The Germans are scientific and militaristic. They start the game with Bronze Working and Warrior Code and build panzers instead of tanks. Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars brought the Germanic tribes into the spotlight of history. Although Roman efforts to establish hegemony across the Rhine continued for decades, the frontier eventually stabilized along the Rhine and Danube rivers. At that time, Germanic culture extended from Scandinavia as far south as the Carpathians. Although it was heavily fortified, the frontier was never a barrier to trade or culture. Germanic fear of the Huns meant that the Roman Empire could, in moments of crisis, mobilize at least the Goths, Burgundians, and Franks for mutual defense. Soon after Attila's death in 453, however, the Hun empire collapsed, and Rome lost this hold over the Germans. The Merovingian kings and their Carolingian successors eventually brought much of what would later constitute Germany under Frankish control, but the ceaseless blows from Danes, Saracens and Magyars in the later 9th and 10th centuries weakened the kingdom's cohesion. Because the Carolingians themselves were unable to provide effective defense for the empire, there arose in nearly all the German lands powerful lines of margraves, counts and hereditary rulers, their intrigues and wars against each other interrupted only briefly by the rise of strong electors such as Frederick Barbarossa (1155-1190). The subsequent history of Germany is, despite the role of the central rule of the Holy Roman Empire, one of the rise and fall of feuding principalities. It would be a thousand years before Germany was again unified under a single ruler. Troubled by the mass insurrections and diplomatic defeats that had followed the Napoleonic Wars, William I of Prussia (1861-1888) considered abdicating in favor of his son, who was believed to have political views close to those of the liberal opposition. He was persuaded, however, to consider forming a new government led by Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian ambassador to Paris. In September 1862, Europe was startled by the news that a statesman with a reputation for conservatism, nationalism and realpolitik had become the prime minister of Prussia. The new German Empire was proclaimed in January 1871, in the aftermath of three short