Have you noticed that after the fall of Rome, the europeans lived for centuries without sewers? My theory is that after the degenerates destroyed Rome, they also executed anybody intelligent who was able to stop them, which includes engineers and architects. Because of this, nobody was able to reproduce the difficult architecture of sewers for centuries. The same happened in Russia. After the degenerates destroyed Russia in 1917, they executed all the intelligent russians.
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HarlandKornfeld14 ago
The "Dark Age" happened due to a Grand Solar Minimum, the crop failures pushed barbarians into Rome and resulted in the Plague of Justinian. The strange weather events during the campaigns of Belisarius were likely the result of a major volcanic eruption.
Had these not happened, Belisarius and Justinian could've rebuild the Roman Empire somewhat.
ardvarcus ago
The fall of the Roman Empire had nothing to do with natural phenomena -- it was the result of the decadence of the Roman people, which caused corruption and a failure of will.
HarlandKornfeld14 ago
You don't think the end of the Roman Warm Period had anything to do with it? These climactic changes caused barbarians to go on the move.
So okay, barbarians are invading Gaul, if the Romans were not decadent they might have some more heavily armored units at their disposal, and more reliable too because they aren't mercenaries. The problem is 1) they can still lose anyway, and once they do more barbarians will pour in when defenses crumble. 2) They will be dealing with famine in the safer parts of the Empire, which is bound to effect the logistics and manpower situation.
It would increase their odds of holding out, but t would be far from a guarantee.