Would Roman Empire borders on the Elbe/Carpathian Mountains have made a difference?

Would Roman borders on the Elbe River/Carpathian Mountains have made a difference?

  • Yes, it would have made the Empire more secure.

    Votes: 55 57.9%
  • Yes, the additional resources needed would make the Empire less secure.

    Votes: 26 27.4%
  • No, it would have not helped nor hurt the Empire.

    Votes: 21 22.1%

  • Total voters
    95

Hecatee

Donor
Oh please, you Plebians have yet to get on my Romaboo level.

The fact you don't even consider a Tyras/Vistula river border shows how un-roman you are.
Thing is that you then begin to have a problem of distance. If you look at pre-colonial eras you see a tendency for policies to reach a certain size which rarely go above a given point which is linked to speed of information. At one point information takes too much time to come to the decision centers and the state can't react properly so great losses are endured. A Tyras - Vistula border is one of those distances because the Vistula does not lead to a point where easy communications back toward Rome do exist in the way the Elbe or the Oder do come back to the Danube at place where roads going south are available.
Let's look at Orbis data for travelling time in the Ancient World (orbis.stanford.edu) :

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We see clearly that the area around the Elbe or even the Oder seems to be in the same range as Britannia, but the area around the Vistule is clearly much more difficult to reach. So I'd consider it a worse border. A good question though would be wether or not a move of the borders to the Vistula might cause a change of the capital to Athens or Constantinople. If the west was completely pacified up to at least the Elbe and most of the legions were on the Vistule and in the East then we could easily see a necessity to move the court (I dismiss Sirmium due to no sea access, but it could also be a city on the Danube... Aquincum for instance, especially if the pannonian plain begins to produce a lot of grain : the issue with the capital is the amount of food needed and how to carry it there, thus why a sea city is better to get access to both the african and egyptian grain)
 

I do wish that Orbis tool would explain why it takes longer to travel from Cornwall than from further East (v.confusing).

However, I'd also love to see what adding certain canals would do. I've always been of the mind that if you had Constantinople as a capital and additional canals in certain places, the Empire massively changes.

I'd agree that Constantinople works better than Rome for this massive eastern shift but it would need serious infrastructure projects to reach some of the territories, or otherwise provide a great amount of autonomy to certain regions.

I dread to imagine the cost of expanding the Pruth through to the Vistula.

I think it is more likely to see expansion along the Pruth, with canal works at its northern end to extend it till the Vistula valley becomes a reasonable target for a campaign.
 

Hecatee

Donor
I do wish that Orbis tool would explain why it takes longer to travel from Cornwall than from further East (v.confusing).

However, I'd also love to see what adding certain canals would do. I've always been of the mind that if you had Constantinople as a capital and additional canals in certain places, the Empire massively changes.

I'd agree that Constantinople works better than Rome for this massive eastern shift but it would need serious infrastructure projects to reach some of the territories, or otherwise provide a great amount of autonomy to certain regions.

I dread to imagine the cost of expanding the Pruth through to the Vistula.

I think it is more likely to see expansion along the Pruth, with canal works at its northern end to extend it till the Vistula valley becomes a reasonable target for a campaign.

For details on the methodology look at the "geospatial" tab in the orbis page description : they provide quite a few infos that would help you. It's probably that the ground may have less mountains and/or better seas.

About new canals in the Pruth to Vistula area I must confess I now nothing about the lay of the land in the area in the region, so I don't know about the feasibility of a canal in the area but canal building was not something the romans did that often, so that's not something I see them using that often as a tool for extension (even if the fossa maria was build in war time).
 
Oh please, you Plebians have yet to get on my Romaboo level.

The fact you don't even consider a Tyras/Vistula river border shows how un-roman you are.
If this means a Baltic invasion of Rome (as the Balts would be Rome's neighbours now) then I'm all for it.

Česlovas Gedgaudas would be proud.
 
The Dniester is a good idea. Here's a map: blue lines are river borders, red lines are land. The shortest border, and the one with basically no land border, would be Vistula/Dniester (Tyras), but good luck getting that. Next shortest land border is the actual Roman Empire border (minus Dacia). The Carpathian land border is long even if you use the Dniester.

How short of a land border can you do if you go Elbe-Danube or even Oder-Danube? Depending on how far tributaries are navigable, it seems those get you pretty close in places.
 
Thing is that you then begin to have a problem of distance.

Yeah but that would only be a problem if there were any actual threats beyond the Border. The whole point of Conquering to the Vistula is other than Steppe nomads there isn't anyone left that could possibly be much of a threat. True you might need to stomp out rebellions and maybe some Bandits raiding villages from across the border but no huge raiding parties most likely.

Also I remember someone on the forum once proposing the Romans invent an optical telegraph that could speed things up tremendously.

However, I'd also love to see what adding certain canals would do.

Honestly Canals would have a better effect for draining swamps than anything.

If this means a Baltic invasion of Rome (as the Balts would be Rome's neighbours now) then I'm all for it.

You mean a Roman invasion of the Balts? I'm sure all that Baltic Amber would entice some enterprising Romans.
 
I didn't cast my vote because I did't find my variant:
- an expanded border was impossible.

I mean it was not there because the Roman Empire was not able to do it.
Simple as that.
Conquering and holding, consolidating, assimilating such a territory was damn hard and damn risky. Octavianus Augustus tried it and regretted it very much.

I`d say the very fact that Augusts had made some really good inroads into making the Elbe border a reality before Teutoberg should speak that at least expanding the border to there at least is not impossible. Claiming that something couldn`t be done because it wasn`t done IOTL defeats the purpose of alternate history, after all.
 
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