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Rob Zacny

Three Moves Ahead 554: Empires and Imperialism with Bret Devereaux

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Three Moves Ahead 554:

Three Moves Ahead 554


Empires and Imperialism with Bret Devereaux
Len and Mike are joined once again by Dr. Bret Devereaux (@BretDevereaux), Visiting Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of the blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry (acoup.blog). The topic this time around is Empires and Imperialism. What exactly makes an empire? How do strategy games model empires and the process of imperialism, and how could they potentially do better? Header Image: The "Ozymandias Collossus", Ramesseum, Luxor, Egypt by Charlie Phillips via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Europa Universalis IV, Victoria II, Civilization, Total War: Warhammer 3

 

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I've really enjoyed these episodes with Bret.  Very cool to get an academic perspective on some historical aspects of these games and the different definitions or categories of empire, states and so on.

 

Would be cool to have an episode with him based on the fall of empires, with a look towards how different empires have broken apart (not just rome).  Though- maybe that's too tangential to video games since I'm not sure how well the fall of empires is really modeled in video games.

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I'm really amazed how you can talk about these issues of state, empire, internal colonization etc. in strategy games without reference to Hegemony III: Clash of the Ancients...!?

While not as complex as Paradox games, this game models empires with all of the following:

(1) conquered native factions need to be assimilated before cities yield any significant taxes and recruits

(2) native factions however give access to special troops like e.g. the greek hoplites, the etruscan archers or gallic horsemen

(3) cities of native factions have low morale and can easily rebel, thus they need to be garrissoned with combat units, hostages need to be taken or buildings built (e.g. a colloseum etc.) to improve morale

(4) cities of native factions that have been conquered tick up towards assimilation (and the tick speed again can be increased by buildings e.g. a forum etc.) - but in the end the player needs to actively "grant citizenship"

(5) assimilation can be sped up by researching a colonization skill which lets the player recruit colonist units which can be settled in those native cities to give an instant boost to assimilation

 

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