Massalia Tales
Total War: Rome II - Massalia Campaign - With Divide Et Impera 0.94-0.96
At the beginning of the third century BC, Massalia was a frontier city on the edge of the civilised world. An outpost of hellenistic culture blended with the local gallic traditions to create the world's trading gateway to the dark, barbarian world of north-west Europe.
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But those same barbarians put the city in constant danger. It would need keen leadership to keep it from being overwhelmed, but luckily such leadership was not in short supply. In fact, the talent of the officers Massalia produced might just be enough to end their status as a frontier outpost for good...
Watch Episode One
Key Characters
Zenon
A young officer tasked with the 'impossible' mission of defeating the barbarians threatening the city. Highly talented, it is likely he was assigned this task purely so that he would die before his populist politics could affect the nobles of the city.
Melanthios
A leading Massalian noble, wealthy and powerful enough to dictate many aspects of city policy. He would rather this arrangement not be unsettled by the new influx of popular military officers.
Gelon
A man of middling skill as a leader, he is called upon to lead the Massalian city guard when Zenon is out on campaign. However his loyalties lie with his politican patrons rather than the city itself.
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Homer
A Massalian admiral, leading operations to protect the trading interests vital to the city's health since its very inception. A fine man for the job, but for his lack of interest in keeping the favour of the gods...
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Eusebios
An officer under Zenon with a bright future. Highly influenced by his commander's strategy of pacifying enemies by uniting with them, just as Massalia did in its dark, early days.
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Cretheus
A young, academically gifted officer, raised in a noble household to be a future leader of Massalia, if he can navigate the battles and political schemes that stand in his way.
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And many more who will emerge as this epic tale unfolds!
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Fun Facts!
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Massalia Tales was originally made as a contribution to the no-longer-existant Total War Network, a community Total War channel that hosted videos from various Youtube creators. The first 30 episodes were released there, until it effectively died off and I started releasing them on my own channel. Then the network channel was mysteriously deleted so I reuploaded the start of the series on my own channel, finally bringing the whole thing home.
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The original concept for the series was for it to be a head-to-head campaign with another Youtuber, WolfTW. It proved very difficult to film though, so we gave up almost straight away. WolfTW intended to make his own narrative let's play from the footage - some voice recordings I did as part of that are in the guest narration section of the Patreon Treasure Stash.
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The series is split into two halves - before and after the Battle Of Athens. This was because I had to stop working on the series due to the general insanity that working on it while having a full time job was causing. That is also why most of the episode in the first half are shorter than my usual Total War NLP episodes. Later on I got reduced hours, and then left my job entirely, allowing the series to return for a second half that saw it through to completion.
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The annoucement video stating that I would be beginning work on Massalia Tales was the most disliked thing I have ever created. Then the first episode was, at the time, the most liked thing I had ever created. Didn't get any negative comments on that annoucement (now deleted with the disappearance of the TWN) so I never discovered why so many hated the idea of it!
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Towards the end of the series I talk about a glitch that prevented the long awaited civil war. To make sure it was impossible I tried assassinating all non-Timouchoi politicans to that the balance of power would be entirely with one party, however it remained at 51%, unable to rise, even after dozens of turns. Most likely it was caused by the fact that in the beginning the Timouchoi was the opposition party, and then mid-way through the campaign they became the player party due to changes to the mod.
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While the city is called Massalia, the name of the faction is actually Massilia. At some point in the campaign the city was renamed Massilia as well by a game update. Massilia and Massalia are interchangable translations for the name of the city, so I did not see fit to change the name of the series!
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I once met a Divide Et Impera developer who said he liked the series - horray!
Related Patreon Treasure:
Special "Tales from the Hellenic Frontier" episode art and scripts