"I didn't expect to be beaten by someone part of "a brand new melee gaming clan" who play "all sorts of maps, preferably LT style", but still, more ridiculous stuff happens every day, I mean, I have a losing record to Keanu_Reaver for crying out loud"
- Ling-erie's A Pubbie Tourney BR
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| Historycraft: The Punic Wars | | | Author: | | | IP: | bha7-s2.XXXX | | Date: | 02/09/00 05:02 | | Game Type: | Other | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 2, Max: 10, Min: 8
Lifetime Rating for [MrFurious]: 7.0000 |   | |
prologue: Once again it is time for us to visit the glory days of yesteryear when a tactical drop meant having to deal with seaborne disease and a rush meant months of traveling to the enemy base.Kick back relax and get out your notebooks while the pics load cause there will be a test on this next week. Without further ado we will jump right into our subject:
The early game : The First Punic War As you can see from the map, Rome spawned at the 12:00 position in the Italian boot while Carthage spawned at the bottom in North Africa (about where Tunis is nowadays). Carthage immediatly expands all over the map becoming THE great naval power of the time. The people of Carthage were descended from the old Phoenicians which in latin is pronounced Poeni hence the term PUNIC for these wars we are about to witness.
When the first blows fall in 264 B.C., Carthage has solid expansions in Corsica and a foot hold in Sicily. As any SC player knows, taking an expansion spot right in the face of your opponent's main cannot go unchallenged. So the first conflict was fought over Sicily. Rome dropped troops and layed siege to Carthaginian cities all over the island. Knowing Carthage had a strong fleet, Rome hastily produced its own and also teched up a bit to obtain better boarding technology. Carthage tried to break the siege with their fleet but the romans wasted it and the island was lost.
< Imperia_Roma > No exp for you
< [Phoeni]Carthage> Fucking gay-ass boarding tech
Rome used their maritime advantage to take out the Corsica and Sardinia expansions as well. Carthage could only sit and watch while building up their presence in Spain.
Middle Game : The Second Punic War In 218 B.C. A young Carthaginian general named Hannibal marched 20,000 men, 6000 heavy cavalry and 38 war elephants over the Alps in direction of Rome. This "control group" won 3 engagements thanks to Hannibal's superb micro. The romans also tried some harassement tactics but nothing stopped Hannibal from laying waste to the Italian countryside.
< Imperia_Roma > OMG!
< [Phoeni]Hannibal> New school owns all man...
< Imperia_Roma > You have to be hacking...
< [Phoeni]Hannibal> bah
Let's take a break for a moment and imagine you are playing BW on lost temple. Your opponent has a a bunch of Goons and temps roaming blockading your main. You have 6 rax and 2 factories pumping out stuff, you send waves of M&Ms and tanks to take it out.... and fail miserably due to poor micro! What do you do?? What do you think the romans did?
That's right.... They panicked.
They made human sacrifices to their Gods for help. They wished desperatly for someone to destroy the impudent Hannibal ASAP. They kick out their commander Publius Maximus after only 6 months because they didn't agree with his harassement tactics and wanted someone who could finish it.
This honor went to two consuls Varro and Paullus who mounted an army and went to meet Hannibal where he was camped, on the plains near the town of Cannae.
The battle of Cannae
 The Romans organized 74,000 light and heavy infantrymen into three lines for a central assault. The legions were led by a man named Servilius, who was a war tribune--a position of command that rotated among six officers each year. They faced a semicircle of 40,000 heavily armed infantry under the personal command of Hannibal. The Carthaginian troops included units of Libyan, Gaul and Iberian mercenaries, foreign soldiers hired to fight
On his left flank, Hannibal positioned 6000 heavy Celtic and Spanish cavalry commanded by a Greek mercenary named Sosylos. Facing them on the Roman right flank were 2000 cavalry under the command of the consul Paullus.
To his right, Hannibal stationed 4000 light and highly mobile cavalry from Numidia, an ancient country in North Africa that is today mostly Algeria. Opposing them were 4000 elite Roman cavalry under consul Varro's command; these horsemen were patricians, or knights of Rome and their sons.
 No sooner had the Roman front lines commenced their attack on the Carthaginian center than the Carthaginian heavy cavalry commanded by Sosylos rushed the horsemen on the Roman right flank. Unable to hold their position, the Romans were splintered into small units that fled the battlefield and left their leader--consul Paullus--dead. The Roman right flank was left defenseless.
The Carthaginian center was gradually withdrawing from the Roman assault. This was part of Hannibal's plan to win the battle: his infantry withdrew deliberately to create an even tighter semicircle around the attacking Roman forces.
Having crushed its opposition, Sosylos's cavalry went around the rear of the Roman infantry; joined the Numidian cavalry commanded by Maharbal; and engaged the enemy's left-flank cavalry. Faced with Carthaginians both in front and behind, the Roman cavalry was annihilated. Though their commander, consul Varro, escaped, most of the Roman horsemen rode sluggish mounts and were unable to dodge the repeated Carthaginian attacks.
 Stripped of both its flanks, the Roman infantry formed a wedge that drove deeper and deeper into the Carthaginian semicircle. Hannibal's infantry surrounded its enemy on three sides--and the Carthaginian cavalry closed the circle in the Roman rear.
It was no longer a fair fight: the trapped Roman soldiers were massacred...
Desperate drop
So what do you do if you can't break containement? that's right you drop the sucker...
In 204 BC, the romans took the offensive, landing in Africa and pushing dangerously near Carthage. Hannibal and his remaining forces returned totally exhausted to defend their city.
At the Battle of Zama (202 BC), Hannibal was decisively defeated by a Roman general dubbed Scipio Africanus (No doubt the ancestor of [E]Scipio) for his victory in the African desert. The Romans used the same tactics Hannibal had employed in Cannae.
Late game : The Third Punic War
Led by the grandson of Scipio Africanus, Rome besieged Carthage in 149 -146 BC, burned the city down to its foundations and sowed salt into the soil to make it forever infertile. Of the 250,000 citizens of Carthage, just 50,000 survived the massacre--only to be forced into slavery. Such systematic murdering of civilians would not be seen again until WWII.
Lessons learned
1) Don't panic you can always break containment...
2) The orgin of the word Punishement comes from this conflict
3) Micro only takes you so far... after that you need raw firepower to kill your opponent
Thanks for reading
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