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The Roman Republic devolved into dictatorship for very concrete and largely unavoidable reasons, and restoring it centuries after it fell would be even more ASB than having it not fall in the first place. The Empire is too large, the autocratic institution too ingrained, civil society too...

Given the post-1905 requirement, having this happen requires a Nicholas II who can accept the fact that he must give up some of his power to the Duma: a very difficult Nicholas II to imagine. This political shift might improve the lot of the common folk and make them more willing to fight for...

This gives Britain and France the chance to catch up to Germany in terms of re-armament, and denies Germany the strategic resources it gained by occupying France. The Allies aren't going to back down and reconcile with Hitler a second time after the status quo has shifted so dramatically in...

Yes, the structure of the Roman Republic was designed for a small city-state, not a sprawling empire. The shift to a more efficient, authoritarian system was the only option if the state was to survive intact.

This is a very compelling idea. After all, it's possible that the first pastoralists leaped straight from hunting-gathering to keeping herds of animals for food. Without farming I can see pastoralism becoming dominant in the same way as agriculture did OTL, as in terms of food production it...

This is a very tenuous scenario because I don't see any way the trend towards larger brains will be reversed - it's just too advantageous: even without agriculture humans rose to the very top of the food chain and annihilated every competitor - so as soon as the climate becomes suitable for...

Well, if we're using ASBs to totally rule out any possibility of agriculture developing such that we have, say, another million years of hunter-gatherers, we'll probably at the very least see populations in different regions adapt and change to suit their distinct environments. This may lead to...

Well, anatomically modern humans supposedly diverged around 200,000 years before the introduction of agriculture, so I imagine things wouldn't change much in the interim if agriculture were to be developed later. This is also problematic because we don't have a very good idea of the effect...

I guess I would argue that every empire has limits on its size, based off of its inherent weaknesses and its inherent strengths, both of which are directly linked to environmental, geographic, economic, social, and technological factors. The structure of every empire is based off of these...

I guess now we get back to the old argument whether increasing the size of the Roman Empire strengthens it or merely accelerates its demise. Personally, looking at the evidence of every large empire in human history, I would say that the bigger the empire the faster it will fall due to problems...

China had a remarkable demographic and economic base which allowed it to soak up any invaders without fragmenting into culturally distinct zones. It also had the advantage of being geographically separated from any rival who could possibly pose a threat to the integrity of Chinese civilization...

I think it's at very plausible that Rome or a Roman successor state could restore a significant portion of its empire after periods of crisis and disunity - after all, it actually happened with the Byzantine iteration of Roman civilization - but what you're assuming is a sprawling Roman Empire...

I won't contest that the arrival of the Avars was decisive, but the Slavs were already raiding the length and breadth of the Balkans, causing great devastation, with almost no reaction from the Byzantine army which was mainly occupied in the West and later in Armenia. Also, the very fact that...

Justinian's attempts to restore the old borders in the West were ultimately a waste of resources for little gain. Expansion in Italy, Spain and North Africa, though impressive, were mostly ephemeral. The war against the Ostrogoths in particular utterly devastated Italy and left it open to...

Justinian. What an unmitigated disaster...

I think it could happen under some circumstances, but I highly doubt it would last for very long. England is just too small to permanently devolve like the HRE did.

*sigh* The same old goofy map (take a look at Wallachia). I played CK a lot but it's definitely broken. Within 50 years the entire world map devolves into a patchwork of unlikely states in unusual juxtapositions. I'm pretty sure the Emirate of Cyrenaica ended up in Scotland in 50% of the games...

Yeah, that was sort of my point. Did I really need to specify who would win? You're just not going to get anywhere arguing that the Mongols are going to be stopped in their tracks by European fortifications. Every single Mongol campaign from Syria to Korea demonstrates that if they had an...

It's a simple question of organization and tactics. You can demand "evidence" all you want (while providing little of your own, I might add) but these facts are obvious: The standard model of warfare in most parts of Europe at this time was for the decisive blow to be struck by a charge of...

Definitely requires a very early POD - maybe a POD before Russia or even Kievan Rus' existed. The Muscovite state and the Russian Empire that preceded it would and could not have existed under anything but a highly centralized autocracy. Novgorod is an interesting candidate, but I'm skeptical...