You are sent "back in time" to Italy in year zero, in command of 40,000 men from our era who are young and healthy, willing to follow your lead and informed of the situation. You are given an Amazon gift card with 2.2 trillion dollars (the cost of the war in Afghanistan), a starting computer with an infinite battery and the ability to connect to any Amazon website (so you can use amazon US, Italy, Germany, etc).
Whatever you order on Amazon magically appears in your base the next day, and any product is always available in unlimited quantity.
Your goal is to militarily conquer Rome.
For the first 18 months, the Romans can never ever find out about your base.
You cannot trade with the locals (so no gifting tablets full of porn to cause moral collapse, etc.).
Furthermore, this is all a simulation so you should not feel guilty about killing people. However, only victory will ensure the return home and a reward for every surviving man.
So, Anon, do you think you can conquer Rome under these conditions? And how?
bump, I have to go to bed but I want to see this in the morning
wait a minute are you asking us how you would make a military from stuff bought on amazon?
no, I already know you can buy machetes, bows, etc.
I'm more interested in logistics and tactics.
Also thinking about tools that would give a military advantage but we don't consider them just military, like radio, night vision, drones.
So, don't worry I'm not FBI, nor should you worry if you're the FBI.
Buy 2.2 trillion dollars worth of ladybugs and horse semen.
Black person I could do that with 10.000 dollars.
Simple explosives are not difficult to manufacture and would absolutely murder tight Roman infantry. And it's a lot easier to build simple devices to chuck grenades one hundred meters than it is to run up and throw a spear.
>only victory will ensure the return home and a reward for every surviving man.
Me and 40,000 boys have 2.2 trillion dollars of spending money and we're hanging around in Roman times where gay is okay.
What possible reward is supposed to entice me to complete the objective and go home
Anon, uhhh, kinda has a, uhh, point
you're right, but in the original post there was a clause about 10000 years of torture if you didn't put effort or something. My fault.
Too bad no takebacks fricko. Better remake the thread if you actually want that clause. Meanwhile me and the boys will be living like kings in the Alps.
I've already told you that you're right. Enjoy your 2.2 trillions roman vacation.
Autistic thread
One Minuteman 3 aimed squarely at Jerusalem.
>build an entire foundry with hundreds of CNC mills churning out zip guns
>thousands of kamikazi drones
>modern farm implements and cultivars
>eat like kings
>hunt legions with drones and chemical weapons
>it's not real, turn it into a competition
>literally in an Isekai
>Buy shitload of creatine, protein powder, Rockstars, and various supplements
No idea what to do aside from that, but I assure you physical fitness would not be a failure point.
Guess I'll buy that uranium and a book on uranium refinement from Amazon, should be able to pocket a cool trillion and chill with crassus after nuking rome (and jerusalem)
With 2.2 trillion dollars and 40,000 men this is a trivial? Just buy a full set of stab-proof clothing for every dude for a start and then your army of 40k dudes in basically invincible. Purchase makeshift weapons to taste, some camelbaks, high energy food and water etc and get going. Once you've conquered the city make them feed you.
a billion clock switches, one party hat. Might have better luck on sportsmanguide
Through Amazon's rx service I simply hold the Imperial Court hostage through my rationing of antibiotics, modern trauma treatment gear, antiseptics, and dental products while slowly getting the wives and children of the Court hooked on opiates and benzos, and cure alcoholism with suboxone and benzos when requested.
I will also lease modern office and administrative equipment to the bureaucrats, and lease radios to the military.
Every Roman military officer and administrator will gladly follow my orders as long as I can guarantee the security of my magic Amazon portal. It will be a bloodless coup, no "conquest" necessary.
peaceful solutions through material superiority are always the best but
>You cannot trade with the locals
>trade
My primary strategy is holding the ruling elite hostage through the health of their children and loved ones, but rules are rules.
You'd still get a massive advantage either way since the majority of casualties in ancient wars were due to disease
Just wait while the enemy army dies from disentery and minor injuries
Plus the possibility of accidentally bringing in disease strains Romans were not exposed to
How would I expect to hide an army from Rome in Italy for 18 months? Set me up in the hinterland at least, Jesus.
I a couple hundred thousand dollars on mills, lathes, and solar, reference texts on steel and chemicals, and stainless stock for the latter industry. Set up on the banks of the Don, and start an industrial center. Buy modern horse semen, bull semen, and seeds and fertilizers to improve the local stock of livestock and vegetables. Subborn the client state of the Cimmerian Bopsorus and create a cavalry carbine Mauser armed and steel armored Cataphract army. Standardize a packable medium velocity 3 inch howitzer with explosive shot, make a navy of gun armed galleys, armed with a gyro stabilized version of that howitzer.
Once production of shells is at full rate, we need to break out of the Black Sea. Byzantium is a minor port city at this point and Asia Minor is a backwater still recovering from the Roman conquest of the Hellenistic Kingdoms. Hellenes will form a base of recruitment in Asia Minor after the Dardenelles and a few islands in the Aegean can be secured. Once the Aegean is no longer safe for anything Roman, liberating Egypt and Crete will open up a huge amount of labor that we can exploit. From there, we burn all Roman shipping, launch raids to a day's ride of every river that will accept our galleys all over the Balkan coasts, and once Rome has had a year to raise some legions, we bait them to a fight around Ravenna. Obviously our force there will do it's best to smash the legions and capture standards, but the real point is to draw as much force as possible away from Rome, so we can sack the city, murder the senate, demolish the Pantheon, demolish the Forums, and demolish the aqueducts. If we get to bring Augustus back to Tanaus for a Roman style triumph, all the better, but humiliating Rome is enough to destroy it.
Cartridge firearms and artillery is crucial because it allows you to monopolize the technology.
Step 1: Buy fertilizer
>$55 million PER SOLDIER
>Base is in Italy so I don't necessarily need a Navy
I don't shop on Amazon but obviously they aren't selling firearms. Would it be possible to buy shit like lathes and raw materials to start producing my own rudimentary firearms and black powder? Shit, I'm sure Amazon sells chemistry textbooks. If I have 18 months I'd probably try to build up a force of musketeers riding golf carts/ATVs/electric bikes, I'd imagine the absolute culture shock of motorized infantry with ranged chemical weapons would be enough to break the Romans' spirit.
that's the basic idea
is going for and i think it might be possible to make out basic firearms with the lathes and other equipment amazon is selling
Amazon sells the tooling you need to make basically anything. Is it good, necessarily? Not really. But with a Grizzly Mill (basically a Bridgeport clone) and a Grizzly Lathe, and chinky carbide tooling, I would be confident in my ability to make 1970s era guns at low rate production. I would be going with a Mauser 1895 Carbine style rifle mostly for purposes of speeding up production, especially once the 18 month gag order is rescinded and I can start recruiting local labor.
Drawing brass is a huge pain in the ass, but doable with modern shop equipment in a way it just fundamentally isn't for the people of the late antiquity, or for horse nomads. This makes the cottage built Mauser clones essentially useless in the hands of your enemies, depriving the Legions of a way to level the field and securing the steppe frontier in a way that muscle power weapons can't. Cartridge repeaters are what broke the power of the Steppe Horse Raider in our timeline, in this one, it means that the Huns and other raiders who devastated Eastern Europe for a thousand years will be stymied, possibly converted into a labor force or immigrants, but never conquerors.
Step 1 would be ordering maps of the area…. And probably history books from the time period. Probably order 40k crossbows. Modern compound bows would out range long bows, I suppose and faster to load than crossbows…
2.2 trillion dollars of bedbugs.
You can buy a mill, a lathe and a heat treat oven off amazon.Combine that with metals, chemicals and books, and you get working firearms. Plus I bet there would be at least 1 person willing to take the risk and set up an illicit Amazon storefront selling "real" ammo later on even.
Just mass produce FGC-9s and start sending people into Rome with concealed firearms. They'd have literally no defense against that. Even modern countries have been taken over by disorganized cells of goons storming the capital. Rome wouldn't stand a chance, especially not against 40k troops.
If you had to conquer all of Italy with 40k men, that'd be a lot harder. Conquering the entire Roman empire at its height with that many men would pretty much be impossible, assuming you only have ~50 years to do it if you troops would get too old and sick to fight.
>40,000 men from our era who are young and healthy
lmao
>Furthermore, this is all a simulation so you should not feel guilty about killing people. However, only victory will ensure the return home and a reward for every surviving man.
gay
>Your goal is to militarily conquer Rome.
I'm going to start by completely depopulating Judea and see where it goes from there.
Hadrian tried that and it just spread them everywhere. Build a wall around Judea and turn it into a containment zone. Create a warning symbol like the one for radiation to warn future generations not to let the heebs out. Also put written warnings in latin, greek, coptic, persian, and any other language that can help ensure that no one lets them metastasize.
split my men into contingents with food and water, each contingent goes and shits en masse into a different aquaduct.
All of rome dies from exotic new world diseases we carry immunity for but they have no resistance too within a month.
When the separation is more than a century of time the answer is always bioweapons because of how fast bacteria evolve.
Cholera, Influenza, Salmonella existed in the old world, but todays strains are so different from the strains they might have been exposed to that they'd get fricked up.
I guess buy lots of laxatives and electrolyte heavy drinks for the dudes to get dispersion and avoid disease casualties of my own.
Yeah it would be piss easy.
>buy a bunch of tacticool shit to get everyone decked out
>everyone gets a horse and an assault rifle with tons of ammo
>tendies and a portable charcoal grill for each guy
>buy a textbook about ancient siege engines and ones about the tactics of the roman generals i plan to face
No way that would cost 1.1 trillion. Probably you could give everyone a marksman rifle too so they could just camp out of range of Roman arrows and pick them off until they give up
Just build catapults and fertilizer bombs, and a laser pointer cannon to ignite wood and blind soldiers. Hell im pretty sure you could get the romans fearing the wrath of the gods with commercial drones, LED floodlights, black powder bombs and loudspeakers
>sent "back in time" to Italy in year zero
Someone was watching Bible movies on Easter.
ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder are available on amazon. I buy 2.1999 trillion dollars of that and spend the rest on synthesizing a primary explosive to light that frickin candle. right in the middle of my camp. I want god to wake up.
Amazon doesn't have firearms but it carries some pretty high end air rifles. I'm not too familiar with their specific capabilities but I know some people use them for hunting large game so they can definitely let you reach out and touch someone. Amazon also has a decent selection of "battle ready" armor and weapons and I don't mean makshift shit like machetes but legit looking plate armor, polearms, swords, maces, etc... Of course we want to avoid hand to hand combat as much as possible but should be ready for it regardless.
Transportation would be one of the biggest issues amazon does sell ATVs but we would have no reliable way of getting fuel so as another anon mentioned bicycles would be our best alternative perhaps even electric bikes recharged with solar panels. Eventually we would want to secure a supply of horses and draft animals for wagons. One big advantage is we would have modern saddles which would allow for highly effective mounted combat and since we outrange everything they have except for maybe ballistae and catapulta we could make use of parthian tactics and we know how effective that was against Romans even when it was done with shortbows and no stirrups.
>air rifle
>hunting large game
how ?
>ib4 aim the eyeball
.50 cal slug
This aint your red ryder bb gun they use high pressure compressed air canisters or co2 and fire .357 or bigger slugs.
I'm pretty sure you can get Dimethyl methylphosphonate on Amazon so I'd go Aum Shinrikio on their asses for like at most a million bucks. If it isn't, fricking drain cleaner in their water supply would also work. A bunch of cheap firework also could burn down the city.
Poor choice of time.
.
The first thing I would do Is find Jesus. Wait him to be old enough to tell me what to do.
Many of you will make fun of me for this choice, but what kind of man would I be if I do otherwise? I called myself Christian, what kind of Christian would try to rule over Jesus? I literally have no choice, but to hope for him.
However if the year was before or after the coming of Jesus I would act differently.
Basically you gave me near infinite resources. Against a primitive, but very rational, enemy.
Given the incredible position of power you offer me there Is no need for a war in the first Place. I would Indeed display my power, but mostly to psychologically cripple the Roman leadership.
I don t know how, It Is something I should ponder. A vulgar idea would warn them of my power first, but since words are useless I would provide with a nucleare explosion at night time 10 miles away from the coast of Anzio, the idea is to turn the night in day for a brief Moment. I Guess It would frick them up in the mind enough.
Then diplomacy would be the next step. I would convince them to give me Power for 25 years, establishing a system of my own desire: a dictaror rules for 20 years(20 years Is the time necessary to form a generation) he must nominate his successor at the 15th year of his ruling at 20th he get deposed and executed.
This system will keep the greedy and corrupt away from the pinnacle of Power which only belongs to those Who love their people and are willingly to die for It.
>(so no gifting tablets full of porn to cause moral collapse, etc.)
Imagine being so brainwashed by /misc/ that you think any modern porn could even make a Roman blush lmao.
I throw bags of sugar-free haribo gummy bears at every roman soldier
they'll be so enamored by the strange flavor they eat a ton of it and end up shitting themselves to death