On this day, October 10th, 732 AD the Battle of Tours, also called the Battle of Poitiers (although not that one), was fought. On that field, a combined army of Aquitaine and Francia defeated the Umayyad Caliphate. The victory is credited as saving Western Europe from conquest by the “Saracens” and set the victorious King Charles Martel’s family* on the path to becoming emperor of Europe.
I was alerted to this anniversary through an acquaintance posting on Facebook. He posted a graphic commemorating Charles Martel’s “defeat of the Moors” thus “ending the Muslim invasion of Western Europe.” He had made a similar post on the 7th commemorating the Battle of Lepanto. I suspect it is all intended as a commentary on current politics – but that’s not what I want to talk about.
The anniversary of a historical battle is something I like to celebrate with a bit of game playing. This particular one resonated with me because of something else I’ve been trying to do. Excuse me while I digress.
I’ve not shared any of my experiences with you but for many months now I’ve been back at Crusader Kings II. At this moment I’m on the cusp of being able to roll my game into Europa Universalis IV, which was part of my goal all along. The last time I tried this, I started with a Hundred Years War scenario which kind of went wonky when I made the conversion. One of my problems is that I always start my games somewhere in England. Another problem – well, let me return to that in a future post post and, instead, stick with the England thing. Suffice to say that this time I avoided England and the viking invasion. Instead I started the Charlemagne campaign, inheriting Charlemagne’s kingdom to get a fresh perspective on it all.
![](https://ettubluto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/karling2.jpg?w=1024)
As you can see in the above screenshot, I’ve survived and thrived through most of Crusader Kings‘ timeline – making it into 1336 – as a direct descendant of Charlemagne himself. I’ve also found myself ruling, once again, England. It’s a long and complicated tale. I inherited the English throne through marriage, marrying an English queen who lacked male successors. England seemed so far afield from the struggle for the Holy Roman Empire but, when it came time to consolidate the two kingdoms, it was the lands under England’s crown that comprised the bulk of my domain. Who knows where this might end up, but you can see why I took a shine to Charlemagne’s grandfather, having been triggered by a Facebook post.
Another reason that I’ve been playing this particular Crusader Kings campaign is its relation, timeline wise, to Field of Glory II and, particularly, to the Medieval expansion release. I’ve even been pursuing that long-held fantasy of using a campaign to generate new and interesting locations for detailed battles. Field of Glory II exposes a huge amount of its “guts,” promising to open a world of possibilities to the dedicated modder.
Problem is, I don’t particularly want to be dedicated – I want to tinker around a bit and toss together interesting battles quickly. After sinking way more time into FOG2 mods than I ever intended to, I got exactly nowhere. This also is a story for another time.
Where all of this rambling writing leads, though, is that when I saw the meme about this battle I thought, “perfect!” Here is a ready made engagement, new to me, but one that must fit right in with Field of Glory II. Such a pivotal moment surely would have an associated “Epic Battle” in the Field of Glory II package, right? Well, not exactly.
It is not one of the battles that came with the release of the game. That’s maybe not so surprising… the “Epic Battles” are but a small part of the game’s offering and their number is small – a handful of battles with each release. I note that coverage of the conquests of the Umayyad Caliphate is among the Field of Glory II campaigns. But that won’t get me to the battle – not the way I play.
What can I download? Perusing the user-made scenarios, I find I’m getting close but yet so far. Field of Glory player stockwellpete, whose work I admired in the original Field of Glory, did make a scenario for Tours. Unfortunately, he made it for multiplayer only. Exactly why he went that way may be related to the editor/modding quirks I’ve noted above – or maybe not. Again, a conversation to continue later.
![](https://ettubluto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/karling1.jpg?w=1024)
In for a penny, in for a pound, or so they say. Assuming I’m willing to just let the generic AI take me on in battle, how hard could it be just to convert a multiplayer scenario to let the computer take on my opponent? Once again, harder than I thought.
One hurdle to overcome is that the scenario is written with “Side 0” being the caliphate. This means that if I just jigger the files and load them up as single player, I can only play that one side. Obviously, having read this far, you know I want to play Charles Martel.
Next step is to follow through the “tutorial” for making a single-player scenario playable from both sides. Unfortunately that resulted in a fatal error. Fortunately, it only took a bit of time and dedication to find and correct that error. It is telling that the tutorial (which has some issues) contains the instruction; “Not even RBS** knows what this is for, and rather than mess things up, I think it is best to bypass it…” This seems like par for the course.
However, fortune does favor the bold and, more importantly, the persistent. In the screenshot above I’ve got the battle actually working although the naming of the units is all messed up. I guess the scenario was developed with a bunch of custom tags which I got all jumbled. While I take a break to fix it all, I figured I’d give you an update – before the anniversary slips away from my time zone.
*So as not to be to obtuse, Charles Martel was the grandfather of Charlemagne.
**RBS is Richard Bodley Scott (RBodleyScott on the forums) who one of the creators of De Bellis Multitudinis (a DBA follow-on for larger battles), author of the table-top Field of Glory rules, and head of Byzantine Games, developers of the PC games series for Slitherine.