China in Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties

As depicted in Age of Empires III's Asia expansion, China is quite clearly based on the Qing Dynasty. Its flag is the (post-1862) Azure Dragon flag, its AI leader is the Kangxi Emperor (incidentally voiced by Barry Dennen, a.k.a. Pontius Pilate from Jesus Christ Superstar), its troop roster contains a number of steppe units, units are trained in 'Banner Army' batches, and its overall aesthetic is distinctly northern, reflecting the general environs of the Manchu centres of power from Beijing to Manchuria proper, rather than the commercial heartlands on the Yangtze and Pearl Rivers. However, strangely the intro text for the faction chooses to introduce the Ming instead, despite virtually the entire aesthetic of the faction being Qing. This leads me into a generral theme here – the game is pretty good at depicting the Qing, but tends to conflate the second millennium dynasties a bit, particularly with a few moments of Ming-Qing mixing,.

From a military standpoint, broadly speaking AoE III's China is reasonably good in terms of its unit roster, although it does make a few odd inclusions and omissions. The inclusion of the Flying Crow and Flamethrower as artillery units are a bit unusual by virtue of their having been long out of use even by Ming times, while the absence of conventional field artillery is a little odd for a dynasty that, in its first few decades, actually had better cannon than Europe due to casting their barrels in bronze-iron composite instead of just one or the other. The Chu-Ko-Nu is a pretty iconic unit, but its inclusion is a bit out of place, as the Qing generally preferred composite bows to crossbows of any sort, let alone repeating ones. What's quite odd is that the Qing 'Chinese' cannot train Manchu horse archers under normal circumstances – there are three Home City cards allowing them to ship Manchus, and it's a toss-up when building the Monastery (which is the mercenary recruitment building for Asian factions) as to what mercenary units are available. What is quite neat is that there are two major references to Koxinga and his wars against the Qing and the Dutch. The Monastery can (with a certain card) train his Iron Troops, while the Shaolin Monastery 'native tribe' allows you to train Rattan Shields, a reference to his creation of light shock infantry. While these were Ming loyalists, the Qing did ultimately manage to hire quite a few of them to fight in various campaigns, most notably against the Cossacks on the Amur.

Going to the 'Banner Armies', obviously this game mechanic strays far from the actual essence of Banner forces, not least because most Han troops were not part of the Banner system. However, there are a few nice little references, and a couple of odd choices. For example, the inclusion of Mongol Keshiks in the 'Ming Army', when the Ming overthrew the Mongols and were infamously bad at ruling the steppe, is a bit odd. However, a lot of the army and shipment names do reference actual Qing military formations. The 'Black Flag Army' of Arquebusiers and Flamethrowers that can be trained from the Castle references the Black Flag Army that the Qing supported in northern Vietnam in the early 1880s, which conducted a guerrilla campaign against the French. Certain Home City cards also make such references – the 'Mandarin Duck Squad' card, shipping Chu-Ko-Nu and Flamethrowers, references the 'Mandarin Duck' formation advocated by Ming general Qi Jiguang; the 'Beiyang Army' card for Steppe Riders and Keshiks is far off the mark in depicting the modernised infantry army formed in the 1880s, but still at least name-drops it; the 'Ever-Victorious Army' of Iron Flail cavalry and Flying Crow artillery is again a little off the mark in depicting its eponymous modernised infantry formation from the 1860s, but again at least the reference is made; the 'New Army' card converting Chu-Ko-Nu to Arquebusiers and pikemen to swordsmen is perhaps a bit of a poor way to represent military reforms post-1900. Still, at least in name they acknowledge the variety of late Qing military reforms.

From a religious standpoint what is somewhat odd is the importance placed on Shaolin Buddhism, with the Chinese 'monk' unit being a Shaolin Master able to train Disciples. While Shaolin martial arts have always been quite well-known in popular consciousness, Buddhist sectarianism was always seen as heterodox. However, at the same time you'd be hard-pressed to somehow produce a combat unit from a Confucian scholar-official, so I'll let it slide.

In terms of foreign relations, the four available Consulate options do to an extent accurately reflect China's late 19th century backers and rivals. Britain and France, who are available by default, were the main players in the anti-Taiping intervention and backed the Qing's postwar reconstruction effort. Germany is unlocked later, and indeed quite a few contracts were signed with German and Austro-Hungarian firms for the import and licensed production of artillery (especially Krupp) and small arms (especially Mauser and Männlicher). The Ottomans are a more unusual inclusion for China, but may be an allusion to the Ottoman backing of Yaq'ub Beg's separatist regime in the Tarim Basin in 1865-77. My mistake – it should have been Russia here, which makes more sense as Russia had had a frontier with the Qing since the 1640s.

Then there's language. The Chinese faction's units all speak Mandarin, mostly Standard Mandarin, but there are certain exceptions. The cavalry units speak with Manchu or Mongol inflections, and the Manchu horse archer mercenary (technically available to all factions) speaks full-on Manchu. The one issue I want to bring up, though, is that there are certain units with particular geographical origin that nevertheless speak Standard Mandarin. In particular, these are the two aforementioned Koxinga-inspired units, the Iron Troop and the Rattan Shield, who should speak a Min Chinese variety like Hokkien rather than Mandarin. But that's a bit of a nitpick.

The biggest issue I'd say (given that I'm giving it a lot of leeway for having to fit a certain RTS formula) is the Qing-Ming conflation. I've already mentioned the contradiction between the overall Qing aesthetic and the Ming introductory text, but there are a couple of other areas where there's a lot of Ming included in what is otherwise Qing-dominated. Wonders are broadly speaking Ming buildings, the exception being the Summer Palace built by the Jurchen Jin. The Porcelain Tower, White Pagoda and Temple of Heaven were all Ming structures, while the 'Confucian Academy' is simply a generic item. The other issue is the campaign.

The campaign follows a version of the Menzies conspiracy theory about a Chinese discovery of the New World, and even then the first two of five missions remain firmly in Asia. In all honesty the premise doesn't bother me too much in the context of AoE III's other campaigns, one of which involves an Ottoman expedition to Florida to stop an evil secret society from exploiting the Fountain of Youth. I think it's kind of neat that one of these campaigns pits an Asian faction against a Native American one. However, my objection is that it's a Ming-era setting using a Qing aesthetic, down to a couple of units specific to the campaign. Lao Shen, the hero's gruff sailor sidekick, has a shaved forehead and wears a Manchu queue. In the 1420s. Why is this problematic? Well, the Manchu queue edict was such an affront to Han identity when it was proposed that many chose to die rather than obey it, and a number of people circumvented it in part by becoming Buddhist monks to be allowed to shave all their hair. For someone – a Han Chinese no less – to adopt a steppe hairstyle under the comparatively xenophobic Ming Dynasty would have been ludicrous.

So in short, I think AoE III does an OK job of representing Qing China as an RTS faction with some interesting mechanics. My main objections have to do with an oversimplification and generalisation of Chinese history, with a lot of obsolete technology in the army roster, and a degree of Ming-Qing overconflation.

Honestly, I don't have a lot of high-level criticism of the Age of Empires games, i.e. how civilizations are presented. I chalk a lot of that up to gameplay. Age of Empires (especially Age of Kings) has become kind of a cult classic and has a cult following that plays the game like a sport. And I guess I'm ok with all of that for balance reasons. Spirit of the Law has some decent videos on the historical campaigns, and I have to say, some of the details in the campaigns drive me up a wall because of how unnecessary they are.

• In the Genghis Khan campaign, the Mongols assault China and have to fight different Chinese factions. That's fine. China wasn't united at the time. But you (the Mongols) have to defeat the Tangut and the Xixia... who are literally the same people. I feel like you need to intend that mistake. Unless they read two separate sources that did not specify that the Tangut people were the Xixia Dynasty, and they thought, ok these two sources must both be correct, the Mongols defeated two separate peoples, one the Tangut, and one the Xixia... sigh.

• I actually love the artistic design of the campaign maps and the way they're presented. But as a cartophile, I have a minor stroke playing through the Joan of Arc campaign and see "Burgundy" with modern Swiss borders. <Shrieks in German>

• The worst sin of all, in my opinion, is how early renditions of the game treated architecture. Though I have to admit I haven't checked out the remaster, I'm curious if they changed this. In case you don't know, Age of Kings split their civilizations into architectural groups: Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle Eastern, and East Asian, later adding Mesoamerican. The Britons and Spanish were Western Europe and shared the same architectural style. The Japanese and Chinese were East Asian and shared one also, etc. But I knew things were just... wrong when the Byzantines, which I guess could be defined geographically as "Middle Eastern," used Islamic architecture. This just... I just felt my brain break seeing mosques in the Attila campaign.

• Allow me beat this architecture drum a bit: the Mongols share the "East Asian" architecture. They have flared tile roofs, hanging lanterns, little koi ponds, the whole shebang. And my gods does it look awful. The opening scene of the Genghis Khan campaign just... it just looks like trash. Like out there on the steppe the Mongols are building pagodas and paper-wall doors. The creators certainly knew this wasn't right. The Mongols' Wonder is the Great Khaan's Golden Tent, which I think actually looks great, and maybe it was a part of the technology and the system they used at the time. But then the Huns in the Conquerors expansion use the same Mongol language (since we don't really know enough about Hunnic to reproduce it) and then the East Europe architecture model. And while I enjoy the Alternate History of it, it just makes so little sense.

• One last one: they've recognized this and have started to make corrections. African Kings and Rise of the Rajas have made unique architectural skins for all the new civilizations: Portuguese, Ethiopians, Malians, Berbers, Burmese, Malay, Vietnamese, and Khmer. There's even a campaign built around the construction of Ankgor Wat. I'm decently impressed. But the trend to start making a unique architecture skin started with the surprise expansion The Forgotten with unique architecture for the Italians, Magyars, and Slavs. They gave the Incas the same skin as the Mayans and Aztecs and it looks off, but not crazy. What does look crazy is that they gave the Indians the same Middle Eastern architecture skin as the Byzantines and the Saracens. This makes me want to shriek with panic. One of the most unique architectural landscapes in the world is just lumped in with the Persians, Arabs, Egyptians, Moroccans, and oh yeah, Constantinople. Shrieks in Panjabi and Greek at the same time. I managed to snag a whole bunch of Steam Workshop mods that gives the Indians their own unique architecture and fuck it calms my nerves. But then Rise of the Rajas came out and they updated it, giving them a unique (based on south Indian style) skin.

• Ok I lied, one more: the Britons Wonder is the Aachen Dom built and ruled over by Charlemagne. Why? Just... why? It's not like there's a dearth of medieval English architecture to choose from. Mind blowing.

• The Battles of the Conquerors non-campaign campaign from the first AoK expansion does a disservice to the vast majority of the scenarios. The Kyoto battle could have been expanded into a whole Sengoku Jidai campaign. (Spirit of the Law covers the scenario's accuracy and context as decently as any layman Youtuber would.) Noryang Point could have (should have) been expanded into a whole life of Yi Sun Shin campaign from his early days as an officer disciplining some unruly border guards to being Supreme Admiral of the Korean navy mid-samurai invasion. The single scenario implies that he was the inventor of the Kobukson (and all of the words are pronounced atrociously (Tokugawa EE-eye-uh-ya-soo), and that the Koreans invaded Japan in the process. In actuality, Noryang Point was a revenge mission in which Yi Sun Shin tried to stop the Japanese from retreating after six years of butchering Koreans. Yi Sun Shin lost his son in a campaign, and had an extreme mental breakdown, going so far as to torture Japanese prisoners who couldn't have possibly been the ones to kill his son. Yi himself was tortured by enemy factions in the Royal Court, and a lot of this complexity and drama is lost. I don't need an academic treatise coming out of my Age of Kings, but a lot of the other campaigns - Saladin, Barbarossa, the poorly named Montezuma - and a lot of the newer ones - just finished Gajah Mada, loved it - retell these important stories with a surprising amount of added perspective for people for whom these are completely foreign names and stories to tell. Yes, their primary function is entertainment, and their second function is dramatic, but I feel cheated in the Asian history department here.

• Vinlandasaga is also rather bizarre once you know the actual story of the Vinland colony. The Vikings didn't have to butcher their way through Greenland. There was conflict, but they didn't have to invade Greenland in order to colonize Vinland. And the Skraelings represented by Celts is just... weird. Idk, I just find the whole thing odd. Cool dragon in the Sea of Serpents though.

• In the final scenario of the El Cid campaign, Ximena Diaz says there is no help: King Alfonso of Castilla-Leon is in no rush to join them. Count Berenguer of Barcelona is imprisoned in the Valencian dungeon. Motamid is dethroned and retires as a desert poet. And "the Christian Kingdom of Aragon is too far away" ... from Valencia? I mean, in modern Spain, the two Autonomous Communities share a border. And in El Cid's time, Aragon was just as far away as Castille. And in the context of the story, El Cid had just conquered his way through the Zaragoza region (modern Aragon's capital) and just why even bother mentioning it?

Apparently when the Conquerors came out they debated between the Khmer, Koreans, and Tibetans to add to the expansion. And went with the Koreans, partially wondering if the game might catch on in Korean by adding a Yi Sun Shin scenario (see above). This is not so much a nitpick or an inaccuracy or anything, just me hoping and waiting to see if we might end up with a Tibetan civilization and campaign. I'd love to see an Age of Mings.

Just indulge me for a minute. There's so much history in that region and within the time span of that single Dynasty:

• a Zheng He or Hongwu/Red Turban Rebellion

• a Yi Sun Shin campaign

• a Tokugawa campaign

• a Dayan Khaan/Mandukhai Khaatun campaign

• a Portuguese Formosan campaign

• and (a man can dream) a Zhabdrung or Rinpungpa campaign

Now that they've finally got their act together with architecture skins, I could trust that they wouldn't just give the Himalayans pagodas and koi ponds. Plus I could never figure out why with a country that has so much medieval history, they seem completely tangential to the larger story of Age of Empires.

Anyway. Thanks for the opportunity to vent about all the things that drive me nuts about one of my favorite games.

Age of Empires II - Attila the Hun and Alaric

One of my favorite pastimes in gaming is making games more historically accurate and griping on the inaccuracies in games, so I'm going to have some fun here and gripe about the inaccuracies in the classic Attila the Hun and Alaric campaigns for Age of Empires and its fan-made, later officially adopted, expansion.

Units

The first and most obvious issue is with the depiction of the armies using the game's engine. Obviously the Romans weren't using arbalests and knights and wielding two-handed swords, but we can excuse the game for this due to its design and engine limitations. The third expansion, which was originally fan-made, introduced two new units however: the Legionary and the Centurion, which are only available through modding beyond preset appearances in the Alaric campaign. The first glaring inaccuracy is that they obviously modeled these units off of the classic 1st century army, but in terms of Age of Empire's somewhat cartoonish theme that's not a huge deal. The second is that for some reason the Centurion is a mounted unit, which makes no sense since the post of Centurio (or Centenarius in the late Roman period) was an infantry posting, as Centuria were only an infantry regiment while cavalry were organized into Turmae. The Huns, who were added in The Conquerors expansion, also feature a unique unit: the Tarkan. It's actually somewhat surprising that they selected the word Tarkan or more accurately, T˙arh˘âns, for the unique unit of the Hun civilization. The word likely comes from the Xiongnu language, that being Yeniseian, and may have the same meaning as Böri does in the Oghuric Turkic language, which was used by some of the subject peoples of the first Gok-Turkic Khaganate and was the name of their "royal guard" (for reference, we now know the first Gok-Turkic Khaganate's official language was actually a Mongolic, not Turkic, language). Their appearance, however, is the obvious downside, as the Huns are as usual depicted as something out of a 1960's Hollywood film on the Mongols, rather than anything near what's grounded in the actual archaeology (I have only once seen historically accurate artwork of a Hun, and that is the depiction of the princely figure from the Volnikovka Burial). In fact, the Germanics, surprisingly, are even worse offenders. The Gothic unique unit is the Huskarl, something clearly deriving from Viking culture, rather than anything from Gothic culture. Their appearance is... loosely Gothic-looking at best, with something resembling a conical spangenhelmet being worn on their head. The Franks' "Throwing Axeman" is no better. At best the helmet can be written off as one of the 10th century ridge helmet types exemplified by finds such as Bojna or Praga-Stromovka, examples of which stretch from the Pontic to the Carolingian realm. Their giant double-bladed throwing axes are obviously nothing like the Francisca, which wasn't used at the same time as the Bojna-type ridge helmets. Also, the extensive use of furs to make them look "barbarian" is again a hollywood trope, as furs had symbolic meaning in these cultures and people did not randomly drape bearskins over their bodies and armor. The Alans are probably the worst represented - using the "Byzantine" civilization for them would have been more accurate than representing them as Vikings, as at least they would have had Cataphracts.

The Campaign: Attila the Hun

I do want to say that this is my favorite and the most fun campaign in the game, with close seconds being "El Cid" and the "Bari" campaign from the fan expansion. However, its historicity is off, to say the least. The campaign starts with "The Scourge of God," in which Attila the Hun taking Bleda into a forest for a Hunt, in which you can assassinate him in a few different ways. We don't know much about Bleda's life and death, we only really know that it's possible Attila assassinated him, and most scholars think that is likely. So mixing an assassination into a fake hunting accident is actually a fairly accurate representation. It goes downhill from there: you now have to defeat your three opponents on the map, the Scythians, Romans, and the Persians. The Scythians as a civilization are represented by the Mongols... and faded from History almost 700 years prior to Attila's Birth. The map isn't any real location as there's obviously no point at which the Hun, Roman, and Persian empires all directly intersected, separated by smaller states and major geographical barriers like the Black Sea and the Caucasus. That being said, for some reason I always loved the little Roman fort on this map.

The next mission, "The Great Ride", also suffers from much of the same issues. Presumably this mission is supposed to be Attila's first campaign into the Roman Empire in 441 through 443. Historically, Attila crossed at the Roman fort of Constantia and sacked Viminacium, Margus, Singidunum, and Sirmium, before retreating back across the Danube, and then in 443 sacked Ratiaria and Naissus. In-game, Attila raids Dyrrhachium, Sofia, Naissus, Adrianople, and Thessalonica on an a-historical map (and meets with a Scythian soothsayer who gives him a bunch of wolves and gunpowder-armed Petards to break through "Eastern Roman Empire's" walls). Historically, only the cities of Naissus and Serdica (Sofia) were sacked by Attila, the first in 443 and the second is debated but probably in either 443 or 447. Dyrrhachium was somewhat out of the Huns' reach, protected by mountains and there's no evidence it was sacked by Attila. Thessalonica and Adrianople were too well fortified and were military staging grounds, and never sacked by the Huns. Although Attila ravaged the Balkans extensively, allegedly sacking somewhere around 70 to 80 cities and fortresses, and this is extensively evidenced in destruction layers, the representation of his invasion is sorely lacking in historicity.

The third mission, "The Walls of Constantinople", gets progressively more absurd, as in this one you actually breach and sack Constantinople, burning the Hagia Sophia to the ground. First the Hagia Sophia as we know it wasn't even commissioned until 532 AD, 85 years after Attila approached Constantinople. The building at the time of Theodosius' reign was the second of the three churches known as the Hagia Sophia, and looked somewhat similar to the Hagios Demetrios in Thessaloniki (itself a 7th century replacement). At least in this mission the map is somewhat accurate, being an approximation of the Bosporus, although Philippopolis is roughly placed where Didymoteikhion is and Marcianopolis is located roughly about where Messembria is, although this can loosely be explained away due to the sprawl-oriented gameplay mechanic and map size. Interestingly, the land walls of Constantinople are somewhat "accurately portrayed" in that there are only two walls - the third, middle wall was only built after the great earthquake of 26 January 447 that toppled a 57-tower long stretch of the walls (in other words, a massive section, nearly 2/3 of the walls). The sea walls, however, had not been built at this time - the first sea wall that faced the Bosporus along the South was only built in the mid-600's, probably in response to the danger posed by the Persian siege of 626. The game's depiction of Constantinople also notably lacks the moat that protected the forewall, although it could be argued that the cliffs in-game are supposed to represent it. Otherwise, this depiction is somewhat more accurate. Attila's campaign in 447 followed the Danube to Marcianopolis, which was sacked after he crushed three Roman armies at the battle of the River Utus, after which he approached Constantinople. However, Attila turned away from the city which had been reinforced by the Magister Militum per Orientum Zeno, with his own Isaurian Bucellarii and troops from the Oriental Field army. He then turned South to the Thracian Chersonese, where he defeated the regrouping Roman forces and a fourth field army (the Praesentalis II army). After this, he let his army loose across the Balkans, sacking most of the Roman limes and allegedly most major cities North of the Thermopylae pass. Philippopolis specifically was sacked by a group of East Germanics as archaeologically evidenced, and the Balkans region wouldn't recover until the reign of Anastasius, only to go downhill again after the reign of Justinian and onwards with the Avar sackings.

Ran out of room so this is being split up into multiple parts: (1/3)

I'm a big fan of AOE2 and history in general, it interests me looking at the games and how they've gone about portraying various civilizations.

One thing that irks me is when you take a close look at certain civs in the game and how badly some of the representation actually is, for me the worst are the portrayal of the Huns and Mayans in the Conquerors expansion pack that came out back in 2000.

They both feel like they are pretty ignorant of much real life knowledge of these people, when it came to how they ended up constructing these civilizations. The Mayans for example are given a unique unit called the 'Plumed archer', to begin with this is unusually vague for a unique unit in this series, usually they have a bit more of a basis in particularly well known real life units or positions that reflect stereotypical elements of a country's military history, the Aztecs have a powerful Jaguar warrior that uses a Macuahuitl and excels against other infantry, the British have very long range Longbowmen, the Japanese have a Samurai, wielding their Katana and powerful against other unique units and the mongols have Mangudai, who are basically more powerful cavalry archers good at performing hit and run tactics. Obviously there's lots of pop culture stereotypes here but the Plumed archer really has me scratching my head, I understand that fancy headgear was an important way of denoting rank and seniority in Mesoamerican militaries, but it remains incredibly vague as to what this unit could be based off of. I may be wrong here but it is my understanding that the Mayans didn't have particular associations with archery in their warfare, yet they are treated as one of the best archery civs in the game (I don't mean they didn't practice it of course, just that they didn't have such singular focus they would be an archery civ). It is also my understanding that peoples like the Mayans would have gotten more use out of an atlatl in warfare than a bow, but again I could be misremembering. Still it might have been better to portray the Mayans unique unit as some kind of spear thrower.

The lax representation for the Mayans extends to the other aspects of the civ, their unique technology is called 'el Dorado', which, despite the name, for some reason gives more health to Eagle warriors (Meso civs use these fast infantry to replace cavalry, I know they should probably be Aztec exclusive but I can understand that they had to make allowances for game balance). First of all El Dorado is a legend that the Spanish colonizers chased and had nothing to do with the Mayans, second, well.... It had nothing to do with the Mayans! To the best of my knowledge the myth was associated with people from Northern South America and had no connection to the Mayan homelands at all! I still baffles me that they went with that almost 20 years later. The rest of the stuff to do with the civ are a pretty random collection of bonuses, Mayans are famously powerful in game thanks to getting more out of all resources and starting with an extra villager, which makes it easier to snowball and create armies of Plumed archers, but its nothing really specific to the Mayan civilization that existed in real life.

As I said the Huns have some similar problems, right off the bat I think the lack of knowledge we really have on the Huns kneecaped their ability to be well portrayed, they speak the same language in game as the Mongols, which I believe is modern Mongolian, obviously this is incredibly iffy from a historical perspective but probably hard to avoid considering the lack of sources we have on their language so they had to make do. Their civ is mostly fixated on cavalry and especially cavalry archers which seems fair enough, and they don't need houses which is meant to reflect their nomadic nature. Things kind of go downhill from there, their unique tech is 'Atheism', which delays wonder and relic victories and makes it easier to spy on the enemy, it seems to be referencing the Romans perception that the destructive Huns were godless though there isn't really any evidence they literally were atheists. Their unique unit is a Tarkan, which to my knowledge refers to military positions that were first recorded among Turkic and Magyar people that came quite a while after the Huns, I suppose it's conceivable that the Huns called their commanders some variation of Tarkan, especially if they were Turkic, but I don't think we can really say with any actual evidence. The worst by far for me is their architecture, in AOE2 different civs share different architecture sets based on their general geographic area, IE the British, Celts and French have Western European buildings, the Arabs, Turks and Persians have Middle Eastern buildings and the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans have East Asian buildings. This can somethings create some awkward fits, the Byzantines have used the Middle Eastern set for ages which is kind of weird considering that their church building clearly looks like a Mosque (they seem to intend to change them to the Mediterranean set used by Italians and Portuguese in the new release, which is a better fit) but the Huns have it most awkward of all. They use the Central European set, also shared with the Germans (or "Teutons"), Vikings and Goths, which is made up of buildings that look like they post date the Huns by almost a thousand years. It's hard to justify the Huns using this set that's mostly based off of medieval Germanic architecture considering they were a heavily nomadic nation that mostly disappears after 500 ad, but it's probably the best they could have done without making a dedicated nomadic set.

Anyway, that's a lot of text describing some of the more noticeable problems I have with specific civ portrayals in AOE2. There's other stuff I could mention as well, notably the Arab's Mamluke unit ridiculously throwing scimitars at their enemy as their main attack, or the questionable Gbeto unit for the Malians. I guess I'm curious to hear what better informed minds than mine think could have been done to better portray various civilizations while keeping in mind the mechanics the game rests on overall? In addition, is there any historical representation, either in the campaign or the way the civs are portrayed, that people think was surprisingly good?

I am so into this.

One broader question I have is how do you address the "Age of Empires" understanding of historical progression (or the Civilization understanding). E.g. where civilization progresses linearly from stone age to bronze age to iron age to (etc) industrial age by researching technologies. When people learn about the Spanish conquering Mesoamerica, they then wonder how a civilization reaches the Gunpowder Age while another is still in the Stone Age, and I feel like that isn't a great way to understand history.

Sorry if that didn't make sense.

Black riders. Give me that history mama bird.

Anything to do with them. Why were they formed if they are indeed real?

How effective were they?

How many were ever really fielded?

What arms and armaments did they field?

How were they selected?

What kind of training?

Any tales of when a particular black rider distinguished himself?

Is there a specific kind of horse they selected for the job?

Joan of Arc. Day #1

Foreword

I, for once, cannot shy away from that one. I’ve started a Twitch channel for the sole purpose to provide historical commentaries on Age of Empires—even thouth not very succesfully audience wise. Here is a highlight I saved from a former stream where I go on reading the in-game encyclopedia on the « Knights » entry and ramble about it. At first I went on to play Joan of Arc’s campaign and provided commentaries as I advanced in the scenario. That’s on YouTube now, even though I couldn’t make it into a series, along with a few short clips about Vikings [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. My latest and probably cleanest video edit is probably the short historical analysis I did on the Battle of Crécy, whilst comparing the longbowmen to the genoese crossbowmen units from Age of Empires 2. It’s only me working on it though, with my poor video edit skills, my full time night job and my social life to juggle altogether #CaptatioBenevolentia. It all started with a top facts on Joan of Arc I wrote on the AoEZone website (and also on Reddit, adding some corrections), in their kinda dead history forum. I’d love to finish a clean and well cut video edit on Joan of Arc’s campaign and provide something better than what Spirit of the Law is producing out of Wikipedia. I mean, I read the chronicles, the trials, the most recent books on the topic. So there it is, my short historical overview of the first scenario of Joan of Arc’s campaign (I won’t have the time to write about them all in one single go, maybe I’ll post one scenario a day since this is going on all week).

The Map of France

Now, the map that we see when we start the campaign is just plain awful, as I’ve complained several times. It basically shows the borders of France today, along with the borders of Switzerland (that becomes Burgundy!?), Belgium and the Netherlands. On that one, I’m sorry, but we can only give an F to Microsoft. One very pretty map that displays the border of France during the time of Joan of Arc is the one drawn by Auguste Longnon in the 19th century. I actually challenged u/Brother_Judas to provide his fresh take on it and he’s at it! It’s going to be beautiful. I can already tell.

I. An Unlikely Messiah

Ideology versus reality

What we see in the scenario introduction is nothing short of a build up to depict Joan as a national hero. Well… The young girl was certainly pretty religious, but she had no idea of what a “nation” was to our current understanding of the notion. She saw that the king had not been anointed in Reims, as was the tradition dating back from the Carolingian kings, and she maybe thought it as the supernatural cause at the source of wars afflicting the French people. I say “wars” because the Hundred Years War was not in fact one big conflict between two nations, but the many push backs from the French nobility (including the king of England, who was a French nobleman) against the raising authority of their king through the slow building of an actual administrative state, which eventually lead long term to the administrative monarchy that ruled Louis XIV. Among the many concerns of the French nobility was the ability to raise their own troops. The king managed to deny them that right when he finally introduced the “Compagnies d’Ordonnances”, the first permanent and professional army in Europe since the Roman times. It brought the end of the Feudal system as we know it, where the suzerain called on his vassals. From then on, the king could rely on a constant military support, but it needed massive tax reforms and he really struggled to pass it on. Many of the noblemen that fought alongside Joan of Arc to “liberate France”, such as the Duke of Alençon, actually turned against Charles VII when the Companies d’Ordonnances were instated. That episode was called “the Praguerie” and it happened before the final battle of Castillon, which is portrayed as the final chapter of Joan’s campaing in AoE2.

Basic nitpicking

· Basically, everything was much more complicated than what AoE2 makes us believe. Also, Joan’s travel from Vaucouleurs to Chinon was not a commando mission. Jean de Metz didn’t like that Joan would stop in every church to attend mass, because he wanted to be discreet about their journey (they also travelled a lot at night), but they didn’t have to force their way through a Burgundian settlement as the scenario suggests.

· About the scenario introduction, yet again: Paris is misspelled “Pairs”. Also, the game map fused the Seine and the Loire together into one single river.

· As we start the game, we witness a battle where the French are literally crushed and overpowered by an English army. The problem the French faced however was not that they didn’t have enough military to face the English. At that time (from 1410 to 1440), they were poorly organized and divided between opposing factions that wouldn’t play well together. The Duke of Burgundy refused to attend the battle of Agincourt, the Duke of Bourbon only sought his own personal glory, the Count of Richemont showed poor political skills when he drowned the king’s favorite courtier, etc. The French army was more than able to push back the English forces, as Charles V demonstrated during his rule with his attrition strategy. It just lacked a proper hierarchy up until the Compagnies d’Ordonnances were put into play.

· Oh, and by the way, Joan could ride a horse! She wore a red dress when she arrived in Vaucouleurs and was given men’s clothes to go on his journey at the request of Jean de Metz. He stated so himself during Joan’s second trial. #JustRanting

· Now, it is true that Joan called Charles VII “mon gentil Dauphin” (meaning “my noble Dauphin”). However, Charles VII was already king! He was not the heir to the throne, but the dude on the throne. He only hadn’t been anointed yet. Henry VI of England, who claimed to be Henry II of France and who was Charles VII’s nephew, hadn’t been anointed either. He would nonetheless be anointed in Paris in 1431, as a political answer to Charles VII 1429 ceremony in Reims. So France had two kings just as Christendom, around those very years, had two popes. The question was only who could actually wield the power since both Charles VII and Henry II had very strong legal claims to the crown. Meanwhile, Charles VII and Henry II held different parts of the royal demesne and they offered different political “programs” so to speak. Allied to the Burgundians, the Lancastrian pretenders maintained a more traditional and conservative views, whereas the Valois mustered for a better centralization of an unruly state.

Needless is to say that Joan of Arc’s AoE2 campaign is what actually gave me my love for History. This campaign is emotionally very important to me and I can’t stress enough how much I love it. Even though I could tear down every single thing from the campaign, from the scenario intros and outros to the gameplay, I freaking love it and would recommend anyone to play it. The only reason I made my master thesis on La Hire is because of that freaking campaign.

By the way, spoiler alert… La Hire was dead in 1453 when the Battle of Castillon took place. So when I replayed that last scenario I actually shed a tear to find him still alive and kicking, thirsting for blood. He died in 1443 during a military campaign the king lead in the Southern part of France. He was dearly missed by Charles VII himself, as Monstrelet writes in his chronicle. Just as much as Bertrand Du Guesclin and Arnauld-Guilhelm de Barbazan before him, Étienne de Vignolles, La Hire, was nothing short of a hero. He became the Jack of Heart in the traditional French card game.

As usual, you’ll find my answer on my blog along with pretty pictures plus the audio files from the intro and outro of the first scenario! Make sure to check it out ;-) I'll provide some bibliography once I'm finished going through all the campaign scenarios.

So we don't ask questions here, right? It's just that historians sign up for those games and write their thoughts about it?

Also isn't the whole series a little bit ambitious? Those are 3 big games with 7 expansions between them and they cover most of human history up until 19th century. Especially if you're going for "what was not done at all".

Were Abus Guns used as widely as it may seem from seeing the Ottoman tech tree? How light and man-portable were they? How powerful and effective were they in comparison to a regular firearm? What do we know about their tactics?

Curious, is Age of Mythology allowed to be discussed here? The original three factions are based on real cultures, and the Atlantans seem to steal from Roman and Hellenic culture as needed (Atlantan swordsmen use a Roman gladiator helmet, for one instance).

I'm back baby. Did you miss me? ;-) [1/3; full read on my blog with pictures, maps and videos: https://asinusdocet.tv/2019/07/21/aoe2-c1s2-the-maid-of-orleans/]

Age of Empires 2: Joan of Arc #2. The Maid of Orléans

I fell in love with Joan of Arc thanks to Age of Empires 2. I never healed from it. As Ovid says: “Quod nullis amor est sanabilis herbis.” There is no remedy to love.

Once I started to study History at the university, I met Joan again. I discovered her through new lenses. I read the papers and scholarly books written about her. I read the original sources from the 15th century. Her voice sounded clear to me when I read her trial. I saw her proud gait whilst perusing the medieval chronicles. Then I visited Picardy and many places she went. I walked near the tower she jumped from when she tried to escape the English.

In the following paragraphs it will look like I’m dismantling piece by piece the second scenario of Joan of Arc’s campaign in Age of Empires 2. However this is a love letter more than anything. Age of Empires 2 is a fantastic video game to discover the Middle Ages. There is much to say about the scenarios and the in-game encyclopedia, but that’s only for the better when you really think of it.

Intro

March 26, Chinon

It is one thing for a band of dispirited soldiers to put their trust in a teenage girl. It is entirely another for that girl to be given command of the army of an entire nation.

We were filled with pride when we heard the Dauphin's heralds pronounce Joan the Maid as Commander of the Army of France.

So that she may look like a general, the Dauphin presented Joan with a great warhorse and a suit of white armor.

Joan instructed me to look for an ancient sword buried beneath the altar of a local church.

I was skeptical, but not only did the men unearth a rusted blade, but we found that the sword belonged to Charlemagne, grandfather of France. I shall not doubt her word again. Still visible on the hilt was the fleur-de-lis.

Joan adopted the fleur-de-lis as her symbol and had it blazoned upon her battle standard. Wherever Joan goes, the standard goes also. It goes with us to Orléans.

The City of Orléans is one of the finest in France, but it is under siege by our enemies, England and Burgundy, and is about to fall.

This war has dragged on for one hundred years with precious few French victories. The people of Orléans need a savior. They are to get Joan of Arc.

Commentary

This, for one, is a wonderful text. It really helps us to connect with Joan’s story on an emotional level. However, it is filled with inaccuracies…

Though Joan’s brothers were given nobility titles after the victory of Orléans, she was never invested of any official military title. The “Commander of the Army of France” was the ‘connétable’ and that man, since 1425, was Arthur of Bretagne, count of Richemont. Connétables were chosen for life. Richemont himself had fallen into disgrace because of his political actions (he had drowned the king’s favorite courtier) but he still held on his title. Right under him were the ‘maréchaux’ and those titles had also already been handed out to other aristocrats.

Regarding Joan’s famous sword, it didn’t belong to Charlemagne… First off, the fleur-de-lis only became a symbol of the French royalty during the 12th century, once coat of arms were properly invented. It couldn’t have been Charlemagne’s emblem. Secondly, the sword was not miraculously found, dug up or given to Joan. It was merely an ex-voto that caught her eye when she went in pilgrimage to Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois on her way to Chinon.

Finally, when Joan arrived to Orléans the Burgundians had already lifted the siege. Poton de Xaintrailles, La Hire’s brother in arm, had risked a dangerous diplomatic move. He’d offered to open Orléans to the Duke of Burgundy if he could insure the safety of its inhabitants. Philip the Good wish for nothing less but it angered the Duke of Bedford, Regent of France. The two men were at odds since Anne of Burgundy had passed away. Sister to Philip the Good and Bedford’s former wife, she’d already saved the Anglo-Burgundian alliance in the past and her death left the alliance in tatters. Therefore, the English were left alone to besiege Orléans.

1.1. The Map

In this scenario we find three French cities: Chinon and Blois, south of the Loire, controlled by the artificial intelligence, and Orléans, north of the Loire, which the player takes over as soon as he steps into it.

Orléans is threatened by four English fortresses, two north of the city, which produce long swordsmen, longbowmen and mangonels, plus two other, south of the city, which produce battering rams and knights.

Furthermore, the Burgundians are still in play, though it is historically inaccurate. They send up spearmen to attack Orléans along with other units.

Since all those units will continually attack the player, he will have to produce a vast variety of counter units to push back the AI efficiently. It will be tricky to balance an economy properly to that end, however, with a population capped at 75…

1.2. The Siege of Orléans

Historically speaking, Orléans was surrounded by English bastions, mainly west to the city. John Talbot, knight of the Order of the Garter, was commanding those fortified places himself. He’d been a real thorn in the shoe of the French since he landed on the Continent, back in 1427. The English also had a few bastions eastwards, but first and foremost they occupied the ‘Bastille des Tourelles’ that closed the Loire bridge. It forced the people of Orléans to destroy the bridge so that it couldn’t be crossed, contrarily to what the player can do in the Age of Empires 2 scenario.

For its defense, Orléans had no less than thirty towers along its walls and barricades also blocked the city access in the suburbs. Churches also could serve as fortified places. However, the people of Orléans struggle every day a bit more to ration their food and they urgently needed supplies to maintain their spirits up.

Public Medievalist has recently published (then deleted in less than a day) an article on the superficial global representation that implements non-Western cultures as minor additions to a European norm in world history-themed games, with AoE2 as the main example.

Can we discuss Age of Empires Online civs? Those are the best civs in the series and really lead them all in terms of historical accuracy. I know AoEO was not as successful as the others in the games.

One of the better aspects of the HD version of Age of Empires 2 I find is the addition of custom made campaigns by users, I remember this game being my first real dip into history, and it was the point at which I began to be interested in humanity's past as opposed to being bored out of my mind from drinning school lectures, to this day I believe games are one of, if not the best entry point for any young mind ripe for being shown the depths of the world he lives in.

The conqueror's expansion pack added a nice aztec campaign, and while not exactly "historically accurate", it is a nice dip into a history that is often forgotten in more mainstream history curriculums, the recent expansions did us a huge favor in adding an... Incan-flavored let us call it, campaign, but it also added the opportunity to add user made content, a standout for are campaigns like Ancient America which I found to be a very detailed (though a bit imbalanced) romp through a rather well researched series of campaigns, each of which is set in periods and regions away from the Aztec Triple Alliance, and add a ton of depth to what was, and is an incredibly diverse region of the world, this I think is one of the best aspects of the AoE2 community.

As noted, we're hoping to see this be an on-running series. We would love to hear feedback from YOU ALL though about what media you'd want to see addressed! To keep that from cluttering up the thread, please keep any requests you might have about that contained as responses to this comment. Thank you!