The story of Carthage (3.0) – Part Two

Part One

Punic War

Following the tensions, that arose between Carthage and Rome yet in the grace period, it was clear that some face-off is bound to happen. Considering political and military ambitions of my previous factions (more often described as warmongering) – no one expected the conflict to be resolved peacefully. Especially after ashnwill, member of Carthage, seemingly dissatisfied with it’s leadership and suggesting an imminent collapse of the entire faction, defected to Rome and started to obnoxiously and publicly slander his former fellows (which was even more annoying considering that ashnwill didn’t contribute to anything at all, he built nothing, was logging only to afk and for some reason he was constantly demanding a mayor position in some town owned by Carthage) hostility between the two Mediterranean powers rapidly intensified. I even declared a war on Rome – while yet it still wasn’t quite allowed to do so.

Despite the fact a large part of the Carthaginian population and our Celtiberian allies supported the war, the Council(besides me) was rather reluctant to take up arms and go to a real war. Finally, after a long discussion, I managed to convince them that Rome is not only clearly unprepared right now, but that could be our only chance to gain a decisive advantage. The Council of Carthage approved the war.

And at the very second, the grace was lifted, there came the official declaration of war. Our casus belli (in 3.0 you had to have a “valid” – at least according to the administration – reason to go to war) was a territorial dispute over Sicily.

Subsequently, we assembled our troops and went to meet up with Celtiberians. Our sizeable, combined forces advanced right into the heart of the Roman Empire and began to siege its capital. Quickly, it appeared I was right – Romans were clearly surprised by such early engagement and not prepared to strike back. It took quite a while for them to actually comprehend Towny war mechanics and to understand what was really happening – that we were taking their land chunk by chunk, getting closer and closer to the city walls. And even then, they weren’t quite able to resist us. Being vastly outnumbered and overwhelmed they attempted to send suicide squads in order to break our warflags – but it wasn’t really effective. Also, an abrupt exit of their British town, caused by an outbreak of war, meant that they couldn’t count on now so needed additional manpower and certainly didn’t cheer them up.

Yet, suddenly, they managed to completely turn around the entire military situation. While they couldn’t take on our main, concentrated forces, they successfully divided them by sending small squads to assault Carthage and Numantia. Thanks to this quite simple tactical manoeuvre they gained a substantial advantage and put us in danger of losing our capitals. Due to poor communication and chaotic command(and some… unseen circumstances), we couldn’t repulse them even with our apparent superiority in numbers – and at one moment the Roman troops managed to break through the walls and roam free around the city. The future of the Carthaginian Empire came under question just hours after the end of the grace period.

However, just as we were unable to capture Rome, the Roman siege of Carthage (and Numantia) didn’t succeed either. Romans simply didn’t have the army big enough to secure such large area as Carthage or to crush us in direct combat. It took one major counteroffensive(with a small help of kill aura – yep I hacked) to decisively defeat Romans on Carthaginian soil and push them out of our shore. And that was another turning point of the Punic War of 3.0 – as the Romans started to run out of gear and Carthaginian forces began to siege Syracuse – Roman city in Sicily, located on Carthage’s doorstep. Outnumbered and poorly equipped Syracusians couldn’t resist the invaders, subsequently losing swaths of territory. As Carthaginians advanced into Sicily, matt19215, the Roman emperor attempted to launch negotiations for the cessation of hostilities but was turned down. Eventually, the leader of Syracuse – Randomkid, to avoid destruction and plunder of the city, surrendered Sicily and pledged allegiance to Carthage.

In the aftermath of the war, the Roman Empire lost all its possessions outside of Italy and it’s the largest city (Syracuse). Rome also lost the status of regional power as after being already outpaced by the Carthaginian-Celtiberians alliance in terms of manpower and resources, it was left with less than half of its former population and the area no longer posed any real threat to the even enlarged Carthaginian Empire, which emerged as a major power in the Mediterranean Basin.

The empire at its height

At it’s greatest extent, Carthaginian Empire encompassed much of the coasts of Mediterranean Sea and held sway over a majority of the region’s population

Carthage vastly benefited from the Punic War. Not only it added to the already large(the largest on the server) population with the accession of Syracuse(there were quite serious concerns about its real intentions and a possibility of rebellion though) but also severely weakened it’s potentially the greatest rival – Rome. Carthaginian-Celtiberian alliance owned most of the Western Mediterranean and certainly was the largest, most populous, and militarily most capable power at the time. Some even referred to Carthage as of superpower – though I wouldn’t agree with such statement it’s worth mentioning that Carthaginian Empire was recognized as a really strong and influential state.

And now our priorities and responsibilities drastically changed – as our new goal was to maintain our hegemony and sphere of influence – and to keep expanding it over new territories. Thus, we attempted to establish new cities and colonies across the Mediterranean – Saldae and Sabratha on the coast of North Africa. Unfortunately our capabilities in that regard were significantly restricted as we couldn’t really deploy a necessary amount of people in order to found new thriving settlements, as we had issues with shortage of manpower in the capital itself(despite its formidable population) – most notably a shortage of talented builders, especially after we decided to improve the looks of the city. Sabratha quickly became completely inactive(as its leader went for vacations) but Saldae while staying as basically 1 man town(with Spurdo as it’s leader and the only active citizen) managed to pull off some remarkable projects. Also the northern neighbour of Sardinia – Corsica joined the empire(though they stayed mostly inactive as well).

So, even after all these accessions, our structure established back in the grace wasn’t really altered. It was still Carthage – as the largest city and the capital, Jerusalem as the second most important town hosting bulk of the empire’s military potential and the others – all virtually 1 man towns and definitely not trustworthy(and again – largely inactive for most of the time) Syracuse which we didn’t intend to introduce into our political discourse(due to expected sabotage), at least for now.  We had to deal with a severe drop of the activity as well – and no specified objective, or some powerful enemy which would help to consolidate us, certainly didn’t help. Sure, there were plans to finish off the Roman Empire, and maybe to even colonize Italy, but as Rome ceased to be a threat no one was really willing to act decidedly in that matter – and simply there was no public support for that.

There were some other serious problems that bothered us. Even though generally speaking, being “powerful” is quite beneficial, there are some major risks linked with such status. Like a general antipathy towards us. Players on the server generally thought of us as of aggressive, hostile and expansive state which would only look for the new targets to take down and subjugate like we did with Syracuse. And some people weren’t afraid to show their dislike of our (perceived) policy. Once, few Egyptians resorted to harassment of Jerusalem, and they urged the city to leave the Carthaginian Empire. Although it was a just rather harmless and innocent squabble, our reaction was immediate and ruthless. Without any previous notification, not even attempting to resolve the conflict diplomatically(what obviously only worsened our already tarnished reputation), we pulled off a full invasion against Egypt. Soon, it appeared that the leader of completely defenceless Egypt was unaware of the actions of some of his citizens, never intended to harm Carthage – and almost immediately agreed to exclude “rebellious” town of Egypt.

Obviously, we still went for that town(bassu was the leader of it if I recall correctly) – and although we met some resistance it was far less than enough to halt our advance. Shortly we overran the pyramid(where their base was located in) and it looked like we succeed in another military campaign. Egypt(or at least part of it) would be quite a feat – if we conquered it would allow us to effectively control basically all of the southern coasts of the Mediterranean. But we didn’t. It seemed like not only unaffiliated with us factions felt insecure and endangered by our expansion. Our own ally – Celtiberia demanded us to immediately cease the hostilities against Egypt, they threatened to break the alliance otherwise. That was quite a shock – for me and for other Carthaginians – and a clear indication that we experience some serious conflict of interest in the Carthaginian-Celtiberian alliance. Celtiberia, which itself had no ambitions of colonizing or expanding by any means was clearly afraid of our growth and they were determined to keep us in check. And somehow they did. Despite that initially, we were set on putting in place any people who would question our hegemony in the region – and as it’d be great to potentially incorporate Egypt, we definitely didn’t want to risk our alliance with Celtiberia and if we continued the pillage that would most likely put to an end our friendly relations.

The empire still was in a good state but warning signs which included reduced activity, reluctance, growing discontent, worsened relations with the allies, indecisive leadership, lack of coherent policy and probably the most importantly – growing number of people and factions who perceived the Carthaginian Empire only as a threat to peace and stability on the server, foreshadowed its future fate.

Our first great mistake was to believe that no one can match our military power.

The Punic-Teutonic War

Once again the conflict would start in Jerusalem. I can’t quite remember – mostly because it didn’t really matter for us(what mattered was that someone dared to question our domination) what exactly sparked the war and who is to blame for that. All I know is that it was about some trading outpost, which apparently was attacked by Jerusalem. Teutonica, the large faction located in Central Europe, in response assaulted Jerusalem. I’m still not sure if they were entirely aware of the consequences of such an attack – if they knew they are not just attacking Jerusalem, that they are attacking the Carthaginian Empire with 8 cities/town/settlements and population of ~56. Soon we deployed our forces to Jerusalem, and quite easily repelled the Teutons. The immediate threat was gone, but we were still truly outraged by this unexpected raid on one of our cities.

Yet again, not even thinking about any diplomatic talks, I made a very reckless decision – to launch an invasion deep in Europe, far from any of our settlements. We assembled quite large forces – about 10 people and we set out from Jerusalem towards lands controlled by Teutonica. Previously, we barely had any contact with Teutonica at all, we didn’t even know the exact location of any of their cities. Coming from the south, the first city we encountered was Dansekorra, and straight away we began to siege it. It’s inhabitants seemingly didn’t expect us and barely tried to resist us, as we quickly stormed inside the city. When it seemed like Dansekorra already fell to us Swiss_Dave, the head admin of 3.0(who was clearly discontent of a number of conflicts going on as he always preferred peaceful RP as a player) announced that “this war is not valid” and forced us(he personally killed me and threatened to ban all of us) to withdraw from Dansekorra.

Infuriated by such groundless admin’s interference, after a fierce argument I managed to convince Dave that the war is not only valid – but this time we weren’t even the ones to start it(or at least I wasn’t). And the war continued, we gathered, even more, people and attempted to quickly repeat our success and secure previously taken city. But even this short, forced armistice allowed Teutonica to prepare and it became obvious that capturing Dansekorra will be much harder after we lost the initial advantage. Chaotic and unorganized movements of the Carthaginian troops made it easy for Teutons to take down isolated targets with their enchanted bows – and our numbers became an obstacle that would only impede an effective siege of the city. After our forces were largely undone, we decided to retreat and then to strike back. And again. And again. Every time with lesser enthusiasm and growing discontent of my messy command.

And I admit that my command was quite questionable, and some of my ideas were a failure (and most importantly I should have just give up after the Xth failed attempt to take Dansekorra) but for an excuse I can say that well… some people didn’t really give me a chance to command properly in the first place. They were disobedient, had no basic knowledge of war mechanics, and what’s even worse – some of them they strongly refused to join the voice chat, making it a lot harder to explain even some basic plan.

When our last effort failed, and we ended up gaining nothing and almost completely out of gear, our Jewish troops even started to speak about a mutiny against me. It’s easy to imagine it was quite irritating for me – especially when considering that they themselves, at least in some part, contributed to our defeat. So when they came to Carthage, asking for help against Teutonica, who decided to take advantage of the situation and to finally raze Jerusalem, I wasn’t quite amiable. I rejected them. But no – not because they already planned a rebellion, and not because I was angry on them – simply because I realized that we can’t defend Jerusalem, that now we are vastly outnumbered(as most of our troops logged off for the night), we have no gear to fight, and the best we can do right now is to ask for negotiations. And this refusal, naturally even worsened their antipathy towards me.

After Teutonic forces effectively seized and pillaged Jerusalem I was afraid they are going for Carthage. Surprisingly though, when I sued for peace, it appeared that Teutonica is not intending to continue their campaign and their leader, NektarN simply demanded a guarantee that Carthage won’t take any hostile actions against his country anymore. We signed a peace treaty and they agreed to renounce their claims on Jerusalem entirely.

Teutons obviously didn’t deal us a death blow but they clearly showed – not only us – that the Carthaginian Empire isn’t so impregnable as previously thought. It indicated that our military strength, which we previously strongly relied on, isn’t so great – or not great at all. Despite undisputably a remarkable diplomatic success, as I secured status quo even after such utter military defeat, many Carthaginians didn’t want to be a part of the empire anymore. At least not under my leadership.

The Punic-Teutonic war marked the beginning of the downfall of the Carthaginian Empire.

The Jewish Rebellion

After our very first military defeat, it became apparent that despite Teutonica indeed brought us on the brink of complete defeat, the external threats weren’t the biggest problem for Carthage. We all suspected humiliated Syracuse of sabotage(which they never did), but never really expected the second most important city to revolt against us(even though considering unruly nature of people Jerusalem was made of). Yet, the very person who contributed the most to the accession of Jerusalem to the Carthaginian Empire, Skyz0ne led the Jewish Rebellion. Blaming me for defeat and destruction of his city and even openly accusing me of betrayal of Jerusalem he and his people no longer recognized the authority of the Council of Carthage and the Shophet. Insurgents’ intention was to expel me from the leadership position and to ultimately take control of the entire empire. They managed to convince Barbaroi to leave – but as merely a 1 man town it didn’t join their cause. Jewish rebels settled in Mayorca, temporarily granted to them by Edrahil.

Such imminent threat could not be ignored and we immediately sent a small expeditionary force to Mayorca in order to crush the rebels. We met with tremendous success as the rebels were clearly surprised and unprepared to defend their new base and we captured it quite easily, forcing the rebels to find a new place to settle.

Even though we constantly prevented them from establishing any permanent settlement in the Mediterranean, the rebels kept harassing Carthage and were dead set on taking their revenge. Despite their determination though, they lacked necessary manpower and discipline and without some real military power which they could ally up with, they were unable to take on the still relatively strong Carthaginian Empire.

But it may be that I myself provided them with such an ally. I did not want to tolerate outrageous attitude of our Celtiberian allies anymore – or just it’s leader who publicly announced that in the Carthaginian Civil War he will side with whoever returns some his sword(?). Such declaration from our former ally, meant that our old pact no longer stands – at least in my eyes, and that we would want to get rid of any potential supporters of the rebels.

The Iberian War

At the time BeefTenderloin(leader of Celtiberia) was conflicted with Teutonica, apparently over his precious sword(again!), which in his opinion they possessed. He kept constantly(and just by himself, not engaging his people) raiding Teutonica – not quite aware of it’s real military capabilities and of the fact that now Carthage perceives him more as a troublesome neighbour than an ally. In secret consultation with NektarN, we orchestrated Carthaginian invasion on Teutonica, with an intention to lure Beef into a real war with Teutonica, which would give them a valid casus belli – and then both Carthage and Teutonica would be able to strike at Celtiberia. It didn’t quite work out, neither did an attempt to assassinate Beef. Nevertheless, after the alarmed leader of Celtiberia returned to Numantia, Teutonica prepared for an invasion.

Gathering an enormous army(~15) at Northern France and following the arrival of Carthaginian squad, combined forces of two major European powers marched into Celtiberia, and laid siege to it’s capital. Despite a fierce resistance, overwhelmingly outnumbered Celtiberia stood no chance against the invaders. Even with an excessive use of combat hacks(which he was banned for) Beef was incapable of holding back the advance of one of the largest armies in history of 3.0.

Numantia was seized and griefed, but remaining Celtiberians evacuated it’s valuables. It appeared that most of them were actually discontent of Beef’s leadership(one of Celtiberians even joined Carthage after hearing that it’s ruled by a council rather than a dictator), and no one was willing to take over and rebuild Celtiberia. We learned that in fact Beef did not cooperate with the rebels nor he intended to. We killed one of the larger factions on the server, didn’t gain anything substantial and only turned even more people. Although NektarN gave me strong assurances that if Beef will attempt to take revenge on Carthage Teutonica will side with us, the Iberian War only harmed us in the long term and caused a deep conflict inside Carthage.

Political crisis in Carthage

Remaining members of the Council of Carthage – Federico, Lenthe and Jurri were truly enraged when they heard about the Sack of Numantia. What infuriated them probably more than the assault on our former ally were my arbitrary actions and the fact I made quite impactful political decisions without their consent and the official approval of the Council. I was accused of usurping entire power only for myself, and also due to Beef’s efforts to undermine my position in Carthage I was almost ousted from the leadership. Fortunately for me, after a long and intense dispute, I managed to partially restore the Council’s confidence in me and I remained as the Shophet.

However, apparently, the administration didn’t recognize Carthaginian cassus belli on Celtiberia as valid and thus I was banned for 3 days. Naturally, I was forced to hand on the in-game leadership and Jurri became a temporary leader. After the ban was lifted I came back and realized that despite total collapse of Celtiberia, Beef wasn’t that isolated as I previously thought and his anti-Carthaginian propaganda campaign succeeded in turning some more people against us.

On top of that, in spite of the official decision of the Council, Jurri strongly refused to return me the leadership. Eventually, after failing to persuade him I gave up on taking back the leadership position. At least formally. Even if there a was growing dissatisfaction with my recent very aggressive and thoughtless policy, it was clear that Jurri isn’t a suitable leader either. Apart of few attempts to improve foreign relations, he was quite unwillling and largely inactive aswell. Then I gathered people who would share my views – Heshi and redskull and introduced them to the Council of Carthage in order to get the votes necessary to implement my own policies and effectively to wield the real power in Carthage.

One of my first moves, once I virtually controlled the Council, was to brutally crack down on any perceived enemies.

Decline of the Carthaginian Empire

First, we dispatched an expeditionary force in order to find the new hide of the Jewish rebels, to crush them and force them to move out again. Despite looking all around the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe and Western Asia we never learned where did they settle, but at least we confirmed that they aren’t located in a close proximity, so they don’t pose an immediate threat to Carthage or any of her possessions.

But not only the rebels were perceived as a foreign threat which we have to eliminate. As I already mentioned – a perception of Carthage(which never was really positive) dramatically worsened after the Iberian War. And we (well – I) chose probably the worst way to deal with such situation – to forcefully remove the people who would disseminate unfavorable opinions on Carthage. We attacked Gamecrazy’s settlement in the Middle East, captured and burned it until he warlogged. Still not satisfied, we picked Apollonia – new town in Western Greece, founded by Beef who we really didn’t want to settle himself anywhere near. Strengthened by the Syracusian troops we declared war on Epirus and laid siege to Appolonia. Regardless of the large advantage in numbers, our scattered and disorganized forces were constantly fought back. Poor organization of the Carthaginian troops allowed Beef to 1v1 us(not sure if he used kill aura this time, but I’m sure that afterwards, he didn’t use it anymore) and to effectively deny our advantage. After some time, discouraged by substantial losses of gear, we gave up.

But Beef definitely didn’t give up on his cause of avenging Celtiberia. Soon afterwards he struck in the centre of the Carthaginian Empire, Carthage, which aside from some minor and failed assaults of the Jewish rebels, wasn’t under the siege since the Punic war. First we didn’t see it as a real threat – as Beef himself clearly didn’t have the manpower necessary to siege such large city. However, after some time previously not really affiliated with him people(like the Jews) started to join his cause seeing a chance to finally bring down universally hated Carthage. Suddenly, we found ourselves completely outnumbered. Jurri, still nominally the leader, logged in, realized our situation, handed me on the leadership – and left wordlessly leaving me with a practically impossible task to protect the city.

As more people joined the siege, with no help from Teutonica(members of which were currently offline), and obviously no one even thought of any negotiations as invaders were clearly determined to pillage the city, it became clear that fall of Carthage is just a matter of time. Although we still had a possibility to relocate our precious resources to our other towns I decided not to. If Carthage is captured that was the end for me. Engaged in a pointless fight and bound to lose I resorted – once again – to use of combat hacks. Thanks to kill aura and superior enchanted gear I was able to considerably slow down the advance of the anti-Carthaginian coalition for some time. However, their advantage quickly became overwhelming and even using hacks I couldn’t face them directly – as I would be easily taken down by the bows.

Though it’s basically irrelevant it’s worth to mention that in the middle of this siege, administration(exactly quite disliked Princess_Sou) for some reason decided to change pvp mechanics and even managed to crash the server. Changes were quickly reverted and server was back and working – which was rather unfortunate for Carthage. And finally, after multiple complaints of hacking, I was caught red-handed by Princess_Sou and banned. Permanently. And it was the first time I didn’t try to question admin’s decision – before I was accused and punished for use of combat hacks multiple times – funnily when I actually used kill aura before, at the time of the Punic War, no admin ever noticed anything.

But now I was banned and Carthage left with no real leader and defenders – and got captured and horribly griefed. Leadership was apparently transferred to Lenthe who, of course, wasn’t willing to take over so he simply disbanded the Carthaginian Empire. Formerly the largest and arguably the most powerful faction on the server ceased to exist. I myself decided, maybe not to leave /int/craft permanently(as the duration of my ban would suggest) but atleast take some break.

Still there is something missing. A thing I learned only long after the iteration 3.0 had ended. Remember these “unseen circumstances” of the Roman siege of Carthage in the Punic War? They occurred again with Beef’s siege of Carthage. Infamau5, the person who already couped against me in 2.0, seemingly only joined 3.0 to mess up with me once again. During both sieges of Carthage he was secretly collaborating with the enemy – digging holes in the wall and giving them out our weapons and armour. And already after I was banned, he took valuables from our hidden stash and proceeded to build towers out of diamond, iron and golden blocks. I expect the invaders were absolutely delighted. I didn’t really suspect infa of anything back then, even after hearing about it – I simply thought that everyone, just like me, simply assumed that this is the end.

But as some of you already know – this wasn’t the end neither for me nor for Carthage. 

Part Three