Scenario Under Construction: Ancient Middle East

[Dearnen]

I'm working on a scenario based on the ancient Middle East, prior to the invasion of Alexander the Great. I've chosen to use 8 civs on a standard 100x100 size map.

Departing from history as we know it, I've kept the standard tech tree, so the nations can develop without being invaded by the Greeks, Romans, Turks, etc.

The civs and their unique units:

Hittites (musketeer - as French)
Phoenicians (trireme - better version of galley)
Israelites (F-15 - as American)
Egypt (war chariot)
Assyria (panzer - as German)
Babylon (bowman)
Persia (immortal)
Arabs (rider - as Chinese)

I also added two new governments:

Fascist (preferred govt of the Assyrians)
Theocracy (preferred by the Arabs)

Of course, because of the limitations of the editor, I've encountered a few problems.

First, I was stumped for a way to limit the ability of units to wrap around the east-west edge of the map. As near as I can tell, there is no way to set the map to non-wrapping. I came up with a stop-gap solution by placing a double row of mountains at each edge with a strip of sea in between, so that no units can pass over and no cities can be built on the edge to build ships to pass accross that water. When flight tech is developed, this solution will have problems, though.

Second, there doesn't seem to be any way of assigning each civilization to a specific start location. This is somewhat frustrating.

If anyone has any ideas or knows something I don't about the editor, let me know.

I have not yet played the scenario in the game, so I don't know how good the map looks, nor how well the civs and govts work. It's still a work in progress.

-Dearnen

[Ewingum]

I would like to help you with this mod (anything except map designing)
BTW:
Well, after king Shaul there were two jewish countries:
Judea
Israel

The capital of one of them was Jerusalem. I don't remember anything else

[Dearnen]

I've pretty much got the map done, but there seem to be some problems with the scenario.

The first time I tried to play, the game would crash when the very first tech research window was supposed to pop up. I traced that down to my selection of Monotheism as one of Israel's (and Arabia's) granted techs. I was under the impression that the game would grant later techs as a bonus when the prerequisites were fulfilled if they were set that way, but it simply crashed the game. I fixed that problem by removing Monotheism from those civ's granted tech list.

I just tried playing again and a new problem popped up when I found my first goody hut. The text that appears telling me what I found was all messed up. I think this relates to the names of the barbarians, which I have changed to reflect the setting. Other than resetting to the defaults or eliminating goody huts, I'm not yet sure how to fix this.

King David succeeded Saul to the throne of Israel. (Prior to Saul, Israel was a loose affiliation of related tribes that had conquered Canaan after they escaped from slavery in Egypt 400 years earlier.) I've chosen David as the leader for Israel, since he is the most famous. David's son, Solomon (the Wise) followed him. Upon Solomon's death, however, the kingdom had a civil war and split. The Southern Kingdom remained loyal to the house of David and kept the capital in Jerusalem but took the name Judah, after the dominant tribe there (also the tribe that David was from). The other 10 tribes in the north kept the name Israel but chose a new capital city, which moved around before settling in Samaria.

The two kingdoms fought on and off for about 250 years, then the Northern Kingdom was attacked by the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians hauled off every last citizen of the Northern Kingdom into captivity. They disappeared from history, and are remembered as the Lost Tribes of Israel. The Southern Kingdom of Judah lasted another 140 years until the Babylonian Empire (which had conquerd the Assyrians) did the same to them, hauling them into captivity in Babylon for 70 years. After the Babylonians were conquered by the Persians, the Jews were allowed to return to their homeland. Interestingly, the word "Jew" actually derives from the word "Judah", so technically speaking, it only refers to the decendants of the Southern Kingdom.

The Jews were under Persian and then Greek rule for a few centuries, then had a brief period of independence after throwing out the Greek rule. But, the Romans then conquered them. After a while, the Romans grew tired of constant Jewish uprisings and in 70AD they destroyed Jerusalem, and forced all the Jews to leave. One final revolt in 135AD lead to the expulsion of all Jews from Palestine by the Romans. It wasn't until 1948 that the Jews were able to claim their homeland again.

All in all, it's an interesting story. In addition to the roles that Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia played in Israel's history, the other three civs I chose were involved. Arabia traces its ancestry to Ishmael, the brother of Isaac, an ancestor of Israel. The Phoenicians were descended from the Canaanites that Israel forced out of the Promised Land, and were important trade and diplomatic neighbors to Israel. The Hittites had an early empire in Asia Minor and played a role in the early history of the region.

Some other important peoples of that time are on my list of barbarian tribes (the Philistines, for example), so I hope I can get that functioning right.

-Dearnen

[Ewingum]

Very nice!

Well, about the technical problems... I think we all shall wait for an official patch...
About the history, good job
BTW, where are you from?

[Dearnen]

Yeah, I think it would probably be best to wait for a patch or two on the editor before doing much more. I think the scenario has a lot of potential, but these various problems spoil it some.

I'm from Oregon, btw.

-Dearnen