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While waiting for the first official patch to BOR, I've spent some time replaying the Spartacus War. I've usually chosen the historical route and stayed in Southern Italy, trying to survive against the inevitable Roman onslaught there. This scenario is fun to play, because it's so difficult to win as the slaves (as it should be).

This time I decided to choose the Northern strategy and abandoned the South. The march to Gallia Cisalpina was brutal. I followed the Eastern coast of Italy, managing to capture a couple of cities on my way to Tegertes, finally arriving there after several months of bloody marching and fighting. I had split my slave army between Crixus and Spartacus - this strategy seemed to work reasonably well against the Romans, and made it easier to supply the troops. However, after reaching my destination I quickly noticed that the Northern winters are harsh, and I ran into some serious problems trying to keep everybody adequately supplied. The South is more populated and has much more loot to offer, and the weather is warm even in winter. I also noticed that I received much fewer reinforcements than I did in the South.

I was never able to evacuate everybody from Tegertes. The Romans spent some time wiping out the remaining rebels in the South and then concentrated most of their troops against my little slave kingdom of the North. I tried to send some light troops to raid and harass the Roman advance, but it didn't help much. Crixus died fighting valiantly with his men against a massive Roman army under Crassus, and then there was only Spartacus and his elite force of veteran gladiators left. They held out for a few month more, but constant supply difficulties and heavy Roman pressure finally led to Spartacus being captured and crucified, which effectively ended the rebellion. I suffered a minor defeat in points. I did manage to evacuate plenty of slaves from Tegertes, but obviously it wasn't enough, with Spartacus losing his life.

It was fun and dramatic (would have made a great AAR!), but I don't know what I could have done differently to win in the North. There just doesn't seem to be enough supplies or reinforcements available, and there were still many turns left when I lost my final army.

Any thoughts from our veteran gladiators here?

Congratulations, PJJ.

I have seen "proper" AARs less entertaining than your post!

I am very glad you are enjoying the scenario.

(PS: as to the official patch for BOR, it is not too far away, but the beta patch seems to be good, and brings lots of improvements, I sugest you give it a try)

Best regards

It's one of my absolute favourite scenarios and the one I learned how to play AJE with. Never won it decisively however. Best playthroughs I split up my forces and have them run all over Italy. Making a mess everywhere you can gets you more troops and keeps the Romans off balance. Despite my best efforts however those pesky buggers always end up massively outnumbering and slowly decimating me at one point or the other.

The fun is in trying to postpone that moment the best you can.

Ben wrote:The fun is in trying to postpone that moment the best you can.

Yes, definitely. It's always a very desperate struggle against impossible odds. I've always found the story of Spartacus to be one of the most interesting ones in the whole history of the ancient world. Too bad we know so little about him. There was a Roman historian (whose name I can't remember now) who wrote extensively about the history of the slave wars, but unfortunately only small fragments of his work remain.

"The Spartacus Wars"is an excellent book on the subject.
Can't remember the authors name[am not at home now]

The Osprey books is also very nice.

http://www.amazon.com/Spartacus-Slave-War-73-71-gladiator/dp/1846033535/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1360597099&sr=1-12&keywords=spartacus.
Barry Strauss 's book is also recommended ( The Spartacus War)

Who says you can't win that one as Spartacus?

Ha! That'll teach them to keep slaves. I hope they robbed all the riches from Crassus's vaults.

The AI must have made a terrible mistake, or you must be a superb player (or both!). I've never seen such an outcome before.

Regarding books about Spartacus, the one by Barry Strauss is perhaps the best. But they all suffer from the same problem, lack of ancient primary sources. There's just so little we know about the slave wars that many details are totally unknown, and will remain so unless new discoveries are made.

When you all talk about these historical sources I can only say I am astonished by how much research must have been done for AJE and BOR. Of course I don't know how faithful to history the games are but it seems to me they are very thoroughly researched..

Ben wrote:
Who says you can't win that one as Spartacus?

You can win, but only if you lay siege to Rome early, before the Rome gets its first 4 consul legions, before Crassus comes with 2 more legions, before Pompey comes to Italy with 4 more...
In the first few turns, your Army is actually stronger, but as Romans get serious, you become cooked meat, you can only hope to run away and win on points by escaping Italy (if you try to stick to history and not invade Rome too early).

Ace wrote:You can win, but only if you lay siege to Rome early, before the Rome gets its first 4 consul legions, before Crassus comes with 2 more legions, before Pompey comes to Italy with 4 more...
In the first few turns, your Army is actually stronger, but as Romans get serious, you become cooked meat, you can only hope to run away and win on points by escaping Italy (if you try to stick to history and not invade Rome too early).

In that game the Romans already had their overwhelming numerical superiority with the consul legions and Crassus already in play. What I did was take over the south then split my armies in two and send the smaller one north and keep the main force in the south. The Romans combined their forces and focused on taking back the cities in the south. So I ambushed them in the mountians and then blockaded their main force there whenever I could. With my northern force with whom I had untill then evaded direct confrontation I then aggressively attacked the smaller Roman 'stacks' before marching on Rome. Southern Roman force then went north but because they had been hit hard I was able to stall them with constant attacks by my (quickly diminishing) southern force. In the end Rome fell before they could reach it. Most intense bout yet.