Eranshahr, the Star of the East, ON HOLD :(

[Alwyn]

Your short update, like your longer ones, is well worth reading. I enjoyed your latest chapter, the way that the chants and prayers powerfully communicate the anxiety and fear of the men on the battlefield, the dramatic use of the famous Testudo and the great screenshots. I look forward to seeing more of Shapur's friends and the return of Mudi.

[The Wandering Storyteller]

Excellent stories, what research did you do for the Sassainds?

[waveman]

THank you both. To tell the truth it was quite random. I originally intended to look up the religion and the history of the dynasty (overthrow of Parthia, pervious Shapurs, etc) and then read a lot about the religion and Mazdakism, reforms and political strata, which then led to the various ways of looking at women (especially) and the different classes and inevitably military views. Then, due to the sources often stating how vague reports on Sassanian culture are - many are from outside sources, such as Greeks and Romans, who were of course biased - I looked up information and articles from several sources and compared them, which was quite interesting. And then I had to cut myself off because I need to be studying chemistry, not dark ages history, no matter how interesting it is (and I find {organic} chemistry to be quite interesting as well, but class is class...).

I noticed parallels to other empires of course - overall strength with a strong leader, too much or too little military focus, overly powerful upper classes, corruption, the exhausting rivalry with the ERE, which helped pave the way for ease of the Islamic expansion

http://iranian.com/main/2012/feb/sasanian-society.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_...asanian_Empire
http://www.academia.edu/4447978/sasanian_empire
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/women-i

These are a few articles, if you're interested, that I have bookmarked.

[Draco Redux]

Waveman,

I must have moooooooore. The suspense is killing me. I may have to call out of work, tomorrow...

[waveman]

Haha thank you, it's good to hear that you're enjoying this! I have to take a midterm in an hour but I'll try to post something after; I've been taking classes all summer

So I got shogun 2 to work again and got caught up playing it...

[Draco Redux]

Haha thank you, it's good to hear that you're enjoying this! I have to take a midterm in an hour but I'll try to post something after; I've been taking classes all summer

So I got shogun 2 to work again and got caught up playing it...

I check for an update every day. I'm beginning to lose hope.

[waveman]

I'll get one up today or tomorrow barring some unforseen catastrophe. Other than that don't expect a whole lot for the next week and a half because I have a final exam coming up. After that however I should be able to do some writing because I have a break for two weeks (one of which I won't even have work!)

[The Wandering Storyteller]

Waveman, sorry for not responding as I am busy, but your updates are fantastic! Take a break, you need it and take your time. Good luck for the exams!

[waveman]

OK, I've been trying to continue this fluidly, and I just can't find the motivation to.

1) I'd much rather write about Shogun 2
2) This is a huge amount of work since I have to dig through my save files to edit army comps to keep the Eastern Roman Empire from being swarmed by my vassals
3) It is too easy unless I do aforementioned editing - yeah I had some tough battles, but overall the campaign just wasn't as challenging as it could have been. I could have chosen the Western Roman Empire for the challenge but
4) I wanted to have one AAR set in "the West" and one in "the East"
5) I only want to have a maximum of 2 AARs going on at once, and I pretty much started this one because I couldn't write about Shogun (it was crashing constantly)
6) A personal flaw that I freely acknowledge is that I hate, I abhor redoing things (the main reason I struggled to get A's in writing classes in high school, and B's in college - although the college writing courses did have a weird grading policy....), and since I lost quite a few chapters' worth of writing it just sap my motivation that much more

Sorry to those who have been enjoying this, but if you are so inclined you can look for me on the Medieval II and Shogun II AAR forums, in The Tin Isles and a soon-to-be-started piece (like, as in will be started withing the next couple of days, possible even today). As you can see there has been quite a lot of thought behind this decision, but I would still like to apologize anyways

Who knows, I may eventually pick this back up


- waveman





Additionally, my chosen name is related to Shogun and that era....
"Etymology[edit]

The word rōnin literally means "wave man". That, however, is an idiomatic expression that means "vagrant" or "wandering man", someone who is without a home"

although I meant it more in a sense of:

"The Kanji "浪人" means a "drifter" or a "wanderer", i.e. "he who drifts/wanders"."

[waveman]

Also, thank you Triumph!

[The Wandering Storyteller]

Not a prob, eager to see your next stories!!! Especially the Shogun 2 one!

[waveman]

Thank you, although I am curious as to why you are especially looking forward to the S2 one? And Medieval is already in progress

[waveman]

double post

[Alwyn]

As I see it, if we aren't enjoying writing a story or aren't enjoying the campaign, there's no need to apologize for writing about something else. I look forward to reading your Shogun II story - and to the continuation of your excellent Medieval II tale The Tin Isles. (Sorry to hear that you lost a lot of chapters of Eranshahr). As you've said, there's always the possibility of returning to this in future, if you find a way (e.g. through a mod, a different difficulty level or even a different faction) to have an enjoyable campaign.

[waveman]

Thank you Alwyn. The funny thing is that I was enjoying it - just not as much as Shogun, and also it was too much work. That being said........................................... Shogun! (As soon as I think of a name )

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

Sorry it's taken me a while to get round to catching up with this - and sorry to hear there won't be any more of it. Alwyn's right, though, it isn't worth doing if you aren't enjoying it. Your writing is good, so I will happily console myself for the loss of Eranshahr by reading your other AARs.

I was intrigued by the background to your choice of name; thank you for explaining that.

[waveman]

Thanks Callaigh. Another thing that influenced the name choice (albeit in perhaps a less thoughtful way) is that I like the ocean, beaches, sailing, etc.

My big issues was that Eranshahr just wasn't hard enough. In The Tin Isles and Shogun I have to juggle my armies carefully, a loss could be catastrophic. In Eranshahr I was like "guys (my vassals) go home stop its my turn to fight"

Thinking about it though, and having just re-read some of the Critic's Quill, I may opt for a hard narrative approach - the one most loosely related to the game

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

Heh. Yes, I can imagine that your vassals doing all the fighting would be less than fun.

I'd say if you fancy hard narrative, give it a go. It can work really well, and it does leave you much more free to do what you want in the game (and just tell the story you wanted to tell anyway). If you find you enjoy writing this as a hard narrative AAR, you just keep going, and we all get to enjoy it; if you find you don't enjoy that as much, well, then this AAR comes to an end - but we'll still have your others. Sounds good to me!

[Lugotorix]

Although they're mostly Christian factions, Empires of the Sands has some factions that are similar to the Sassanids. They even have new Sassanid ancillaries (can't say I'm pleased with those *because they're Christian*) I'd recommend giving the Lakhmids a look, and seeing if that would be a more challenging campaign with a similar setting for your research to go to work. The amount of effort that went into the DLC is impressive.