Plants and animals of the period
The trees, shrubs and wild horses of Messalith's battlefields, each one documented for the Mediterranean region six million years ago.
Every plant in the game is one that the fossil and pollen record places in or near the Mediterranean at about the right time. The game names them at the level the evidence allows, often only the genus or the family, and nothing goes in until a source does.
| Plant | Grown height | Where it grows on the battlefield |
|---|---|---|
| Pine (Pinus, genus only) | 15 m | Coast, Forest, Parkland |
| Cedar (Cedrus) | 18 m | Forest, Highland, Parkland |
| Cathaya (pine-family conifer) | 16 m | Forest, Highland, Parkland |
| Beech (Fagus) | 20 m | Coast, Forest, Parkland |
| Swamp cypress (Glyptostrobus) | 18 m | Marsh |
| Fir (Abies) | 22 m | Alpine, Highland |
| Drought shrub (evergreen, sparse) | 1.6 m | Canyon, Desert rim, Scrub, Steppe |
| Thorny sub-desert shrub (Calligonum / Nitraria) | 1.2 m | Brine shore, Desert rim |
| Lygeum tussock (esparto-like grass) | 0.7 m | Canyon, Desert rim, Scrub, Steppe |
| Saltbush (goosefoot family, Chenopodiaceae) | 0.5 m | Brine shore, Salt flat |
How they read in a fight
Trees are full cover and block sight. Scrub plants never are: they are drawn low on purpose, so open scrub always reads as open ground. Thickets of shrubs stand in for trees where nothing taller grows. On the salt flats and brine shores the only life is low saltbush on the mud between the plates of crust.
North and south
The wooded north has pine, beech, the pine-family conifer Cathaya and some cedar. The highlands climb from Cathaya and cedar to fir, and fir stands alone up to the treeline on alpine ground. Swamp cypress grows in the marshes. The open south is scrub and steppe: tussocks of Lygeum grass, sparse evergreen drought shrubs, and thorny sub-desert shrubs along the desert rim.
Animals
Animals are living scenery. They never touch the rules: no cover, no blocking, no line of sight, nobody can target them. For now there is one: a small herd of three-toed horses (Hipparion) grazing just past the edge of the board, which moves off when a unit the player can see comes near. It turns up on open country, steppe, scrub and desert rim, and in refuge villages, in southern Europe between 36 and 46 degrees north, never at a Court war camp.
Sources
The game's research notes cite the record for each plant and animal. The main sources:
- Suc and colleagues, 1994: Mediterranean vegetation just after the crisis, with forest belts of Sequoia-type trees, Cathaya, cedar, fir and spruce in the north-west, and open herb-rich ground with Lygeum, Calligonum and Nitraria in the south.
- Suc and colleagues, 2018: the north-south contrast through the period, swamp cypress (Glyptostrobus) swamps, and sparse drought-hardy evergreen shrubs.
- Atalar and colleagues, 2016: late Messinian pollen from central Anatolia, with pine, Cathaya and beech, and the daisy, goosefoot and grass families on open ground.
- Martinetto, Scardia and Varrone, 2015: a swamp-cypress forest of the same kind in Piedmont.
- Solounias and colleagues, 1999, Pesquero, 2003, and Koufos, Kostopoulos and Merceron, 2009: the three-toed horses of the later Miocene "hipparion faunas", from Spain to Samos.