Colchis

In Greco-Roman geography, Colchis (/ˈkɒlkɪs/; Georgian: კოლხეთი Kolkheti; Greek Κολχίς Kolkhis, presumably from Kartvelian ḳolkheti or ḳolkha) was the name for a region in the Southern Caucasus. Colchis was located on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, centered on present-day western Georgia. Around the 1st centuries BC and AD the land south of the Greater Caucasus and north of the Lesser Caucasus was divided between Kolchis in the west, Caucasian Iberia in the center and Caucasian Albania in the east. To the southwest was Armenia and to the southeast Atropatene.

The Colchians were the population native to Colchis. They are assumed to have been early Kartvelian-speaking tribes, ancestral to the contemporary groups of Svans, Mingrelians and Lazs. Ancestors of the Colchians were probably established on the Black Sea coast from as early as the Middle Bronze Age.

For centuries, until its annexation by Kingdom of Pontus in 164 BC, Colchis was an independent kingdom. This kingdom has been described in modern scholarship as "the earliest Georgian formation". Colchis (also known in late Antiquity as Lazica, or Egrisi) would later contribute significantly to the development of medieval Georgian statehood, alongside Iberia.

Total war

Total war is warfare that includes any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, and typically involves the use of weapons and tactics that result in significant civilian or other non-combatant casualties, whether collateral damage or not. American-English Dictionary defines "total war" as "war that is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the territory or combatants involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the laws of war are disregarded." The term can also be applied when the war effort requires significant sacrifices by most of the friendly civilian population.

In the mid-19th century, scholars identified "total war" as a separate class of warfare. In a total war, to an extent inapplicable to less total conflicts, the differentiation between combatants and non-combatants diminishes and even sometimes vanishes entirely as opposing sides can consider nearly every human resource, even that of non-combatants, as nevertheless part of the war effort.

Total War: Rome II

Total War: Rome II is a strategy game developed by The Creative Assembly and published by Sega. It was released on 3 September 2013 for Microsoft Windows and is the eighth standalone game in the Total War series of video games. Rome II is a successor to the 2004 game Rome: Total War. The game suffered from significant technical problems upon release (some of which were fixed by the Emperor Edition), but proved a commercial success, surpassing all other games in the Total War series in both sales and number of concurrent players on its release day.

Gameplay

Total War: Rome II is set in the classical antiquity period, and focuses on a more inclusive and in depth portrayal of each culture, which in the original game had been portrayed anachronistically. The grand campaign begins in 272 BC, and lasts for 300 years. However, the player also has the option to play further, as there are no timed victory conditions in Rome II.

The Warscape engine powers the visuals of the game and new unit cameras allows players to focus on individual soldiers on the battlefield, which in itself may contain thousands of combatants at a time. The Creative Assembly has stated that they wish to bring out the more human side of war this way, with soldiers reacting with horror as their comrades get killed around them and officers inspiring their men with heroic speeches before siege towers hit the walls of the enemy city. This is realized using facial animations for individual units, adding a feel of horror and realism to the battles.

Kingdom of Georgia

The Kingdom of Georgia (Georgian: საქართველოს სამეფო) also known as Georgian Empire was a medieval monarchy established in 975 by Bagrat III. The kingdom reached its Golden Age of political and economic strength during the reign of King David IV the Builder and Queen Tamar the Great from 11th to 13th centuries. It fell to the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, but managed to re-assert sovereignty by the 1340s. Renewed Turco-Mongol incursions from 1386 led to the final collapse of the kingdom into anarchy by 1466 and the mutual recognition of its constituent kingdoms of Kartli, Kakheti and Imereti as independent states between 1490 and 1493. A unified Georgian state would not emerge again until 1762, when the kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti merged to form unified Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti. In 1801 the state was annexed by the Russian Empire and remained under Russian (and later Soviet) rule until 1991 (see Georgian SSR), when present day Georgia was founded.

Origins

The ascendancy of the Bagrationi dynasty can be traced to the 8th century, when they came to rule Tao-Klarjeti. The restoration of the Georgian kingship begins in AD 888, when Adarnase IV of Iberia took the title of "King of Georgians". The United Kingdom of Georgia was established in 1008. In this year Bagrat III, son of Gurgen II, became the ruler of the Kingdom of Western Georgia (Kingdom of Abkhazeti), including the Principalities of Imereti, Samegrelo, Abkhazeti (Abkhazia), Guria and Svaneti. Bagrat's mother was Queen Gurandukht, a daughter of George II of Abkhazia.

Laz people

The Laz or Lazi (Laz: ლაზეფე (pl.), ლაზი (sing.); Georgian: ლაზები/ჭანები (pl.); ლაზი/ჭანი (sing.); Turkish: Lazlar, Laz;) are a Kartvelian-speaking ethnic group native to the Black Sea coastal regions of Turkey and Georgia.

Estimates of the total population of Laz people today ranges drastically, with numbers as low as 45,000 to as high as 1.6 million people, with the majority living in northeast Turkey. The Laz speak the Laz language, a member of the Kartvelian (South Caucasian) language family along with Georgian, Svan and Mingrelian. The Laz language is classified as endangered by UNESCO, with an estimated 130,000 to 150,000 speakers in 2001.

History

The history of Lazica dates back to at least the 6th century BC when the first South Caucasian state in the west was the Kingdom of Colchis which covered modern western Georgia and modern Turkish provinces of Trabzon and Rize. Between the early 2nd century B.C. and the late 2nd century AD, the Kingdom of Colchis together with the neighbor countries, become an arena of long and devastating conflicts between major local powers Rome, Kingdom of Armenia and the short-lived Kingdom of Pontus. As a result of the brilliant Roman campaigns of generals Pompey and Lucullus, the Kingdom of Pontus was completely destroyed by the Romans and all its territory including Colchis, were incorporated into Roman Empire as her provinces.