Other Projects > Play With Your Buddies
Let's Play Civ 4: Beyond the Sword - The Wolf & The Troll
Iituem:
It's LP time, and once again we're going back to the British in Civilisation 4! I recently picked up the Beyond the Sword expansion and my graphics card is just about working again, so this seemed like the perfect time to give it another go. As before, I am playing on Marathon mode (something like 2-3000 turns in a game instead of 500) on a Huge map and will be treating the LP as a series of historical lectures and journals.
If anybody would like to be 'dwarfed' as an historical figure, speak up and I'll insert you in! I'll especially insert you in if you pick a fairly realistic name, as otherwise I'll have to mangle your screen names a bit to fit into the setting (e.g. EuchreJack would be Col. Edward 'Euchre' Jack; adwarf would be 'Adam Dwarf' etc.). I have no idea how the history of this one will play out, but if you watched the last England LP I did, that's a good rough idea.
I've picked the English partly due to good ol' patriotism, but mostly because Elizabeth's specials (Philosophical, Financial) play well into my typically rather British strategy; make enough money to buy the world. Or, y'know, conquer the shit out of the most valuable parts and exploit the rest. I don't intend to go for a conquest victory, by the by. A cultural victory would be pretty awesome, as it's rather difficult to pull off by comparison. Whatever we pick, I'm going to try and play for the highest score I can.
Game is set to 'Noble' difficulty, as I'm not a great Civ player. Effectively, I have no bonuses and penalties compared to the AI. We're on even ground.
Chapter One: History of the Fair Folk
Before the familiar, Sinite-descended Britons we know, there was a race of people regrettably lost to time. Later legends would refer to them as the 'Fair Folk' and depict them as giants or mysterious people of the forest, and the vague memory of their genocide would remain in the legends of the British Sinites for most of their history.
Digs in the London area have shown clusters of villages around Lake Downing, where the lake empties out into the Thames and runs to sea. To the best of our knowledge, these were the homes of the Fair Folk of yore. These settlements date from around 4000 BC to the end of their civilisation, with signs of being burned down, flooded and rebuilt several times. The Fair Folk were fishermen and there are signs of surface copper mining in the nearby hills, though such deposits are now long gone. What their beliefs were remain unknown, but burial and offering sites have shown collections of beads, pig bones and mounds of maize (only later would earthenware pots be used to store the offerings). In the earlier sites, pig bones are less common and tend to be from larger animals; it is likely that these were hunted boar rather than domesticated swine. Around 3800BC we see the slings and darts become prevalent amongst the various Fair Folk tribes, with an associated increase in apparent standard of living that can be attributed to better hunting techniques.
Trade was prevalent amongst the different tribes of the Fair Folk. To the north, Fair tribes worked the hills for their extensive gold deposits, sending them south to the London tribes (gold jewellery and markers have been found in several of the London burial sites). Crude marble statues and grave markers have also been found from the same region.
To the north we find remains of a tribe, one that apparently had a strong hunting tradition. This tribe has been termed the "Holly Folk" for the large number of holly-shaped idols and offerings in their grave mounds, and there is evidence to suggest trade of ivory and cattle hides to and from the London settlement. The Holly Folk grave mounds have the remains of slings (or at least, copper sling holders, the leather long since rotted away) and darts and their artwork praises running, jumping and acts of agility. It is likely that the Holly Folk were capable huntsmen and scouts.
The limits of Fair Folk trade to the south was the Welsh Jungle, where trade with the locals was rich but unable to penetrate the deep rainforest. To the east, trade stopped past the Pennines, where the Pennine Folk again contributed greatly to the wealth of the London settlement but heavy forest prevented much further trade.
To the west trade apparently stretched as far as the predecessors of the Maya, as Mayan artefacts have been found in Mercia as early as 3700-3600 BC. Malinese jewellery has also been found, but it appears these were traded through Maya to the Fair Folk, as only a minimum of oral history indicates a meeting between the two.
And to the north, trade stretched beyond Northumbria to the lands of Egypt.
Probably the furthest trading link with the Fair Folk were the Maga Valley folk, north of Maya. The particularly fertile valley was home to a people with an incredibly advanced understanding of agriculture for their time. Before the valley was taken over, Maga grain and pots made their way all the way to London by the mid third millenium BC.
Not all contacts were friendly, and there are indications of many skirmishes between the Fair Folk and the inhabitants of the Sinai Desert, an unfortunate indicator of things to come. Even amongst the Sinai tribes the Fair Folk had some friends, as several ancient oral tales (later committed to writing) tell of the Fey Folk seeking shelter in a desert tribe's huts and rewarding their kindness with magic. Whilst the magic is an embellishment, there are enough similarities between the different tales to indicate at least one root tale if not an actual event.
Continued struggles with the Sinai led to a gradual shift from hunting to war; from about 3300BC onwards we see larger shields in grave mounds. These tower shields would have been made of wood with copper supports (the tarnished remnants of which have been found since) and designed to deflect slingshots. These shields first appear amongst the Sinai, with perhaps a century before Fair Folk tribes begin taking them up. Whether this was in response to Sinai warriors having better cover or because of the growing interbreeding amongst the tribes remains unknown.
This period also sees a gradual shift from hunting to animal husbandry; the burial bones change from large boar to smaller pigs, decreasing with time and growing more prevalent. The London settlement swells to an estimated population of 20,000 amongst all of the villages and a gradual taming of the surrounding region begins.
In the last note of our essay on trade, it is only around the cusp of the 2nd millenium BC that the very first American artefacts are recorded in even Mayan lands, let alone British. From trade artefacts and the like it is presently estimated that Fair Folk exploration and trade had reached beyond the Welsh Jungle and explored most of the continent of Jova.
Next in our lectures comes the early British Bronze Age, and with it the arrival of the Sinai tribes and their swift, bloody conversion of the Fair Folk that preceded them.
The reach of Fair Folk trade, circa 2900BC.
NRDL:
Looks cool. Um...Dorf me as Nigel Ridlin, please, when it's feasible.
EuchreJack:
Col. Edward 'Euchre' Jack reporting for duty!
Delta Foxtrot:
Daniel Foxly, for the glory of England!
Sirus:
Hell, I'll join in. Cyrus of Maga, reporting for duty as my queen desires!
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version