Wow, that’s actually really interesting. I knew of other empires in this shape (to me the Kushan empire is the most obvious syncretic example) but I didn’t know they were all shaped this way. I suppose I always imagined empire being a bigger thing than kingdom but this definition seems more useful. It seems that other definitions don’t involve resource extraction necessarily but power over multiple nations. Still, it’s a useful frame.
In practice I suppose this must have been the case because you can’t easily impose monocultures especially when information travels slowly.
That makes me curious if military tactics of the time also had regional variation and if the relative strengths of various regions came from their awareness of certain tools being effective. Bringing in a foreign army with its foreign techniques might have been like bringing small pox to a population- they’d have no defense the first time around so if you’re fast you get them all.
Well, sure, and there's also a 200 population limit per player (in Age of Empires 2, at least). And no day-night cycle or seasons. These are clearly intentional choices to capture the vibes of economic and military conflict while massively compacting the scale of true historical conflict.
For those who aren’t aware, AOE2 is thriving today with a huge player base, fan base, ongoing development and large international tournaments (recent Red Bull Wololo tournament in London, for example). I play this game regularly with friends and love it.
I will leave the following since so far all the commenters seem to have either not read the article at all, or to have at least skipped the following two sections:
>The third, predictable and annoying argument is “stop overthinking it, it is just a game.” Which is – if you will permit me to paraphrase C.S. Lewis – an unserious ‘boy’s philosophy’ unfit for adults. Video games are cultural products, like books or films or any other – and to say that those cultural products have no impact or importance is to argue against the historically obvious, given how frequently we find such things at the roots of important political ideologies, social movements, and wars.
>I bring this up not because I demand utter historical accuracy in my games – I will almost certainly happily play Age of Empires IV despite this. Instead, I bring it up because I find that this overly simplified view – sometimes, depressing, held to be the truth by some – in its errors, reveals some important things about empires, which again, I should note, seem to have been the dominant very-large-scale organization system for humans generally in the historical period.
First it tends to obscure the necessarily diverse nature of empires – as we have just laid out and perhaps more to the point, it obscures the power that empires derive from being diverse....
Videogames rely on gameplay more than storytelling or teaching history. It's not a novel or encyclopedia entry. It's not unserious to expect a videogame to be fun over having a deep exploration over the possible interpretations of one word in its title.
Plus, some films are like Casablanca. Some are like History of the World Part 1. Additionally, if someone relies on media like Age of Empires, The Empire Strikes Back, or the novel Empire by Gore Vidal to gain an understanding of what an empire is, just because the word empire is in the title of these works, there are bigger issues at hand...
It's not a great argument because the game takes place pre-empire, and the end of the game is intended to be when one player, the winner, is now an empire. This is evidenced by the final age in the game being called the Imperial Age. Most empires in history fought their neighbors in more or less the same manner as exhibited in the game before they became big and strong enough to be an actual empire.
I guess you could make an argument that the game doesn't transition into the most powerful player beginning to behave like an empire in the imperial age as you keep steamrolling your opponents until the end of the game, but it's a weaker argument and it's not clear why you would want to change the entire game's mechanics right before the game ends.
Am I misremembering things? I played a lot of AOE2 in college and in multiplayer games one of my gotos was to attack someone quickly and force them into an alliance where they sent me resources, and then continued to demand resources so they could never grow big enough to remove the alliance and attack, then coordinate through them to attack other people. Seemed like a pretty good approximation of empires to me at the time.
It's not that deep. It's obvious that AoE marketed itself as an RTS game and not some kind of 4X game with complex diplomacy/subjugation mechanics. Competitive RTS games are at their best when each faction maintains some unique characteristics (as opposed to assimilating opposing faction tech), otherwise, you lose balance and/or strategy. At the end of the day, good gameplay should be prioritized over flavor.
ETA: To add, as a young nerd I did appreciate the history section of the game.
Wow, that’s actually really interesting. I knew of other empires in this shape (to me the Kushan empire is the most obvious syncretic example) but I didn’t know they were all shaped this way. I suppose I always imagined empire being a bigger thing than kingdom but this definition seems more useful. It seems that other definitions don’t involve resource extraction necessarily but power over multiple nations. Still, it’s a useful frame.
In practice I suppose this must have been the case because you can’t easily impose monocultures especially when information travels slowly.
That makes me curious if military tactics of the time also had regional variation and if the relative strengths of various regions came from their awareness of certain tools being effective. Bringing in a foreign army with its foreign techniques might have been like bringing small pox to a population- they’d have no defense the first time around so if you’re fast you get them all.
Altogether an enjoyable read. Thanks.
Well, sure, and there's also a 200 population limit per player (in Age of Empires 2, at least). And no day-night cycle or seasons. These are clearly intentional choices to capture the vibes of economic and military conflict while massively compacting the scale of true historical conflict.
The author addresses that.
For those who aren’t aware, AOE2 is thriving today with a huge player base, fan base, ongoing development and large international tournaments (recent Red Bull Wololo tournament in London, for example). I play this game regularly with friends and love it.
I will leave the following since so far all the commenters seem to have either not read the article at all, or to have at least skipped the following two sections:
>The third, predictable and annoying argument is “stop overthinking it, it is just a game.” Which is – if you will permit me to paraphrase C.S. Lewis – an unserious ‘boy’s philosophy’ unfit for adults. Video games are cultural products, like books or films or any other – and to say that those cultural products have no impact or importance is to argue against the historically obvious, given how frequently we find such things at the roots of important political ideologies, social movements, and wars.
>I bring this up not because I demand utter historical accuracy in my games – I will almost certainly happily play Age of Empires IV despite this. Instead, I bring it up because I find that this overly simplified view – sometimes, depressing, held to be the truth by some – in its errors, reveals some important things about empires, which again, I should note, seem to have been the dominant very-large-scale organization system for humans generally in the historical period.
First it tends to obscure the necessarily diverse nature of empires – as we have just laid out and perhaps more to the point, it obscures the power that empires derive from being diverse....
Videogames rely on gameplay more than storytelling or teaching history. It's not a novel or encyclopedia entry. It's not unserious to expect a videogame to be fun over having a deep exploration over the possible interpretations of one word in its title.
Plus, some films are like Casablanca. Some are like History of the World Part 1. Additionally, if someone relies on media like Age of Empires, The Empire Strikes Back, or the novel Empire by Gore Vidal to gain an understanding of what an empire is, just because the word empire is in the title of these works, there are bigger issues at hand...
Because "Age of pre-empires" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Speaking for AOE2, the most popular AOE version,
It's not a great argument because the game takes place pre-empire, and the end of the game is intended to be when one player, the winner, is now an empire. This is evidenced by the final age in the game being called the Imperial Age. Most empires in history fought their neighbors in more or less the same manner as exhibited in the game before they became big and strong enough to be an actual empire.
I guess you could make an argument that the game doesn't transition into the most powerful player beginning to behave like an empire in the imperial age as you keep steamrolling your opponents until the end of the game, but it's a weaker argument and it's not clear why you would want to change the entire game's mechanics right before the game ends.
Am I misremembering things? I played a lot of AOE2 in college and in multiplayer games one of my gotos was to attack someone quickly and force them into an alliance where they sent me resources, and then continued to demand resources so they could never grow big enough to remove the alliance and attack, then coordinate through them to attack other people. Seemed like a pretty good approximation of empires to me at the time.
> is now an empire
wonder ful point
Oof
It's not that deep. It's obvious that AoE marketed itself as an RTS game and not some kind of 4X game with complex diplomacy/subjugation mechanics. Competitive RTS games are at their best when each faction maintains some unique characteristics (as opposed to assimilating opposing faction tech), otherwise, you lose balance and/or strategy. At the end of the day, good gameplay should be prioritized over flavor.
ETA: To add, as a young nerd I did appreciate the history section of the game.