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I'm not entirely sure why, but for some reason I've always had the thought in the back of my mind of a game that doesn't make you fight 60 years ago or 600 years ago, but 6,000 years ago....
The idea of an "Assyria: Total War" or even a "Sumer: Total War" ("Civilization: Total War" is sexy but might cause some lawsuits )is appealing to me, and I guess I want to see if you guys think there's any merit to this as well.
Some of my thoughts:
1) There's a certain limit to how far back you can go to have a reasonably playable game. We can't do a "Sumer: Total War" because you'd only be fighting scattered peasant rabble... Clearly, when you're the first and only civilization, things can get pretty lonely In order to have something to actually do, you need a starting point... perhaps the rise of Sargon the Great, in 2334 BCE? Going until, vaguely the fall of Assyria in 609 BCE?
2) I'm hardly an expert going back this far, but civilizations could perhaps include...
-Sumer
-Akkadia
-Assyria
-Babylonia
-Elam
-Hurrians
-Hittites
-Egypt
-Urartu
-Mycenae
-Minos
-Israel
-Judah
-Medes?
3) Armies are more and less advanced than you think they are.
-The Sumerians wore copper helmets (which, while weaker than bronze, is better than nothing) and heavy cloaks, which were sometimes studded with metal (which is, again, not great but better than nothing). It was actually the Egyptians who were lax in armoring their soldiers.
-Weapons of the period included spears, axes, and slings. There were also bows, but only simple ones until about 1500 BCE.
-Generally, weapons were made of iron (stone persisted in Egypt though) because iron is hard, armour was made of copper or bronze because they are lighter and can be cold-cast, and shields were wood and leather affairs. This stuff obviously evolved though.
-Big, clunky, two- and four-wheeled warcarts drawn by asses were used as early as the Sumerians, but they were too slow for combat - they were used for leaders. The kind of chariots we're more familiar with show up around 2000 BCE, and I've read that they were brought in by steppe tribes living on the fringes of civilization - kinda like early barbarian hordes. Chariots were extremely powerful but also extremely expensive weapons of war when they arrived.
-It was the Assyrians who evolved cavalry, but I'm not sure at what point they did so (though it was definitely after chariots, counter-intuitive as that seems) - that's what research is for ! As I recall from John Keegan's A History of Warfare, early cavalry was basically "charioteering without the chariot"; that is to say, they were more skirmishers than shock troops (though they may have had thrusting spears), and a major reason for their success was simply that getting horses AND chariots is much more expensive then just getting horses.
-There was some measure of siege warfare, as there are already stone walls by this time. The trick is making assaults - there are no catapults for a long time to come, and battering rams don't show up until 1900 BCE. Ladders, sapping, or simple starvation are the way to go.
-Warfare, especially early on when it was just infantry, did often consist of mobs of men fighting in no discernably organized fashion. However, Sargon's men did march in a proto-phalanx, and the concepts of flanking and envelopment were already long established - after all, dealing with herds of men is surely little different than dealing with a herd of cows or sheep! (Indeed, it has been suggested that the first warriors proper were not hunter-gatherer's, as we might expect - because thats really more skirmishing - but shepherds and the like, because they were used to up-close slaughter and dealing with masses. Anyway.)
I'm not sure how it can all be done in a realistic and historic yet entertaining and intriguing fashion, or even if it can be done. It could either be excruciatingly slow and boring and repetitive ("Yay! More chaotic mobs beating each other up!")... or thought-provoking and amusing in a "Hey look at that" sort of way ("Rams? I can build RAMS? DEAR GOD YES! Wait...")
How do you assault a fortified city with nothing better than ladders and some elbow grease? How do you survive in battle wearing little bronze studs on a cloak instead of lorica segmentata? How the bloody hell do you flank without cavalry?
Meritous idea? Or idea without merit?
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Start of game, 2334
-Sargon the Great becomes leader of Akkad. He controls one city, Akkad (which he apparently founded), which is somewhere between the cities of Sippar and Kish on the left bank of the Euphrates. Historically, he ends up usurping most of the Sumerians with his empire, the Akkadian.
-Egypt is here by this point, and united. The Great Pyramids have also already been built. We're in the second-to-last year of the rule of Teti. Egypt is at a crossroads in its history; while still nominally intact, the great building projects of recent times have drained the country and its resources to its limits. Historically, a series of weak pharoahs and the stop of Nile flooding in 2100 causes what we know as the Old Kingdom to collapse.
-Babylonia is also here (Sargon mentions it), but as of yet lacks any real power. Historically, the First Dynasty arrives in 1959 with Suum-Abuum. Hammurabi ends up usurping both Sumer AND Akkad, but he only shows up on 1792.
-Another kingdom here is the Huurian, who were a people from the Caucasus and ended up in the northern part of Mesopotamia. They only become an organized state in 2250, when the Akkadian Empire fell after constant warring with the tribes of Armen.
Arrival of the Hittites, 1750
-The Hittites had established their kingdom in Hattusa in central Anatolia sometime around 2000, and became the Hittites proper around 1750.
-The Kassites themselves date from 1749. They were a mountain tribe of sorts, and are of interest mostly because when Babylon was sacked by the Hittites in 1595, it was given to the Kassites.
Arrival and Fall of the Assyrians, 1365-609
-Ashur-uBallit I was the first new Assyrian king after he liberated Ashur from the control of the Mittani. The city of Ashur existed beforehand - actually, it was conquered by Hammurabi - but until now has lacked any real indepence. Assyria was a very militaristic state, which meant that it could wield a lot of power relative to its neighbors but was vulnerable a great defeat could cause the loss of a lot of manpower. Historically, when the Hittites collapse in 1160, the Assyrians will duke it out with the Babylonians for control of the remnants, and come out with the upper hand. After the death of Tiglath-Pileser I in 1076, Assyria was led by weak rulers and constantly fighting with Urartu, and her power declined until the arrival of Adad-Nirari II in 911. Assyria and Urartu continue fighting for centuries, and Assyria begins to break apart in 627, when Ashurbanipal died. Facing pressure from the Scythians and Medes, and a resurgent Babylon that managed to regain its independence, Assyrian power dwindled despite a last-ditch alliance with Egypt. Eventually it collapsed altogether in 609.
-Urartu was never as strong as Assyria, but managed to keep Assyria out of Turkey for quite a long time. Historically, they'll be overwhelmed by the Scythians and the Medes in 612, but they'll live on as a people when they merge with the Armenians.
-The Phoenicians had by now established a trading empire across the Mediterranean, although their indepent presence in the Middle East appears to have been limited to Tyre, which proved impossible to assault by the Assyrians.
-The Scythians and the Medes, horse peoples from the steppes, were at this point in history not entirely organized, but generally just went around raping and pillaging as they saw fit. The Medes historically ended up establishing themselves in Iran in 701, and stubbornly persisted against Assyrian power because of their alliances with the Scythians. Historically, the Medes would end up eliminating the last vestiges of Assyrian power when they conquered Urartu and Nineveh in 612, and finally Carrhae in 609.
-After pressure from the marauding Philistines, one of the "Sea Peoples" who had come over from Greece during the 12th Century and established small communities in Canaan, the Kingdom of Israel was founded in 1025 by Jacob's children, with the first king being Saul. The kingdom will remain united until the death of Solomon in 922, when the disputes over succession between Solomon and his elder half-brother Adonijah finally come to a head and cause Israel to break up into the Kingdom of Israel, in the north, and the Kingdom of Judah, in the south. Histrocially, the two kingdoms fought with each other for some 60 years, generally cooperated for the next 80, and Israel was overthrown in 722 by Assyria and its Nine Tribes were scattered. Judah, consisting of the tribes of Simeon, Benjamin, and Judah, managed to outlast the Assyrians themselves, who were conquered by Babylon. They were eventually conquered by the Babylonians in 586, and the Babylonians were in turn conquered by the Persians in 539.
The question is, though, would it be better to have:
1) A single uber-campaign with emergent factions
2) Several smaller "provincial campaigns," one for each given time period
3) Some other combination
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Consider:
Campaign 1:
This is a campaign much like that in Alexander: Total War. Starting in 2334, you must lead Sargon, the new king of Akkad, and forge an empire from a single city to the entire Middle East, from Mesopotamia to Anatolia. But to do that, you must get through the Sumerians, who, though declining, are still in control of much of Mesopotamia. Meanwhile, the city of Babylon is just as eager to assert its independence, and to the south, Egypt is watching...
...can you forge the Akkadian Empire as created by Sargon the Great in but 55 years?
Campaign B:
This is also a simple campaign in theory: starting around 1290, leading the Neshites (Hittites), you must destroy Egypt... or, leading Egypt, you must destroy the Neshites. In practice, this may not be so easy, as both nations are the superpowers of their day. Leading the Neshites, you have the advantage of an ally in the Kassites, who control much of Mesopotamia - but the Egyptians are vastly wealthier than either other state combined. Historically, the two nations signed a peace in 1258...
...will you be so cowardly?
Campaign D:
This is a more "typical" campaign. It is 1365 BCE, and the Mitanni have just been thrown out of Ashur by the new king, Ashur-uBallit I. Will you lead his people, the Assyrians, and create an empire that historically lasted for over 600 years? Will you try and lead the crumbling Hittites back to greatness? Or will you seize their remnants as the Babylonians, or Urartu? But the horsemen of Scythia and the Medes may block your path, and the wandering Israelites may very well surprise all...
...have you the strength to accomplish all this before 609?
One of the main reasons civilizations will have to be split up is not only because of disparate timelines, but also by extension the weapons technologies available. The first campaign will feature poorly armored infantry armed with but copper spears, axes, maces, and simple bows - and not much else. A lucky few royals may have sickle-swords and chariots - but big, clunky jobs, driven by onagers who will either sprint at breakneck speed or refuse to even plod (is it actually possible to have units simply refuse to follow orders?). Cities with stone walls may prove so time-consuming to assault that you'd be better off ignoring them. Warfare here is mostly a matter of forcing the enemy to withdraw before you take too many losses of your own - conserving your manpower is a must.
On the other land, the later civilizations will have plate armor, bronze weapons, and (albeit enormously expensive) charioteers with composite bows. The Assyrians will even introduce the revolutionary idea of cavalry. This allows vastly greater flexibility in the warring of this time - death comes and goes much easier now.
Way back in June I proposed an idea for a mod then called "Antiquity: Total War", then intended for RTW. It generated some interest, and I made some proof-of-concept units, but it basically faded away...
Now I'm looking at M2TW, with its individual units, religion, and city/fortress stuff, and wondering about this again because the concept doesn't appear to have cropped up. While my personal expertise is with Rome, there's already several mods based around that - and since I've been getting more interested in the ancient world I've been learning more about it, and it's only fascinated me more...
I'm therefore throwing this concept out there to see what people think of it, but for M2TW, and now called Ama-gi: Total War - "ama-gi" being the Sumerian word for "freedom", which I think is a particularly apt name.
I clicked the "post a poll" but there's nothing for me to fill in, so if I don't figure out please respond with the following "byline" before you give the rest of your input:
Yes, it is a good idea, and I would like to help
Yes, it is a good idea, but I am unable to help
No, it is a bad idea
Both from my initial research "blitz" and from accumulated researching since I have found several very good sources on this period - with both economic AND military info - making this mod rather more realistic. I've also come up with some outlines of possible troop types for some of the factions.
Thanks for your constructive input!
