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Settler
Local Time: 21:19
Local Date: October 31, 2010
Join Date: Mar 2002
Posts: 2
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Civ II Swan Song
[Translator's note: This is actually the chronicle of a Civ II game, included here as a reminder of how vastly _different_ Civ III is. Remember Crusaders? Chariots that don't suck?]
All hail Assur-banip-al, King of Kings, Lord of Mesopotamia!
The known world is in three parts: Mesopotamia, the Land Between the Rivers; the land known as im-mar-tu, a set of rocky islands to the west of Anatolia; and, dominating everything, the mighty continent of Africa.
[Translator's note: the map is mostly a huge Africa, with mesopotamia in the northeast corner, and some bits of southern Europe visible at the extreme north. Italy, Greece, and Spain look like unconnected islands.]
I am Assur-banip-al. I will chronicle for you the strange and sad tale of my Babylonian people.
In the depths of time, the city of Babylon was founded between the two sacred rivers. The people were hard-working, and they thrived, but they were lonely, as there were no other nations save the savages that occasionally came down from the hills to plunder our riches. We thought we were all alone in the world, so we built three more cities for company: we called them Sumer, Ur, and Uruk.
Our complacency was forever shattered, when exploring down the coast-line of the Mediterranean sea; bright yellow chariots heading north brought word of a people calling themselves Egyptians. They were proud and fierce, and demanded tribute, and that I call their Pharaoh my master. This was, of course, intolerable. Could we not call ourselves brothers? Though lacking chariots and other modern frippery, my mighty warriors are not to be sneered at. No!, bellowed Pharaoh's emissary. You will be our slaves!
Alas, our oldest and most tradition-laden brigade, I Warriors, was instantly overwhelmed by the devil chariots, their bright banners trampled into the dust. Panic gripped the realm ... could anyone stop the Egyptian onslaught?
The gods smiled upon our people. Just when the Egyptians' evil plans to conquer us became apparent, there was revealed to us the magic metal Bronze, with which we could forge long spears. Our first squadron to use them, I Phalanx, was the salvation of our race -- three brigades of devil-chariots ground themselves to powder against the shield-wall of I Phalanx on the dusty plains outside Uruk.
I Phalanx and it's new sister brigade II Phalanx immediately headed southwest to find the source of the Egyptian evil. But dark clouds stirred in the West: deathly bone-white ships were seen prowling off the coast.
I decided to ignore these Sea Peoples for now. Our highest priority was to contain these arrogant, hawk-nosed Egyptians. We quickly discovered that the land became narrow between two seas in a place called Sinai; we built a military garrison town called Gaza to block the isthmus.
Oh, the unhappy Sinai! For centuries we battled the Egyptians for that miserable triangle of land, for it lay barely two day's chariot-ride from their wicked capital of Thebes. How quickly we discovered that our Phalanxes were valiant in defense, but the shield-wall becomes ragged when charging forward, and the phalangites are quickly slaughtered. This was discovered by III Phalanx, IV Phalanx, and V Phalanx. The sands of the desert became red as rust. If not for the heroism of I and II Phalanges fortified in Gaza, all would have been lost, for the devil-chariots besieged the city many times. Eventually we discovered the art of chariot-making ourselves, and sent pillaging parties into the heart of Egypt to slay their peasants, burn their crops, and destroy their roads. But they had their own phalanxes, and the deadly Catapault. For the time being, we were safe behind the shield of Gaza, and built some more towns on the Mediterranean coast.
This situation obtained for a long time, until the code of chivalry was developed. At that point we converted our peace-loving nation into a warrior society, neglecting the gentle arts and cultural strivings to build a massive army of Knights to slay the Egyptians once and for all.
It was glorious! I-VIII Knights crashed through Egypt's border and we rode singing into Thebes (IV Knights had the honor of smashing the last defender and entering the supine capital). We plundered their treasury (and their libraries too... those Ankh-head devils are clever, if evil) and rampaged south along the River Nile, taking two more towns which we renamed from the harsh Egyptian language into the soothing polysyllables of Babylon-tongue.
Sated with the spoils of land, cash, and technology, we deigned to make peace with Ramses. And not before time, as the dreaded Sea Peoples, known to themselves as Romani, crashed upon our shores in their iron legions, raping and pillaging. They took Tyre and obliterated Damascus, and were well poised to assault the heartland.
The survivors of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force were many long, dusty miles to the south, and needed to guard against further Egyptian perfidy; they were powerless to intervene. So again we abandoned gardens and temples in mid-construction to raise an army.
After much bloodshed the Romani were driven from our shores. We recovered the ruins of Tyre, as well as diagrams showing how they made those blasted boats! We immediately started building our own fleet, and a mighty Lighthouse to show them the way home. We concluded peace with the Romani, and were happy.
Until *The Betrayal*. We'd long known that the cursed Egyptians maintained possessions in North coast of Africa, to the west of their erstwhile capital, as well as far south along the Nile, in a land they called Kenya. But we'd been at peace with them for centuries, even giving them gifts to buy their goodwill.
Then came the Rape of Thebes. A massive yellow armada landed near the Jewel of Lower Egypt, disgorging pikemen and catapaults. Crusaders charged out of the desert. The surprised town fought to the knife. But eventually all the defenders (as well as most of the civilians) were slain, and Thebes once again groaned under Pharaoh's yoke. Worse yet, his occupation of Thebes isolated my Nile possesions between Egyptian forces!
I hardly need mention that the accursed Romani, may they boil in Hell forever, chose that moment to land and obliterate Damascus-II.
It was the final straw. In the throes of national crisis, we cast aside all cultural aspirations and became a military machine. All our cities became camps for the training of our own crusaders. And fleets.
However greivous the situation in Africa, we had to defend the heartland first. We chased those lousy mafiosi back into the sea again, but this time we loaded up into our own boats and followed them back to their ugly, hilly homeland. No more would they darken our shores with their disgusting presence.
Hills. The hills were our undoing, slowing our mounted crusaders unmercifully, leaving them vulnerable. How many of my glorious chevaliers were butchered by those foot-slogging legions? How many fleets were dispatched with more doomed reinforcements? Finally, we assembled the Grand Fleet ... seven caravels packed to the gills with crusaders -- and pikemen to protect them. When they reached Italy, they were met with guns. The situation that followed was extremely ugly, and I have forbidden any scribe to write down exactly what happened. I will say only this: when the dust settled, the entire Romani race had been extirpated, their towns razed to the ground beyond all redemption. My once-glorious army was down to one pikeman and one crusader unit, who, sickened by their experiences, fortified themselves on a mountain, never to move again. My one remaining boat sank itself in despair.
(All the while, far to the south of our holdings along the Nile, and even to the south of the Egyptians, we were unaware of the mighty convulsions wracking the continent. All we'd hear were outlandish names: Germans. Zulus. English. Americans. And the occasional traveler's tale, probably lies, about alliances or wars between these enigmatic peoples, or the wonders built in their alabaster cities)
During the 500 year long Romani War, we lost our remaining Egyptian posessions, and were lucky to keep the now-ancient border town of Gaza. Maddened by the horror of the recent war, and bolstered with new technology -- dragoons! -- I ordered the flower of Babylonian youth back into the saddle to finish off our ancient enemies.
(While preparing, we saw a great ship all of metal off the south coast of Gaza. This was our first contact with the mighty German Empire. They seemed friendly enough, but we weren't able to make any deals. I hoped that they would not betray us like everyone else.)
Every city, town, and hamlet in the Empire was busy training Dragoons. Finally I judged we had enough (20 brigades!), decided that we had enough, Devil take the hindmost, and the Last Ride began. We crashed over the border and put the primitive musketry of the Ankh-heads to the sword in the Third Battle of Thebes. We pressed south, our supply-lines growing longer and longer, and became amazed at the size and splendour of the empire we were destroying. Some of the older, more mature riders started to wonder why. The Egyptian Empire, while we were off fighting a savage tribal war in Italy, had become vast in size and mighty in lore; their former capital of Thebes, once the fulcrum of nations, was to them a dusty backwater on the fringes of nowhere, defended by their oldest, *most* *obsolete* units. Oops.
The counter-attack was devastating. Mighty cavalry units slaughtered entire stacks of my dragoons until we had to disperse for safety, then they were mobbed one by one. As the youth of Babylon bled out into the dusty savannah a thousand miles from home in a pointless, now lost, war, I began to realize that I had led my people astray, that I was the reason for our constant defeats, the reason that even our victories had come at too great a price.
[Translator's note: There is a fragment missing from the manuscript here. From context, I surmise that the hapless Babylonians were hounded out of Africa again.]
As I write this, steely-eyed Egyptian riflemen are prowling around near the walls of Ur. Uruk is in ruins. Incomprehensible metal houses, like enormous chariots, rumble toward the walls. Our long dream of glory is finished.
[Translator's note: I am now busily mismanaging a vast, though chilly Ainu empire towards humiliating defeat, Civ III style. That chronicle may show up here too.]
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