I think their objective is primarily a quick end to the hostilities in the East. A drawn out campaign into Mesopotamia is probably out of the question while a good chunk Latin Europe marches on Constantinople and the burden to the Roman exchequer is at an all time high. If or when Ibrahim is decisively defeated I assume the Romans will try to sue for peace to transfer troops back West. Imo, at the most they might make a half-hearted attempt in the general direction of Mosul to force Ibrahim to the table and get the best possible terms.
An Age of Miracles Continues: The Empire of Rhomania
- Thread starter Basileus444
- Start date
I think their objective is primarily a quick end to the hostilities in the East. A drawn out campaign into Mesopotamia is probably out of the question while a good chunk Latin Europe marches on Constantinople and the burden to the Roman exchequer is at an all time high. If or when Ibrahim is decisively defeated I assume the Romans will try to sue for peace to transfer troops back West. Imo, at the most they might make a half-hearted attempt in the general direction of Mosul to force Ibrahim to the table and get the best possible terms.
Boa: Bahrain is a good base. Attacking Qeshm and particularly Hormuz would involve taking the Ottoman navy and whatever Triune ships are around head-on, but it could be done. It’d be a major campaign though.
The Ottomans have a bit of the Punjab but otherwise have been driven west of the Indus. From the Sikhs’ point of view, the Ottomans are a threat, but Oudh is an immediate threat. Think bear on the back porch rifling through your garbage versus bear in your kitchen looking inquisitively at the contents of your fridge.
Bergioyn: Not quite the description I would’ve used…
I’m getting more insane too. Slightly more than 1/10 of the TL (150 pages) covers just the period from the accession of Andreas III to now.
Wolttaire: Hormuz and Basra are the main Ottoman ports so any kind of sustained naval campaign (as opposed to just raiding) would focus on one of them, likely Hormuz as taking Basra without seizing Hormuz would be troublesome.
Evilprodigy: There are some classical authors I wish the Ethiopian navy would’ve attacked. It would’ve spared teenage me much pain.
That’s a disadvantage Rhomania faces against someone like, say, the HRE. There are still forests along the Pontic Mountains but they’re exploited for the Roman navy. Forestry laws try to protect them but they were emplaced in the 1400s and ships have gotten a lot bigger and more numerous since then.
One idea I have for developing Siberia is that Romans subsidize Siberian development so they can get access to Siberian resources more easily.
Emperor Joe: It’s given Roman sugar a huge hammering. The Roman sugar industry still exists but now it’s mainly just Orthodox territory that buys it. And the sheer volume of New World sugar is working its way even into those markets.
I’m pretty sure I worked in a joke somewhere that the first Roman who saw a potato tried to put sugar on it.
RogueTraderEnthusiast: I don’t think I’ve ever had poutine.
HanEmpire: I thought this question merited more of an answer then I usually give in response posts, and an answer integrated into the TL proper. So I started writing, incorporating some more ideas I’ve had floating around for a while but never introduced, and it turned into an almost four-page update by itself.
Centralized Vijayanagar would be scary. Vijayanagar right now is a lot like an uber-Ethiopia. It has a developed and centralized core that answers directly to the central government in the capital with appointed salaried officials. But that core is then surrounded by a slew of vassal states that make up the rest of the Empire.
Agree with you about environmental damage. That’s one of the disadvantages Mediterrean Europe and the Middle East had vis-à-vis northern Europe in the early modern era. Those areas had been worked by humans for lots longer, in some cases literally millennia longer, with all the issues that entails.
I will note that the forestry laws were written to safeguard supplies for the navy and so focused on big trees near the coasts that were ideal for shipbuilding (and even then the Empire’s getting a lot of naval stores from non-Imperial stores, hence the interest in acquiring the Dalmatian coast and its timbers). So turning it into an ecology law isn’t as easy as it would seem.
I’m not familiar with cuisine very much (I’m definitely a pleb when it comes to food). But Roman cuisine would be very popular in Ethiopia because of cultural influence, although less so in the vassal states less tied into the Roman-Ethiopian relationship. Ethiopian cuisine would have some influence but not to the same degree, although with an Ethiopian Empress its role could expand.
The Romans could, provided they were able to reinforce the Army of Mesopotamia, invade Mesopotamia proper. But they’d only do that as a way to bring Ibrahim to the table faster. If Ibrahim’s been cut off in Syria, the Romans would force him to cough up Maskanah and Manbij, perhaps some tribute, but then let him go. Breaking the Ottomans would be too time-consuming.
It’s currently autumn now; I’m going to have to starting putting month stamps in addition to the years at this rate.
Baghdad, although no longer the capital (much to the annoyance of the inhabitants), is still the largest city in the Ottoman Empire, with 100,000+ denizens. It’s also still a major economic and cultural player, dominating Mesopotamia and influential throughout the Ottoman realm.
Floppy_seal99: Not familiar with Power Rangers, so no surprise I didn’t get the reference.
Woodland would still be valued because people need access to firewood and a place for their pigs to forage. But in an era where carting food long-distance is prohibitively expensive and prone to spoilage on the way, if one wants more food in an area, the logical choice is to expand arable land by any means necessary.
Jjstraub4: It’d be big. A lot of Greece/Anatolia is mountainous and not good for agriculture but potatoes should be fine there. If they can handle the Andres, they can handle the central Anatolian plateau. Central and eastern Anatolia are lightly populated compared to the Aegean basin because of their weak agricultural basis and the difficulty of importing foodstuffs inland, so Egyptian/Scythian grain doesn’t help here. The potato could change that.
Minifidel: I’m not familiar with them, but given that TTL Romans seem interested in a lot of stimulants I can see them taking off. Might be a good way to boost revenue from Syria/Lebanon.
King Nazar: While regional monocultures are an issue (central Anatolia for example) I don’t see the Romans suffering from an Empire-wide monoculture. The highlands would grow potatoes but the lowlands would continue growing established crops (wheat, barley, vegetables, rice etc.).
ImperatorAlexander: That’s Domestikos Theodoros Laskaris’ idea. He doesn’t want to attack Ottoman earthen entrenchments again if he can avoid it. Much better to make Ibrahim attack his.
Alexandros is inspired by Marshal Ney from OTL. The title ‘bravest of the brave’ was taken straight from Ney. He wasn’t a brilliant military strategist or tactician, but Ney was the guy you wanted on the field inspiring the men and leading the charge or defense at the crucial juncture. Alexandros is the same.
Babyrage: I haven’t established that yet. At some point (1633?) I want to switch gears and take a look at internal developments in the HRE and how they’ve been affected by the war. At that point though Elizabeth will return. I hope to give her a big role since I feel bad about shafting her character.
Stark: Aren’t you supposed to knock on a piece of wood when you say something like that?
Ain: The good ones often die in war.
MarshalofMontival: Gunpowder’s rude like that. Most improper.
Donald Reaver: It’s always so annoying when my personal space gets invaded.
JohnSmith: Well, Baghdad didn’t exist when Alexander was around, so I’m not sure that would be appropriate.
GodEmperorG: The Romans have the Banda Islands, Ambon, and some more outposts in various spots, plus there’s the Katepanate of Pahang in Malaysia. The Spanish have Ternate and Tidore while the Triunes don’t have any territory that they control outright as opposed to just trading posts/commercial factories. The vast majority of Indonesia is still under independent native states, albeit with varying degrees of western influence.
Yeah, the Triunes have a lot of Muslim allies. They’re rivals with the Spanish and Romans, so the enemy of their enemy who becomes their friend is often a Muslim. It’s drawn commentary in Europe but both the Catholics and Orthodox think the Bohmanist Triunes are heretics so it’s just frosting on the cake in their bad opinion of the Triunes.
InMediasRes: Precisely.
The Ottomans have a bit of the Punjab but otherwise have been driven west of the Indus. From the Sikhs’ point of view, the Ottomans are a threat, but Oudh is an immediate threat. Think bear on the back porch rifling through your garbage versus bear in your kitchen looking inquisitively at the contents of your fridge.
Bergioyn: Not quite the description I would’ve used…
I’m getting more insane too. Slightly more than 1/10 of the TL (150 pages) covers just the period from the accession of Andreas III to now.
Wolttaire: Hormuz and Basra are the main Ottoman ports so any kind of sustained naval campaign (as opposed to just raiding) would focus on one of them, likely Hormuz as taking Basra without seizing Hormuz would be troublesome.
Evilprodigy: There are some classical authors I wish the Ethiopian navy would’ve attacked. It would’ve spared teenage me much pain.
That’s a disadvantage Rhomania faces against someone like, say, the HRE. There are still forests along the Pontic Mountains but they’re exploited for the Roman navy. Forestry laws try to protect them but they were emplaced in the 1400s and ships have gotten a lot bigger and more numerous since then.
One idea I have for developing Siberia is that Romans subsidize Siberian development so they can get access to Siberian resources more easily.
Emperor Joe: It’s given Roman sugar a huge hammering. The Roman sugar industry still exists but now it’s mainly just Orthodox territory that buys it. And the sheer volume of New World sugar is working its way even into those markets.
I’m pretty sure I worked in a joke somewhere that the first Roman who saw a potato tried to put sugar on it.
RogueTraderEnthusiast: I don’t think I’ve ever had poutine.
HanEmpire: I thought this question merited more of an answer then I usually give in response posts, and an answer integrated into the TL proper. So I started writing, incorporating some more ideas I’ve had floating around for a while but never introduced, and it turned into an almost four-page update by itself.
Centralized Vijayanagar would be scary. Vijayanagar right now is a lot like an uber-Ethiopia. It has a developed and centralized core that answers directly to the central government in the capital with appointed salaried officials. But that core is then surrounded by a slew of vassal states that make up the rest of the Empire.
Agree with you about environmental damage. That’s one of the disadvantages Mediterrean Europe and the Middle East had vis-à-vis northern Europe in the early modern era. Those areas had been worked by humans for lots longer, in some cases literally millennia longer, with all the issues that entails.
I will note that the forestry laws were written to safeguard supplies for the navy and so focused on big trees near the coasts that were ideal for shipbuilding (and even then the Empire’s getting a lot of naval stores from non-Imperial stores, hence the interest in acquiring the Dalmatian coast and its timbers). So turning it into an ecology law isn’t as easy as it would seem.
I’m not familiar with cuisine very much (I’m definitely a pleb when it comes to food). But Roman cuisine would be very popular in Ethiopia because of cultural influence, although less so in the vassal states less tied into the Roman-Ethiopian relationship. Ethiopian cuisine would have some influence but not to the same degree, although with an Ethiopian Empress its role could expand.
The Romans could, provided they were able to reinforce the Army of Mesopotamia, invade Mesopotamia proper. But they’d only do that as a way to bring Ibrahim to the table faster. If Ibrahim’s been cut off in Syria, the Romans would force him to cough up Maskanah and Manbij, perhaps some tribute, but then let him go. Breaking the Ottomans would be too time-consuming.
It’s currently autumn now; I’m going to have to starting putting month stamps in addition to the years at this rate.
Baghdad, although no longer the capital (much to the annoyance of the inhabitants), is still the largest city in the Ottoman Empire, with 100,000+ denizens. It’s also still a major economic and cultural player, dominating Mesopotamia and influential throughout the Ottoman realm.
Floppy_seal99: Not familiar with Power Rangers, so no surprise I didn’t get the reference.
Woodland would still be valued because people need access to firewood and a place for their pigs to forage. But in an era where carting food long-distance is prohibitively expensive and prone to spoilage on the way, if one wants more food in an area, the logical choice is to expand arable land by any means necessary.
Jjstraub4: It’d be big. A lot of Greece/Anatolia is mountainous and not good for agriculture but potatoes should be fine there. If they can handle the Andres, they can handle the central Anatolian plateau. Central and eastern Anatolia are lightly populated compared to the Aegean basin because of their weak agricultural basis and the difficulty of importing foodstuffs inland, so Egyptian/Scythian grain doesn’t help here. The potato could change that.
Minifidel: I’m not familiar with them, but given that TTL Romans seem interested in a lot of stimulants I can see them taking off. Might be a good way to boost revenue from Syria/Lebanon.
King Nazar: While regional monocultures are an issue (central Anatolia for example) I don’t see the Romans suffering from an Empire-wide monoculture. The highlands would grow potatoes but the lowlands would continue growing established crops (wheat, barley, vegetables, rice etc.).
ImperatorAlexander: That’s Domestikos Theodoros Laskaris’ idea. He doesn’t want to attack Ottoman earthen entrenchments again if he can avoid it. Much better to make Ibrahim attack his.
Alexandros is inspired by Marshal Ney from OTL. The title ‘bravest of the brave’ was taken straight from Ney. He wasn’t a brilliant military strategist or tactician, but Ney was the guy you wanted on the field inspiring the men and leading the charge or defense at the crucial juncture. Alexandros is the same.
Babyrage: I haven’t established that yet. At some point (1633?) I want to switch gears and take a look at internal developments in the HRE and how they’ve been affected by the war. At that point though Elizabeth will return. I hope to give her a big role since I feel bad about shafting her character.
Stark: Aren’t you supposed to knock on a piece of wood when you say something like that?
Ain: The good ones often die in war.
MarshalofMontival: Gunpowder’s rude like that. Most improper.
Donald Reaver: It’s always so annoying when my personal space gets invaded.
JohnSmith: Well, Baghdad didn’t exist when Alexander was around, so I’m not sure that would be appropriate.
GodEmperorG: The Romans have the Banda Islands, Ambon, and some more outposts in various spots, plus there’s the Katepanate of Pahang in Malaysia. The Spanish have Ternate and Tidore while the Triunes don’t have any territory that they control outright as opposed to just trading posts/commercial factories. The vast majority of Indonesia is still under independent native states, albeit with varying degrees of western influence.
Yeah, the Triunes have a lot of Muslim allies. They’re rivals with the Spanish and Romans, so the enemy of their enemy who becomes their friend is often a Muslim. It’s drawn commentary in Europe but both the Catholics and Orthodox think the Bohmanist Triunes are heretics so it’s just frosting on the cake in their bad opinion of the Triunes.
InMediasRes: Precisely.
Can’t be the only one who likes long updates.
will we return to the west this time?
will we return to the west this time?
Baghdad/Ctesiphon/Seleucia/Babylon, they changed too many times with the river flows. Maybe Odysseus can do some renovating after he's done with his trip through the middle east.
Wow, things got really grim real quick, I hope things like cannibalism isn't too widespread, who knows what diseases they'll develop with eating too much human flesh.
This savagery will pale in comparison to when the Allies are beaten back and have to retreat through these devastated areas. If the Roman Army doesn't catch them I'd imagine the country-side would butcher them all, fleeing soldiers are much easier prey.
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These people won't be able to return to being ordinary civilians after this is over, they'll have to be put down like animals. And to think, the Germans will be facing this back home pretty soon as well when the Triunes come crashing in.
If the Triunes attack during this winter it'll be especially bad for everyone west of the Elbe.
Also an interesting note:
If the Triunes attack during this winter it'll be especially bad for everyone west of the Elbe.
Also an interesting note:
I'm surprised that a commoner girl (albeit from a family affluent enough to rent out housing) has historical knowledge like this. What's literacy and education like for Roman commoners these days? Is the Orthodox Church pushing mass education, with peasants expected to be able to read the Bible? Is it accessible for the average commoner?
Hmmmm.....
Well, that'd be a stretch. But if the allied army is broken deep into Thrace I suppose anything can happen in the ensuing chaos.
The impact of partisans may be overstated since we're getting lots of POV updates on this merry band, but how many casualties are they actually inflicting on the allied forces? I'd imagine news will travel and make them much less secure in their supply lines, maybe siphon troops off the main army to guard it?
Jesus Christ, a King of Poland killed and eaten by a bunch of vengeful cannibals? That'd be gruesomely epic.
Sorry but this time I'm completely unconvinced. The whole region has seen starvation and guerrilla warfare repeatedly and often enough in a far greater scale than what is happening at the moment for a very long time and well into the modern era. No recorded cases of cannibalism in the historical record. Same for the rest of Europe and for example Germany during the 30 years war had half her population die out. Again no cannibalism. And our merry band of ordinary people turned guerrillas here resorts to systematic cannibalism because they got a bit hungry and while they have alternatives, frex the dead horses, around? Not going to happen.
Sad Times.
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Also, sweet merciful heavens you went all out. Cannibal Partisans. Power to them though, they must have a pretty high Kill : Death ratio by now.
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Maybe its the only cannibal partisan band? Maybe one of them is a cannibal even before this event?
Besides, people do all kind of stuff when they are hungry.
Yeah, I'm not sold on this either. Cannibalism is a taboo on the level of incest in most societies, and most people have to be very desperate before they start considering breaking that taboo in a survival situation. Unless every partisan in the band is a latent Dahmer, they're going to be grinding up acorns and boiling shoe leather to eat before resorting to corpses, no matter how much dehumanizing propaganda there is against allied forces. Picking bits of shrapnel out of horsemeat is going to be way easier to stomach (pun intended), and as long as there's any kind of option that doesn't involve eating human flesh, assume people are going to go for that option first.
Maybe there's a secret society of cannibalistic assassins who take to less savoury methods to dispose of nosy historians?
I have to ask what could be less savoury than cannibalism?Maybe there's a secret society of cannibalistic assassins who take to less savoury methods to dispose of nosy historians?