Timewalking Archive Trap: Battle-Civ Beta: Episode #5, Roman Contact, Roman Civil War

As you might be aware, I've recently redownloaded Civilization 2, one of the top three most addicting games ever created (the others being Minecraft and WoW). It brought up a lot of old memories and a quick search through my downloaded Xanga blog revealed that I'd already blogged about a game of Civilization 2. So enjoy this Timewalking Archive Trap from May of 2007.

Eventually, an expedition of now-outdated Viking 'mechs stumbled upon the Roman Empire, a government that outshined even the burgeoning Jade Falcons in terms of military power. Unlike their contact with the Greeks, the Jade Falcons and Romans coexisted peacefully for some time. 

The Jade Falcons tried to negotiate with the Romans to learn of the other nations of the world, but to no avail. The Jade Falcons also tried to arrange for a trade of peaceful technologies. They abstained from military exchanges though; their own scientists were on the cusp of developing the fearsome Night Gyr battlemech to replace their underproduced Mad Dogs and Kingfishers, and they had no intention of upgrading the military ability of a nation growing ever-colder towards them.

The Jade Falcons did find some Romans eager to exchange peaceful knowledge: a group of persecuted Roman communist party leaders who were quick to tout the fallacies of the Roman Republic's rule. Fortified with an uncooperative Roman  central government and a sympathetic group of Roman citizens, the Jade Falcons began colluding in earnest with the Roman People's Movement. Those forces stationed at the Roman border simply sold their Vikings--now useless to the Jade Falcons, but advanced for the Romans--to the revolutionaries as "farming equipment."

The Roman People's Movement was quick to destroy a federal military supply depot in Pisae with their new farming equipment, and when Roman forces moved in to quell what they saw as a rebellion, the real rebellion broke out, with Pisae requesting protection by the Jade Falcon garrison.

While outnumbered, the Jade Falcons present renounced the tenuous peace treaty between the two peoples and held Pisae against the Archers of the Roman Republic, but so great were the enemy numbers that victory would have eluded the Jade Falcons and their fledging child-state at the very start had it not been for the citizenry of Pisae joining the front lines beside them. Together, they held Pisae held until Jade Falcon reinforcements could arrive.

The Jade Falcons, enjoying advantages in both technology and the size of their empire(if not the relative size of their military), suffered only one difficulty; getting troops and supplies from their Gateway to the West, Mow, to a front line in Roman territory, almost 48,000 miles away, through thick forests and over the harsh deserts of what would in later times be called the Persian Bottleneck.

Still, while reinforcements for the garrison slowly crawled across deserts and wilderness, the Jade Falcons and RPM troops in Pisae faced down wave after wave of Roman troops...

The Persian Bottleneck. A heavily-modified image depicting a number of historical Roman (and Persian) lands. The Persian Bottleneck extends further East, but the Bottleneck itself is the desert island between the Persian and Roman cities. Jade Falcon territory is much, much further East.