Hi everyone welcome to my second post, now I’ve decided to tweak to format to my channel slightly (I’m new to this so forgive me!) but I’ve decided as there are so many things to do with Rome I’d like to talk about beside the narrative, every second episode I’d like to have an opportunity to go off topic and discuss things like Books, films, tv etc. with a historical context obviously for these episode the format will be more relaxed so if anyone has any topics they would like me to talk about please get in touch.

As some of you will know guessing from my title,the first thing I’d like to talk about is creative assembly’s Rome Total War, now the purpose of my blog is to discuss the historicity of the game not review so I’ll just give my quick thoughts on it and move on. I love the total war series especially the historical titles such as Rome and medieval and Rome total war was the first game in the series I played so I’m quite nostalgic for it but to this day I still play and enjoy it the battles are epic yet simple, the world map is beautiful and the game has a simplicity which I find myself missing in newer total war titles, if I give it a score out of 10 it would be a solid 9 and I’d recommend it to any history buff despite the games many inaccuracies.

Which Segway’s nicely into what I’d like to discuss now there are too many inaccuracies to go over in a small blog so I’ll just go over some of main ones in my opinion and give you some historical context and give my thought why I think the developers decided to make the changes. The first change I’d like to bring up is certainly the most bizarre the city of Segesta which is in Scilly in real life in the game is located in North West Italy yeah I don’t get that one either so let’s just move on!

With the Roman factions there are 2 things I’d like to talk about one is the fact that Rome is split into 4 factions the senate faction and 3 families in charge of different regions of Italy with the task of expanding the boarders of the empire for the senate the julii In Gaul ,Germania and Hispania, the brutii in Greece and Macedonia and the scipii in Africa,Yeah Rome didn’t work like that Rome was one single unified entity at this point in history with a complex bureaucracy with consuls and military positions being elected. The reason for this change I believe is that the developers wanted to make the civil war mechanics easier to implement by having separate factions, Also I think they wanted some name recognition with the 3 families with the julii being synonymous with Julius Caesar,the scipii with Scipio Africanus who defeated Hannibal at Zama and finally the brutii for Brutus the ancestor of Rome’s first consul and one of Caesars assassins. Now I may have said Rome wasn’t ruled by families but there was a certain class structure of the leading families who could trace their origins back to the first 100 senators and everyone else the Plebs as they were known now while the scipii and the brutii were among these noble families the julii certainly weren’t and in many centuries time when we come to Caesar he is my know means lower class he is definitely not among the upper elites who controlled the senate.

The second major change I’d like to talk about is the single event which I believe allowed Rome to establish itself as the Mediterranean sole super power for the next 400 years and paved the way for imperial Rome the Marian reforms now in the game they take place much earlier than they did in real life around 100 years or so this was done by the developers most likely to allow you to experience the reforms earlier and get to play around with it a bit which is fun but does give the game some silly aspects (praetorian guard before the emperor 🤔).Gaius Marius is one of my favourite stories from the Roman Empire so I’d like to talk a little about what the Marian reforms where and why it transformed the roman army, You see before Marius the roman army while still effective was a citizen army I.e. nonprofessional only land owning citizens could join you weren’t paid and you bought your own equipment, you’d leave your farm for campaigning and after the war was over you’d return home and start your life again but this is where the problem came this system worked when Rome’s Wars where in Italy but when you start fighting in Africa, Greece and Spain you’re now suddenly away from your farm years at a time so when you did return your farm was ruined and to make ends meet the soldiers would have to sell their farm to rich land owners to survive but ah now this solider who fought for the glory of Rome is now landless and can’t fight in the army and to top this off the wars soldiers like this won meant the empire was full of foreign slaves who the rich land owners with vast estates could get to work the land for no cost meaning there was no jobs, them bloody slaves stealing all our jobs, sound familiar? So it meant by the time Marius became consul and there was a war to win Numidia he found himself short of manpower and his solution would change Rome forever.

His solution was an ingenious as it was simple he made the roman army open to all citizens no matter how poor they were, and in addition to this he made the army professional and they carried their own equipment giving the legions the nickname Marius mules this change made them better trained and the most efficient fighting force the world had yet seen, it also now allowed any man who could survive 25 years’ service of course an opportunity at a better life for many poor joining the legions became the only way to improve your lot in life. I don’t even think Marius himself would have foresaw the change this would have on roman empire but this simple change turned the roman army from being loyal not to the state but too the general who pays then.(Anyone else read that in littlefingers voice?) Anyway I’ve really got on a tangent here especially as I intend to cover Marius later but if you can’t wait for that then I’d recommend Plutarch’s lives to learn more about the man who became consul seven times.

To finish this post I’d like to get back on topic and mention a few other historical inaccuracies within Rome: total war first the names of some factions there was no such thing as a united Spain (Hispania), Gaul or Greece so the factions where clumped together to simplify the game even though in reality these states had, many independent states and tribes which were culturally very different from each other in some cases. Also the Egyptian faction is very inaccurate as in the game the faction units resemble more of the Bronze Age kingdoms rather than the Hellenic fighting style the historical Egyptians of the period would have had, but with the already stocked Hellenic factions in the game Greece, Macedonia, and Pontus. Thracian it made sense to give Egypt a unique feel so I can understand this change from the developers. However a change I cannot understand is the supreme dominance of the phalanx within the game from the front the phalanx is practically unbeatable always being able to overcome the roman legions in a head on battle now while in the days of alexander the phalanx was the dominant fighting force history has proven the Roman legionaries was vastly superior to the Greek hoplite, now I’d love to explain this more to you but this post has already gone on a little too long! So if you would like to know more about why the Roman fighting style was superior to the Greek I will leave a link to a video on the battle of Battle of Cynoscephalae which gives an excellent explanation of why the romans won.

Thanks for reading see you next time!