Are there definitive Islamic scenarios for ToT?

By which I mean an Arab Conquests or a Crusades scenario?

Cross and crescent by bebro
Age of Crusades by Exile
come to mind.
I think gapetit converted both for ToT
Maciez the frogman didn't finish his Mohammed scenario afaik

For me the quintessential 'islamic' scenario is Fire and Roses by Stefan Härtel. It is set during the era of the early Abbasid caliphate and focuses on events in the east, primarily in Iran and Afghanistan. It actually may be my favorite scenario of all time now that I think of it. Alas it is for MGE rather than ToT, though I could post a homebrew ToT conversion if you like.

Allard's Mamluks is an excellent crusades era scenario.

True, but Mamluks is only dedicated to Allard by Maciez (Heresson), who has made that one too. I had made a ToT conversion and posted the graphics at poly. I will look for it. Petit's excellent ToT conversions of Roses, Fading lights, Medium Aevum, Holy wars, Muhammad, Age of Crusades, Komnenai, Mamluks (his version) and Timur are here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=410838

Tanelorn said:

True, but Mamluks is only dedicated to Allard by Maciez (Heresson), who has made that one too.

Click to expand...

My mistake. How could I forget the king of frogs?

For a long time one of those great historical questions for me has been the question of why the Sassanids lost to the Arabs to easily (or more generally why major Empires sometimes collapse abruptly). In some historical texts this is hand waved away in terms of the religious fervor of the early caliphate Arabs, but this is not a very complete or convincing explanation. I recently read one of the essays concerning the Islamic conquest out of the Cambridge History of Iran. I found it to be extremely thought provoking. I made some notes about it:

• Arab raids begin BEFORE Islam w/ Shaybanids
• Sassanid disregard for Arab satellite buffer states eg. Christain Ghassanids and Al-Hira
• Military defections (such as the Asawira)
• Recent succession of Yazdegerd III, basically a child emperor, the last of 10 Sassanid emperors in 4 years
• Brilliant Arab General Khalid ibn Walid
• Byzantine-Sassanid war 602-628 culmination of almost a century of constant war between the two states
• Geographic peak of Sassanids under Khosrau II between 613-622 taking Egypt, Syria and much of Anatolia, siege of Constantanople in 626​
• Masterful counterstike by Emperor Heraclius devastating to the Sassanids.​
• Ibn Khaldun hypothesis
• Sassanid society 'exhausted' (in terms of infastructure, economy and demographics) after decades of war with Byzantines.​
• Ineffectual and divided central administration​
• Arabs had strong asabiyya​
• Arab expansions under Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattab generally NOT religious in character
• Battle of al-Qadisiyyah in 637 was a disaster for Sassanids, Yazdegerd III forced to flee to eastern provinces, leaving much of Persia effectively ungoverned.
• Sassanid army better equipped and numerically superior to that of the Arabs. c.f. Carolingian problems with Vikings during times of weak central administration.​
• Gradual conquest of Persia, most within 15 years but some hold outs, and continued rebellions for almost 100 years after.
• Arab administration was generally enlightened and less burdenful than that of the Sassanids.

+1 for Stefan's Fire and Roses; one of his best scenarios imho.

Interesting thoughts about the collapse of the Sassanid Empire Erin. Guess there was more to it than the religious fervour of nascent Islam coupled with centuries of warfare exhausting the Sassanids and Eastern Romans, as you say.

It was a pretty baldfaced attempt to inspire some honest to goodness historical discussion. For me in the past it was one of the great draws to these forums.

Nobody mentioned my very old (1999) and crappy Outremer scenario, which is about third crusade, so I will.

Fading Lights is about Byzantines fighting the Turks, but one could also play Latins and fight Mamluks.

Komnenai can be only played by Byzantines in XIII century... so there are Fatimids and "Muslims" civs, but they can not be played.

Mamluks are actually to be played by Mamluk civ. Mamluks in these times were Turks, but the country they ruled (Egypt) was and is Arabic.
I was supposed to make a Frank-playable version called St Louis but I never did.

Heraclius is to be played by Byzantines, to defend them against Persians and Arabs.
I created an Arab-playable version called Muhammad, but while it's not finished and while it's fun to play until you conquer entire Arabia, it's less interesting from then on.

These are my scenarios.
There were several other Arab scenarios, but it was such a long time ago...

Hey. You're Michael Daumen. I recall your surname. Didn't you make some crusade scenario?

And you're Maciej. I played your scenario years ago, and enjoyed it. It's not crappy at all, just kind of old. I've had it on my hard drive for years. As I recall, it had detailed Readme files and a chronology. I remember going back to it some years later, after seeing Ridley Scott's movie "Kingdom of Heaven". Have you ever thought about doing an update, even for Test of Time?

This has got me looking back at my MGE scenario files. Lots of ground breaking stuff, including your Fading Lights and the German language scenario Orden, about the Teutonic Knights. All from around 1999 or so. It seems that many of the early scenario designers were real history buffs; there are lots of ancient and early middle ages scenarios set in Europe and/or Asia. Many are set in quite exotic historical periods and places.

More recent scenarios tend to be set in more modern periods and reflect a greater military, as opposed to historical, interest on the part of the designer. Or am I just imagining it?

It's just because these are the ww2 guys that survived
I haven't made any scenario stuff in 8 years or so... and the fact my mom accidentally threw away some of my Heraclius work was, as they say, the last nail to the coffin.
I can't play ToT at my computer.
hmmm

Outremer was (not counting the very first attempt that later became Fading Lights) my first scenario and I didn't yet know much about scenario-making... hence there are some horrible, horrible mistakes I've made.

I think Arabic world deserves many more scenarios.
Actually, apart from my unfinished one, no scenarios about Muhammad!
The Arab conquests is a fascinating topic. Several scenarios exist, but not that great.
The sieges of Constantinople.
The Abbasid revolution
The Byzantine re-conquista
The Fatimid revolution (I considered making such a scenario and had some ideas)
The crusades / mamluks (several scenarios made, but most are not that good, not detailed, use great European maps with only part of Middle East visible etc)
The confrontation between Ottomans and Mamluks
Al-Andalus (Jesus Balsinde covered this topic well)
Oman expansion would be interesting
Muhammad Ali (Egypt) scenario, a very nice idea.
Israeli-Arab wars... there were several scenarios obviously, one was quite interesting in fact, but they all have such horrible maps... I would gladly make a scenario about it but I am not able to draw nice MODERN units. Too complicated. I could use my corrected (years ago) Outremer map.
The Civil War in Lebanon (extremly interesting topic but it's so complicated that being historically accurate is not really possible, you'd just have to set starting points and some general factors)
Iraq-Iran War
Gulf War (I)
Algerian Civil War
Polisario
Qadhdhafi's bid for mastery Not that he really achieved anything apart from occasional fighting and unifying with everyone around, but he was such a colourful figure that he deserves a scenario of his own
Syrian Civil War scenario, but making it would leave me ashamed because it's on and people actually still die there.
And probably many more I can't think of now.

But there are other Middle-Eastern and Caucasus ideas... Armenian, Turkish ones.
Great Idea vs Turkish war of Independance for example... There actually was at least one scenario, but that's little.

Gothmog did an Algerian Civil War scenario, and Capt. Nemo did one on the 1st Gulf War. It was his first, I think, and not as good as his late stuff. Leon Marrick (who wrote the Advanced Scenario Design paper) made an early scenario about the conquest of Arabia by the Muslims.

I have a 1/4 finished scenario on the 2nd Gulf War (a map and most units, thanks to Fairline) The interesting thing about it is that I taught myself to hex-edit cities, so that there could be multi-square cities. Baghdad is 5 adjacent city tiles, Basra is 3 and Mosul is 2. I shoulda thought about food though.

Could be fixed by food caravans from other cities. I didn't know one could make multi-square cities.

I really wanted to play that Caucasus scenario, though. And it was never made!

I could come back to civ if someone cooperated with me on 1948 Arab-Israeli or Lebanese Civil War scenario

I'd be interested in the Yom Kippur War '73, but I only use Test of Time.

Hmmmmm That is possible too.
I have this thingy one guy did for me which allows me to play civ2, perhaps ToT would work too.

It looks like you can now download Test of Time for free, here:http://www.gameswin.org/gameen.php?id=380

Don't forget to install the patch, here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=59

thanks

I have ToT cd somewhere. i lost previous one, just like every Civ2 disc, but bought a new one.

Let me know how it goes.