Mon Oct 28, 2013 10:37 pm
I'm not so sure that it would have been an epic long campaign. The battle of Actium wasn't really a fluke as much as a desparate attempt by Mark Antony to break out of an impossible position -- a bit like the one the Athenians got themselves into at Syracuse.
Antony had already lost the political battle, and in the long run that translates into legions. He couldn't win, not unless he spooked Agrippa into doing something incredibly stupid, and he ended up getting hoist on his own petard.
I don't buy Octavian's propaganda that Cleopatra abandoned Antony at Actium. She had the war treasury in her ship, and the purpose of the battle was probably to break open a hole in Agrippa's line that Cleopatra could slip through so that they could continue the war. The ugly surprise may have been the extent of the casualties taken in order to get the treasure fleet out.
The campaign leading up to Actium is fascinating, since it was a land and sea campaign played out along the whole coastline of Greece. I've always wanted to see a scenario covering it and I hope it's in the works. To get the interplay of land and naval forces working correctly for this one the map will need to have a few ports and harbours added (e.g. two in the gulf of Ambracia).
Other scenarios that I would love to see would be the Social War, Jugurtha, and the Carthaginian conquest of Southern Spain between the First and Second Punic Wars. And as a warm-up for the Actium campaign, there's always the Illyrian wars.