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All,
In my free time (damn that CTP2) I write books. Nothing published yet, but some near misses. I used to do SciFi but realized I was wasting my time, since what I really enjoyed (and wrote passionatly) was history. So now I'm working on a historical fiction - namely, the settlement of Carthage (by Elisha, a.k.a. Dido).
Details aside, heres the question: All of you have built hundreds of colonys. You've hit that little city button and pop! There is a new city. So what would that take? Not the step by step details, but what are the peculiarities? What are aspects about building a city from the ground up that would be interesting, enough to make the reader go "huh - I never thought of that."
Assume the proto-carthaginians are only starting with a couple of hundred settlers (some of them stolen from Astartes temple in Cyprus).
Heres one point I know: the first building to be erected in a phoenician city is the temple of Melqart. This serves as the centerpoint of the coloney. Also, everyone across the med knows that this temple IS sanctuary. You might be at war with the Phoenicans, but if you are here, you are safe and can trade open and honestly. It was the lynchpin the their entire colonization effort (almost a franchise operation, given the Phoenicians).
And, yeah, I know the ox-hide story.
p.s. founders-laf. My backdrop on my computer is from an old oil painting, "Dido founding Carthage". Its supposed to inspire me, but its a little silly. There is Elisha and a couple of shmoes dwarfed by these massive stone forums that they must have just recently assembled. Jeeze - how many craftsmen and tools did you bring? One with think that a struggling coloney on a hostile shore would have better things to do with time and sweat.
Oh well - I look forward to whatever responses I get on this.
In my free time (damn that CTP2) I write books. Nothing published yet, but some near misses. I used to do SciFi but realized I was wasting my time, since what I really enjoyed (and wrote passionatly) was history. So now I'm working on a historical fiction - namely, the settlement of Carthage (by Elisha, a.k.a. Dido).
Details aside, heres the question: All of you have built hundreds of colonys. You've hit that little city button and pop! There is a new city. So what would that take? Not the step by step details, but what are the peculiarities? What are aspects about building a city from the ground up that would be interesting, enough to make the reader go "huh - I never thought of that."
Assume the proto-carthaginians are only starting with a couple of hundred settlers (some of them stolen from Astartes temple in Cyprus).
Heres one point I know: the first building to be erected in a phoenician city is the temple of Melqart. This serves as the centerpoint of the coloney. Also, everyone across the med knows that this temple IS sanctuary. You might be at war with the Phoenicans, but if you are here, you are safe and can trade open and honestly. It was the lynchpin the their entire colonization effort (almost a franchise operation, given the Phoenicians).
And, yeah, I know the ox-hide story.
p.s. founders-laf. My backdrop on my computer is from an old oil painting, "Dido founding Carthage". Its supposed to inspire me, but its a little silly. There is Elisha and a couple of shmoes dwarfed by these massive stone forums that they must have just recently assembled. Jeeze - how many craftsmen and tools did you bring? One with think that a struggling coloney on a hostile shore would have better things to do with time and sweat.
Oh well - I look forward to whatever responses I get on this.
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