Ai Khanoum

[Thrond]

Hi all, team members especially -

In both Sidky "The Greek Kingdom of Bactria" (2000) and Holt "Thundering Zeus: The Making of Hellenistic Bactria" there is mention of the city of Ai Khanoum on the Oxus as one of the richest sites of Graeco-Bactrian archaeological evidence.

Knowing that the team has picked all of the settlements based on their sources, I was wondering what source-based evidence there is for including Gava-Haomavarga rather than adding Ai Khanoum as a fourth Bactrian city, or at least making the Haomavarga region a homeland region so that it may be renamed.

In Sidky (p. 146) he includes a map of Bactria and its surrounds, which does not show any major settlements in the area represented by Haomavarga other than Ai Khanoum.

Ai Khanoum was apparently a Seleucid foundation and by the rule of Diodotos I and II, it was a well established Hellenic town. Holt (p. 43) notes that a "major phase" of construction took place in Ai Khanoum between 280 and 250 BC, so it was no small settlement.

I hope I haven't sounded insultery and have presented a reasonable argument.

[The Persian Cataphract]

We have a few reservations towards the map ourselves; There have been many discussions ranging from the veracity of a certain location to the very given name of the settlements. The problem? While it appears to be relatively simple to tweak the map, the real problem comes to changing the name of the city; Not only is it time-consuming and work-intensive but when there is a script and a bunch of text-files pointing at defunct names... You're bound to open up a can of worms unfortunately.

So what we are doing instead, thanks to the added flexibility in M2TW and specifically "Kingdoms", is that we intend to reconstruct things from the beginning so that we don't need to do it later on.

[Zarax]

A bit OT but: is there a thread for pointing out map proposals/inaccuracies/ideas?

[Pharnakes]

Not to my knowledge.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

We don't know for sure what the name of the town was. Ai Khanoum is not an ancient name. Then again, countless other places were major towns at this time - we just have to pick the most important in these regions and we don't know enough about Ai Khanoum (in relation to what we do know about Baktra itself) to choose it instead.

[Zarax]

Not to my knowledge.

Could the team please open some official threads for this kind of things?
Map especially is trickier to change as the mod further progresses and there are at least two cities (namely krete and karali/nora) that to my knowledge have questionable name/location...

[Maksimus]

Since Persian and Teleklos are here and since this thread has a question on some settlement size...

I really need your help to convince my self not to use/mod-or modified city mod just to disable AI's Megapolise's

Why is EB enabling CPU and Human player to make every settlement with Army/Royal barrack's, Pro/or Imperial palace, Huge Port's and Temple's.. etc
(AS and Aegypt have only Large and Huge cities all with Royal barrack's as early as 200bc ... why?:shrug:

Sorry if I am boring with this, it's just that some construction times for High-end building's are relatively short by defaultare, and if there is no gap like City mod add's - then it all seem's much more 'unreal'?

I those times as I know, Huge and Large were rare, and even more the Cities that could train elite unit's...

If you can convince me that I am wrong please do... :curtain:

thank you!

[anubis88]

Since Persian and Teleklos are here and since this thread has a question on some settlement size...

I really need your help to convince my self not to use/mod-or modified city mod just to disable AI's Megapolise's

Why is EB enabling CPU and Human player to make every settlement with Army/Royal barrack's, Pro/or Imperial palace, Huge Port's and Temple's.. etc
(AS and Aegypt have only Large and Huge cities all with Royal barrack's as early as 200bc ... why?:shrug:

Sorry if I am boring with this, it's just that some construction times for High-end building's are relatively short by defaultare, and if there is no gap like City mod add's - then it all seem's much more 'unreal'?

I those times as I know, Huge and Large were rare, and even more the Cities that could train elite unit's...

If you can convince me that I am wrong please do... :curtain:

thank you!

I don't agree. The Cities in EB are the largest in the known world at the time, and IMHO they all deserve to become huge, and have huge and extraordinarry buildings (not counting the barbarians perhaps)

That's why i don't use any mods:sweatdrop:

[konny]

I those times as I know, Huge and Large were rare, and even more the Cities that could train elite unit's...

The terms are misleading. A city of 24,000 inhabitans can not be called hughe, in the sense of "maximum level", for the Ancient times. Even if we take into account that these are only the number of adult males, fit for military service. The city itself on the EB map does not represent itself only but also all other towns in that province plus the rural population. Taking that into account, the "cities" that we have in the middle or late game are much more realistic than the population in the early game.

Training of elite units has nothing to do with the size of a city, BTW.

[keravnos]

Hi all, team members especially -

In both Sidky "The Greek Kingdom of Bactria" (2000) and Holt "Thundering Zeus: The Making of Hellenistic Bactria" there is mention of the city of Ai Khanoum on the Oxus as one of the richest sites of Graeco-Bactrian archaeological evidence.

Knowing that the team has picked all of the settlements based on their sources, I was wondering what source-based evidence there is for including Gava-Haomavarga rather than adding Ai Khanoum as a fourth Bactrian city, or at least making the Haomavarga region a homeland region so that it may be renamed.

In Sidky (p. 146) he includes a map of Bactria and its surrounds, which does not show any major settlements in the area represented by Haomavarga other than Ai Khanoum.

Ai Khanoum was apparently a Seleucid foundation and by the rule of Diodotos I and II, it was a well established Hellenic town. Holt (p. 43) notes that a "major phase" of construction took place in Ai Khanoum between 280 and 250 BC, so it was no small settlement.

I hope I haven't sounded insultery and have presented a reasonable argument.

No you haven't been insulting at all. This current thing is in debate among us and your thoughts are quite correct. Ai Khanoum/Alexandria Oxiane/Eukratidia is one very hot topic, as it presents the ONLY deffinitely Hellenistic city in past day Baktria. Before its discovery, the very existence of Baktria as a state was in doubt.

Now, I understand that there were not any other major settlements in the area, "Gava Haomavarga" is supposed to represent the tribes living in that area "Drinkers of Haoma" as the Achaimenid Persians would call them.

Ai Khanoum was by no means a small settlement. In fact the archaeological discoveries made in it and analysis of its data shows that it followed very closely the latest fashion and wares that existed in the long lost homeland thousands of years away. Discoveries in it (and especially in its armory) have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt its importance and the fact that it had a burgeoning weapon manufacture.

Ai Khanoum was one of the compromises the team has had to make. I know that Kingdoms have a technique that will aleviate this, by allowing perma-forts which will in turn help us present the map as correct as we can.

I know Ai Khanoum's importance, however there are other places of the map that are under-represented and deserve more regions being given to them, than Ai Khanoum/Alexandria Oxiane/Eukratidia.

Thanks for posting, btw. Anything else you found interesting about Baktria in any of those books take some time to post it, if you feel like it.

[Maksimus]

I don't agree. The Cities in EB are the largest in the known world at the time, and IMHO they all deserve to become huge, and have huge and extraordinarry buildings (not counting the barbarians perhaps)

That's why i don't use any mods:sweatdrop:

Yes, I agree! I would not use them either - it's just that if you see this thred

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=93151&page=6

You can see that in 166bc - all settlement's are HUGE!
And If you see the start of the game there are on huge settlement's what so ever:shrug: (i think)

And the picture in 166bc IS NOT TRUE or by the historic note's EB team uses to hold on - that picture is not objective or real:no:

So I don't like it...

One soulution would be to make some high-end building's with 10 time's longer construction's time - but counting that THERE should be SOME HUGE cities form the start:shrug:

...anyway's that is my opinion..

[Thrond]

Is it possile that the Haomavarga region will be made a Baktrian homeland with expanded recruitment in a future build so that there is more incentive to recreating Ai Khanoum?

Right now all I can recruit there are Baktrioi Hippeis and some regional troops.


I've seen it said around the forum that recruitment is incomplete, though I'm cautious to ask if its the case in Baktria, as in Ferghana (Alexandreia-Eschate) I can only recruit a few of Baktria's iconic troops and in Sogdiane, even fewer.

I've been planning to write a historical Baktrian AAR trying to follow as closely as possible, the history of Baktria's break with the Seleukids and its wars with the Parthians. Though I've been unsure as to whether I should wait until EB 1.1 is released before I start, especially with Baktria.