supply lines. Outriders isn't to secure our supplies, but to further deny Medix's.
Your primary criticism of Plan Pompolussa is our supply situation. While you're right that snow and harsh weather can fuck us over if we take Pompolussa, given how close Beneventum is, I feel that we can stomach those risks. Finally, do remember that whatever supply problems we have, Medix will be facing worse, as he has less disciplined soldiers and civilian mouths to feed.
Then again IF everything went well with Carcellan, then the looser siege around Nola could lead to many warriors abandoning Meddix. Who knows? (The QM, obiviously
How exactly does this happen? I would argue the opposite will happen actually.
Think about it, from the point of view of Medix's men, despite being outnumbered 3 to 1 and besieged... the Romans ran away. With plan Carcella giving Medix space and time to manuever and send messengers, he could very well leverage this to show that Rome isn't invincible, that even with what they have, they can defy Rome, and with potentially more men they could win.
Medix is an epic hero and the face of Samnite resistance. We are fighting in Samnium. Give him time to swell his numbers and strengthen his support and we may not even be able to besiege Nola come Spring.
In contrast, in Plan Pompolussa, we starve him out. We wait til hunger pangs at his men and civilians. I see more Samnites abandoning Medix due to hunger than a nonexistent siege.
- Location
- Central Europe
This is probably where we simply differ in risk aversion and will just have to agree to disagree. I don't have a big problem with Plan Digging In winning, if the majority wants to risk it.
Just to explain my reasoning:
Narratively we have pacified large parts of Samnium. Any Pentri or Hipirni among Meddix's army might be tempted to return home. I doubt they could simply slip out without being enslaved, if the city was besieged.
I will admit there is a risk that Meddix will be reinforced, but I don't see the big problem with that:
- Right now it stands 4500 to 8000, I personally doubt he could make up the difference with reinforcements.
- If he does, then it would probably force him to abandon the relatively small city of Nola. I'm cautiously optimistic about our chances in open battle.
- Every Samnite warrior that joins him in Nola is one less for us to worry about on the outside and one more mouth to feed for Meddix.
Also to all those that keep saying: "Defeat in detail". We send out one cohort of 480 fighting men split into multiple centuries. Worst case is we lose a whole century(80 men) to an unscouted sally before Sertorius probably calls off the whole operation. Even in the absolut worst case the balance of power in the region wouldn't change just because of that subvote.
A real defeat in detail could happen under this...
... but nobody is voting for that.
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Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
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So...now, but we need the war to drag out somewhat longer.
Also finangle a way to insert ourself or Scaevola to broker that peace.