NA,
Please don't take people' comment too seriously.
I think TG's main point is that your questions are mostly answered by reading the whitepaper and all the background material already posted.
And it would save you a great deal of time to read them first and reading them also empower you to engage in more meaningful online discussion.
As for historical accuracy, no, the latest Amazon Total War is not 'history' per se, but it is a highly plausible scenario.
Because for tens of thousands of years, the human races are maternal societies. What we know as recorded 'history' is really a very small fragment of our total existence.
Put it in a different way, the human story is mostly 'her-story', and very little of 'his-story' (no offense to Herodotus intended). Although what we know today are mostly the latter part.
Amazon Total War IS about Maternal Societies. I took a lot of flack from people for creating what I think is a true representation of ancient conflict involving the maternal communities. All the dirty and silly insinuations aside, the Amazons were real, from archeological and anthropological perspectives. And the following are undeniably true.
- In ancient time, women make better cavalry soldiers, because the horses in their days are really slightly up-scaled ponies. Take a look at the photograph taken in the Victorian Era showing a Mongol horse archer riding his steppe pony, and seeing that short stocky warrior dangling his feet an inch or two above the ground, I think you would agree that if in the 1800's the steppe ponies were not up to the task, after two milleniums of natural evolution, most of the equestrian breeds in ancient times are not meant as cavalry mounts for men.
So aside from one on one hero duels, in none ritualistic combat, Men would have to fight on foot or on chariot. Whereas women, with the advantage of their more petite frames, have no problem roaming a great distance on horseback. Women also have no such desire for the 'glory' of hand-to-hand combat and their only reason to engage in combat is to defeat the foe as economically and decisively as possible. So they would be perfectly comfortable fighting on horseback with stand-off weapons. This is the genesis of modern day warfare, ie to the Amazon, there is no such thing as fighting fair, and the Amazona do not want to 'fight like men'.
- Because the lesser physical reach of most women compared to men, women must fight as a team. And their end-goal is not for glory as much as to protect their community, and most importantly, their children. In other words, their goal is not heroic glory but to "do-it or die" for the survival of their community. The Iranistan translation of Amazon is "Women who fight as a team". This is the basis of modern combat and it is worth noting. Because in the classical era, most 'men combat' are one-on-one hero duels. You would notice that it is not until around 520bc, when the Greeks become the mercenaries employed in Phrygia and Caria, both of them Satrapies in the Persian Empire with heavy Amazon cultural influence, the battle formation such as Phalanx, or cavalry wedge formation start to get mentioned in 'history' ? Before that, most Greek battle description is about some high and mighty warriors getting off their chariots and engaging in bronze age version of school yard bully fights.
Square infantry formation has existed from Summerian time, and many Assyrian Stellae depicting walls of shields and forest of spears of their armies. And countless of dissertation described the possibility of their use and deployment. Once you put the assumptions aside, however, all sources can only agreed that it might be marching and review formation, but not one source can state with authority that is a battle formation. In other words, what we can say definitively is that at the time when men still fought as many individuals in combat, Amazons already fought as a combat team.
So I think it is perfectly valid to have an Amazon Total War mod, do you ?
The latest Amazon TW mod (aka Amazon Total War Reignited, or ATW 6.0) is about women soldiers forming small equestrian forces that can defeat much larger army on the battlefield, not in head-on confrontation, but by using superior firepower and mobility. This is also the basis of modern-day maneuver warefare.
And to answer one of your questions, there are plenty of factions in the Amazon Total War with the male soldiers, those combat units are used mainly to demonstrate the validity of this hypothesis.
[chuckle!]
So feel free to try out the mod, and your opinion and feedback are greatly valued here. As TG said, as long as they are informed opinion and feedback.[This message has been edited by ParthianShot (edited 11-21-2011 @ 11:35 PM).]