The Shadow of Ishtar - The Beginning

[helmersen]

No one blames you! It's all right, of course

[nzartus]

Hi everyone, I've just read through 10 pages of The Shadow of Ishtar conceptual thread so that I could gather every possible idea you've had and the processes you followed to get there, so that I could provide you with whatever help I could offer. So please take heed of my advice which was very gruelling work to formulate!


You may not be happy to hear this, but in my opinion many of your faction choices are inappropriate for this period. Into this statement I'd group almost anything North or West of Asia Minor.

My reasons for this are because of the nature of the factions you are suggesting and how they contrast with the nature of the game. I'll explain piece by piece.

Firstly Italy, an area I have been studying heavily for years. As much as I am a fan of the place in antiquity and today, the Etruscans, Romans, Latins, Umbrians, or anyone else can simply not be used as factions. Why? They were not unified enough. A look at history tells us they were around back then which is fine, but a study of political geography and then a closer study by means of ancient texts and archealogy shows they were in no position to be compared to people such as Egypt or Medes who also feature in your game. It took Rome till around 270 BC to conquer Italy. I see it happening alot faster in this game. As for Etruscans or Latins or any other people in Italy, there was not enough unity between them, and studies (I can give you University journals if you really wish) as recent as 2004 show none of these peoples to be as powerful as commonly believed.

The same goes for the Greeks who didn't get involved in too much other than colonies, and small ones at that, during this time. Other than that they suffered invasions from the Dorians and essentially kept things pretty local in terms of warfare.

Point is, there were some big fish out there, but these are just small fry.


The same could be said of Carthage. Were it me I'd call them Phoenicians and include them with a whole Phoenician faction with Tyre.


Sorry to be a downer but I really want to help.


I think you need to ask yourself what you want to get out of this mod and go from there. It seems you're so enthusiastic to get every aspect of History in but it just can't all fit! I know the pain bad enough, I've tried making boardgames on this stuff(not even any AI)!

If you are totally interested in this period and will not change then I'd suggest cutting the map off west of Asia Minor and focusing more on the Modern day Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan area. But if you could be more flexible with period I'd suggest setting it a few centuries back to include Hittites and all that garb. This way you'll have a collection of decent factions in the Saudi-Iraq area, and because of the time period you can get away with small factions that wouldn't normally be worthy, ie Sea Peoples or Dorian Greeks. This would be a great and new mod in my opinion. Possibly the oldest but there's nothing wrong with that!

Well, that's all I have to say. I sincerely hope this project gets going as I'd love to have all those old factions to play with minus Greek influence.

If you've got this far thanks for taking the time, appreciate it and hope you take some of it onboard.

[nzartus]

Other than that I'd like to hop on board for research or anything like that if you'll have me, if I'm not too difficult??

[Stephan]

welcome to the team

[dragonsign]

Hi Nzartus,

A good post you wrote there, constructive critisism should always be welcome to a mod project

+rep

[nzartus]

Thanks! I'm afraid I won't be much help technically behind the scenes, but I am very aware of the gameplay itself so I can envisage how things will turn out and what is appropriate for the way it runs. Other than that I have access to what I assume is the best Ancient History library section in the country (New Zealand if you didn't guess) and I'm always keen to look up stuff like this. Later on I could possibly help with 2D art, and later on maaaaaaaaybe music but that depends on lots of things, mainly to do with the mod.

But thanks again!

[nzartus]

Cheers dragonsign! I must tell you, it's almost 6am here I've stayed up reading this and looking through some books so I'm glad it was well recieved! I just hate it when I see mods that could be so good dragged down by real simple stuff which is usually just a case of eagerness getting away on people.




Ahhhh, my first rep!

[Stephan]

thx for your suggestions and rep from me too

we wont move the starting date that far behind

to the greece city states and carthago
the greecs and the phoenicians +colonies will fight for the control over the mediteran sea and their colonies there and i think thats something very cool a bit like it will be in empire

carthago is more a fun faction and there would be a huge whole in that area if they werent there

maybe you wanna tell us a bit more about the italian cities you just say how it wasnt. how was it?

Point is, there were some big fish out there, but these are just small fry

like what?

[nzartus]

By big fish I mean Egypt and all to the East. In Italy at the time it was basically like Greece with City states, maybe not quite as distinct though, and I guess Greece gets the common title because:
A - Rome ended up taking over and unifying italy which never really happened in Greece
B - Any discord between people of the same race ie Etruscans or Greeks was not recognized by Roman historians (where we get most of our sources on this period) who grouped them together regardless of whether they were united or not.

Sure they had leagues but these were all about mutual support not forming alliances to take over the world, this type of thing would never work.

I guess Carthage could stay as you need some power there, and the Phoenicians vs. Greeks is fine, they had their colonial wars hehe.

But you understand with Italy? These guys were still living in mud huts remember.

[Stephan]

By big fish I mean Egypt and all to the East

they are included the faction list is on the first page + thrakia

i didnt know it was that bad there
but we have to do something to fill italy maybe we can find a way to represent the situation in italy

what do you know about the other italian factions? messapier and ligurer how was it there

[nzartus]

Those are German names, replace 'er' with 'a' lol.

Messapia were helleno-barbarians from West Greece who never amounted to anything and Liguria had Gauls.

The poblem is anything in Italy is too powerful, same with spain or North Africa. That's why I suggest Cutting out west from Asia Minor or Greece and changing the date to earlier. At the moment it's a very difficult date to work out because at this stage people had organized cities but they weren't powerful enough to do anything.

[Stephan]

Those are German names, replace 'er' with 'a' lol

im from austria

ok i think i said that a million times but one of the beautiful things of medieval is that you can change history

at this stage people had organized cities but they weren't powerful enough to do anything.

thats the starting position maybe we can represent their "weren't powerful enough to do anything" that they have a very difficult beginning with small cities and a weak economy that it will take a long time till they can fight wars

[nzartus]

I know, but it isn't that. They can still takeover things too quickly when they get strong enough.

If you must have something the best I can think of is Greeks in the south.

[nzartus]

Is there a reason you choose this time period?

[helmersen]

Greetings, nzartus, and welcome! I read your looong post, and I liked it. Just not so happy that all we have done is trash..


Nice to have anoher researcher though.

[Stephan]

greeks in the south sounds good, but there are many factions in italy so theres just not much room for them so they cant get too strong and untill they can afford a war it will also take some time maybe we can also make the ai less military centric

Is there a reason you choose this time period?

yes

[Atatürk]

Welcome to the team, I think you've stated some very important points we need to take into consideration.

I'll add your name to the list.

[maxi90]

@nzartus

firts i´ll say i was impresed by your post. +rep
second, welcome to the team, i have the feeling that you will be a big help

i must say that i didn´t know many of the thinks you stated in your post (shame on me). but, however, i wasn´t confortable about having rome and Carthage in the game be couse of the time period. Now, i think we should seriously discuss the ideas of nzartus, specially that of cutting the map. think about it guys. we hav had plenty of factions suggested to be add in the last days, and all of them are in that area. and since it will be much harder to get info about the west factions (i´ve tried to get something desent of carthage, but i couldn´t get nothing good) maybe we should consider this posibility.

[Gwyn ap Nud]

I would agree with Nzartus, especially about extending the map. Often, mods with a much narrower range are more fun, because they're more unique.

[nzartus]

Thanks everyone. Helmersen, as long as you progress from whatever you have it's always worth it .

Stephan, I ask why the time period as it seems the original driving force for the current era of c800-c500 BCE, the African civilizations, have faded away to an extent with focus being put more on the Mediterranean.

With Hittites, Egyptians, Dorian Greeks etc c1100 BCE onwards you will be creating a groundbreaking mod in many ways.

*Firstly, it is not centred around Greeks or Romans. ALL ancient mods I have seen include Hellenic civilizations and most include Rome. By pushing back a few centuries we make a new mod free of these civilizations. In my opinion, exciting and fresh for a mod!
*It will be probably the oldest dated mod. Us playing M2TW is like people from RTW playing this mod, it is that far back!
*It is not centred on the Mediterranean, but rather around the Arabian desert, Egypt and her neighbours, and in the cradle of civilization amongst the two great rivers of Babylon. What a setting!
*The nature of the factions would be more suitable to the game. There were not city states fighting each other but huge migrations of people who, although not quite unified, still saw each other as kin and thus cooperated.
*Finally the older we set the mod the more artistic license we have. It is a fact that Rome was not big c500 BCE, however earlier than 1000BCE is open to a lot of speculation amongst historians and there are many things you could stage unlikely to be argued against with any real clout ie Sea Peoples, Dorian expansion, A single Greek faction. All are workable.

This type of mod would be essentially a race to civilization, a far more suitable scenario to the TW style gameplay than Medieval or Rome.


But this is just my idea and I am not in charge, however I do believe this would be a worthwhile choice and I am fully willing to back such a mod. I had never thought of this until I saw this mod so thanks for the inspiration Kemalraik. Were I a modder I would have started making it already!

So, thoughts?