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3.Civilisations

The Germans already control the Holy Roman Empire, although it was founded only in 962 AD. Because the scenario runs to the end of the 13th century, I think that this is acceptable.
The Germans are highly recommended. Just like the other West europeans, they have a relatively weak starting situation, which does indeed fit to the real situation of the late Dark Ages, but they can develop some of the best units. On the other hand, they are very far away from most of the objective cities.


The Franks have also been designed for play. However, they own lesser expanding room because they are “sandwiched” between the Germans and the Arabs in Spain. To balance this, they do have some of the objective cities (in Spain) right at their doorstep. Because many Frankish knights joined especially in the early part of the Reconquista, this even makes sense. The Frankish units are on the same level as the German ones.

The English are an even larger challenge, since they own only few cities in England and are therefore a bit isolated. However, the units they can develop are quite strong too.

The Byzantines have got the largest empire at the beginning of the scenario, but this civ has not been designed for play, this would be much to easy.

I will summarize the two Arab civs, because they too have not been designed for play. There are the Almohads in Spain and Northern Africa, and the Aijubides, named after the dynasty of Saladin, placed in Egypt and the Holy Land. I know this selection is not really accurate when the game starts, but due to the limits of Civ2 I decided to keep it.

The seventh civ, the Independants, represents several different medieval realms, e.g. the developing Christian kingdoms in Spain, Norman cities, and many cities in Eastern Europe or on the Balkan. Also Rome is set up as independent, since the Holy Roman Emperors were often in conflict with the Pope. Of course this civ is not playable.

Finally there are several Barbarian cities which represent the Seldjuk empire, later also Mongols appear as Barbs.
Generally, all cities are very little improved, because I thought that would be more interesting. For Western Europe, that is also quite realistic, because the fall of Rome triggered the decline of many cities, even such renowned towns as Trier became true ghost cities. Because of that, I limited the settlement at the beginning of the scenario to some important cities to leave some spare room for city-founding. Basically, the society of the Dark Ages was oriented more towards agriculture, the urbanization began much later.