An Age of Miracles Continues: The Empire of Rhomania

RIP #TeamElizabeth, where can she run now? The Romans will probably take Stuttgart easily once word of the Reichsarmee’s complete destruction reaches them. And the only other direction is into the Triunes.

On the plus(?) side Ottokar has no choice now but to join the fight against the Triunes. His main two rivals for the throne are dead and at this rate the Triunes will take much more than the Rhine.....

I would not count Germany out that fast. OK it is more likely than not that Alsace Lorraine is taken by the Triunes. But post that... Just thinking out loud.

1. We know suspiciously nothing of the succession situation in the Triple Monarchy. And unless I am mistaken Henri is starting to get pretty old...
2. That German POW in a Greek monastery several chapters ago that was in bad company... what are his whereabouts? Can you spell popular uprising, levee en masse, already invented by the good people of Antioch TTL one notes, new model army and similar funny things, maybe?
3. Lotharingia is of course massively fortified. How many sieges the Triunes army needs to win? How long each siege and how many can be fought simultaneously. In the meantime a goodly chunk of the Triune army is stuck at the wrong end of attritional warfare.
 

Cryostorm

Monthly Donor
I would not count Germany out that fast. OK it is more likely than not that Alsace Lorraine is taken by the Triunes. But post that... Just thinking out loud.

1. We know suspiciously nothing of the succession situation in the Triple Monarchy. And unless I am mistaken Henri is starting to get pretty old...
2. That German POW in a Greek monastery several chapters ago that was in bad company... what are his whereabouts? Can you spell popular uprising, levee en masse, already invented by the good people of Antioch TTL one notes, new model army and similar funny things, maybe?
3. Lotharingia is of course massively fortified. How many sieges the Triunes army needs to win? How long each siege and how many can be fought simultaneously. In the meantime a goodly chunk of the Triune army is stuck at the wrong end of attritional warfare.
Not to mention I have a feeling that the Triune merchant class is not going to come out of this one is all that great a shape, nor the Triune's eastern colonies.
 
What's the Empire of All North up these days? Could be an opportunity for them here.

I think this campaign has gone on more than long enough. Rome still has to deal with Ottomans holding interior Syria, Muslim Egypt acting up, the Berber-Maghreb Megagblob continuing to threaten shipping in the Western Med, and possibly shenanigans in the Eastern colonies as well. It's time to go home.
 
What's the Empire of All North up these days? Could be an opportunity for them here.

I think this campaign has gone on more than long enough. Rome still has to deal with Ottomans holding interior Syria, Muslim Egypt acting up, the Berber-Maghreb Megagblob continuing to threaten shipping in the Western Med, and possibly shenanigans in the Eastern colonies as well. It's time to go home.
I think they've attacked into Holstein.
 
What's the Empire of All North up these days? Could be an opportunity for them here.

I think this campaign has gone on more than long enough. Rome still has to deal with Ottomans holding interior Syria, Muslim Egypt acting up, the Berber-Maghreb Megagblob continuing to threaten shipping in the Western Med, and possibly shenanigans in the Eastern colonies as well. It's time to go home.
They're invading Germany like everyone else.
 

Cryostorm

Monthly Donor
I think they've attacked into Holstein.

They're invading Germany like everyone else.

Yeah, it really has gone 30 Years War for Germany but unless it is somehow worse that OTL then this is far from the end for Germany. For one thing there is no sectarian split and second Germany has been far more united and centralized the past few centuries like France OTL.

This means that when, and it will be when, Germany recovers the EAN, the Triunes, and possibly Hungary, should all be wary of the revanchist mood there.
 
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Triune ascendancy is still only a distant threat to the empire, especially its heartland. D3 might not be thinking too clearly about it, but it's not like it'll have any consequences even remotely comparable to the damage the Germans have caused.
 
Ah I would say no. Germany is in the process of being destroyed, it is looking to be a battleground between the Triunes and the Romans perhaps the North.
 
The reality is that Germany will more than certainly be able to bounce back, I mean, look at the Roman Empire. It'll have some long-term scars that will take a long time to heal, but it'll still be fine, we're only looking at the SE. The Rhine is going to hurt because of the Triune War, which leaves IMO a future where

1) Elizabeth brokers co-operation between the rest of Germany, effectively a figurehead
2) On land, Bohemia is king during the war, and leads that fight against the Triunes
3) On sea, Pommerania leads the fight.
4) Post-War, it is Pommerania and the NORTH that will be the wealthiest areas. Bohemia doesn't really have any lands it can grab, short of marrying into the Wittlesbachs to take their territories (not a bad idea though). Those, and Bohemias manpower, will need to recover. Pommerania on the other than is as far from the Triunes as possible. They instead have the Empire of All the North. If they can use this war to push control over the Oresund, then they've effectively taken ownership of the Baltic, and can use it as a basis to flood the seas from an unstoppable harbour.

Germany as we knew it, is likely dead. Whether it is Bohemia, or Pomerania depends on how the Northern War goes.
 
Perhaps you're all being too negative regarding Roman policy. TriUK that takes Rhineland paints an automatic target on its back from everyone (Lotharingia, Spain, HRE, EAN) and will have to deal with a highly revanchist Germany/HRE.

Romans are looting and killing a bit (not that unusual in this age, and Germans did the same to them just before), but Triunes will have Germans under their boot. Therefore, angry revanchist Germany might be a perfect pawn to occupy Triunes on land while Rome takes to spoils on the seas (paralles to UK-Austrian/Prussian alliances against France).
 
To be clear, I don't feel as if this is the end of Germany so much as it is the end of the HRE. There is simply too much Germany to be completely partitioned in one war, and unless the Triunes are stupidly greedy, they'll probably bite off the Rhineland at most. The North, fundamentally a balancing act as-is, probably can't afford any overly huge occupations of German land. With Hungary's western ambitions sated with the reclamation of Austria and Rhomania's only geopolitical interest in Germany checked off (that being revenge), the Wittelsbachs (or perhaps a ruling dynasty with a more Czech name) will be free to look westward for the foreseeable future.

And when the time comes for revenge against the Triunes, a ton of commercial interests across all of Europe will only be too happy to help...
 

Vince

Monthly Donor
To be clear, I don't feel as if this is the end of Germany so much as it is the end of the HRE. There is simply too much Germany to be completely partitioned in one war, and unless the Triunes are stupidly greedy, they'll probably bite off the Rhineland at most. The North, fundamentally a balancing act as-is, probably can't afford any overly huge occupations of German land. With Hungary's western ambitions sated with the reclamation of Austria and Rhomania's only geopolitical interest in Germany checked off (that being revenge), the Wittelsbachs (or perhaps a ruling dynasty with a more Czech name) will be free to look westward for the foreseeable future.

And when the time comes for revenge against the Triunes, a ton of commercial interests across all of Europe will only be too happy to help...

Yeah if Germany can hold together as a political entity they stand a chance. I'm assuming worst case the Triunes are on the Rhine + Belgium, Hungary takes Austria and the EAN takes Schleswig-Holstein (Honestly I don't know where the EAN ends and the HRE begins). Give them a generation to reform and rebuild they are going to be itching to hit back. Since @Basileus444 has already foreshadowed the Triunes are headed for a rough patch I can see Germany pushing them back to France in that scenario.
 
For a really smart guy D3 is pretty dumb here.
I think in this case, rather than just a huge serving of steaming-hot revenge (it's not always served cold) D III wants to make the HRE an object lesson.
He first showed what their army can amount to if they really want to, to get rid of the view that the ERE soldiers are weak compared to their western counterparts, and now wants to show the consequences of hubris to any would-be Odoacer by ravaging their own country, even when it might not be politically expedient to do so.
 
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Aside from straight revenge I think this might be Rhomania’s way of saying “we are back”. This is the farthest west a Roman army has been since at least Justinian if not the fall of Rome. The times when they have been hired as mercenaries don’t count.

The eastern half of the Roman Empire at this point has more or less completely recovered from the last 1000 years. They or their despotates control the entire Mediterranean east of Tunis; the Anatolian peninsula and Egypt are both more secure than they have been since the rise of Islam; and with this latest war Rome has come to completely dominate South-Eastern Europe up to Vienna!!! With garrisons established in major cities of their allies of Serbia and Hungary it is not a position they will be knocked easily from.

All that is left is to deal with the Ottomans and at this point it isn’t a question of if Rome will win decisively but whether the Ottomans will survive as a coherent polity or go through a TOT of their own that will leave them permanently as the subordinate power to Rome.
 
With the latest update we see what happens when a battle hardened, elite army with an excellent commander meets up with a larger green army with middling leadership. In a way it is almost the opposite of what happened in Bulgaria and Macedonia at the start of the war. The biggest difference is that Rome has transitioned from feudal armies to fully professional armies and officer corps that allow an army to “bounce back” from defeats in a way that feudal states cannot.

We saw the same dynamic as early against Iskander. When Roman armies are defeated they are able to retreat and reform even if their cohesion has been broken while the victors get tied up looting a battlefield. When Roman armies win they are able to pursue until destroy the opposing army and enemy units are not able to reform and march again even amongst though who escape the battlefield.

It allows the Romans to avoid “strategic defeats” even while losing every battle but gives them are far larger chance of “strategic victories”.

Looking at the European theatre n this war the Romans have lost more than they won. The difference is when they won; Ruse, Thessaloniki, Ulm; they have shattered the army facing them while when they have lost it has been a grinding victory for The alliance that is a victory mostly because they hold the field.

Edit: fixing autocorrects
 
I made a more detailed world map, lemme know if there’s anything I goofed up on!
 

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