Nav 7 History

[snip]

Administrative Regions of the Imperial Roman Republic



Red: Italia
Orange: Wessex-Londinium
Yellow: Francia
Green: Northumbria
Purple: Aquitaine
Cyan: Pannonia

Italia: Representing the core of the First Empire after the Contraction, Italia remained one of the most powerful regions in the world. After the unification of the Frankish and Roman states by Charlemagne, Italia became the seat of the Second Empire. Holding the seat of government and the de-jure centers of power for most of the next 1200 years, Italia's significance has waxed and waned, but never fallen.

Francia: From first founding by Charlemagne to its devastation in the Bonaparte Rebellions, Francia held the de-facto centers of power from the beginnings of the Second Empire until the end of the Bonaparte Rebellions. Despite the splitting off of Aquitaine following the Internal Wars of the 1300-1400's, Francia remained both the economic and military powerhouse of the various formal Roman states until the establishment of the Roman Imperial Republic in 1830

Wessex-Londinium: Created with the fusion of the Kingdom of Wessex and the City-State of Londinium after the Second Empire reestablished itself in Britain, Wessex-Londinium occupied the whole of Roman territory in Britain up to the ancient boundary of Hadrian's Wall until it was partitioned after the Internal Wars. Where the Industrial Revolution found first root in Roman territory, the only thing keeping Wessex-Londinium from economic domination of the Republic is its limited land area.

Aquitaine: Split off from Francia after the Internal Wars as a way of curbing Frankish power, Aquitaine enjoyed a quiet existence until the beginning of the Bonaparte Rebellions. When Bonaparte first began raising troops, Aquitaine was the primary source. Playing on the feeling that Aquitaine was being pushed aside by Francia in the Empire's power struggles, Bonaparte was able to gather enough support to deal a nasty defeat to the Frankish nobility. With the rebellion ultimately culminating in the brutal end of both the Emperor and Bonaparte himself, Aquitaine was looked down on even more in the years following. While wounds have healed in the last 100 years, Aquitaine remains a hotbed of potential revolutionary activity.

Northumbria: Split from Wessex-Londinium after the Internal Wars to curb the power of the latter, Northumbria earned a reputation as the frontier of the empire, with all the ups and downs that such notoriety could bring. Unlike its fellow province Aquitaine, Northumbria turned staunchly conservative in recent years, with the strongest voices against Bonaparte coming from Northumbrian leadership. While modern Northumbria is considered the poorest part of the modern empire, it is one of the most politically monolithic.

Pannonia: A merger of a disorganized bag of territories after the establishment of the Imperial Republic in 1830, Pannonia is home to a rapidly growing industrial base. With the combination of established fixtures like steelmaking and the new oil fields, Pannonia is where citizens of the empire go to strike it rich. For those who succeed, the new wealth continually injects itself into the high-society of the Republic with sometimes interesting results. Those who do not succeed litter the streets. Within the last few years, Pannonia has seen several forward-thinking social programs get enacted to help the downtrodden.

[Walter]

Northumbria earned a reputation as the frontier of the empire, with all the ups and downs that such notoriety could bring.

Yeah, considering that for a short period of time, it was pretty much the Wild North beyond the Northern border and the Wild West across the Celtic and Irish Seas... :)



I thought the idea was to balance (or at least try to balance) the number of small counties (or whatever they are) in each region... which is why I went with this...

[Kaiser Kirk]

I thought the idea was to balance (or at least try to balance) the number of small counties (or whatever they are) in each region... which is why I went with this...

I thought that was required as well, that the # of provinces per region be fairly consistent.

I'm still waffling between 3 regions or 6.  I really can't see an advantage in 6 except that your colonial regions are to be the size of your home regions...but I have a giant deployable army, so I can seize and hold a very large area.

I drew this up and started putting cities and ports on it back in the spring, but then the game looked like it stalled out, so I ceased efforts.
My final will be close to this, or I'll just merge 3 into the other 3.

[Kaiser Kirk]

Question,

I've been pondering when the Romans and Byzantines had their final falling out.
I mean, they've got to have a healthy rivalry to make the Med interesting.

I had an idea today.

The Great Schism between the Roman and Orthodox Churches happened in 1054 AD.
The First Crusade was 1096 AD. Then there was the 1101, the 1144, etc.

What if the Crusades were aimed by the Roman Catholics not at wresting the Holy City from the Perfidious Muslims (here defeated and driven out already) but from the Perfidious Orthodox Church?

That way the sack of Constantinople in the 4th Crusade... still can happen.
Old, old bitterness, with the Byzantines stepping in for the Ottomans, and Rome for the Venetian Republic.  So you still get the classic battles and histories, but with new names.

?

[Jefgte]

A kind of War of Religions...

[Walter]

I'm still waffling between 3 regions or 6.  I really can't see an advantage in 6 except that your colonial regions are to be the size of your home regions...but I have a giant deployable army, so I can seize and hold a very large area.

To me it is more about how it looks. I might be able to make 4 regions if I were to add Iceland to Scotland and Ireland and then split up Norway and Novgorod into 3 parts. With three regions, I would probably have to add a few Southern Norwegian bits to Iceland/Ireland/Scotland in order to reasonable balance it out. If I were to go for six regions, I would probably have to add a few Scottish bits to Southern Norway to balance things. Both those case would make it look weird to me. I am much happier with what I have now.

What if the Crusades were aimed by the Roman Catholics not at wresting the Holy City from the Perfidious Muslims (here defeated and driven out already) but from the Perfidious Orthodox Church?

Keeping the Crusades is some form or another would be nice as that would mean that I can keep "Sigurd the Crusader" as "Sigurd the Crusader" without any issues. :)

A kind of War of Religions...

Good thing the Vikings don't care about Christian niceties...

*checks status*

... Oh wait... the North is Christian now... :)

... of course if we are going to have religious friction between the Roman and Orthodox Churches, then I guess I would have to make the whole of the North Catholic...

[snip]

Im good with the Crusades idea.

[snip]

Regarding Province numbers, I will go back and try and even mine out a little more. I really want to try and keep a divided England tho.

[Walter]

If you want to do that then that might be a bit of a hassle to get the numbers up for those two regions. Maybe change the SW-NE line to a NW-SE line and add the Dutch Roman bits to Northumbria (so you get something like "Northumbria and Hollandia") and add Belgium to Wessex-Londinium (to get something like "Wessex-Londinium and Belgica"). Just a suggestion. Even if the regions are like that, that does not mean that they are actually part of each other. Northumbria, Hollandia, Wessex-Londinium and Belgica would probably each have its own officials that have nothing to do with the officials of the other parts. Depends on what you have in mind when it comes to governmental control.

[Kaiser Kirk]

To me it is more about how it looks.

I've been looking at the regions from a more metagame perspective, than how it looks.
The first 6 region map tried to be more considerate of historical regions, and would allow me to make 17 province colonies, which is a nice size.

The below map is a more militarized version, consolidating the western provinces into a Byzantine March, and the Coastal/Fishing provinces into the Gulf province. I wound up being unsure what to do with the large amounts of Arabian Sand, but decided they would be linked to the coast. The Parthian/Persian central core remainds, but the arid regions of the Transoxian steppe and Baluchostan (sp?) are bundled in the east.  Politically it even makes some sense, with the trade/fishing regions along the gulf consolidated, the more nomadic areas consolidated, the Parthian/Persian heartland consolidated, and the diverse mountain folks of the Kurds/Georgians/Armenians which have been fought over for 2000 years...consolidated. Though Iraq should probably be linked with the core if that was the primary consideration.

We start with 40 fort points, which before I was going to spread 10 each along the western border, but now I can drop 20 fort points into the Byzantine March, 10 into the Gulf, and turn 5 into coastal forts on the Gulf, nicely consolidating them. The Steppe would get 5 forts to represent the cities along the Oxus River, while the Subcontinent border is all mountains anyhow. 

From the Army deployment point of view, before I would have to divide my western armies among 4 regions, while now I only have 2. Further, the central core is inaccessible without passing through another region. So I could have 10 armies in the Core, 40 in the Steppe, 50 on the Gulf, and 70 on the Byzantine March. That means I can be using my "Expeditionary" forces somewhere and not worry about the home front.  After all, most folks only have ~40 deployable, and my weakest region- the Steppe- has that many.

Edit : Well today (7/24/17) Photobucket decided to disallow 3rd party hosting. Since that's a major reason I  *Had* photobucket, that's very annoying.

[Walter]

Edit : Well today (7/24/17) Photobucket decided to disallow 3rd party hosting. Since that's a major reason I  *Had* photobucket, that's very annoying.

That is odd as a lot of people (including me) seem to have the 'disallow 3rd party hosting" issue since the beginning of the month. Surprises me that you lasted as long as you did. As Photobucket has outlived its usefulness, I pretty much removed all my pictures from there. The big images no longer worked on it anyway and the map bits I made are uploaded with dropbox which is what I will be using for now.

[Kaiser Kirk]

So.. what's the vision for the New World's history ?

I know Walter had a Norse Colony in there.

The idea that occurred to me is there has been a fair amount of speculation on the role of disease in the Americas.
Both smallpox and others devastating the local Indian populations, but then made worse with the introduction of African slaves carrying Dengue and Yellow Fever and a more virulent Malaria. Some authors put forth that this why European colonists and workers experienced tremendous mortality when first arriving and made the resistant African workers so desirable.

So... The Romans had at least trade with the Canary Islands in the period of 100-400CE.
What if we say it was a bit more, and that Roman expeditions reached both the Azores and eventually Brazil?
There was a claimed potential roman shipwreck found in Guanabara Bay, near Rio. I've read the ship construction of the era wasn't adequate for continuous trade.
Ok, but what if in 200CE they had placed a Colony in the Canaries, and used the Azores as a trading base for West Africa. With these long distances, slightly more robust vessels are built. And in 250CE, they manage a stormblown crossing to Brazil. From 250-260CE, limited trade occurs, with African goods and people (and diseases) moved to the Americas in return for exotic goods. When the Plague (smallpox) of Cyprian comes in 260-270CE, it is transmitted to the Americas. This is also the period of the Gothic invasion of the Gaul and then Iberia, ending in 274CE.  Contact could be lost then.  This gives the Americas ~700 years to adjust to Old world diseases in relative peace.

Then in 1010, when the Norse attempt a settlement in North America, it's been 700 years and the Natives have gained some disease resistance. This makes the Americas much harder.

[snip]

I like it.

[Jefgte]

I've been pondering when the Romans and Byzantines had their final falling out.
I mean, they've got to have a healthy rivalry to make the Med interesting.

I had an idea today.

The Great Schism between the Roman and Orthodox Churches happened in 1054 AD.
The First Crusade was 1096 AD. Then there was the 1101, the 1144, etc.

What if the Crusades were aimed by the Roman Catholics not at wresting the Holy City from the Perfidious Muslims (here defeated and driven out already) but from the Perfidious Orthodox Church?

That way the sack of Constantinople in the 4th Crusade... still can happen.
Old, old bitterness, with the Byzantines stepping in for the Ottomans, and Rome for the Venetian Republic.  So you still get the classic battles and histories, but with new names.

Catholics vs Muslims... general conflagration!!!
Roman + Iberia + Norse vs Parthes + Byzantine

[snip]

I really like the Crusades being Catholics vs Eastern Orthodox. Means we can also play another three-way religious war when Luther gets all uppity in Germany.