It's not that often that cutting-edge video games make it to the History Channel, let alone find themselves used as an educational tool. But that's exactly the position Rome: Total War finds itself in when appearing in the History Channel's "Decisive Battles" series, which kicked off July 23rd and runs every Friday. Using the Rome: Total War engine, the series re-enacts various battles through history, leading us to ask the developers for their own take on history and how it plays out in Rome: Total War. In the first installment of our new "Historic Battles" series, the developers give some basic background on the attention to accuracy, as well as two particular battles from the old Roman days.



After reading about some of the strange little things that were acceptable in the ancient world, we put several dozen new vices into Rome: Total War. Without historical research, however, we'd just have done the same as some other games companies and "made some stuff up." As it turned out, our research ended up determining nearly all the game content: units and buildings in the tech tree, tactical abilities for units like the Roman testudo or tortoise formation, nations that we included, and so on.

Admittedly, we did include a few things they were funny, rather than 100% historically accurate. Overall, however, we've tried to get historical flavor into the game, rather than slavish adherence to a historical timeline. We make sure that the starting conditions for a battle or campaign are as correct as possible, and then let the game take over. We're not trying to create a simulator here, but something that will be interesting and fun. Based on our experience with Shogun: Total War and Medieval: Total War we know that the history is important to players, but also that it leads people into finding out more for themselves. And anything that encourages people to go out and learn has to be a good thing.

The Parthian Cataphract cavalry rout the Roman cavalry.

Carrhae

Carrhae was a battle that need not have happened.

It was the success of Julius Caesar in Gaul that led Licinius Crassus, a rival for power, to move against the Parthians: Caesar was doing rather too well. Crassus had been a member of the First Triumvirate with Caesar and Pompey, and then a consul with Pompey. His achievements were in danger of being overshadowed.

In 55 BC, Crassus went to Syria -- a province he had been given when the spoils of the Empire were divided up -- with war on his mind. The Parthian Empire to the east was an opportunity for glory and even greater wealth, although his desire for a war was completely unnecessary and probably beyond his skills to manage. To be fair to Crassus, he was an adequate general, rather than a great commander like Caesar or Pompey. He probably knew that he owed his place in the Triumvirate to his enormous wealth. There also have to be some doubts as to Julius Caesar's true motives in writing to Crassus urging him to go to war.