Tweet
Gaming
Salaam friends.
Just finished university for this year and with my increased spare time have been able to get back into my pashto learning journey. At the same time I am a bit of a nerd and love PC games. The genre that appeals to me is strategy games. So I am starting this thread to see if anyone else has a similar interests.
In this thread I plan to post about games which relate to or have some emphasis on Afghanistan and Pashtuns (seeing as this is Pashtun forums after all!).
The first game is by a company called Paradox Interactive, titled "Victoria 2".
The game is set in the Victorian era and begins roughly in the 1840's. The player takes the role of the monarch or leader of any country that existed in this time period, which of course includes Afghanistan under the leadership of Dost Muhammad Khan.
I think some of our members would enjoy this game as it provides an opportunity to make right historical injustices imposed on Afghanistan. As is ever the case Afghanistan starts off surrounded by enemy nations, Peshawar is occupied to East by the beligerent Punjabi's, to the North the horse lord Khan of Bukhara occupies ancient Balkh. To the West the Qajarid Persian menace has designs on the provinces of Herat and Kandahar.
Now I forgot to warn you guys that this is not your Call of Duty style game, rather it actually takes some brain cells to play as the player must micro-manage aspects of economy, diplomacy, military, politics, technology, population etc, basically you are the head of state. Hence you do not participate in actual combat rather you order your armies to do your bidding and combat is simulated based on aspects such as troop type, morale, terrain, equipment etc. See picture below for an example of an army unit.
One of my favourite aspects is the population mechanics of the game. Each country is made up of different ethnicities, in Afghanistan's case Pastuns, Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks. Population is further divided into Upper-Class (Aristocracts & Capitalists), Middle-Class (Artisans, Bureaucrats, Clerks, Officers & Clergymen) and Lower-Class (Farmers, Labourers, Soldiers & Slaves). The game literally models every adult age male in your country, each with their own religion (Sunni or Shia), ideology (Conservative, Liberal, Reactionary, Communist, Fascist etc) and a whole bunch of dominant issues among your populous (Jingoism, Pro Military, Moralism etc). As Afghanistan is a highly conservative nation you must be careful as raising taxes, losing a war, introducing innovative technologies, social or political reforms can cause great unrest among the people leading to militancy and revolt. The picture below shows a snapshot of the breakdown of the 875k adult male population in Afghanistan.
Other interesting topics covered by the game include economy, production and trade. Basically your countries farmers, labourers and artisans produce goods which are traded on the world market and the player can either tax or impose tariffs on the populace thereby raising revenue to fund their country, see screen shot below of Afghanistan initial production. As you can see the country is quite poor and does not produce much besides some wood, wool wheat, cotton and fruit.
The game runs all the way into the 1930's just before the onset of the World-WarII era. From humble beginnings I managed to re-conquer Balkh and Peshawar. Ultimately I destroyed and annexed the Punjab, Sindh, Kalat and Makran. I conquered half of Persia, defeated the British at the gates of Delhi, a defeat which they never recovered from and learnt never to to threaten or cross the Afghans again. I had allied my self with the Chinese Empire. My economy was one of the strongest in the world exporting all manners of goods. My armies were equipped and trained to the latest standards and manned with recruits from newly conquered regions. Funnily towards the end Pashtuns were a small minority in the empire with a vast number of Punjabis, Sindhis and Persian population. Unsurprisingly I was facing constant revolts in my far flung provinces which of course required brutal crushing! Here is a screen shot of my conquests. The only down side to the game is waking up from the dream and realising that Afghanistan will probably never be this powerful....
Overall this game is the budding statesmans/politicians/historians/economists/tyrants/maniacs wet dream!!
Check it out and let me know what you think. I will be posting reviews of other similar games to this thread if you guys show interest so please comment away!
Pa Makh De Kha.
Mr Logar
Just finished university for this year and with my increased spare time have been able to get back into my pashto learning journey. At the same time I am a bit of a nerd and love PC games. The genre that appeals to me is strategy games. So I am starting this thread to see if anyone else has a similar interests.
In this thread I plan to post about games which relate to or have some emphasis on Afghanistan and Pashtuns (seeing as this is Pashtun forums after all!).
The first game is by a company called Paradox Interactive, titled "Victoria 2".
The game is set in the Victorian era and begins roughly in the 1840's. The player takes the role of the monarch or leader of any country that existed in this time period, which of course includes Afghanistan under the leadership of Dost Muhammad Khan.
Now I forgot to warn you guys that this is not your Call of Duty style game, rather it actually takes some brain cells to play as the player must micro-manage aspects of economy, diplomacy, military, politics, technology, population etc, basically you are the head of state. Hence you do not participate in actual combat rather you order your armies to do your bidding and combat is simulated based on aspects such as troop type, morale, terrain, equipment etc. See picture below for an example of an army unit.
One of my favourite aspects is the population mechanics of the game. Each country is made up of different ethnicities, in Afghanistan's case Pastuns, Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks. Population is further divided into Upper-Class (Aristocracts & Capitalists), Middle-Class (Artisans, Bureaucrats, Clerks, Officers & Clergymen) and Lower-Class (Farmers, Labourers, Soldiers & Slaves). The game literally models every adult age male in your country, each with their own religion (Sunni or Shia), ideology (Conservative, Liberal, Reactionary, Communist, Fascist etc) and a whole bunch of dominant issues among your populous (Jingoism, Pro Military, Moralism etc). As Afghanistan is a highly conservative nation you must be careful as raising taxes, losing a war, introducing innovative technologies, social or political reforms can cause great unrest among the people leading to militancy and revolt. The picture below shows a snapshot of the breakdown of the 875k adult male population in Afghanistan.
Other interesting topics covered by the game include economy, production and trade. Basically your countries farmers, labourers and artisans produce goods which are traded on the world market and the player can either tax or impose tariffs on the populace thereby raising revenue to fund their country, see screen shot below of Afghanistan initial production. As you can see the country is quite poor and does not produce much besides some wood, wool wheat, cotton and fruit.
The game runs all the way into the 1930's just before the onset of the World-WarII era. From humble beginnings I managed to re-conquer Balkh and Peshawar. Ultimately I destroyed and annexed the Punjab, Sindh, Kalat and Makran. I conquered half of Persia, defeated the British at the gates of Delhi, a defeat which they never recovered from and learnt never to to threaten or cross the Afghans again. I had allied my self with the Chinese Empire. My economy was one of the strongest in the world exporting all manners of goods. My armies were equipped and trained to the latest standards and manned with recruits from newly conquered regions. Funnily towards the end Pashtuns were a small minority in the empire with a vast number of Punjabis, Sindhis and Persian population. Unsurprisingly I was facing constant revolts in my far flung provinces which of course required brutal crushing! Here is a screen shot of my conquests. The only down side to the game is waking up from the dream and realising that Afghanistan will probably never be this powerful....
Overall this game is the budding statesmans/politicians/historians/economists/tyrants/maniacs wet dream!!
Check it out and let me know what you think. I will be posting reviews of other similar games to this thread if you guys show interest so please comment away!
Pa Makh De Kha.
Mr Logar
Comment