Viking scenario (planning phase)

[Erebras]

Takhisis, colonies cannot build horsemen. Barbarian camps can, but they won't be restricted to the steppe, and the modder will have to preplace and name each barbarian camp on the steppe. Not a bad workaround, I'll note, but if an area of Ireland gets laid to waste, you could end up with a band of Hungarians or Mongols outside of Dublin.

 

[Takhisis]

The empty spaces would be for the colonies in the steppe, not in Ireland. But this is a Viking scenario, so the focus should be on the Scandinavians and their activities, and the inferior Swedes should be left for later.

 

[Erebras]

Wait, wait, wait, you misunderstand. I think I jumped ahead too far in my train of thought. What I was saying was that IF you preplace barbarian camps in the steppe and (re)name them their historically-appropriate placename, and you still have that list of barbarian "cities" (what? 78 of them? something like that) in the Editor for when a barbarian camp arises in an abandoned area (due to elimination of cities through warfare), then IF you are using the barbarians as steppe nomads, then you could end up with the unusual situation if the Vikings sailed around England and sacked Ireland, laid waste to the region, and went home, then a barbarian camp would arise there -- nature abhors a vacuum -- and it could have a strange, non-Gaelic name for the camp if all the barbarian cities in the Editor were steppe-people names. It's a lot of IF's, but that was my line of reasoning for it.

As for the empty spaces -- empty meaning unclaimed or unsettled, right? -- then who would own the colonies that you speak of? The nearby cities of the Magyars? It's not a bad idea, Takhisis -- that's not at all what I am saying -- but I'm not getting the whole picture of how you propose representing the steppe as a vast region unable to have cities (and therefore, inhabitants).

I'm not sure about the inferior Swedes. http://funnywebjokes.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/swedish-girls-making-british-girls-look-ugly-since-1428/ Apparently they've been providing a valuable public service since 1428.

It wasn't clear to what geographic extent the scenario was going to go, or for how long, so I was merely throwing out ideas about Norman expansion as a logical extension of what happened after Lindisfarne got raided.

 

[Takhisis]

Wait, wait, wait, you misunderstand. I think I jumped ahead too far in my train of thought. What I was saying was that IF you preplace barbarian camps in the steppe and (re)name them their historically-appropriate placename, and you still have that list of barbarian "cities" (what? 78 of them? something like that) in the Editor for when a barbarian camp arises in an abandoned area (due to elimination of cities through warfare), then IF you are using the barbarians as steppe nomads, then you could end up with the unusual situation if the Vikings sailed around England and sacked Ireland, laid waste to the region, and went home, then a barbarian camp would arise there -- nature abhors a vacuum -- and it could have a strange, non-Gaelic name for the camp if all the barbarian cities in the Editor were steppe-people names. It's a lot of IF's, but that was my line of reasoning for it.

Oh, yes, it's a valid reasoning, but I didn't think having simple nomads would be worth it.

As for the empty spaces -- empty meaning unclaimed or unsettled, right? -- then who would own the colonies that you speak of? The nearby cities of the Magyars? It's not a bad idea, Takhisis -- that's not at all what I am saying -- but I'm not getting the whole picture of how you propose representing the steppe as a vast region unable to have cities (and therefore, inhabitants).

Anyone who wants a luxury resource can get it by building a colony and keeping a road to that place in good repair. The Byzantines in Crimea, Danube and Volga Bulgaria as well as Tmutorokan and Kyiv would be the best places from which to control the colonies. Beware the nomads!

I'm not sure about the inferior Swedes. http://funnywebjokes.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/swedish-girls-making-british-girls-look-ugly-since-1428/ Apparently they've been providing a valuable public service since 1428.

Inferior to Norwegians, I meant.

It wasn't clear to what geographic extent the scenario was going to go, or for how long, so I was merely throwing out ideas about Norman expansion as a logical extension of what happened after Lindisfarne got raided.

They aren't Normans, they're Scandinavians. The Normans are those who settled in northern Neustria and eventually conquered England in the second half of the eleventh century, and who also caused a lot of trouble in the Mediterranean, but they're not exactly the same.

 

[Jerry'sGoldfish]

@erabras - you could bring the map further south to include sicily and tunis, egypt and armenia, locations know for highering normans, or rus...if you keep the map as it is, the normans will capture the north pole 500 years before industrialisation and there would be no more ice today, because they would have sold it to the abbasids for gold...

 

[Takhisis]

This is a map from wikipedia where you can see the main trading posts:

Spoiler :

Kyiv, Novgorod, Chernigov; Chersonesos and Kerch for the Dnieper route; Tmutorokan and Tana for the Don; Sarkel, Atil, Volga Bulgaria; and so on down to Baku for the Volga route. Beware of the mighty Oghuz and their rials on the steppe, the Khazars, Kipchaks, Patzinaks.

Maybe the retrieval of VP units from such places would make the AI Vikings set out to pillage them, but once they get far from their ships the horsemen of the Steppe can get them.

 

[Erebras]

Scandinavia is named for a region in Sweden, so ignoring Swedish Vikings would be a lapse. Vikings used a Danish axe, so ignoring Danish Vikings would be a lapse. Norway is associated with Norse and Nordic, so the Norwegians get stuck in the mix. Normans are "a people descended from Norse Vikings" (wiki.) so ignoring them would be a lapse. Varangians/Varyags was a name given to Vikings by the Greeks and East Slavs, so ignoring them would be a lapse.

What I'm getting at is that in my worldview Vikings encompasses a wide range and yet very specific culture group in a way that Germanic does not have the same connotation. If a very specific warband from a town in Denmark sacks a city during the Viking Age, it's not an isolated incident, but a part of a larger picture. So if a group of Vikings take over Sicily or take up employment with a bunch of sissies paying them in besants, it's part of the Viking "saga."

As an American, it would be odd to say "Oh, the French and Indian Wars? Yeah, that was just New Hampshiremen, there." or "Man, those darn Virginians sure did it to the Cherokee, didn't they?" In the New World mindset, the colonists ceased being British early on and became Americans, in thought and deed if not in word and tribute, and the history of the English-settled colonies is the history of Americans, long before any treaty or constitution was ever drafted. By the same token, the history of the Scandinavian countries -- including Greenland, Faroe Islands, Iceland, Ireland, Scotland, whatever -- is the history of the Vikings, even if one group went east and one went west, or one group Christianized while another clung to Odin (and all the other days of the week, except Saturday). Does that make sense?

Spoiler :

Of course, I'm not suggesting how the modmaker do his business -- he has his vision of what he wants -- but I am pointing out (as I already have) that the modmaker will need to determine to his liking to what extent (temporally and anthropologically) he's gonna go with this. He's already suggested the geographic locations and the tribes he's got in mind, but I've overlooked how far into the past and future the scenario's timeline's gonna go, if it's been posted. In and of itself the Viking Age didn't last all that long. {EDIT: I just read the Timeframe I'd overlooked in the initial post. Disregard all comments by me about the timeline, since the matter has settled.}

@Jerry'sGoldfish:

 

[Takhisis]

Erm, you've completely lost me there.

Where's our Babylonic overlord?

 

[Babylon746]

Here I am!
Some interesting input lately.

I must admit I hadn't heard of Tmutorokan before.
Having given it some thought, I think making a scenario on the scale I envisaged at the beginning would be too much. I simply don't have the time.

Let's consider the idea shelved. Knowing myself, that means as much as abandoned, but that sounds so ... definite.

But if you have input on Viking scenarios, by all means keep it coming. Maybe someone else wants to pick up the pieces.

 

[Erebras]

Abandoning the scenario is your prerogative, but if you wanted a beefed-up Norse-centric version of Rood and the Dragon, certainly you'd be able to garner permission to make a Viking scenario of the Rood mod with the ideas you came up in your initial post. If it's not a total re-write and re-construct, how difficult would it be to add some units and expand the map a bit? And adding techs to an already existing techtree may not be all that complicated if the original is left intact and all that needs to be done is add some more arrows and grid coordinates.

 

[Ozymandias]

My vote would be for the separate Welsh Kingdoms planned at present. The Welsh (British) were no more a united people at this point in history than the Anglo-Saxons who surplanted them in the eastern half of Britain.

I found a far better map for 700 CE: it's interactive (selecting a kingdom will pop up a veritable plethora of history.) It can be found HERE.
Non-interactive version attached.

And the Wikipedia entry is actually quite informative.


Cheers,

Oz