What is the Chinese government thinking? What are they holding back?
And whatever the heck are the North Koreans planning? Are they serious about the test or was it just lots of TNT? Why are they trying to attract attention to their nuclear programme?
No one really understands Kim Jung-il, so it's hard to guess what they're up to.
Who's interested in a trip to North Korea? They have guided tours for tourists! North Korean tourism is... exotic, to say the least.
Another game. Europa Universalis III, with its 2 expansions: Napoleon's Ambition and In Nomine (In the name (0f) in Latin).
The original game is about the world between the day after Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, fell on 30 May 1453 until the 1st of January 1793, which really isn't a particularly important date. The final date is merely some years into the Revolution after the storming of the Bastille.
The first expansion, as the name hints, lengthens the game by including the years during which Napoleon reigned. In this game, one of the years I can start at is the day the Revolution began, when the idea of Nationalism swept across Europe. The game will end, no matter when the player started at, by the 1st of January 1822. Again, not an important date; Napoleon died in 1821.
In Nomine lengthens it some more by making it start 50 years earlier. In this expansion, we are allowed to play from the 14th of October 1399 till the 3rd of February 1821. 14th Oct 1399 was the day after Henry VI of England was coronated. This guy's life was made into a play by Shakespeare. I don't know what happened on 3/2/1821, but Napoleon's fatal health condition began showing in that month.
The interesting thing about the earlier start in In Nomine is that players get to see the final death of the Byzantine Empire. In 1399, the Empire was still barely in existence in the form of Byzantine Thrace (where Constantinople was, now renamed to Istanbul) and Morea.
The purple bit of land surrounded by the Ottoman Empire and the Black Sea was Thrace, while the purple mass SW of it was Morea ( In 1399 Morea controlled only about 3/4 of that landmass). Obviously it was hopeless for the Greeks, and 54 years later, New Rome became Istanbul. Morea was taken by the Ottomans 7 years after that.There was a time when I thought the Byzantine Empire was the Holy Roman Empire. But the Byzantine Empire was really a different empire.
Meanwhile during this period nothing really happened in Asia except in Northern India where the Timurid Empire grew really big.
Anyway I tried playing In Nomine just now. I tried my hands on Morocco because I wanted to see Africans (well they're mostly Arabs today, but it's in the African continent so technically they're still Africans) ruling the world. Sadly, all the African Sultanates and Sheikhdoms and etc were technologically challenged and were obviously meant to be food for the Europeans. Except the Mamluks.
My Morocco thrived in the initial peace, having royal marriages (royal relatives marrying with their royal relatives) with all my Muslim neighbours, ie Algiers, Tunisia and Granada. Tripoli rejected my proposal, for unknown reasons.
But within several years, the alliance of Portugal, Castille and Aragon declared war on me. I didn't have any allies, so no one was obliged to help me. I was gang-raped, so I quit.
After reading about the next few crusades after the fourth, I realized there really isn't anything of note that happened, except for the Sixth Crusade when the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II led his armies without the consent of the Church.
It was the first time someone attempted a large-scale crusade to Jerusalem without the blessings of the papacy. It was also the first time a Crusade was led by someone who was excommunicated (due to politcal reasons). It was also the first Crusade to succeed in taking Jerusalem, albeit to a degree.
Fred was trying gain power while reducing that of the Papacy. They didn't like that at all, and when he failed to lead his armies to join the failed Fifth Crusade 7 years before, the Pope took that as an excuse to excommunicate the emperor. He couldn't go for the trip because there was an epidemic in his empire, causing stability problems that required his immediate attention.
The emperor went anyway despite the shit the Church gave him, and actually reached Jerusalem. However due to certain unfortunate events (as usual) his armies were significantly shrunken by then. He didn't just leave though. No it wasn't anti-climatic at all.
He used a show of force, marching his armies down the coast trying to scare the Egyptians who controlled the Holy Land. Meanwhile, the Sultan of Egypt was busy fighting rebels in Syria, so he gave Fred Jerusalem plus a few other bits of land. The contract also included a ten-year truce.
So for ten years, the Christians controlled Jerusalem. Success! But after that the Muslims just charged in and took everything back.
It wasn't that bad though. At least he took it back at all. That was the best results ever achieved by all the Crusades aiming at Jerusalem. No one else ever did better than that. This also demonstrated that the Crusades did not need the blessings of the Church to succeed. In fact the statistics at that point of time show that if the Church wasn't involved, crusades to Jerusalem would have 100% probability of success, while crusades started by the popes are always doomed to failure.
Of course, statistics aren't everything. Four years after the Muslims took back the Holy Land, Louis IX of France probably saw this logic and thought he would give it a try.
The king failed, got captured by the Egyptians together with much of his forces and was ransomed for a shitload of money (roughly the annual revenue of his entire kingdom at that time).
Then he tried again by starting the Eigth Crusade but died after landing in Africa from a really bad stomachache. Charles I of Naples, King of Sicily and brother of Louis IX, had just arrived, so he took over and subsequently resumed the century-old Christian tradition of failing at such Crusades.
But before he lost, he managed to ally himself with Edward I of England, though Prince Ed arrived too late to help. Charles lost, gave up and went home. Ed, on the other hand, didn't want to go home without doing anything, so he started the Ninth Crusade and... seriously do I really have to repeat the same thing eight times? Before he could attack Jerusalem his father the King of England died, so he said," Gtg need crown," and left.
Hence it took NINE tries for the medieval Christians to finally get what their god was trying to tell them (which probably must have been something along the lines of "Go away! I'm telling you, you guys don't want to be here, especially in 700 years' time!). Nine attempts spread over 200 years with only one that resulted in some sort of success. Many of the rest actually involved fighting with fellow Christians and some helped to split the Church. And btw, Louis XI was later sainted (Saint Louis) despite the Crusades.
At least they tried...
:P
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