I don't think that is possible, but I'd be wrong!

Dear Granite_Rocks/S_Bishop,

I want to write to you on this thread that you made because it seems like a way to get in touch with you, as your profile doesn't have an email, and anyway I want to open up my discussion about brainstorming scenario design to others who read it.

Your series of AOE:ROR scenarios called "Ages of Mankind" is excellent. Your scenarios and design style remind me of puzzles and I am still working through the scenarios.

In your Chapter I (eg. "Lord of the Animals") History section, as I recall, you made a comment asking or exploring what separated mankind from animals and saying that it's a philosophical question. I responded to the philosophical issue yesterday in the Comment Section for that Campaign file in the Granary.

The main reason why I wanted to write to you was to share with you my brainstorming on my designing of an early Christian campaign, because I'm impressed with your campaign and with your throughtfulness. Plus you made the scenario about Jerusalem's rebuilding under Cyrus, so it looks like you can have some shared interest in the topic.

I got into AOE:ROR a few years ago because it is one of the few games to deal with the 1st-2nd Century AD period and across the Roman world, particularly in the case of ROR's 3rd Campaign's "Year of the Emperors" Scenario, but also because of the many amateur Scenarios that cover events like the 70 AD Roman conquest of Jerusalem.

One of the features of ROR is the Scenario and Campaign Editor, so I wanted to make a campaign dealing with the events of the 1st-mid-2nd century AD, particularly the events related to Christianity or Judea.

One basic question that came to mind for designing one was how many scenarios are in a Campaign, or what would be the beginning and end of a Campaign? In the ROR's 3rd Campaign, there are 5 scenarios (eg. Actium/Cleopatria & "Year of the 4 Emperors"). But some official AOE Campaigns have been much longer. "Ascent of Egypt" is a learning campaign and has 12 Scenarios. Campaigns are tied together by a common theme. So for instance the Ascent of Egypt deals with Egypt's history up to about 1425 BC.

More historically, a "campaign" was a tour of duty by a Roman commander. After he reached a certain number of "campaigns", he reached a certain high rank. Each campaign would have certain battles. So for instance, there was a "campaign" in the Alps when the Romans fought battles to conquer that area. And in the history of the Alps, there could be several Roman "Campaigns". One Scenario that I made was Abgar's "Campaign" in Mesopotamia, as it involved a battle against Nineveh, one against Gaugamela, and one against a Persian ruler's forces on different parts of the map. But despite being called a "Campaign", it only made up one ROR "Scenario". It was better to make it one Scenario than to break it up into several because moving Abgar through different regions in one Scenario fit the storyline better.

From the player's POV, one downside to long campaigns made of lots of scenarios is that the player can tire of it after a while. That is true with reading long books in my experience. But on the other hand a long good book can also have a rewarding side. From the designer's POV, a long scenario can be time-consuming: on average, a single scenario that I made took about a week to ten days. It starts with researching it, and then drawing the map accurately.

Let me tell you about Scenarios that I considered for a campaign related to the early Christians. First, I already made the following four and put them on the Granary:

- Gethsemane (About Holy Week in 33 AD)
- Conversions and Catacombs of Rome (Peter probably went to Rome in 42-43 AD)
- Abgar V (Abgar detained Meherdates so that he didn't get the Persian throne in c. 49)
- Thomas' mission to king Gondophares in Taxila (Thomas went to Taxila in c. 46-51)

Next, I thought about one on Nero's persecution of Christians, as well as Epaphroditus' later killing of Nero, Emperor Domitian's later killing of Epaphroditus, and Stephanus' killing of Domitian. I think that Joey S did an excellent one in his campaign "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire". But I want to make mine historically accurate and as I understand it, Roman soldiers did not hunt down Christians in the street in the 1st-2nd centuries and kill them on the spot like in that campaign. I could be wrong because there was an instance in the 3rd century IIRC where Roman soldiers caught Christians in a catacomb and I don't know if they killed them there.

In including the killings of Nero and Domitian, I would say that time, like space, is relative. Generally we think of incidents occurring across space united in the same dimension, whereas separated in time. However, this is from our 3D point of view. In some other sense, events occurring at different times are also united and occur across time. So normally we would look at two related events in two different spaces at one time and look at them together, but someone could theoretically also perceive two different connected events at two different times and look at them together in 4 Dimensions. This narrative structure shows up in some books and movies like "Cloud Atlas" and "The Master and Margarita"

After that, I thought about a few on Josephus, covering the period 66-70 AD, because I believe that he was a Christian. There are a few reasons why I think that he was, such as the Testimonium Flavianum, and I could mention this in the History section.

Josephus was a governor of Judea and he joined the revolt against Rome, preparing troops against them in several Galilean cities. His forces in the early stage were also resisting bandits IIRC and he had problems with competing Jewish rebel factions in Judea. At one point IIRC they wanted to kill him and he escaped. So my first Josephus scenario would be on this early stage where Josephus was preparing troops and fighting/escaping competitors and bandits/raiders.

The next scenario would be the battle with Rome that Josephus had. His forces were defending a city (maybe Jotapata) and he was captured afterward. In the scenario, I could make it so that the buildings line up with the pattern of the buildings that the Player constructed in the previous Scenario.

There is this famous "Josephus" math problem based on the event of that battle because a number of his soldiers, according to his account, wanted to commit suicide instead of surrender, and he failed to persuade them otherwise. So the soldiers killed each other in a certain order that they agreed on, one after the other, and Josephus and his bodyguard were last in line to kill each other. But they did not kill each other, and surrendered instead. The Josephus math problem is about setting up an order of units such that they cancel each other one by one leaving only two pre-selected units that don't cancel out. And something like the math problem could be included in the game.

I don't remember offhand if Josephus claimed that he was lucky that he survived the soldiers killing each other, but he probably arranged it so that he and his bodyguard were last in line. As with the Masada mass suicide story, I'm also skeptical that the soldiers actually killed each other, as opposed to the Romans killing them.

Chronologically next in time would be the "Flight to Pella." The account goes that an angel warned the Christians to leave the city of Jerusalem and that they did so not long before the Roman battle at Jerusalem. They left to go to the region of Pella, in Jordan or in Syria. In Josephus' history of the Jewish revolt, chariots were seen fighting in the sky and there was a voice over the city heard saying something like "Depart hence", and these events were considered ominous in the leadup to the Roman battle. It isn't clear whether the story of the angel making a warning that led the Christians to leave refers to the Gospel's warnings to leave for the hills when rumors of war are heard or to Josephus' story about the voice, or to some other event like an angel appearing to someone and giving a warning.

During or right before the battle of Jerusalem, Josephus was at the walls of Jerusalem in the company of the Roman army, imploring the citizens of Jerusalem to give up the city to the Romans. In his history of the revolt, you can read the things that he claimed that he told the citizens. Probably his argument for surrender went somewhere along those lines. He referred in part to the prophecies in the TaNaKh about the city's destruction, probably referring to Daniel 9, but also referring to the ideas that he interpreted to be in the Book of Ezekiel. I could explain about that in the History section.

So in the scenario about the Flight to Pella, I could have the Christians leave the city, and then the Roman army come and besiege the city. It might be kind of hard to have the Christians have to leave the city to avoid an enemy Player when Josephus would be next to and "Allied" with another AI Player designated as the Romans. Josephus in that scenario would be trying to "Convert" Jerusalem citizens, and the Christians who left the city would be founding a village near Pella. Maybe Josephus trying to convert the citizens could be a separate scenario. I might be able to find a Middle East or Levant map that included both Pella and Jerusalem. to include the part about the chariots in the sky I could put a cliff with a lake of shallows on it next to the city.

Next would come an Armaggeddon Scenario. Wikipedia says about the date of the book of Revelation: "The bulk of traditional sources date the book to the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian (AD 81–96), which evidence tends to confirm." It's debatable whether an Armaggeddon Scenario would be best placed chronologically in the late 1st Century or as one of the last Scenarios in a long campaign. In many ways John the author seems to be referring to events and figures in his own time. One documentary suggested that the horses or chariots from the east in Armaggeddon alluded to the Persian army's emphasis on cavalry. Another interpretation of Revelation is that it alludes to archetypes and events that repeat throughout history. So that in a sense, the Roman emperor was "Antichrist", but there are also other Antichrists in history. A third, common interpretation is that Revelation more literally refers to a specific Antichrist person and a specific battle in the End Times, which would turn out to be many centuries after John's own time.

In my designing of an Armaggeddon scenario, I would try to make the terrain and geography like the location in Palestine and make the armies correspond to what was described in the Book. I believe that Magog refers Biblically to an ancient nation in what is now Turkey, not to someplace in southern Ukraine or Russia as some have thought. In case the battle is supposed to include some supernatural element, like God using light or lightning to fight Magog, I could include the St. Francis character who shoots lightning and have him and the "good" army face off against a large opponent, since St. Francis is a strong unit in the game. Or I could use the mirror towers, which are strong too.

Next could come the rain miracle that happened under Marcus Aurelius Antoninus that helped Christian Roman soldiers fighting in Germany. The rain gave water to the soldiers to drink and sent lightning at their enemy.

Next I could make a scenario about the persecution that happened in Vienne and Lyon. Certainly there were alot of instances of conversions and persecutions that happened in the Roman empire in the first two centuries, but as far as ROR is concerned, they would follow a general pattern (ie. priest comes to village, converts villagers, then converts some soldiers). ROR tends to be a military game, with military units fighting each other, whereas the priest conversion feature is really a side addition to the ROR armies, albeit one of the more powerful units.

I welcome your thoughts on this. My main difficulty with designing more scenarios is how time consuming they would tend to be for me. Each of the 4 scenarios that I already made took maybe 10 days. Alot of the time is spent on research and then designing the maps based on their historical geography. This is my main personal obstacle for succeeding in making all the scenarios that I just outlined.

The first five scenarios that I outlined about (from Gethsemane to Nero's persecutions) seem also to fit one "Campaign" because they focus on the apostles, whereas the next 3 (Josephus and the Flight to Pella) seem to fit another Campaign and a separate theme, ie. Josephus and the Jewish Revolt of 66-73 AD. Armaggeddon is in a way it's own stand alone scenario. Being apocalyptic and eschatological, it fits well with Gethsemane and maybe Nero's persecutions, but it also fits with the 70 AD destruction of Jerusalem's Temple as an "eschatological" event in a way. Being an End Times event, it could also be placed at the end of all the scenarios outlined above. Finally, the rain miracle in Germany in the mid-2nd century and the persecution in Lyons, France, have some things in common, being German and French events from the same period. I guess that putting Armaggeddon at the end would keep the series of Scenarios from ending on the "bad" note of the tragedy at Lyons. Americans don't like "bad" endings in stories, but apparently some Europeans do.

Yours kindly, Rakovsky