Georgia: Against All Odds I
First, some technical details about the game. I am playing Europa Universalis 3 Complete, patched up to version 3.2 beta. I'm using Magna Mundi Platinum 1.5. I did play a couple of very short test games to try a couple ideas out and see how plausible it would be for me to play Georgia. In real life, Georgia remained an independant country until 1555 when the Ottomans and the Safavids divided the country between them. My goal for this game will be to at least survive past that year. There are new patches for both the core game and Magna Mundi coming out in the next couple months, so I do not plan for the game to run for too long. Even if I survive past 1555, I will likely not play until the game's end date.
Our story begins on May 29th, 1453. This is the day that the great city of Constantinople falls to the Ottoman Empire. Of course, this news wouldn't reach Georgia for some time, but given the large force of heathens that came against her, the outcome seemed inevitable. We'll deal with the implications of that a little later. For now, let me introduce you a little to the country of Georgia.
A map of Georgia
Georgia lies between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. As can be seen from the map, the terrain is predominately mountainous, with the Caucasus Mountains covering much of the land within our borders. The land to the north is the Great Steppe, once ruled by Genghis Khan and his hordes.
You might be able to tell from the map that Georgia is divided into four provinces. Imereti is in the south-west, and is home to the capital city, Batumi. The province of Kartli is in the south-east, Alania to the north-east, and Circassia to the north-west.
The political landscape
Next we take a brief look at the surrounding countries. Georgia is in the very center, displayed in blue. To the west, in yellow, is Genoa, a small nation with a fair influence on the trade in this area. North-west, in bluish-green, is Crimea. This is a fairly large country that is not on particularly friendly terms with us. North-east, in tan, is the remnants of Genghis Khan's Golden Horde. Like Crimea, they have hostile intentions towards us. To the east, in brown, is Shirvan, a small state with whom we are allied. The green country to the south-east is Qara Koyunlu. This country stretches off beyond the reach of our knowledge. It too is hostile towards us. To the south, sea-blue is Ak Koyunlu, another small country that is our ally. To the south-west, along the coast of the Black Sea, is Trebizond, a tiny country that is somewhat friendly towards us. Of particular note, the greenish country along the south of the Black Sea is the Ottoman Empire. They are hostile, and exceedingly dangerous. To the south, in tan, along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea is the Mamluks, another hostile and very dangerous nation. They currently hold Judea.
In summary, our neighbors are predominately hostile. Those who are our allies are small, and not (as we will see) particularly trustworthy. Politically, our situation is precarious.
The religious landscape
To give you an idea of how precarious our situation is, I present for you a map of the religious views of the area. Georgia (in the center) is Orthodox. Note the general lack of brown which is used to indicate other Orthodox countries. There are some such countries west of the Black Sea, but we pretty much are surrounded by heathens. One exception is the small country of Trebizond to the south-west. However, they are too insignificant to have much influence on events in this area.
Anything in green is Muslim, specifically Sunni. Of particular note is the province on our south border which is light brown with green stripes. This indicates that the province is predominately Oriental Orthodox, but that Ak Koyunlu, the country to which it belongs, has an official state religion of Sunni. Likewise, Genoa, at our western tip, is officially Catholic, but the inhabitants are Sunni and Orthodox.
In general though, our neighbors are hostile and muslim, even our allies. Any friendly relations we currently have are unlikely to last long. We have large nations on all sides that are likely to desire expanding in our direction. Many of the surrounding nations, if not already allied with each other, likely will be soon. We will be hard pressed to hold on to what is ours, to say nothing of bringing new lands under our influence.
Comments
Re: Georgia: Against All Odds I
Ah...Steam! Is that how you got into this game?
Looks interesting, but as you know, strategy games are not my thing - too complex to be enjoyable recreation for me. I have a feeling that tactics are more my preference. But, still, interesting, especially since it claims to be historically accurate. I'd guess that if a person wanted to write a historical novel, this might be a good platform to use to assure a rational organization and reasonably accurate and believable foundation. In other words, use the game as an intentional tool, rather than let a book evolve as an afterthought from playing the game and writing the AAR.
Now, the question...what motivated you to select Georgia? Did you do a bunch of research first, looking for a scenario that would be of interest to you, is it a spinoff form another game, like Civ, or did you just pick it at random?
I think that if I was playing it, my favorite historical setting is probably America in the period of roughly end of the 17th century through first quarter of the 19th century. Maybe that explains my lack of interest in world travel.
However, I finally gave up on acquiring Archer, the first in the three book Grail series by Bernard Cornwell, and read Vagabond, the second, and am now starting the third and last, Heretic. I was out of books and those were the last two in my stack, and I wasn't taking time to drop by the Goodwill to look for more, so just dived into Vagabond. These are in the period (forgot the years, but 14th century I think) of King James of England. I haven't read much in that period, and while it was somewhat interesting in itself, some of the portrayal of the Scots and their relationship to the English grabbed my interest. That would be interesting but I see from the description at your link to the game on Steam that the date range is 1453-1820, so while that would work for my America interests, it wouldn't work for Scotland. However, Scotland might be interesting in that period as well.
Anyhow, too much gab - didn't plan on rambling! Sounds like a good fit forf our interests,
Re: Georgia: Against All Odds I
I actually knew about the game well before it showed up on steam, but I was happy to get it on steam because it makes it easy to delete and later reinstall without difficulty.
I'd be a little careful about using the term historically accurate about this game. I'd call it more... historically emergent. That is, the starting points are pretty historical, and the general shape of things is fairly historical, but it's certainly not scripted, and odd things can definitely happen in the game that are not so historical. Still, it feels very historical, and they did put a good bit of historical research into it, so it's close to as historical as you can get without being on rails, like just reading a history book.
It took me a long time to settle on a country. Georgia caught my eye because I was looking around the map in the religion overlay mode, and noticed this island of Orthodoxy in the middle of all Sunni nations. That caught my interest. It's kind of the last bastion of Christianity in the region, and seemed doomed. Then I started investigating to see if it was a lost cause, or if there really was a chance at holding out and doing something interesting. Indicators seemed to be that it was an interesting country to play, so I went with it. So, mostly just random chance that I happened upon it.
Scotland can definitely be interesting to play in this period, although challenging, because England can be awfully powerful.
...oh, and I certainly hope you find it interesting. I'll do my best to entertain!
Re: Georgia: Against All Odds I
I was looking for some Ottoman empire history and found a concise history at an interesting site.
http://www.mideastweb.org/Middle-East-Encyclopedia/ottoman.htm
Down a ways into the history they tell of some of the reasons for the weakening of the Empire which intriqued me, not because of their wonderful colorful slice of history, but because of their relationship to the CIVilization IV game I have been playing. First of all the Empire spent more money than it took in - they became subservient to the creditors of Europe from whom they were borrowing. They didn't allow banking in their own country because of their avoidance of usury. They has no middle class because they had no industry or commerce partly because they would not allow foreign traders in their territory, thus they had great stagnation as Europe surged ahead of them. They were in control of overland trade routes but Europeans were opening up oceanic trade routes and thus, again, the Empire got left behind. As their territory grew, they maintained a bureaucratic central state. However, they had such poor communication across their Empire that they pretty much lost control of the outreaches of their land. Part of the problem there was that they never bothered to build roads and attempt to maintain communication routes. They spent money over the years to maintain a group of slaves and also a mercenary army of Christians called the Janissaries. Eventually the Janissaries became too powerful and had great influence in the Empire causing some disasterous decisions for the Empire. Both the slave and the mercerary habit were expensive to maintain.
Sometimes their expansion of territory was called the jihad, but usually only for convenience when they needed extra support of some particular entity. And I would maintain that Georgia was able to hold out against them for a couple of reasons--the biggest of which must be the mountainous borders, affording good defense. That and the fact that the Ottomans would not spend much money on a Navy for the Black Sea conquests while they were busy trying to conquer the countries around the Mediterranean.
You got me interested!