The Shadow of Ishtar - The Beginning

[nzartus]

I seriously think cutting out Carthage and just having Phoenicians is the way to go.

[dragonsign]

If Carthage is left behind and we only have phoenicia it will probably look something like this: (Phoenician terretory in red)

[helmersen]

Wouldt the campaign be harder if we had Carthage and Phoenicians? The conflict between them could have been good..

[Stephan]

If Carthage is left behind and we only have phoenicia it will probably look something like this: (Phoenician terretory in red)

i think they also got colonies on cyprus

Wouldt the campaign be harder if we had Carthage and Phoenicians? :original: The conflict between them could have been good..

im for carthage too

[absinthia]

mind you, the distance between carthago and phoenicia proper would be an enormous span of ocean. the ai does not handle naval invasions to well and even with land access the distance would mess it up.
the conflict between carthago and phoenicia would be virtually non-existant.

[The_Bulgar_Slayer]

I too think that Carthage and Pheonicia should be combined. At this point in time Carthage would not likely have survived without continual Pheonician support through trade, money, supplies, and manpower. Carthage was no different early on than many other Pheonician colonies, and while it could have acted independently at times, it still primarily served Pheonician interests.

Think of Pheonicia as the Great Britain of the 9th century and Carthage as one of the Commonwealth countries (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India). While those countries of the Commonwealth at times acted independently, when it came to war and trade they worked hand-in-hand with Britain.

The possibility of Carthage achieving independence could be there, but the city would be too new and small to be on its own. Again, think of the colony of Jamestown in the USA trying to survive without British support. Carthage would be in a similar postion in relation to Pheonicia for its first 50-100 years or so.

I hope this explains my reasoning.

[Stephan]

what do you think about an unplayable phoenician colonies faction, they are a phoenician vassal and send them money every turn depending on how mighty they are (dont know if its possible)
maybe with utica as capital which is the oldest colony in africa

that would solve the problem with the huge distance and the independence from the motherland

[The_Bulgar_Slayer]

That is a possibility, though it may be better to just have the major colonies as part of the Pheonician faction, and the minor ones as rebels. By making Pheonician colonies start out as undeveloped and poor we can ensure that Pheonicia does not make too much money and can't build many troops outside Pheonicia itself. The benefit of the colonies would be the money from trade, while the dependence on the motherland is represented by the best military units being recruitable only in Pheonicia at the start of the game. This will ensure that, early on, most of their effort will be spent on defending or expanding Pheonicia and not on expanding the colonies.

If Pheonicia is conquered, which is a real possibility given all the nearby enemies, then Carthage would be the most important remaining Pheonician settlement and could become the capital. Now, the faction of "Pheonicia" would essentially be the faction of "Carthage" in all but name. This is basicially what happened historically.

[nzartus]

Haha, you're half right Bulgar Slayer, except actually Carthage was historically Phoenician in name but not geography. This is why we have the Punic wars, the Latin name for Phoenician.

[The_Bulgar_Slayer]

Haha, you're half right Bulgar Slayer, except actually Carthage was historically Phoenician in name but not geography. This is why we have the Punic wars, the Latin name for Phoenician.

I'm not that dumb; I know Carthage was not in Pheonicia geographically. Reread my post, or I can try to clarify:

If the cities in the province of Pheonicia are conquered (cities like Tyre and Byblos), then a Pheonician colony, like Carthage, will now be the most important city left and will have to be the new capital. This means that the faction of Pheonicia will now essentially be the faction of Carthage in all but name.

I hope this helps clarify.

[absinthia]

with some scripting(you could use the kalmar union script from teutonic campaign) you could let carthago emerge in the colonies and replace phoenicia if phoenicia proper is lost.

[Stephan]

yes i like the idea
maybe 2 different factions carthage and utica so you can chose

[nzartus]

Don't worry, I understood you Slayer, and I think it's a great idea. Very realistic.

[Stephan]

ok but we still need a faction list i want to start making the faction symbols

[The_Bulgar_Slayer]

1. Egypt
2. Kush
3. Judah
4. Israel
5. Pheonicia
6. Aram Damascus ???
7. Assyria
8. Chaldea (Babylon)
9. Elam
10. Persia (emergent?)
11. Media
12. Urartu
13. Cimmerians/Skythians ???
14. Phrygia
15. Lydia ???
16. Oympia
17. Thebes
18. Athens
19. Sparta
20. Thracians
21. Macedonia
22. Illyria
23. Oscans (Southern Italians) ???
24. Berbers ???
25. Libyans
26. Saba

Other possibilities:
?? Elis instead of Olympia
?? Corinth instaed of Olympia
?? Ionian Greeks instead of one mainland Greek faction
?? Neo-Hittites
?? Shrink the map to end in the Adriatic w/o Italy and Tunisia
?? Expand map to India
?? Other stuff you guys have thought of

[Stephan]

thx
heres a little map with the factions

[helmersen]

Maybe we could expand the map to India.. Getting some factions from there could have been cool, and never seen before from this time peroiud..

[absinthia]

The Middle East through the eyes of the ancient Israelites, reconstructed according to the documentary hypothesis.

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Sheba
Sabaeans
Ancient history of Yemen

"Bronze man" found in Al Bayda' (ancient Nashqum, Sheba kingdom). 6th-5th century BC

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Dʿmt
Due to their hegemony of the Red Sea some Sabaeans lived in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea during the Sabaean-influenced kingdom of D`mt.
Around 800 BC the kingdom of Dʿmt arose in Ethiopia, centering around Yeha (thought to be its capital) in northern Ethiopia. The kingdom seems to have had very close relations with the Yemenite Sabaean kingdom. The only known inscriptions of Dʿmt kings include reference to the contemporaneous ruling king of the Sabaean kingdom at the time. The Dʿmt kingdom developed irrigation schemes, used plows, grew millet, and even made iron tools and weapons. Remains of a large stone temple dating to about 500 BC still survive at Yeha, near Axum. The transition from Dʿmt to the Kingdom of Aksum remains unclear. Reference to Ethiopians in Ancient Greece however is obviously either to Africans in general, or the Cushites of Northern Sudan in particular. It is interesting to note that Greek historians viewed Ethiopia as a sacred people that was mostly loved by the Gods. Memnon was regarded as one of the noblest heroes that participated in the Trojan war and as the handsomest man of his time, bested in battle only by Achilles. According to a version of the myth, the Gods admired him so much that after his death from the sword of Achilles they decided to grant him immortality. According to Greek Mythology Ethiopians acquired their dark colour when the sun came once very close to their country. Herodotus recorded that a contingent of Ethiopian warriors who wore leopard skin and claws and painted their bodies red and white were among Xerxes' army that invaded Greece in the 5th century B.C. It remains to be seen as to how the history, migration and human settlement of the vast land between ancient Egypt and modern Ethiopia helps us understand the history of the region and the pre-Christian-pre-Islam human organization of those days. The nearby Nubian civilization was crushed by the Axumite king in fourth century.


Kush

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While Egyptian forces pulled out by the 11th century, they left a lasting legacy. A merger with indigenous customs can be seen in many of the practices formed during the kingdom of Kush. Archaeologists have found several burials which seem to belong to local leaders, buried here soon after the Egyptians decolonized the Nubian frontier. Kush adopted many Egyptian practices, such as their religion and the practice of building pyramids.
However, Kushite power soon overshadowed Egyptian. In the 8th century BC, under the leadership of king Piye, Kush invaded and controlled Egypt itself for a period (the Ethiopian dynasty). Kushite kings would hold sway over their northern neighbors for nearly one hundred years.
Of the Nubian kings of this era, Taharqa is perhaps the best known. A son and the third successor of King Piye, Taharqa was crowned king in c.690 in Memphis. He ruled over both Nubia and Egypt and devoted himself to all kinds of peaceful works, like the restoration of ancient temples in both Egypt and Nubia and building new sanctuaries, like the one at Kawa. In February/March 673, an army sent by the Assyrian king Esarhaddon was defeated by the Egyptians, but this was the last of Egyptian successes. In April 671, the Assyrians were back, and this time, they captured Memphis (11 July). Taharqa had left the city, but his brother and son were taken prisoner.
In Lower Egypt, Esarhaddon appointed the native princes as governors. One of these was Necho I, a descendant of Tefnakht, who resided in Sais in the western Delta. Meanwhile, Taharqo fought back, reoccupied in Memphis in 669, and forced the princes into submission.
This provoked a third Assyrian campaign, which was broken off because Esarhaddon died. He was succeeded by Ashurbanipal, who conducted the fourth campaign in 667/666, took Memphis, and sacked Thebes. Because the princes were obviously unreliable, the Assyrian king chose one of them who could be trusted: Necho.
When, after Taharqo's death in 664, his successor Tanwetamani tried to reconquer Memphis (the subject of the Dream Stela), Necho beat him, and although he was killed in action, power remained in his family. It was his son Psammetichus I, who unified Egypt, and was clever enough to give the Assyrians the impression that he still served them once they had been forced to recall their garrisons when civil war broke out in Assyria (651-648). The sphinx of Taharqa was found at Kawa Sudan, and is now on display in the British Museum.
Around 670 BC, the Assyrian King Esarhaddon (681-669 BC) conquered Lower Egypt, but allowed local kingdoms in Lower Egypt to exist, in order to enlist them as his allies against Ethiopian rulers, who had been accepted with reluctance. When King Assurbanipal succeeded Esarhaddon, the Ethiopian king Taharqa convinced some rulers of Lower Egypt to break with Assyrians. However, Asshurbanipal overpowered the coalition and deported the Egyptian leaders to his capital, Niniveh. He appointed the Libyan chief Necho, ruler of Memphis and Sais. Necho I was the first king of the Saite Twenty-sixth Dynasty (664 BC-525 BC) of Ancient Egypt. A new Ethiopian King Tantamani (664-653 BC) killed him the same year that Taharqa died, in 664 BC when Tantamani invaded Lower Egypt. However, Tantamani was unable to defeat the Assyrians who backed Necho’s son Psammetichus I. Tantamani eventually abandoned his attempt to conquer Lower Egypt and retreated to Napata. however, his authority over Upper Egypt was acknowledged until the 8th regnal year of his reign at Thebes (or 656 BC) when Psammetichus dispatched a naval fleet to Upper Egypt and succeeded in placing all of Egypt under his control.
Back at Napata, Ethiopians became interested only in developing their own kingdom, which underwent no conquest, notwithstanding the expansionist policies of Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians and Greeks.

Meroë

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(800 BC – c. AD 350) lay on the east bank of the Nile about 6 km north-east of the Kabushiya station near Shendi, Sudan, approximately 200 km north-east of Khartoum. There the people preserved many ancient Egyptian customs, but their culture was unique in many respects. They developed their own form of writing, first using Egyptian hieroglyphs, and later creating an alphabetic script with twenty-three signs.[15] Meroe leaders had many pyramids built during this period. The kingdom maintained an impressive standing military force.
Meroë was the southern capital of the Kushite Kingdom, or Napata/Meroitic Kingdom, that spanned the period c. 800 BCE - c. 350 CE. Meroë is the spelling that we have inherited from the writings of the ancient Romans. According to partially deciphered Meroitic texts, the name of the city was Medewi or Bedewi (Török, 1998).
Excavations revealed evidence of important, high ranking Kushite burials, from the Napata Period (c. 800 - c. 280 BC) in the vicinity of the settlement called the Western cemetery.

Napata

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Napata was a city-state on the west bank of the Blue Nile River, some 400 km north of Khartoum, the present capital of Sudan. It was built around 1345 BC by the Nubians.
In 1075 BC, the High Priest of Amun at Thebes, capital of Ancient Egypt, became powerful enough to limit the power of the pharaoh over Upper Egypt. This was the beginning of the Third Intermediate Period (1075 BC-664 BC). The fragmentation of power in Egypt allowed the Nubians to regain autonomy. They founded a new kingdom, Kush, and centered it at Napata.
They began exploiting gold to their own profit. The economical growth of Kush attracted some Egyptians, who left their country, which was undergoing several political troubles, including the Libyan power over part of Lower Egypt, the subdivision of Egypt into small and relatively powerless kingdoms, and the menace of Assyrian conquest.
In 750 BC, Napata was a developed city, while Egypt was still suffering political instability. King Kashta profited from it, and attacked Upper Egypt. His policy was pursued by his successors Piye, and Shabaka (721-707 BC), who eventually brought the whole Nile Valley under Kushitic control in the second year of his reign. Shabaka also launched a monument-building policy in Egypt and Nubia. Overall, the Kushite kings ruled Upper Egypt for approximately one century and the whole Egypt for approximately 57 years. (from 721 to 664 BC) They constitute the Twenty-fifth Dynasty in Manetho’s work, Aegyptiaca.
Napata began reaching its height after Tantamani came back from the war against the Assyrians. Its economy was essentially based on gold. Egypt was an important economic ally. Napata could have traded copper with a kingdom in Central Africa between the 8th and 9th Centuries (UNESCO, 2003). In 660 BC, Nubians started exploiting gold, inaugurating the African Iron Age.
People of Napata were culturally egyptianized. Napatan paintings, writing script and other artistic and cultural forms were in Egyptian style. Egyptian burial customs were practiced and several Egyptian gods were worshipped. Moreover, the most important god was Amun, a Theban deity. his temple was the most important at Napata, located at the foot of Jebel Barkal, the sacred mountain of Nubians.

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source: wikipedia

[Stephan]

i dont think expanding the map to india would be good
just more work for us ...maybe in the second version

[helmersen]

Hehe