Essentially Unplayable. I think it is almost more suited to TW and Barbarian Invasions than a Grand Strategy style.
Right, now, that's obviously the big problem that the entire design has to be built around, but I don't think it's insurmountable. What you need is a system with a big focus on methods of government and political capital, far more radical than what Paradox has done before. Something that completely shapes what you can do, rather than EU style flat modifiers. You also need to represent the fact that a ruler's power could vary wildly from place to place and people to people. This for true for many periods P'dox covers, but it's even more vital here.
Basically, it would be a game about the transition from hordes to kingdoms, and transformations in structures of power.
There is no tech development, no slow build up of your nation, no diplomacy.
Er, well, no. I think you're a little confused. We're talking about a period here that is five or six hundred years long, and, despite popular conceptions, changed radically over that period. (Which is the real difficulty in trying to make a game of it, I think; the sheer breadth of what you're trying to capture, coupled with the scarcity of sources).
Technological development
did happen, rulers
did try to develop their states and, yes, there was diplomacy.
Here would be a typical game. You either play a horde country like the Vikings or a small kingdom of 1-2 provinces that end up fighting the barbarians or paying them off. This would continue for 400 years or so. CK took the small kingdoms of less than one province and made them into EU3 countries of 4 or 5 provinces. EU3 takes those 4-5 provinces and turns them into nations of 100+ provinces. The dark ages takes a one province and tries to keep it at one province. Or maybe you take a country of 15 provinces and watch it fragment till only one province is left.
Again it sort of comes down to doing nothing and paying off hordes till you get a super duper ruler to gain some vassels. After his death everything starts to fall into ruins. Point is if the game is going to be historical then it has to have major mechanics that prohibit the forming of a big nation. If you do form a decent sized country the game mechanics have to devaste you with horde raiding (you are now rich), natural disasters or the loss of a ruler that through his personal strenghts caused the nation to be formed. And it's just my personal opinion but playing a game to basically have my creation destroyed is not that much fun.
Oh lord. "The dark ages takes a one province country and tries to keep it at one province." You had states expanding and collapsing and being invaded and expanding again all over. Sure, it was hard to make it
last, but it wasn't something static and unchanging, it was highly dynamic.
You shouldn't be approaching this as, "Take land, job done." That's only half the story; the hard part is holding that land. You have to consolidate and integrate it. You have to try and take a disparate collection of conquered territories and turn them into a cohesive country.
One of EU's biggest problems is that, once you're large enough, there's little challenge and little to do, primarily because its modelling of this sort of thing is so anaemic.
I think the reason no one has made a dark ages game is because it just woulnd't be all that much fun to play.
Except, y'know,
there is a Dark Ages game. It's called Great Invasions, and it's flawed, because it's old, and it's ugly, and its interface is clumsy, and it's underdetailed, and it has a (personally) tiresome bent towards historical determinism, but there's nothing in it to suggest there isn't a good game hiding underneath all that.
And there was our own Earl Uthred, whose "Dawn of the West" was advanced enough for a test game before he disappeared. And the ongoing "Dark Age Dynasties" project in the OT Forum.
So, there
have been attempts, they're just painfully rare.
The bubonic plague hit twice for over 100 million dead. The black death was in the 1300's but the first round hit the Byzantine Empire around 540.
100 million? In the entire world, maybe. Europe in 1300 had a population of
maybe 70 million, max, West and East- and this was after three centuries of booming population growth (the dark ages been a time of great agricultural expansion and overabundance of food).
The dark ages are "dark" because there's a lack of primary sources, and Petrarch wanted to paint himself as resurrecting a lost golden age.
The thing is these 'empires' were sort of in name only. They had to accept some laws and most of the time a change in religion but it was more like Charlemagne took the current king and had him killed or sent to a monestary. Then he put in place a new local ruler that reported to him. It was more like a bunch of vassels but the vassels could have rebels to rise up and then break away.
Heavy focus on individuals? Soft power, rebellious vassal states, fractious empires? SMELLS LIKE CRUSADER KINGS. And again: politicking, intrigue, diplomacy. Lots of stuff for players to do.
To be fair, some Germanic groups made a sincere effort at maintaining Roman ways of life and governing structure, not that they always succeeded. The Ostrogoths in particular should be commended for their efforts in Italy.
Yes, Italy under Odoacer was more or less a direct continuation of the Western Roman Empire. Or even a revitalisation, the Western Empire being so pitifully ineffectual by that time. Which is a general point; the Empire was in such a sorry state by Late Antiquity that its inhabitants often found themselves better off after it retreated from their lands than before.
I think the biggest focus of any 'Dark Ages'-centric game should be culture, rather than EU3's diplomacy & warfare or Victoria's economics & internal politics. The thing would be for barbarian kingdoms to accomodate the 'native' populations of whatever region they settle, deciding on whether or not to separate their own people from the Romanized natives (like the Vandals) or let them freely associate and gradually melt into the local Romantic populations, or choosing sides in debates about Arianism and Adoptionism.
YEEEEEEESS. Exactly; social and cultural development. And it should be something as simple as "I click this -> no more partible inheritance," you should need to build support for it, crush dissent, follow up to make sure it sticks... reform is a process.
I'm painfully aware I'm throwing a lot of stuff out here without backing it up. All my books on this stuff are in boxes, unfortunately. Well, I can see Anglo Saxon England on a stack over there, but it's kinda narrow focus.
