Rome Era Chapter XII: Recuperatio Imperii- Gothic and Vandal wars

This mod is the twelfth part of a Mod series called "Rome Era". The main objective of these mods is to reproduce the most important events of Roman history.

LOADING ORDER:
1-Realistic Campaign
2-Chapter
3-All the other required mods
4- Extremely recommended ( but optional) for economy, food and technologies: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=396015150&searchtext=radious

Historical Context:

The Vandalic War

The Vandalic or Vandal War was a conflict fought in North Africa (largely in modern Tunisia) between the forces of the Byzantine, or East Roman, empire and the Vandalic Kingdom of Carthage, in 533–534. It was the first of Justinian I’s wars of reconquest of the lost Western Roman Empire.

The Vandals had occupied Roman North Africa in the early 5th century, and established an independent kingdom there. Under their first king, Geiseric, the formidable Vandal navy carried out pirate attacks across the Mediterranean, sacked Rome and defeated a massive Roman invasion in 468. After Geiseric’s death, relations with the surviving Eastern Roman Empire normalized, although tensions flared up occasionally due to the Vandals’ militant adherence to Arianism and their persecution of the Nicene native population. In 530, a palace coup in Carthage overthrew the pro-Roman Hilderic and replaced him with his cousin Gelimer. The Eastern Roman emperor Justinian took this as a pretext to interfere in Vandal affairs, and after he secured his eastern frontier with Sassanid Persia in 532, he began preparing an expedition under general Belisarius, whose secretary Procopius wrote the main historical narrative of the war. Justinian took advantage of, or even instigated, rebellions in the remote Vandal provinces of Sardinia and Tripolitania. These not only distracted Gelimer from the Emperor’s preparations, but also weakened Vandal defences through the dispatch of the bulk of the Vandal navy and a large portion of their army under Gelimer’s brother Tzazon to Sardinia.

The Roman expeditionary force set sail from Constantinople in late June 533, and after a sea voyage along the coasts of Greece and southern Italy, landed on the African coast at Caputvada in early September, to Gelimer’s complete surprise. The Vandal king gathered his forces and met the Roman army at the Battle of Ad Decimum, near Carthage, on 13 September. Gelimer’s elaborate plan to encircle and destroy the Roman army came close to success, but Belisarius was able to drive the Vandal army to flight and occupy Carthage. Gelimer withdrew to Bulla Regia, where he gathered his remaining strength, including the army of Tzazon, which returned from Sardinia. In December, Gelimer advanced towards Carthage and met the Romans at the Battle of Tricamarum. The battle resulted in a Roman victory and the death of Tzazon. Gelimer fled to a remote mountain fortress, where he was blockaded until he surrendered in the spring.

Belisarius returned to Constantinople with the Vandals’ royal treasure and the captive Gelimer to enjoy a triumph, while Africa was formally restored to imperial rule as the praetorian prefecture of Africa. Imperial control scarcely reached beyond the old Vandal kingdom, however, and the Mauri tribes of the interior proved unwilling to accept imperial rule and soon rose up in rebellion. The new province was shaken by the wars with the Mauri and military rebellions, and it was not until 548 that peace was restored and Roman government firmly established.

The Gothic War

The Gothic War between the East Roman (Byzantine) Empire during the reign of Emperor Justinian I and the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy took place from 535 until 554 in the Italian peninsula, Dalmatia, Sardinia, Sicily and Corsica. It was one of the last of the many Gothic Wars with the Roman Empire. The war had its roots in the ambition of the East Roman Emperor Justinian I to recover the provinces of the former Western Roman Empire, which the Romans had lost to invading barbarian tribes in the previous century (the Migration Period).

The war followed the East Roman reconquest of the province of Africa from the Vandals. Historians commonly divide the war into two phases:

From 535 to 540: ending with the fall of the Ostrogothic capital Ravenna and the apparent reconquest of Italy by the Byzantines.

From 540/541 to 553: a Gothic revival under Totila, suppressed only after a long struggle by the Byzantine general Narses, who also repelled an invasion in 554 by the Franks and Alamanni.

In 554 Justinian promulgated the Pragmatic sanction which prescribed Italy’s new government. Several cities in northern Italy held out against the East Romans until 562. By the end of the war Italy had been devastated and depopulated. The East Romans found themselves incapable of resisting an invasion by the Lombards in 568, which resulted in Constantinople permanently losing control over large parts of the Italian peninsula.

Changelog:

1- Roman units, emperors and generals total reskin

2- Size increased( Startpos and campaign,Melee infantry 400, missile infantry 300, cavalry 120)

3- The starting position of some barbaric kingdoms has been changed to represent a more historically accurate scenario. The Vandals are in Sardinia to represent their military campaign to mitigate
the local unrest when Belisarius arrived in Africa.

4- Diplomatic effects have been changed so now small factions will respect bigger ones, getting into deals easily. This wants to reproduce the real situation of the epoch where the small barbarian kingdoms tended to respect the more powerful Rome even if they had periodic wars.

5- Ai improvement, more changeling campaign where the Ai will be more aggressive. Nevertheless, this in hand with point 4 will reproduce in global, harder wars with the Ai but less common. So to win a war against will be harder than in vanilla but you will have wars with fewer factions( if you use diplomatics wisely)

6- 12 turns per year

7- New battle system with more realistic morale system as well as slower combat. The spacing of the German factions has been increased and the one of the Romans decreased, trying to reproduce a more historically accurate situation. I have just transpose one of my battle mods to this one, you can see the entire battle changelog here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2204246229&searchtext=realistic

8- The technology tree of the Roman faction has been modified to avoid the foederati upgrades into skutatois. So you could recruit both together.

9- Trying to represent the logistics difficulties of Belisariu`s campaigns, the roman unit’s maintenance has been increased, but not to the foederati units.

10-Roman empire and Berbers are playable.

11- All cities walled. Minor cities have 8m walls and major cities have 15m walls.

Recomended music mods:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2667580147&searchtext=

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2343508169&searchtext=rome