Report on Empire Campaign Turn 13

[Paul Innes]

Not so much a battle report as a campaign report:

http://caliban-somewhen.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/empire-campaign-230-220-bc.html

But there are plenty opf battle reports on there anyway!

[Patrick Waterson]

Well worth a look - are you still using Tactica II for the battles, Paul?

I shall be interested when Hannibal gets rolling, as in the original 'Empire' Italy cannot be conquered (a cunning game device to keep the Romans in the running).  Will your Carthaginians be allowed to knock out Rome if they score a number of consecutive successes in Hannibal's campaign?

Patrick

[Paul Innes]

Hi Patrick, thanks for looking!  I think we will allow Hannibal to attack Rome itself, but only if and when the Romans are stripped of all of their other provinces.  Also, going by our previous experience with Alexander, we may intersperse Hannibal's attacks with other player moves.  This means that the Carthaginians will receive five attacks this turn, but not necessarily all at once.  The only reason for doing it this way is to alleviate player fatigue - playing the same powers five times in a row can be rather tiring, especially bearing in mind that we use this as a battle generator for club evenings.

I'm also thinking of allowing the one Roman attack to be against a Carthaginian army that is not led by Hannibal, but I haven't made up my mind yet.

Cheers
Paul

[Jim Webster]

If you allow the Romans to attack armies other than those led by Hannibal that might allow 'subsidiary' theatres to play their part, the Romans could attack in Spain or Africa.

Jim

[Patrick Waterson]

Jim's suggestion makes sense to me, on the basis that although the Empire system is fine when you have one major and consequential war every decade or so, the Second Punic War was pretty intense, with one almost-decisive (or at least large and control-consequential) battle per year in the more active bursts (218-216 and 208-206, not to mention 203-202) so interleaving actions in Italy and Spain (or, in your campaign, maybe Italy and Gaul, depending upon who goes when and where) with engagements elsewhere in the world during the same turn definitely has merit, and allowing the Romans a counter-campaign breaks the monotony.

The same consideration will crop up when Scipio gets loose in another turn or so: if turn sequencing comes up in a certain way, it is possible for the Romans to get two turns back-to-back and hence run ten campaigns before the Carthaginians can lift a finger!  Your approach of sandwiching other actions between Scipio-induced battles and your and Jim's idea of letting the Carthaginians get a 'counterstroke' in at some point should go a long way to avoiding oh-no-not-another-Scipio-battle! reactions among players.

But do have fun when you get round to it.  And I shall be interested to see if Hannibal does manage to bring Rome to its knees.  Sooner him than some jumped-up Goth or Vandal several centuries later. ;-)

Patrick

[Jim Webster]

the fun bit is the important bit 

Jim

[Paul Innes]

Thanks, both, I think you're right about allowing Romans to hit other Carthaginians.  The whole point is to have fun, and Tactica II lets us do a reasonably large multiplayer game in less than three hours.