All right guys, time for an update. Last few times I was here I kept saying I was working on a mod....well, the problem with Civ 2 mods is you kinda need to start with a map, cause once the map is made, there's only so much you can realistically do with it, if you screw up major, you have to go map to the map editor and build EVERYTHING up all over again.
So....what was I TRYING to work on? A Charlemagne scenario. There's two great scenarios both called Charlemagne, and recently someone ported a THIRD, all of which have their charms, and I wanted to combine what I thought were the best lateral play elements. The problem, is the maps for all three are Western Europe going to Nicomedia and Carthage and nothing else. I wanted to use what's become the standard European large map, the one in various forms in Fortress Europe, Bonaparte, and Blood and Sieges, but I've yet to find a topographical map of eight century Europe and the beer bug makes going places a bit problematic. Plus my local university library is not really accessible to people with mobility problems. The whole campus is a nightmare if you've got anything less than a fully functional pair of legs and feet or an electric wheelchair.
So what were these lateral elements?
Whaling, that is you can send ships to hunt whales for profit, and I've tried to see if that's historical to no avail
Mining, in that you could take advantage of the grassland NOT having a resource to mine it and see if there was a resource under it, and if there was, there was a HUGE boon of trade and such. It was quite an interesting mechanic.
You could also battle Northmen in Scandinavia and Russia and convert them to your cause
And raiding Kugans for riches
And getting an elephant from the Caliph and using it to batter down the doors of heathens for lulz.
I wanted to introduce a drastic role playing element to the game, mostly around the Paladins, diplomacy with the Caliphates and particularly the cutting down of the Irminsul, and what the other options Charlemagne might have had.
But there's one thing I've learned in the last year and a half is that historians at least professional ones have NO fudging IMAGINATION whatsoever, and alternate history people tend to have just enough to keep fairies from dying in front of them, but that's about it. So no one I've talked to has ANY idea what alternatives might have been at hand and what their consequences might have been...but this is something I've run into with more than Charlemagne.
One of the reasons I want to create my own scenarios is because I find in Strat games, and maybe it's just me, winning isn't the point, it's....it's making the world better. Alexander conquered the world, big ****. It was the synthesis that came after, the Ptolemies building Alexandria into antiquity's greatest seat of learning, the Seleucids founding of Antioch, the Greco Bactrian and Greco Indian Kingdoms persisting for hundreds of years, creating golden ages of their own and in Greco-Bactria's case, transmitting Buddhism to China.
So why the total Europe map? Simple: while unlikely in historical terms, I played this game in CK2 where I as Charlemagne reconquered the WHOLE of the Roman Empire using the holy war mechanic on the Caliphate, and then with the Franks on both ends of the Byzantine Empire and in control in four of the five patriarchies and that little thing with Irene blinding her son and because it's three hundred years until the schism, I figured old Charlie would definitely get a claim on the "Roman throne." And hey, Caesar AND Constantine did similar feats.
It was to say AWESOME. Well that and Charlemagne discovering the earth revolves around the sun before the year 800 (a standard way of life event chain in CK2) was SWEET.
And If I can get the Charlemagne angle to work, then you know, I'll make an Age of Issuaria scenario given I've already done most of the groundwork, I simply need to retool the events and maybe the units.
And THAT would be truly novel.
I've not given up, it's just the project like most of my ambitions are going nowhere but not for a lack of interest.
I am in the process of trying to figure out the dos box, but without some good topographical maps of 8th century Europe, it's not gonna do me much good. And this is the least ambitious scenario idea I have.
Well that and the zany, tropey, take on Tootall's Vietnam War scenario I was gonna call The Nam, which despite all the movie references and tropes was really an ambitious recasting of the scenario. Instead of being Westmoreland in practice, this was you were gonna be a...more astute "President" Thieu, trying to rebuild Vietnamese civil society and drain out the avalanche of corruption that makes your government almost as hated as the Communists. Based on Thieves of States and to a lesser degree, The Dictator's Handbook (which despite the title is about the importance of democracy in keeping corruption and violence at bay)
BUT....you can imagine how many berserk buttons you get right and left when you don't follow one of the two Vietnam narratives. So asking questions and people having answers is...a slog. Research on what happened is easy, research on what could have happened is hard.
So....what was I TRYING to work on? A Charlemagne scenario. There's two great scenarios both called Charlemagne, and recently someone ported a THIRD, all of which have their charms, and I wanted to combine what I thought were the best lateral play elements. The problem, is the maps for all three are Western Europe going to Nicomedia and Carthage and nothing else. I wanted to use what's become the standard European large map, the one in various forms in Fortress Europe, Bonaparte, and Blood and Sieges, but I've yet to find a topographical map of eight century Europe and the beer bug makes going places a bit problematic. Plus my local university library is not really accessible to people with mobility problems. The whole campus is a nightmare if you've got anything less than a fully functional pair of legs and feet or an electric wheelchair.
So what were these lateral elements?
Whaling, that is you can send ships to hunt whales for profit, and I've tried to see if that's historical to no avail
Mining, in that you could take advantage of the grassland NOT having a resource to mine it and see if there was a resource under it, and if there was, there was a HUGE boon of trade and such. It was quite an interesting mechanic.
You could also battle Northmen in Scandinavia and Russia and convert them to your cause
And raiding Kugans for riches
And getting an elephant from the Caliph and using it to batter down the doors of heathens for lulz.
I wanted to introduce a drastic role playing element to the game, mostly around the Paladins, diplomacy with the Caliphates and particularly the cutting down of the Irminsul, and what the other options Charlemagne might have had.
But there's one thing I've learned in the last year and a half is that historians at least professional ones have NO fudging IMAGINATION whatsoever, and alternate history people tend to have just enough to keep fairies from dying in front of them, but that's about it. So no one I've talked to has ANY idea what alternatives might have been at hand and what their consequences might have been...but this is something I've run into with more than Charlemagne.
One of the reasons I want to create my own scenarios is because I find in Strat games, and maybe it's just me, winning isn't the point, it's....it's making the world better. Alexander conquered the world, big ****. It was the synthesis that came after, the Ptolemies building Alexandria into antiquity's greatest seat of learning, the Seleucids founding of Antioch, the Greco Bactrian and Greco Indian Kingdoms persisting for hundreds of years, creating golden ages of their own and in Greco-Bactria's case, transmitting Buddhism to China.
So why the total Europe map? Simple: while unlikely in historical terms, I played this game in CK2 where I as Charlemagne reconquered the WHOLE of the Roman Empire using the holy war mechanic on the Caliphate, and then with the Franks on both ends of the Byzantine Empire and in control in four of the five patriarchies and that little thing with Irene blinding her son and because it's three hundred years until the schism, I figured old Charlie would definitely get a claim on the "Roman throne." And hey, Caesar AND Constantine did similar feats.
It was to say AWESOME. Well that and Charlemagne discovering the earth revolves around the sun before the year 800 (a standard way of life event chain in CK2) was SWEET.
And If I can get the Charlemagne angle to work, then you know, I'll make an Age of Issuaria scenario given I've already done most of the groundwork, I simply need to retool the events and maybe the units.
And THAT would be truly novel.
I've not given up, it's just the project like most of my ambitions are going nowhere but not for a lack of interest.
I am in the process of trying to figure out the dos box, but without some good topographical maps of 8th century Europe, it's not gonna do me much good. And this is the least ambitious scenario idea I have.
Well that and the zany, tropey, take on Tootall's Vietnam War scenario I was gonna call The Nam, which despite all the movie references and tropes was really an ambitious recasting of the scenario. Instead of being Westmoreland in practice, this was you were gonna be a...more astute "President" Thieu, trying to rebuild Vietnamese civil society and drain out the avalanche of corruption that makes your government almost as hated as the Communists. Based on Thieves of States and to a lesser degree, The Dictator's Handbook (which despite the title is about the importance of democracy in keeping corruption and violence at bay)
BUT....you can imagine how many berserk buttons you get right and left when you don't follow one of the two Vietnam narratives. So asking questions and people having answers is...a slog. Research on what happened is easy, research on what could have happened is hard.
