[Multi-Game AAR] Beyond the Gates of Troy

[The_Forsaken]

"Men are haunted by the vastness of eternity. And so we ask ourselves: will our actions echo across the centuries? Will strangers hear our names long after we are gone, and wonder who we were? How bravely we fought? How fiercely we loved?" - Achilles

History is full of echoes. What one does leaves ripples through time.

So what if this were to happen in an AAR?

Taking place across multiple games in chronological order of their settings, I'll be (attempting) to build an empire from one game to the next! Obviously, this is a little complicated, so I've tried to come up with a few rules:

1) Each game ends after I destroy a faction. Then I move on to the next!
- This is to prevent too much expansion early on; in-story, this means the death of one monarch/emperor or the 'end of an era'.
2) Only settlements and minimal garrisons (~3 low-tier units) are carried over from one Total War game to the next. No infrastructure!
- This is to keep me from starting each game with too much of an advantage over other factions; in-story, this means settlements are being replaced for various reasons and armies are being disbanded or lost in war.
3) If a game keeps crashing, use progress from the last save. Rule 2 still applies.
- This happened the most with Rise of Persia and a few other mods.

This is just a little something I've been doing with my spare time. It isn't meant to be a professionally-written AAR that could match the likes of so many others!

Also, there will be references to different games, films, and TV series in this. So if you're looking for something completely steeped in history, this isn't it. But, to be fair, I did a lot of historical research, so maybe you'll find something to like!

Oh! And that's another thing. This is an AAR, albeit a very atypical one! I first wrote it like it was an alternate history timeline, and in-game events are mixed in with both real and fictional history.

To balance that out, I added the 'Eyewitness Accounts'! These summarize the main points of the timeline and give a first-hand account of events that basically happened in-game, expanded and reimagined for the story.

This AAR is over two years old, and I didn't keep an exact record of each turn in images. But I do have screenshots of the final turn in each game, and even some of the saves! I'll do my best to recreate events as they're written (and as I can remember them)!


-= Forward =-

"I've seen the future. I've been into the past. My life is no more different than when it began. Beyond the gates of Troy.

I remember growing up there. I remember standing guard on one of the great towers watching the sun set; the sounds of the Apaliunas festival behind me as the people would feast and dance through the night.

And I can still see the face of the young man I was.

The legend of Troy has long been colored in myth and metaphor. People wrote and rewrote its history over the ages, each time losing a little more of the story written by those who lived it. Now, as I witness the end of another era, I feel compelled to write. It's important to see how we rise and fall - to learn of our greatest success... and our most terrible failures.

And I saw it all."


-= Prologue =-

-Summary

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

c. 3000 BCE: Troy is founded.
c. 2600 BCE: Scaean gate is constructed by Erichthonius of Dardania.
c. 2250 BCE: Troy II is destroyed in a fire.
c. 2200 BCE: Troy III is constructed over the ruins of Troy II.
c. 1950 BCE: Troy IV is destroyed in a fire.
c. 1900 BCE: A new culture from inland Anatolia settles in Troy.
c. 1700 BCE: The Minoans settle in Crete.
c. 1600 BCE: Hittite (Anatolian) iron tools and weapons.
c. 1600 BCE: Hittites establish capital at Hattusa (near modern Bogazkale, Turkey).
c. 1400 BCE: Tudhaliya I defeats Assuwa and has a victory stele made.

+Detailed

=Eyewitness Notes

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

This is how the 'Imperial History' textbook tells it. Most of the events are true, though I'd hardly lived that long ago. My story, perhaps fittingly, began in 1417 BCE at the house of my parents. Gods, it's been so long that I can hardly remember their names. But that's neither here nor there, is it?

Although we worshiped Apollo, who we called Apaliunas, I'd heard rumors from the priests that once we'd been his slaves. It wasn't until thousands of years later that I learned the truth. Apollo was a demon... a parasite claiming a host. We only worshiped out of fear. That is, until our savior arrived.

Today, the Dissonants view him as a living god. He could never be killed. Like me, it seems, he'd been immortal. But that's where our similarities end.

Troy was part of a north Aegean heritage shared with Lemnos, Lesbos, Smyrna and Samos - islands off the Troad and Aeolian coasts. Being where we were, peoples would often migrate and displace the former claimants of the city. Eventually, the Hattians became its patrons and soon adapted to the local customs.

We called our city 'Wilusa' - a native Luwian name. Our city served as an important part of a coalition known as Assuwa. To the south were our rivals: Arzawa. Just as we controlled the north, Arzawa held Lydia and Ionia with iron fists. If it wasn't for my visit to the Hittite palace in Hattusa, it might've stayed that way forever: Assuwa and Arzawa stalemating each other. I traveled there to visit a... cousin - the chief scribe of the Hittites.

Servants of the Hittite King Muwatalli conspired to kill him. When I told him of this, he had them tortured and executed. Next, he killed Tudhaliya, the grandson of his predecessor, the tyrant Huzziya II. Muwatalli promised to reward me and my people. And so he did.

Had I done nothing, Troy would've fell to the Greeks. Agamemnon would've burned our homes, killed our men and tormented our women. Don't believe what the books of Homer told you. When the Greeks invaded, we'd already been weakened by a much greater war to the east. A war with Hattusa.

Here, I changed history, with Tudhaliya gone and a grateful king on the Hittite throne. How do I know? Call it a sixth sense. I didn't know it at the time, but I wasn't completely human. But I also wasn't a time traveler or a powerful being. I'm simply... one who listens - who hears the ebbs and flows of time and knows when my perceptions deceive me.

-= The Trojan Wars =-
c. 1300 BCE

=Eyewitness Notes

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

(the real Agamemnon and his warrior troupe)

Paris never stole Helen. It was a poetic excuse the Greeks later used to justify their war with the east. They never trusted us. We were rich, our trade flourishing. Agamemnon was only a pirate. Perhaps he convinced the Mycenaeans to support his cause to invade Troy once, but not here.

Homer would have you believe we had allies throughout the world. If only we had. Not even the Amazons came to our aid. But that didn't mean we fought alone. Assuwa stood as a bastion of stability with the support of our Hittite allies. Only one people could truly threaten us: Arzawa.

(the fearsome Lydian archers)

You know them as Lydians. Their king, Muwa-Walwis, made a secret pact with the Ahhiyawa - the Achaeans - to strike at us and claim the Dardanelles. At that time, Muwatalli had extended his empire out into Cilicia, bypassing the need for Arzawa as a middle man in trade negotiations with Phoenicia. After Muwa's death, his brother, Uhha-Ziti, led a war against Muwatalli.

None of these names were remembered by the classical authors. But Uhha-Ziti must've been a powerful man. He convinced his nephew, Manapa-Tarhunta, to stop paying tribute, and even sent the young King Priam - Piyama-Kurunta - to wage war against us. It wasn't Achilles or Ajax I had to face at the gates of Troy.

It was Priam. Backed by hundreds of Achaeans and Lydians. Who did we have to face him? A weak and ailing king without a successor.

(Piyama-Kurunta stands with his bodyguards)

By the time we met him in battle, Priam had already destroyed much of the countryside. Even the gods seemed to be against us. We had to fall back many times - attack and retreat, attack and retreat. Slowly, but surely, we lured them into the alluvial plains south of Troy. Bruised and battered, those of us who remained felt sure we were about to lose everything.

Then Muwatalli arrived. Backed by our Hittite brothers, I felt centuries of hostility between our peoples melt away as we faced off against a greater threat. I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with many an easterner, our body-length shields planted in the ground as we withstood the charge of the Myrmidons. When our spears broke, I traded blows with the men of Ithica; watched as Hittite arrows mingled with the Lydians' above our heads; heard the blast of a warhorn and the screams of thousands as the Hittite chariots cut through Priam's men.

(Hittite chariots charge into the Myrmidons' flank)

Muwatalli carried the war on through Lydia and trapped Priam at Millawanta - Miletus. Meanwhile, we faced off against the Achaeans across the northern Aegean, sailing from island to island and slaughtering any we came across.

Eventually, peace had settled over the land... but not for long. Piyama-Radu, the elderly Priam's own son, gathered a great many Achaeans and pirates to reclaim his father's lands in Arzawa and make us in Assuwa pay for his death.

History has a way of repeating itself. Piyama-Radu gained power because both Arzawa and the Achaeans had suffered a great loss. They wanted revenge. Again, I had to join my countrymen in facing them, and again, we emerged victorious.

But the Aegean remained a dangerous place full of pirates and madmen. So we turned our eyes toward the roof of the world...

-= The Odyssey =-
c. 1300 BCE

=Eyewitness Notes

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

(Odysseus near the end of his life)

I don't know the veracity of this claim, but Homer believed Alexander captured Odysseus during this second war. Odysseus promised to help map the entire Black Sea if Paris spared his men. Instead, Odysseus freed Priam and fled for Ithaca. In an act of divine justice, Poseidon swept his ship off course.

Odysseus learned his lesson. But it was too late. When he arrived at Ithaca, he found his family dead at the hands of Penelopes' suitors. Furious, Odysseus cursed all of Greece and returned to Troy. The descendants of those daring seafarers to journey across the Black Sea claimed Odysseus as their forefather. Whether true or not, people had begun to leave Troy to settle on the banks of this enormous sea. Troy had become a city of danger, and Anatolia a land of droughts and invasions. Our colony at Phasis would become the most prosperous, while Troy began its long descent from bastion of order to a home of chaos.

[McScottish]

Ah, one of my favourite periods of (pre?) history, and one of my most favoured heroes of myth - the wily Odysseus; I've not got any pointers, everything seems to be as it should be and you can tell that research has been done, so I'll simply say that I look forward to more of the same and give you some rep to hopefully nudge you onward.

[The_Forsaken]

Thank you! I found it funny that one of my adopted generals ended up with the name 'Odysseus', so I just had to play with the myth of my favorite legendary Greek to get him on Troy's side. It was also pretty fun blending parts of Homer's myth with the Hittite record!

Tiny mistake in the initial summary aside (Tudhaliya conquering Assuwa; this only happened in our timeline), I'm glad you liked it!