Year One: A Campaign Retrospective

It has now been a full year of real time since we finished the Empire campaign, and took up where we left off with our own. I thought it might be interesting to look over the last year...

Overall, the rise of Rome has taken place broadly according to history, although some of the details are different. Basically, we started the campaign with a pseudo-historical year of 150 BC. Rome had three armies on the map at the start: one in Hispania, one in Sicily, and another in Rome itself. They began in a state of war with the Iberian tribes, whose main army was ensconced in Numantia; Carthage; and Macedonia, which had field armies in Pella and Epirus. The fourth main power was Ptolemaic Egypt, which had finished the Empire campaign in a far stronger position than was historically the case, partly due to the early demise of the Seleucids. The fifth and last power was Parthia, rising amidst a chaotic vacuum created by the downfall of the Seleucids, and poised to pick up large areas of territory pretty much unmolested. For details, see the campaign page here.

The idea was that the campaign would pretty much drive itself through the interaction of the various powers. I added some spice by including various other historical events pretty much in tune with when they really did happen. Here is a list of these for the period we have played so far, slightly more than thirty years of campaign time:

• 146: The Achaean League declares war on Rome
• 135: The (First!) Servile War erupts in Sicily
• 133: The Pergamene Bequest. There is a revolt against the impending Roman arrival there, led by the aristocrat Aristonicus.
• 125: The Ligurian Revolt. Fregellae in Latium also rebels, and is brutally destroyed - the first stirring of unrest amongst the Socii.
• 121: Large Gallic incursion into Provincia.
• 116: Ptolemaic succession crisis
• 114: The Scordisci erupt into northwestern Macedonia

I spent quite a while putting these events together, and I have more as the campaign progresses. Most of our players will have a rough idea of impending events like these, since they are classical period players, amongst other things, but it is nice to have a few extra bits and pieces to add to the overall mix.

A quick potted history of the first 35 years or so of campaign time:

• Rome continues its inexorable rise to power, albeit with difficulty. The Macedonians are especially difficult to finish off, and Rome also stumbles badly in the initial stages against Carthage and the Iberians. Rome has to exert all its might to defeat all of these enemies.
• Ptolemaic Egypt starts off well, expanding handily into Mesopotamia before running into the Parthians and being forced back. The period ends with a civil war and most of their former possessions effectively seceding in anarchy.
• To balance the rising power of Parthia, we ruled that every so often they have to face off against an Indian army - yet another match we don't see very often.

And that's it so far. Without giving too much away in terms of details, the next forty years of the campaign will see the Cimbric War; Jugurtha; the Social War; the civil war between the Marians and Sullans; Sertorius in Spain; more Servile Wars; and of course the rise of Mithridates and his sidekick Tigranes. That little lot should keep us handily occupied on Tuesday evenings for quite a while...