Rome unites the world!

Unifying the world doesn't mean unifying Europe to the Urals. :rolleyes: It means Rome has to take over all of Afro-Eurasia from the Atlantic to the Cape to the Pacific to the Indonesian archipelago. It then has to take over the ANZA region, and then has to conquer both Americas. That is what unifying the world requires. And even Eurofed can't see that happening, which is to his credit.

But you were talking about pre-modern conquests in Persia and India and I didn't mention any of that. By the time this Rome is taking large chunks of sub-Saharian Africa and Asia it's already in a very modern age.
But even so they are not conquering it all. Other states get more and more dependent of Rome and fall into its sphere one way or the other. Some could even apply to become a province in order to receive parliamentary representation, a route similar to OTL Sikkim within the Republic of India.
The soft power of TTL *contemporary Rome would make OTL USA a joke.
 
But you were talking about pre-modern conquests in Persia and India and I didn't mention any of that. By the time this Rome is taking large chunks of sub-Saharian Africa and Asia it's already in a very modern age.
But even so they are not conquering it all. Other states get more and more dependent of Rome and fall into its sphere one way or the other. Some could even apply to become a province in order to receive parliamentary representation, a route similar to OTL Sikkim within the Republic of India.
The soft power of TTL *contemporary Rome would make OTL USA a joke.

In a situation where its borders, never-defined, include territory that offers them overland trading routes of the sort that mean it never needs a sea route. And if you want a perpetually frozen classical Rome becoming some juggernaut, Roman diplomacy is Mongol-style: make a desert and call it peace.
 
In a situation where its borders, never-defined, include territory that offers them overland trading routes of the sort that mean it never needs a sea route. And if you want a perpetually frozen classical Rome becoming some juggernaut, Roman diplomacy is Mongol-style: make a desert and call it peace.

The step from "Rome with the Americas" to "Rome with the Americas plus a British-style Empire" is the one I admitedly find the least obvious one. They can do it, sure, but as you say they'll have little motivation.
But firstly we can see Rome put a foothold in Africa to gather slaves (it'll make sense ITTL too). Afterwards we can see some sort of ideology that combines white-man's-burden (not necessarily racial, just "civilize the uncivilized") with some sort of divine mandate to rule the world.
 
The step from "Rome with the Americas" to "Rome with the Americas plus a British-style Empire" is the one I admitedly find the least obvious one. They can do it, sure, but as you say they'll have little motivation.
But firstly we can see Rome put a foothold in Africa to gather slaves (it'll make sense ITTL too). Afterwards we can see some sort of ideology that combines white-man's-burden (not necessarily racial, just "civilize the uncivilized") with some sort of divine mandate to rule the world.

Rome in the Americas is the *least* minor issue with this, the first major one is that there's no depiction of what this Rome even looks like as a society or how it evolves.
 
I thought the Roman borders basically expanded hugely during the 1st century AD? The Romans didn't really stop conquering until Hadrian started to realize they couldn't expand for ever and started fortifying and stabilizing the nation.

If instead you are proposing the Romans stop conquering in the 1st century AD. It doesn't make much sense, after all it was the first Great emperors that filled Roman treasuries and achieved Divinity through their conquest. Those are powerful desires to overcome for the prospective Romam emperors.

Not to mention, what mechanism of Roman society would enforce such a stability? The Generals of the legions would not always listen to distant Rome. The Client state system was inherently unstable. Even if Rome itself enacts some amazing reforms to stabilize itself that doesn't mean it's client states would be able to create the same reforms. The Client states probably would not or even could not adopt the theoretical Roman reforms, for them succession of power was a very longterm problem. So states friendly to Rome have to have some compelling reason.

The point was precisely call it quits around the time hegemony over Mare Nostrum is reached and "walling" the empire the way Hadrian walled Britain.
What's inherently wrong with client states as buffer states?
 
Rome in the Americas is the *least* minor issue with this, the first major one is that there's no depiction of what this Rome even looks like as a society or how it evolves.

Good. Because many wrote formulas on how to make Rome survive (some more ASB than others) and which takes precedence as the most plausible is not my immediate concern.
I'm more interested if there is a Rome (any) that can pull off the rest of the steps for world domination.
 
Good. Because many wrote formulas on how to make Rome survive (some more ASB than others) and which takes precedence as the most plausible is not my immediate concern.
I'm more interested if there is a Rome (any) that can pull off the rest of the steps for world domination.

Nope. There is not a variant that could take over even Germania and Persia. It's past the power of the state. It won't find a basis for power more sophisticated than "I have the best legions, obey me or I slit your throats as traitors" until it's really plumbing the Augean Stables in crisis-terms, and after that point you need a miracle-worker just to get the boundaries of Augustus again.
 
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