Bellum Totalis(?)

Total war. A modern concept perhaps, an effect of nationalistic ideology and industrialism, first seen in the First World War. A state where everything is subordinated to the cause of war, all production, civil society and the state dedicated to that same purpose. It has been argued that similar mobilizations have occured earlier, perhaps in the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars of France, pehaps in the final years of Charles XII in Sweden(before someone finally put him, and the swedish people, out of there misery) under von Görtz. Reading ancient history it can seem as if it is far older than any of these examples; Sparta or Rome at times, both seem like societies pretty dedicated to warfare.
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To a “gamer”, as those of us equally devoted to gaming are sometimes called, total war means a lot of fun, since a certain series of games. It started in medieval Japan with Shogun:TW, went to europe in the same era with Medieval:TW and then finally arrived in the ancient world with Rome:Total War. The basic concept is a combination of manouvering on a large scale strategic map, where you move armies, build units, buildings and manage taxes and trade, with tactical(like strategy, but not Kumbaya, from the greek; Taktikē, the art of organizing an army) battles in real time.
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There are, you see, two main versions of the strategy game; those where things happen as time passes with both sides acting at once and those where they players take turns, usually with the actions of each being resolved one after another. Chess is an example of turnbased games, even if most strategy games limit moves per piece and turn rather than moves per side and turn. Most real time strategy games(RTS in industry terms), put the focus on lots of action, managing different units under stressful conditions, limited time and high speed events leading to “clickfests” where one is constantly giving commands and moving around. Personally, I really suck at this and, perhaps for that reason, don’t enjoy it at all. The wonderful thing about the Total war series is that the RTS element is pausable; whenever you feel the nedd you can halt the action and give commands.
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The difference between the tactical and the strategic level is, to simplify it to an absurd degree, that tactics is when you can see and directly hurt each other, while strategy is all the prepration for hurting the other party taking place while you can’t see each them(I said absurdly. Furthermore it ignores the third, intermediate level). In the Civilization game when you want to attack an enemy unit you simply move it onto the other and the whole thing is resolved abstractly. In TW this instead transports you to a tactical battlefield where you manouver your cohorts of hastati, principe and triarii against the opponents war elephants and phalanxes to, well, kill them and make them run, and then hunt them down(just as in the real world, it is during the retreat the most losses are taken). Oh, and Testudo!
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The model in RTW serves its purpose; it’s really mostly about creating cool tactical battles with cool units. Well that, and conquering the world. Thus the time scope is far more limited than Civ, you don’t reasearch technology. Instead you get more advanced units by growing your cities and building training camps, archery ranges and stables. Not wanting to preempt the talk scheduled Saturday at the conference about this game I won’t say much more, except that I look forward to hearing from our reporter in the field about that particular paper. I will however note that the game does contain two versions of the roman army, the pre- and post-marian reform variants(länk). The reform is triggered by a secret criteria (scroll down to the heading "Concerning thy realm if thou does don the Toga) in the game and before you have the traditional version with three different infantry types mentioned above(and of course velites as skirmishers) and after word you have the professional legionary-the rock hard troop that built the empire.
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An interesting twist is that if you play as a roman you in fact paly as one of the great families of roman; the Julii, the Brutii or the Scipii. Your family members, born and adopted, can get elected as praefect, quaestor or consul depending or your standing with the senate. To keep the esteemed elders happy you complete missions for them, such as capturing cities or other violent things(the game includes assasins, not advised for sensitive viewers). To win you have to build your popularity with the people so they one they can back you when you turn against the senate, defeat the other great families, take Rome and the expand the empire to include a certain number of provinces. The way your family wields power though doesn’t seem quite historically accurate; you have your own cities and armies, not from year to year as apointed by SPQR but permanently. You can also play as other factions, Gauls, Carthaginians(War elephants!), Greeks, Egyptians etc. You can trade with other factions, even make alliances, but sooner or later you usually end up fighting them and hopefull taking over there cities(when you do one of the options presented is exterminate-personally, I think those those Etruscans had it coming).
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All this invites a certain amount of idintification with your electronic puppets and some roleplaying . Your family members gain traits and abilities based on what happens; if elected consul you become more respected and better at commanding, run away from battles and you become known as a coward and your men will run away more easily, win battles to become a better commander, spend time in a city with an academy to become educated or govern a large and rich city to turn decadent, wine-soaked and lazy. You also attract followers, everything from mentors to misstresses to miners. Gradually you start identifying and (dis)/liking these characters, wanting them to develop in certain direction, become better. It also translate to greater immersion and a stronger emotional engagement with what happens to your faction; it is very satisfying to become emporer, and even more so to sack rome as Carthago in revenge for what will never happen(länk sack of kartago) in your version of history.
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This feeling of being there or being somone else(someone cool-and what is cooler than war elephants?) is another reason people play games. Mere escapism? Was that what I meant with the quote yesterday? Sweet escape, an opiate or circus for our times? Well, to certain degree, but that’s certainly not all I read in that quote, and that is certainly not all achieved by being someone else for awhile. We go to great lengths to acheive this in other ways, in all the arts. It is good practice for being ourselves, after all.
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Signed,
Tegularius
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There are two expansions(Barbarian Invasions about the fall of the Empire and Alexander about, well, guess.....), countless mods for Rome:Total War (including a Lord of the Rings version, which I found out about in writing this post and will now have to play!) and one, soon two, sequels, none of which take place in ancient times though. Find out more at in heaven.
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Oh, in addition, agreeing with the previous speaker, I think the Home of the underdogs should be resurrected.