Is the Last Roman DLC for Total War: Attila too limited, too small, and too real?

Yes, I would agree with that, too, especially as regards softer science-fiction (like Star Trek), which has plenty of social commentary that makes it more readily relevant to us today than the struggles of dwarven kings vs orc raiders and similar kind of stuff.

Never thought you did. :-)

It is the proper name for the buggers in Enders Game. Which I used because they acted as a horde, an invading ‘other’, much like how orcs are in fantasy. Obviously some differences exist, but they were a hostile* force whose society was completely alien, whose arrival upends society.

A better point of comparison might have been Skaven from Warhammer, now that I think of it. Oh well, I’m not a Warhammerhead, or whatever they call themselves.

I’m not sure I agree on this point, especially given your specific examples. Now, on one hand, the dark/ low fantasy does feel weightier to start in most cases. I’ll absolutely grant that. However it would be mistaken to apply this to thematic depth. Tolkien, more than most fantasy writers, draws inspiration from history. He includes many elements and themes, builds out their languages, establishes locations based on concepts and echoes of history. Granted it often mixes and borrows from several ideas, but it is there. It is not as obvious as Game of Thrones for sure (the battle on the Blackwater and parallels to the siege of Constantinople are not subtle), but that is often because his historical inspiration is historical mythologies. The histories and origin stories societies told about themselves. Which naturally creates a much different feel from a work borrowing from literal history.

But the more fantastical elements you introduce, the more careful and thoughtful of a writer you would have to be to bring that thematic weight. Themes tend to take a beating when the solution is ‘a wizard did it’. Just imagine the violence to the theme of Lord of the Rings if, once the hobbits got to Minas Tirith, Gandalf had just summoned the eagles to do an air drop in Mount Doom.**

There are times when using history may be appropriate, but others when obscuring with fantasy enhances the point. Just take, for example, the conquest of Cortez. Now anyone who has read history will obviously have thoughts about Spanish imperialism, and the actions of Cortez. If the author wanted to cause the reader to think of things in a new light, to consider different perspectives, it might be hard if you come in with preconcieved notions about who was right and wrong, which actions were justified, etc. This is the power of fantasy and sci fi, it enables the reader to consider situations without the baisis of their own biases and prejudices. It is a wonderfully powerful tool.

Also @JoshoB that last reply you wrote up while I was writing mine. Very cool stuff, and I love reading things like that Acropolis story. As someone who has been taking time through podcasts and books to learn more about the ‘dark’ ages, it is fascinating to me how we know what we know about history, and how often the ‘facts’ we are presented are subjective things. Just imagine how different an understanding we would have of Byzantine history if we took Procopious at face value in his Secret Histories! And how those ‘dark’ ages are not how they often were portrayed, but had fascinating changes in their own right, but it is the lack of large centralized states that made them dark. Not because they were a time of loss of civilization or backtracking of progress, but because the time is dark to us for lack of preserved documentation!

*I know, but from the point of view of the characters that was the natural conclusion
**I know about this too. There are answers, but I’d rather not have this be the point you take

I’d say the problem with “high fantasy” is that it frames things in terms of racial or mythological identities. Orcs aren’t bad because they were cast out from Orcland and have a chip on their shoulder, they’re bad because they’re born bad, nor are Elves sophisticated and lovely because of their exercise regime and vegan diet but because they have good genes. So the stories being told tend to be the same across authors and properties.

Sure. It’s actually something we’re exploring as part of a new series on Classical reception. Tolkien was a scholar and an expert on the Beowulf, who also drew a lot of inspiration from the Kalevala, etc. But I think @Enigdigm succinctly points out the main difference between high and low fantasy and why one seems, at least on the face of it, more serious than the other:

And certainly there’s room for a more nuanced view, too: Warcraft – of all things – actually does a good job of making Orcs, for example, more rounded and interesting characters than Tolkien ever did.

Now that we have nuclear weapons, why bother with something so pedestrian as magic?

From a writer’s perspective it’s a hell of a lot easier to make stuff up than it is to do accurate research.

I loved the article Tom. This was the one Attlia DLC that I skipped, but I may buy it on sale in the future.

There were some comments here about the history of the Attlia and Shogun games and I wanted to address it.

The Shogun games are pretty historically representative of the time period they are taking place during. This history in that game (including the DLC’s) have a strong correlation to actual history. The Sengoku period was an age where all of Japan warred to see who would unify Japan. The game rarely ENDs in a historical way but that is the way of a Total War game.

The Last Roman period is also generally similar to real life, with the one difference that the Emperor did not manage to support his expedition enough and it eventually faded out. Again, Total war to me always seemed to be a chance to “fix” the mistakes of history and do the “what if’s” and not be 1:1 representations.

I am with Tom in the way that the history games resonate with me more because I do understand the historical periods. The Japanese, the Romans, or the Imperial Europeans are all historical periods I have studied a lot so having the background information actually grounds the story. If you feel that they are fantastical, study some history. Truth is stranger than fiction.

It’s not like “accurate research” will yield an interpretation of the past that everyone will certainly agree with. Regardless of how well you think you’ve researched something, there’s undoubtedly going to be people able to pick things apart, and when it comes to academic controversies you’ll be forced to pick one interpretation of the evidence over another, and there are people who definitely will call you out on it. So I think it’s not easier per se; rather, it gives the writer some leeway.

Leeway, which makes it easier.

Your conclusion doesn’t seem to be supported by your examples, like you wanted to make a point but couldn’t bring yourself to agree with me. There’s no crime in it, ya know.

Put it like this, there are about a dozen notable works of Science Fiction and Fantasy inspired by Xenophon’s “Anabasis”, and maybe one decent work of fiction reasonably true to the historical account (Michael Curtis Ford’s “The Ten Thousand”, FWIW). Even Yurick’s “The Warriors”, at least sharing the central motif of getting back home across enemy territory, was a work of fantasy, substituting actual research for a view of 60s street gangs ripped from the headlines of the time. Ford had to do the research and then constrain his imagination within the available facts. I absolutely agree with you that that holds you up to more rigorous examination than, say, Jack Campbell who was writing about bringing a divided fleet back home across space. None of this “per se” niggling. Just admit it! We agree.

Well, I gave an example a little further above regarding the latest cover for Ancient History magazine.

The main problem I had was with your use of the term “accurate research”, which suggests that there is a single Truth to be uncovered through rigorous research. I was trying to point out that even if you engage in serious research, you’re still going to end up with having to pick sides in a particular debate. If we all agreed on everything, there would be little need for the conventional back-and-forth found in academic journals or at conferences.

But if you want concrete examples, I’ll take something from my own PhD research – the issues regarding hoplite warfare in ancient Greece. There are two main questions: (1) what was hoplite warfare like, and; (2) what were circumstances and consequences of the invention of hoplite warfare. There are two main camps: the orthodoxy (now seemingly on the way out) that holds that hoplite warfare can be defined as more or less heavily-armed spearmen fighting in formation (phalanx), which came about ca. 700 BC and was associated with the rise of a farming “middle class” and the emergence of the polis (city-state). Opposite this group are the so-called “heretics” or revisionists who believe that hoplite warfare is not as easily defined, that while the arms and armour developed ca. 700 BC, the tactics of fighting in formation developed later (some saying even after the Persian Wars of the early fifth century BC), and that the introduction of the hoplite wasn’t accompanied by any kind of sweeping socio-political changes.

The hoplite debate has been going strong for at least thirty years and the revisionist ideas have slowly become more widely accepted. But still, if you were to, let’s say, develop a game that modelled ancient Greek city-states in the period ca. 700-400 BC, you’d have to make a few decisions: do you go with the orthodoxy and have your hoplites fight in phalanx or do you pick the revisionist interpretation and have phalanx fighting be something that develops over time instead? You can support whatever choice you make using decent arguments, but you’re still likely to get comments/complaints from people who disagree with the theory you decided to support.

Secondly, I wouldn’t say a priori that simply inventing something is easier than doing actual research. My point in saying that it gives the creator more leeway is that it’s the creator in charge of the world he creates, i.e. the creator lays down the rules. By creating something original (or semi-original if inspired by or based on historical events/situation, like Game of Thrones or older fare like Howard’s Conan stories), the creator will never run into a situation where people will complain about his/her interpretation of the past.

Simply put, I doubt that people like Martin or Tolkien would ever claim that creating their fictional worlds was in any way “easy”. Even when creating a new world, it has to make some form of sense, and that requires thinking about socio-political structures, religions and mythologies, and so forth. History, in this instance, can be a source of inspiration, without the creator running the risk of introducing historical mistakes or picking a particular interpretation that his/her readers/viewers/players might strongly disagree with.

Anyway, I’ve written a blog post about history as a source of inspiration a while ago; it might be interesting to read since it ties into the discussion here.

Yes… but it’s easier to just make it up. Literally the only point I’ve made, and you agree with me, but you think I’m wrong. Bizarre.

I think the point Josh is making, and one I would argue, is that fiction isn’t inherently easier, rather it has a different set of challenges to make well. Making a world, whole cloth, requires a different set of constraints to give it a feeling of verisimilitude. It’s also why so many are just rehashing of the concepts Tolkien and others laid out. Tolkien had already done the work of creating an alternate world with conflicts and relations. Cribbing the orc-elf animosity without understanding the meaning is easier, but also leaves a world feeling thin.

So to create a quality world requires more work. It’s hard. It is prone to making mistakes or things that aren’t well received in otherwise beloved worlds (see: Potter and Quiddich). Sure just filing the serial numbers off of another universe, or our own, is easier. It also lacks depth and meanings.

Yes, @CraigM, that’s exactly the point I was trying to make.

You’ll note, I never said it was easy. Going back to Tom’s original comparison - it is easier to write about something which is LIKE the Roman Empire, than it is to write something ABOUT the Roman Empire. They’re held up to different standards, and one is far more constraining. (Though I guess some people prefer the constraint.) And let’s remember my comment was in response to Tom’s original question, but seems to have taken on a life of its own.

(Third edit of this. So difficult to achieve clarity sometimes.)

Science fiction Japanese Empires or Mongol hordes are pretty much standard. There’s a reason for that, and for why people still get paid for it, because it gives you a backdrop that both the writer and the reader is familiar with. A shorthand. I’m not saying it’s always good, but it’s awfully convenient.

Well, you wrote “a hell of a lot easier”, which I don’t think is necessarily true, for reasons already discussed.

Not sure if I’d say they’re held up to different standards exactly – that might depend on the genre or even medium. Both, of course, can become problematic. Sometimes, fans of a particular work or genre become more savvy about that fictional world than the original creator(s), and they’ll notice immediately when something’s inconsistent. For example, Arthur Conan Doyle giving Watson the first name “James” (instead of John) in one his stories, or George Lucas writing that the Republic existed for a thousand generations in one movie and then a thousand years in another.

But indeed, creating something historical can be more constraining, for reasons we already discussed earlier.

Sure. Tropes are everywhere. I guess in those cases, it depends on the quality of the creator as regards to how those tropes are received. Whether the creator can do something original with them (and thereby elevate the material) or not (and in the latter case, the tropes devolve into clichés).

This has been a very fun discussion, by the way.

Put it like this, let’s say we were to put this into practice.

You can research “Anton Gully” and see what you can come up with that’s accurate, given that I tend to troll forums and comment threads while I’m drunk, so you can’t necessarily trust my position on anything. I’ve been using this avatar (actually previously I used a Karloff one, but I paid someone for this - see if you can turn that guy up, he’s really talented and I forget his name) for about six or seven years, so there are definitely some facts out there in the ether, but dammit you’re going to have to sift and use your judgement, but even then there’s no guarantee you’ll get it right.

Meanwhile I have to write a fantasy based on what I can find out about you based on ten minutes going though Google, searching for your avatar image and user name. I can see you’re into stripping paragraphs and leather Hellenic armour. My character, NoshoB is into stripping out of leather Hellenic armour, and I’ve already got a strong backstory going about why - to pay his way through his PhD research, obviously. He’s a dreamy academic with a bod to die for, but that enigmatic smile hides a deeper sorrow…

Which of us will have an easier, nay a MUCH easier time?

Also, what you dismiss as tropes are exactly my point. It’s easy for something to become a trope, because it’s easy. But don’t focus on the trope thing, focus on painting a picture of the “Anton Gully”.

Obviously, you don’t have to do anything, except agree with me that we agree.

I don’t think further discussion will lead anywhere, @Anton_Gully, but let me just briefly explain why I don’t agree with you. (Which replaces my earlier short reply about not wanting to engage any further.)

I think any (creative) endeavour relies on three different things: life experience, imagination, and research. I don’t think you can ever only focus on just one of those factors. If you’re creating a historical game, you’ll rely on research a lot (both historical and game design/mechanics), but you’ll also rely on experiences you’ve had (what worked in other games, what you’ve seen in the movies, what you’ve read in your spare time), and also your imagination. But if you’re working on a fantasy game, perhaps you’ll rely more on imagination than on research, but you can’t really go completely without research, and imagination is hard to quantify – some people have oodles of it, others almost nothing, and how do you gauge how much effort imagination requires over research anyway?

Likewise, if someone was to write an autobiography, it would rely to a larger extent on life experiences (memories), would require some research (what was the name of the high school principal again? how many people lived in the town again?), and perhaps the least amount of imagination. Is writing an autobiography harder than writing a historical novel or writing a fantasy novel? Since I’ve never written any of those, I honestly have no idea, I can’t make a good comparison, but my experience with writing so far – having written two nonfiction books and working on a third – I don’t think one if appreciably easier than the other, except if you deliberately set out to deliver shoddy work.

I would like to thank @joshob, @Anton_Gully , @CraigM , @Enidigm, @Left_Empty and of course @tomchick for this awesome whopper of a thread. Well done chaps, jolly good show.

Corrections:
“I used to [wonder] if Total War: Warhammer”
“it’s someone else’s city is [sic] in your way”

This thread made me roll back to Attila – what a great game, and great DLC.

Over the last week I have been trying to survive in the Last Roman DLC as a Separatist – building my own empire as belasarius. Instant war with my good friends over at the Eastern Roman Empire.

THAT is not easy. But very fun. I am now on Sardinia praying the Moors don’t roll over --and most of Italy is Eastern Empire with legions everywhere.

Great Campaign – Tight mechanics – I am playing vanilla with no mods. No need for mods in this one.

I have to admit I think overall that missile/javelin units probably do too much damage but that the battle mechanics are very refined after Rome 2.

Finally what makes Attila (and the dlc) more fun is that the Strategy part isn’t undercut by the Tactical part --in other words armies/military and bread/butter is well balanced.

I am glad this thread had me back!

Welcome back to another campaign in a very fine game, glad you’re enjoying it.

Myself, I mostly play Attila and Shogun 2 (with an occasional fond return to MTW2), but lately I’ve been taking a break from history and I’m playing Warhammer. This latest campaign was quite enjoyable, playing the wood elves had sufficiently different game mechanics to keep me engaged the entire campaign.

Regardless which TW we’re talking about, you know what I like most? That as a strategy game I’m not playing a puzzle game. There’s no perfect build order I can’t deviate from, there’s no grooming specific soldiers I have to keep alive to win (looking straight at you xcom), I have choices I get to make, each with a cost to be sure, but I’m not forced down a path. W/O choice there is no strategy and there’s no unique emergent campaign narrative.

That’s why I keep coming back to Total War.