The Bronze Age Collapse - II: The Wheel and the Rod - Extra History

You all are!

Martin Ockovsky

David is a star. :)

Extra History

The representation of the materials creates all kinds of feelings in me. RTS nostalgic feelings. I love you. Absolutely amazing work as always. + 10

Martin Ockovsky

And to you!

Extra History

World War II and the Late Bronze Age - so we just had to bookend history a bit, and that was the key to your heart? ;) Thanks for joining us here, and we hope you enjoy our little Patreon community!

Extra History

happy 4th .

schuyler

That's it. This series and the D-Day one got me to pledge. A little at first, but I hope to give more when I will be able. Thank you Extra Credits!

Jonathan Cote

I actually tried a Caesar game for the first time... I wanna say about a year ago? Gosh I loved it. So sad that I missed it when I was younger and had more free time, because I would have wasted a whole summer on that thing.

Extra History

We did, and we slayed goblins!

Extra History

An interwoven global society is as American as apple pie. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kySeEaR_8pA" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kySeEaR_8pA</a>

Jason Youngberg

I have Pharaoh and I absolutely adore that Game. One of the best, if you ask me. :-)

Martin Verran

I do play a lot of Games but, no, Arthur, I am not familiar with RPGs, but I Think I understand your explanation of them. 🙂 At the Moment what I am is annoyed by an advert on one of my Mobile Games which is literally just a link to an external store and doesn't have a white x in the corner to make it go away.

Martin Verran

That it was being recorded hadn't even occured to me, and is a pleasent surprise. May have to listen to that later. @Martin: D&D is short for Dungeons and Dragons. It's an RPG, or Role Playing Game. The original D&D was one of the first table top RPGs to exist - but that was decades ago, so there've been several different versions of the rules since then, hence my question about what edition it was. If you're not familiar with RPGs - picture a bunch of geeks in a basement somewhere. They've got stacks of rulebooks, oddly shaped dice, paper, pencils. Most of them are there playing a single character - it's described on the paper in front of them. One person is playing the entire rest of the world - they're the game master, running adventures and the rest of the world for all the players. A lot of what the players want to do is covered in their stacks of rule books ("I want to attack that monster with my sword!" "Okay, roll these dice.") but whenever something isn't, it's up to the GM to decide what happens. And of course, you're playing characters of your own devising, so if you're doing it well you might spend hours just interacting with each other, never touching the dice at all.

Nessf

Never Mind, Soraya, I very often forget what Day of the Week it is but seeing this Reminds me that I have Three full Days without a single Sheep anywhere in sight. As much as we love them I expect my colleagues would agree that it is nice to have a few Days all to yourself and just relax. P.S: What exactly is D&D?

Martin Verran

Do keep in mind, a lot of those interconnections are ancient. Late medieval and renaissance England was reliant on Lithuanian and Ukranian grain shipped through the Baltic on Dutch and German ships to feed itself, for example. Similarly, by the high middle ages, cloth production in Europe was largely centered in a few locations, most notably the Low Countries and Tuscany with heavy trade in the commodity passing through the continent since everybody had to wear clothes. These were pretty basic goods that people relied on for trades back in the supposed dark times of the middle ages.

Christina Maria Jessen

Perhaps it is just the fact that you are the ones telling this, but the command economy reminds me a lot of how videogame economies work, and when I recall how bad I was at the old Caesar games the idea really un-nerves me...

Matthew Foweraker

Did you venture forth into Dark Dungeons?

Cifer

Haha! Thanks, Markus. Arthur: we're playing 5E! Dan Jones is actually recording it if you want to listen, and yes, he did name the show Dan Jones & Dragons*: <a href="https://soundcloud.com/djndcast" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://soundcloud.com/djndcast</a> *at our insistence

Extra History

Oh, I don't know. We might surprise you!

Extra History

Methinks this may be a cautionary tale about how fragile our own heavily interwoven global society is.

Michael Jebbett

I must ask the most important question - what edition?

Nessf

One of the greatest things about the Bronze Age is that there's so much uncertainty about what happened, exactly, that we can make a good argument for a lot of very different theories. I kind of enjoy that uncertainty, myself, especially when it leads us to explore more cool ideas like this!

Extra History

Oooh. I love Sierra games but I never tried Pharaoh. Sounds like I'd enjoy it too!

Extra History

Hahaha! Whatever you think is cool, they did it first and they're already over it.

Extra History

It is the evilest!

Extra History

You might like Pharaoh from Sierra Entertainment. The game even takes place in the Bronze Age!

I saw a documentary from the BBC, it talked about the Bronze Age Britons and it lead me to believe that the Bronze Age collapse was an economic bubble. It showed how ancient Britain was a major source of tin and copper and traded huge amounts of bronze overseas. But the only reason they know this is because they found treasure troves of bronze buried in Britain. Not hoarding against scarcity but stockpiling for the day 'prices' go up, because there was too much bronze. I mean if you connect things from the series on currency to this series about socioecogovernmental systems you can easily see how societies fall from day-to-day events. Fascinating.

Justin M.

This sounds like the basis for a pretty fun strategy game. One where you have to maintain your country's administration to avoid a game ruining snowball affect.

Parker

Ah, China... The hipsters of the ancient world.

ding you d and d you take another night from us all!

schuyler

That is one of the best excuses for everything ever.

Markus Engelhardt

I hate to admit this... but I was up late playing D&D and forgot what day it was. That's all. :(

Extra History

What caused the Delay, if you don't mind me asking?

Martin Verran