Empire Ain’t Easy
After years, my little Decapolis has lost two cities to encroaching barbarians and suffered the indignity of a successful raid on a third. When it hits, “Hellfire and the Fall of Empire” doesn’t pull its punches.
In the Year of Our Lord (a nice touch) 2948 the Weallian Supremacy launched an exploratory raid through the Gerasa Gap, but my spies had sussed out their plans. My forces laid an ambush in the hills they hoped to use for cover, and turned them back with minimal casualties. We were helped in this by the timely arrival of a small force from the Popular Front – with just a few companies of infantry, we can imagine they are a mercenary outfit. For their help, we paid them well, and even supplied them with a few salvaged Weallian vehicles. The best part about an absolute win like this is that the Weallians are off the table for the next d6 years. I rolled a two, so that’s not much of a reprieve, but we’ll take all the help we can get.
It’s not entirely clear what “they won’t attack” means. My interpretation is that you still roll as normal – 1d6 incursions every year once the Navy withdraws – and if their number comes up…no it didn’t. That turns a Big Win into an effective saving throw of future raids. On the other side of the equation, if you don’t roll up those guys, the Weallians in this case, during those years, they weren’t going to hit you anyway. Still and all, it makes planning easier to know they are keeping their heads down, and it adds to the natural consequences of the game. It pays to overwhelm your enemies instead of go for the narrow wins.
And then the horseclans came.
The next year the Pewca, a bunch of mountainous ne’er-do-wells, hit my best industrial city, Canatha. Their infantry pinned my defense forces in place, which allowed their horseriders to slip into town and ransack every corner convenience mart, vape shop, and shoe store they could find. In addition to the cost of replacing my losses, this cost me a 25% reduction in much-needed revenue from the city heading into 2950.
Things went worse later in the year. In the east, Damascus fell to an invasion by the Tillian Republic. Intent on conquering a path to the sea, they launched a lightning strike from the southeast, and despite my tech advantage and air superiority, I just couldn’t hold off their heavy tanks. To add an air of impartiality, I turned the battle over to a simple model of the LLM variety, which proved to be more artificial than intelligent, but that may be the sour grapes talking. The thing confused which side I was on, which forced me to make tactical decisions for the invading Tillians. Apparently, I’m too good for my own good, because my forces were thrashed, the city taken, and my leaders taken hostage for a ransom I won’t pay. I don’t invest in proven losers.
To rationalize my defeat from the jaws of victory, we might engage in a little bit of retconning. My green troops hadn’t quite worked out the kinks of their brand new energy weapons. Bad weather grounded my ground attack planes. Somebody at HQ was promoted well beyond his capabilities. The boys from Hippos were hamstrung by a desire to avoid collateral damage. Whatever the reason, the results aren’t bad from a game perspective. Although their success was unexpected, the Decopolitans learned a valuable lesson and are likely to return with a much stronger force to re-establish their authority.
Also on the plus side, this motivated me to finally engage in a little bit of domestic wargaming. Since the random numbers foretold of the city of Hippos serving as my capitol, we can use that as inspiration for a decent national flag. Maybe fighting under the deep blue and cream banner will inspire next year’s military to better results.
Love the flag, who could help but be inspired 🙂