Subscribe to download
SMAN's The Ancient World at War - The Black Swan

"Rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno"

(Latin, translation: "A rare bird in the lands and very much like a black swan")


The phrase was first recorded by 2nd-century Roman poet Juvenal's from his work called, "Satire VI." When the phrase was coined, the black swan was presumed not to exist. Juvenal's phrase was a common expression in 16th century London as a statement of impossibility.

The use of the term "Black Swan" has since became a metaphor used to describe completely unexpected events which have a dramatic impact on how society functions. Uncommon events have happened throughout human history, and indeed further back than that. Some of those events were beneficial to the civs that experienced them, some were quite devastating, destroying wide areas of an empire.


"The Black Swan" companion mod is "SMAN's Ancient World at War" mod's "Events System" - which are random things that a civ must face as it navigates the trials and triumphs throughout their history. Some of these events are quite positive, some can be a nightmare.

The mod provides two basic types of events: “global” (which impact across large parts of the map, and “local” (which usually only impact a single civilization). They occur randomly throughout the game (based on game speed), with the global events happening much less often than the local events.


All four global events are negative. Very negative. But, for the local events, there are both positive and negative events. There are slightly more negative than positive, but there is an equal chance that either could occur on any given turn.



While TBS is a companion mod, it can be enabled without using the main AWAW mod.