I greatly enjoyed reading the reviews of the Avalon Hill game on the Second Punic War - Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage in the September PA. The reviewers clearly enjoy the game and found it historically acceptable. Yet there is that great conundrum - Hannibal doesn't seem to be able to win. The implication is that we must fudge the game to give him a chance.
As you say in reply to Andy Dalglish on page 14, the most sensible way of looking at long term balance is to research the real events - but you see no volunteers. Well, here are my views and I am sorry it has taken me so long to send them.
As usual with great wars, however, I find that the relationships between the two sides are not very balanced - Carthage is very much the underdog in terms of resources. I suspect, however, that it could have marshalled many more resources and directed them more efficiently and I suppose that one of the purposes of playing a game is to have the opportunity of doing that. Nevertheless, that game would not be about Hannibal's campaigns in Italy, it would be about political, economic and social struggle in the Carthaginian ruling circles.
My views come from the research I carried out to put on a 50 player game about the 2nd Punic War. This has been played three times now, in 1989, 1990 and 1995. As Steve Owen points out, the political aspects are very important. Rome is not an Empire, it is a Confederation. The individual states are more or less vassals of Rome. It should be possible for the Carthaginians to try and detach them from Rome. In my opinion this is absolutely crucial.
No matter how many times Hannibal wins a decisive battle, Rome cannot be crushed and occupied by a ramshackle mercenary army. It is too rich, too politically and socially sophisticated and, above all, too populous for the Carthaginians to do that. So, she must be isolated and then forced to the peace table - with her former allies lined up with the Carthaginians. (It might be helpful to get people like Philip V of Macedon there too).
We must not forget that in many ways the Second Punic War was a massively unequal struggle. In resources I would suggest that it was rather like Japan v the USA in WW2. Rome possesses vast manpower, single minded leadership and incredibly strong social cohesion. Carthage has great wealth and some brilliant commanders but lacks both strong political direction and social cohesion. It is not helped, in a war, by being a remarkably unmilitarised society.
The popular image of the 2nd Punic War is based on elephants and massacres of vast numbers of Romans led by stupid commanders. This tends to obscure Hannibal's strategy which was, so far as we can tell, based on detaching the allies. Given the huge Roman defeats that he inflicted, why did this strategy not work?
I would identify a number of reasons:
- Poor strategic direction by Carthage,
- Carthaginian citizens were largely uncommitted and unmilitarised,
- Unexpectedly steadfast behaviour of Rome's allies,
- Incredible social cohesion within Rome.
Of these, I think that 1 and 2 are perhaps the most interesting as they receive little attention. Rome and Carthage were very different societies. Rome was the tightly organised city state 'par excellence' in which, despite considerable inequalities, a lot of people had political and other rights in the society and, as the war showed, were deeply committed to it. Carthage, on the other hand, was little more than a slightly politicised multi-national corporation.
The parallel might be with someone like Cecil Rhodes setting up a company to take over large chunks of Southern Africa. He can hire all sorts of people to fight local tribesmen (including the British Army) but no company could take on a state in an all-out war because, primarily, the aims of the two are different (as indeed are the resource levels).
Carthage
We see the pull between the political and the commercial in the Carthaginian Empire. By Hannibal's time it seems politically to have been led by two main factions - the wealthy citizen / traders based in Carthage itself and the parvenu Barca family who were based in Spain.
The traders in Carthage were interested in money. If they had to fight too hard to get or to hold on to a market they were quite content to look elsewhere - like the hinterland and coastline of the African continent. They had little interest in, or knowledge of, military affairs. Let's say they wanted to follow an 'Africa First' strategy.
The Barca family sprang to prominence during the 1st Punic War. Elbowed out of the political mainstream in Carthage they set up their own trading empire in Spain.
As a result of the 1st Punic War Rome secured Sicily and hence dominated the central and eastern Mediterranean. Consequently, it seems that the traders in Carthage directed their energies into the African continent. In typical colonial style they sought cheap raw materials from the indigenous societies and traded cheap manufactures with them. On the other hand, the Barca family in Spain came into closer contact with Rome and its trading interests there.
The result was that the Barca family, rather than perhaps Carthage itself, went to war with Rome. The rulers in Carthage clearly felt that they had to back Hannibal in his invasion of Italy but their virtual abandonment of the Italian campaign reveals, if nothing else, an absence of single-mindedness in prosecuting the war. There are, of course, no written Carthaginian sources but it seems that Hannibal received very little in the way of reinforcements and supplies from Africa during his many years in Italy.
I therefore think that the title of the game - Hannibal - is exactly right. It is Hannibal and his family versus Rome, not Carthage. To that extent, Hannibal's interaction with Carthage itself should be problematical. One could envisage a variety of what-if scenarios in which the politicians and traders in Carthage direct varying levels of resources to Hannibal and his brothers according to his success and their interests.
Roman Allies
The Roman allies were much more steadfast than expected. The terms by which they were allied to Rome are not entirely clear but it does seem that they were distinctly second class citizens (literally). Rome ran their foreign policy including major trade agreements and they were required to provide soldiers each year for military operations. But she did not levy tribute (seemingly a significant contrast to every other conqueror at that time) and even allowed the allies to take a share of loot on campaign. It seems difficult to say, though, that the relationship was based on anything other than "If you do what I say, we won't hit you every year with a club hammer". Yet, if my memory serves me correctly, only one ally defected during the war.
Perhaps the quality of the deal that Rome's allies received is more clearly understood if one looks at the treatment which Carthage meted out to her mercenary armies after the 1st Punic War - she just refused to pay them. The ensuing war resulted in vast bloodshed and financial cost. It was also foolish not to pay disbanded mercenaries without a professional army standing by as an insurance policy.
At all events, the legal safeguards which Rome built in to her relationships with her allies seem to have been highly prized. The major demand which potentially defecting states made of Hannibal was to be subject to their own law, not that of Carthage. In other words, a relationship that had potential, at least, of a certain level of equality rather than just being a milch cow for Carthage as most of her Libyan colonies seemed to be.
The Game
So, how does one put this into a game? It sounds to me as though the designers at Avalon Hill have done quite a good job with their Strategy Cards and a system of province control. Given that Carthage does not direct its war centrally it follows that there should perhaps be a degree of randomness about the levels of resources which are available from Africa. These might be military units or event cards for things like political or trade concessions with the Italian states. The problem, from the game point of view, is that the key Carthaginian decisions may be taken away from the Hannibal player and replaced with a dice. This might have a certain historical authenticity but not be very good as a game.
More Hannibal
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© Copyright 1997 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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