WI: Romans conquers Germania in the 3rd or 4th centuries

If it's just knowledge of techniques, that can change with earlier Roman penetration after Teutoburg Forest causing cultural exchange. Roll forward 200 years and it suddenly looks much more attractive.

That only works if either side has the tools or technique or if it came with from said intermixing. To my knowledge the real secret was the invention of a new kind of plow a few hundred years later. Also unmentioned but important was that the environment was turning against Germanic agriculture at the time and would only get worse and worse. So settlement would be difficult.
 
That only works if either side has the tools or technique or if it came with from said intermixing.

I have lately read an article about the rise of the german super-tribes. The romans supported this development east of the Rhine with great but probably unintended development aid in many areas. Technology transfer happend in many ways across Rhine and Danube.

One area was agriculture. The romans knew the two-field crop rotation. Perhaps even three-field, but this is still disputed. The germans did not know about rotation. They simply used their fields until exhausted and then cleared new land. So the romans themselves finally contributed to the population growth of the germans in the 1st-4th century. Just one of many aspects, how the romans helped the germans to develop. Others are money tranfers and transfer of military and administrative knowledge, which changed the germanic societies greatly. The romans made the germans ready to attack the empire; at least partially.

So I am confident, that Germania would look much more productive 200 years after Teutoburg. Like Britannia was initially rather unproductive, but started in the 3rd/4th century to export grain.
 
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Hecatee

Donor
Soil doesn't change much. Climate and farming techniques do. You could put much of the change to the medieval warm period, new plows and methods to deal with stuff.

The main issue here is that the Romans came from a Mediterranean environnement where you do work in the fields with rather light plows that can be pushed by a man or a donkey for a shallow level of earth penetration.

On the other hand the heavier lands of the North do require heavier plows because of the higher clay level in the soil. This invention did not come OTL before the early Middle Ages (evidence for the late 6th century seems to be the earliest) and this more than anything prevented the exploitation of Germania's lands by the Romans : their techniques were simply not good enough
 
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