Rome v. USMC

[Smitty-48]

You're not going to recruit many followers, if Hannibal couldn't do it, sure as shit a bunch of Germans from the future are not going to be able to.

What about U.S. Marines from the future?

To the Romans, they would be "Germans". Anglo-Saxonia is a German world, Americans are Germans from the ancient Roman point of view.

[Montegriffo]

You're not going to recruit many followers, if Hannibal couldn't do it, sure as shit a bunch of Germans from the future are not going to be able to.

Rome was the light of civilization, the vast majority of Romans were loyal to it unto death, including most of the slaves.

If the first few battles went the way of the archers then recruitment would be a lot easier. There were plenty of tribes all over Europe willing to take on the Romans they just didn't have the means to defeat them very often.
Imagine the Iceni with longbows and medieval tactics.
Love live Boudicca, long live Britannia.

[Smitty-48]

You're not going to recruit many followers, if Hannibal couldn't do it, sure as shit a bunch of Germans from the future are not going to be able to.

Rome was the light of civilization, the vast majority of Romans were loyal to it unto death, including most of the slaves.

If the first few battles went the way of the archers then recruitment would be a lot easier. There were plenty of tribes all over Europe willing to take on the Romans they just didn't have the means to defeat them very often.
Imagine the Iceni with longbows and medieval tactics.
Love live Boudicca, long live Britannia.

Brittania is Rome, the British were Romans, if you tried to incite the Roma Britannia against SPQR, they would cruxify you.

[Smitty-48]

Put this idea out of your head, that SPQR was on the verge of being overthrown by bandits, the Romans were the light of civilization, everybody wanted to be Roman, even if they didn't like the Romans, they still wanted what Rome brought to the table, saying that 6000 Germans from the futrue would be able to overthrow Rome by revolt, is like saying the Taliban are going to overthrow the United States of America.

That's who you would be, running around Rome trying to whip people up against them, you would be like the Taliban going around trying to recruit Americans, on Main Street USA, a mob would form, and the Romans would cruxify you on sight.

[katarn]

You can make longbows from ash, just not as powerful. Still powerful enough to out range anything the Romans had though.
Plus of course they would have the knowledge of how to build a trebuchet to attack Roman walls and set fire to their cities.

At some point they have to close with the Romans, the Romans are not going to surrender, this is why Hannibal never attacked the city itself, and the Romans showed what they'd do if the enemy took the countryside; wait them out, Hannibal occupied Italy for 15 years, but the Romans just bided their time.

I did concede that they would have to recruit enough followers. If they could then they would have no fear of closing with the Romans. The longbow is an excellent weapon at close range too. I guess it would depend on the strength of a Roman shield.

Histories of Crassus' misfated Parthian adventure tell that the Parthian bows stapled legionaries' arms to their scutum through puncturing, and those ancient composite bows were probably at least a few steps behind the longbow in power.

[Smitty-48]

They had ballista, it's not like Romans had never faced projectiles that would go straight through troops shields n' all, there really isn't anything the Romans had not faced before, until the advent of the firearm.

That being said, wouldn't have taken them long to figure out the firearm, and then simply advance behind a rolling siege engine to close the gap.

If you started shooting at them with M16's, they'd just mount thick wooden shields on wheels, and then just roll up behind them until they were on top of you, 5.56mm will just bounce right off of wood, doesn't even go through the light wooden frames on the range, not even a sure thing that it would go through the Phalanx actually, certainly not consistently it wouldn't, and without a critical hit, I don't think 5.56mm would actually slow a Roman down that much, he might die after, but after he had already killed you with a gladius that is.

[katarn]

I did concede that they would have to recruit enough followers. If they could then they would have no fear of closing with the Romans. The longbow is an excellent weapon at close range too. I guess it would depend on the strength of a Roman shield.

Histories of Crassus' misfated Parthian adventure tell that the Parthian bows stapled legionaries' arms to their scutum through puncturing, and those ancient composite bows were probably at least a few steps behind the longbow in power.

A nice army of longbowmen couldn't take Rome even with local support though, but not b/c the longbow isn't a terrific weapon. They couldn't because the Romans would just adapt to the tactics of longbow war (if they even needed to). Remember, this scenario of going back is set around Augustus' time in the OP, and the one of main failures of late Roman armies was that they were more auxiliary as legionary than they should be, ie, they weren't Roman enough and had lowered standards. The Romans this longbow army would face were real Romans, and thus would defeat any longbow that dared shoot at them.

[Speaker to Animals]

How much ammunition can they realistically carry there? They have no modern supply line at all.

Romans were quite a lot tougher than Americans as well.

[Smitty-48]

Realistically they'd max out at about 20 magazines for 600 rds, plus a 200 rd belt for the machine gun, that's a deliberate assault load, but it's gonna be heavy, that's putting them up into 120 lbs each territory with all the rest of their kit.

They could certainly kill a few thousand Romans, but in doing so would be bringing a few hundred thousand Romans down upon them, at which point they would run out of ammo real fast.

[Speaker to Animals]

Realistically they'd max out at about 20 magazines for 600 rds, plus a 200 rd belt for the machine gun, that's a deliberate assault load, but it's gonna be heavy, that's putting them up into 120 lbs each territory with all the rest of their kit.

They could certainly kill a few thousand Romans, but in doing so would be bringing a few hundred thousand Romans down upon them, at which point they would run out of ammo real fast.

That's pretty much how I see it. I don't think people realize how dependent upon stable supply lines a modern unit really is.

The closest parallel to something like this would be Pizarro's conquest of the Incan empire. He relied mostly upon his swords and indigenous forces to do what he did. They ran out of ammunition eventually and had no way to easily fabricate more. Even their armor was starting to break down eventually.