202 BC · Zama, North Africa
The battle that ended the Second Punic War: Scipio Africanus countered Hannibal's elephants and turned the Numidian cavalry against him, defeating Carthage on its own soil.
By 204 BC Rome had stopped trying to beat Hannibal in Italy and had taken the war to Africa instead. Publius Cornelius Scipio, who had learned his trade against Carthaginian armies in Spain, landed there and won enough to make Carthage recall Hannibal after fifteen years abroad.
Scipio had also done the quieter work that decided the campaign: he had won over Masinissa, and with him the Numidian cavalry that had been Hannibal's best arm at Cannae.
Hannibal opened with his war elephants. Scipio had arranged his maniples in lanes rather than the usual staggered line, and blew horns as the beasts came on; many bolted down the gaps or back into their own side.
The infantry lines then fought each other to a standstill through three separate engagements. It was decided by what was missing: the Numidian and Roman cavalry, having driven off Hannibal's horse, returned to strike his rear — the manoeuvre Hannibal himself had used at Cannae, now used against him.
Zama ended the Second Punic War. Carthage kept its city but lost its fleet, its Spanish empire and its freedom to make war; Rome became the only great power in the western Mediterranean.
It is also the war's tidiest irony: Hannibal was beaten by his own method, executed by a general who had spent his career studying him.
The scenario is built on that reversal. Carthage still has the heavier opening threat; Rome wins by absorbing it and having the answer arrive from outside the line rather than across it.
The commanders, the sides, the elephants and the cavalry return are historical. How they are costed, drawn and resolved is game design, chosen for a short readable match.