Which is which?

[ksenagos]

I now it may not belong to the SS forum community but this is a question for SS players who also played or playing TATW.
I sometimes consider Tolkien's universe is a parallel to ours so why not the same apply to the medieval factions as well.

Which SS faction is the reflection of a faction in TATW.
One bond could be Gondor as Byzantium ,you know something like the old all mighty empire now slowly turning to ruins
or maybe Rhun could be the Mongols or the Fatimids (i always considered eastern factions as the "evil" ones(you can blame my history teacher for that))

[caliel]

As always, im not a native english speaker, so im warning you: This post may contain lots of horrible mistakes.

I think you can find resemblances in one world and the other and seeing which faction inspired Tolkien creations, but you can hardly put Byzantium and Gondor at the same level. Gondor would be like the somewhat advanced and somewhat better organized country in the middle of a land where there are only farmers sticking to any kind of weapon (Only with the exception of Dwarves maybe, who are miners). But thats not the case of the Byzantium Empire. There were other powers at that time that could equal the BE. And besisdes, even the "Good" ones antagonize each other according to their needs and interests. Thats not what happens in the middle earth where the economic and political interests are reduced to an epic struggle between good and evil.
Maybe the only thing that its a bit more colourful in the relations between countries are about its race.

Having said that, i must confess that i dont really have much knowledge of the Middle Earth. I have only seen the movies, so i might be awfully mistaken.

[ksenagos]

On Byzantium:Well in fact Byzantium was a properly organized Empire (being the first to field professional armies) had an abundance of money and was probably the most cultured faction of the time only rivaled by the Fatimids or Egyptians or whatever they were called.Only after the late 12th century it declined significantly.The whole "Byzantines are drawback civilization" is a later phenomena.After all Constantinople was the queen of all cities(Now it is New York imo)

As for the rest of middle earth being as advanced as Gondor i believe High Elves could kick gondorian a@@ any time of the day...Plus Isengard , Mordor, the Dwarfs and the kingdom of Arnor all were quite advanced.

[caliel]

When i said "somewhat advanced" i was referring to Gondor. Not Byzantium. I even said that was not the case of Byzantium.

As for the middle earth. I dont really think theres any deep resemblance that could say that, say, Arnor is the equal of any Medieval kingdom. What i was talking about is that the Middle Earth is far more simplistic, which is a big trouble at the time of comparing one thing and the other.
I dont know about advance kingdoms in Middle Earth. All isengard did to get its elite troops was to dig them, there they were, just waiting under the tower. We have the magic factor troubling us here. Which one could be the Eastern power that could represent a faction that is the encarnation of evil?

Nevertheless, we can recognize a lot of Eastern factors in Rhun. But thats because of their looks and their way to fight. And besides that, i dont know if theres any other resemblances with any other faction.