The Assyrians are the inhabitants of the ancient kingdom of Assyria, which once controlled Mesopotamia and parts of Northeast Syria, and are a playable civilization in Age of Empires. They are strictly an offensive civilization and are excellent in small maps and games that start out with low resources.
They excel at rushes (especially with their fast firing archers) at the early game but are less effective in longer games since some powerful Iron Agetechnologies are unavailable to them.
Assyria was a Semitic Akkadian kingdom centered on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia (present day northern Iraq), that came to rule regional empires a number of times throughout history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur. Assyria was also sometimes known as Subartu, and after its fall as Athura, Syria and Assuristan. The term Assyria can also refer to the geographic region or heartland where these empires were centered. Their descendants still live in the region today, and they form the Christian minority in Iraq.[1] After the fall of the Akkadian Empire in 2080 BC, it eventually coalesced into two separate nations; Assyria in the north, and later Babyloniain the south.
Originally, the early Assyrian kings would certainly have been regional leaders only, and subjects of Sargon of Akkad, who united all of the Akkadian speaking peoples of Mesopotamia under the Akkadian Empire, which lasted from 2334 BC to 2154 BC. The Akkadian nation of Assyria (and later on also Babylonia) evolved from the dissolution of the Akkadian Empire. In the Old Assyrian period of the Early Bronze Age, Assyria had been a kingdom of northern Mesopotamia, competing for dominance with its fellow Mesopotamian rival, Babylonia which was often under Kassite rule. During this period it established colonies in Asia Minor. It had experienced fluctuating fortunes in the Middle Assyrian period.
Beginning with the campaigns of Adad-nirari II from 911 BC, it again became a great power, conquering many of their neighbors. Eventually they weakened after so many wars and their empire would fall in the 7th century B.C.
↑Saggs, The Might That Was Assyria, pp. 290, "The destruction of the Assyrian empire did not wipe out its population. They were predominantly peasant farmers, and since Assyria contains some of the best wheat land in the Near East, descendants of the Assyrian peasants would, as opportunity permitted, build new villages over the old cities and carry on with agricultural life, remembering traditions of the former cities. After seven or eight centuries and various vicissitudes, these people became Christians."
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