Saturday, October 1, 2011

10/1/11 - the story thus far...

part one: in the beginning:

i seem to remember something like june of 2010 i was punching thru the internet looking at cool things on stumbleupon.com and came across the interesting item of the terra cotta army created in ancient china.

i thought this was really interesting and decided to look into it.

lo and behold i discovered a piece of history that i did not know existed. and so i began to investigate it further.

two days later, after reading so much ancient chinese history and watching several movies about that time (including "hero" with jet li), i decided to create the game.

as a player and lover of trading and collectible card games (TCG and CCG from hereon out), i was shocked and dismayed that no one had taken the time to make one from ACTUAL EARTH HISTORY. little did i know that the history channel had already taken this step, but i was not to find this out until a year later... eh.

so off i went. making all sorts of cards with all sorts of civilizations. high and low from the byzantines to the celts to the east india trading company. hee hee. yeah. i consider that a civilization. and it was fun and it was good. but i was getting NOWHERE.

until one night at village inn i decided to bring it to a focus. i divided up all of earth history into neat little compartments and months later categorized them down until i had around the top 64 or so of the biggest ones from all epochs of history.

wow this was a big dream.

so i said: "ok. what were the most well known?" popping out my trusty globe from my back pocket i noticed that Egypt, China and Rome were all still on it. and weren't they around back then too? hmmm.

so i decided on those three. but the earliest versions of them. and who better to round it all together than one the worst terror of all history? the huns. not to mention that the huns were a very strong factor in china and rome. i thought this was grand.

so i had my four beginning "empires" as i had come to call them. huns, rome, egypt and china.

well even this proved to be a chunk.

do you know how hard it is to find out about the huns WITHOUT the MONGOLS getting in the way?

so i called history professors and teachers and... no one was available. i turned to wikipedia and google and the internet to guide me on my way.

i was not disappointed.

i had to decide on times for these empires. i chose early. that way if i wanted to make... say... the roman EMPIRE as opposed to the roman REPUBLIC i could later... finding focal points like the death of julias ceaser lent well to this phase. the huns wasn't all that hard. they were absorbed after atilla and scattered to the wind. china hung on the balance of pre-unity before the great qin and egypt before the hyksos decimation.

oh. is this over your head? yeah i was for me too.

i was a noob in a shark tank.

i learned what my cousin daniel eudaly had been learning at college. history is as convoluted as the people who write history make it out to be. and me, with no formal training had to wade thru the slough with only willpower.

but it was ok.

in the end i came out with the timeframe and some really cool discoveries. like... the giza pyramids line up with orions belt and that the chinese invented the flamethrower around 900 b.c.

whaaaaat?

well that's what i dug up, so i went with it.

and thus Empires and Generals was born.

but even that was a gargantuan proposal. i tried a myriad of names but someone had already taken them. sid meier had capitalized on the word "civilization" and i needed something of my own.

yay.

oh. and also because Generals and Empires is GAE. and my game ain't GAY. lol. i meant that in a totally 90's slang way. (ahem).

so i had a premise, an idea, a form and a name... now to work the mechanics...

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