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Having seen your map, I have to say it's a shame that you don't have Venice. While 1204 didn't happen in this story, Venice was still one of the major cities of the Empire that just sort of...slipped away during the dark days of the 7th and 8th centuries. It never rebelled, it never was taken, Imperial authority just kind of faded until Venice was recognized as independent sometime in the 10th century. Considering how little was left in that part of the world (the Adriatic) after the Arabic and Slavic invasions (pretty much just check out what the major medieval cities in Dalmatia were and they're what's left of Byzantine Illyria), Venice would make a wonderful re-addition to the Empire.

Anyway, wonderful picture-update. Good to see the tradition of terrible late-Roman levy infantry has been kept up :p
 
I throw all the weight of my opinion behind that you should have a Mongol viewpoint - Subotai served excellently at Yaik, and if he continues to be historically important, I suggest he continue to be our Mongol PoV character, if he's present for the following events!
 
And those are the urban population within the city walls?
Reconstruction of some aqueducts would be in need soon. :p

And the Imperial road system?
And what of the pre-planned frontier defence lines? :p
 
Hannibal-X - Well, New Carthage-Tunis is the temporary name. I'm pretty sure that some emperor (ie. when I come up with something cool and appropriate :D) will give the third incarnation of Carthage some imposing name. I don't think they'd go with Qart Hadasht, though (awesome as it sounds)... considering at this point Punic has been a dead language for centuries... I could definitely see someone renaming it after themselves though (or something like Demetriopolis)...

Plushie - I have all the territory surrounding Venice except to the direct north. In game, this was because Venice was either a part of or allied with the Kingdom of Germany for much of the early game... didn't want to stir that pot unnecessarily, and in Thomas' little war I was more concerned about gathering up Italy south of the Po first. That little map aberration will soon get notice though...

KlavoHunter - If it happens, it'd be from one of two people--Subotai, or Genghis himself.

Enewald - Those likely are not just people in the city walls. I'm basically imagining Constantinople at this point is pushing up against the Theodosian Walls, and there are numerous districts and suburbs outside the walls (Muslim District, for example). Some of these large cities (such as the Carthage-Tunis mess) are so new they're likely rather random and ramshackle in construction. And yes, there's a great need for building projects down the line. Two problems, 1 - the emperor and imperial government are a little preoccupied, and 2 - the current emperor isn't that inclined to think about 'building programs' really...

...a future one will be though.
 
You could just rebuild the original ruins, get rid of the salt in the fields, and call it Carchedon (Greek for Carthage). You could even rebuild Carthage's great cothon (that famous harbor) and the infamous walls, which took 3 years to destroy! Just let it be Greek (or Arabic).

Oh, and on the topic of Punic being dead, I think some Muslim around that time mentioned an odd language in a village in Carthage's former domain, and it is thought to have been Punic. So it actually died recently in your game.
 
You could just rebuild the original ruins, get rid of the salt in the fields, and call it Carchedon (Greek for Carthage). You could even rebuild Carthage's great cothon (that famous harbor) and the infamous walls, which took 3 years to destroy! Just let it be Greek (or Arabic).

Oh, and on the topic of Punic being dead, I think some Muslim around that time mentioned an odd language in a village in Carthage's former domain, and it is thought to have been Punic. So it actually died recently in your game.

a mortuus lingua est a mortuus lingua. :D
 
General_BT;9721256 [b said:
KlavoHunter[/b] - If it happens, it'd be from one of two people--Subotai, or Genghis himself.

Enewald - Those likely are not just people in the city walls. I'm basically imagining Constantinople at this point is pushing up against the Theodosian Walls, and there are numerous districts and suburbs outside the walls (Muslim District, for example). Some of these large cities (such as the Carthage-Tunis mess) are so new they're likely rather random and ramshackle in construction. And yes, there's a great need for building projects down the line. Two problems, 1 - the emperor and imperial government are a little preoccupied, and 2 - the current emperor isn't that inclined to think about 'building programs' really...

...a future one will be though.



YES YES YES
the fact that constantinople never filled all the area in the theodosian walls always bothered me
:p
 
About Carthage, why not the greek word for "new" with -polis at the end?
Some really big cities there also, how many lived in Bagdhad before the Byzantines took it?
 
About Carthage, why not the greek word for "new" with -polis at the end?

Like, Neapolis? Among the many other Neapoli out there?

Some really big cities there also, how many lived in Bagdhad before the Byzantines took it?

Well, Baghdad was easily over 100K in OTL when Hulegu sacked it.

I'm more suprised about Palmyra which subsisted entirely on trade, and was subsequently throroughly destroyed. Even today's Tadmur is maybe barely that large...and between the Arab civil wars and the earthquakes it would have been a minor town by the time Demetrios won the diadem.

Still, heck, maybe it was rebuilt. The Seljuks rebuilt it as a border fortress in my AAR, so why not here?

And of course both Constantinople and Alexandria are very large, while Cairo is noticeably missing.
 
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Yeah, with regards to Carthage, I think the Byzantines would just call it Carchedon unless and until some emperor rebuilt it in his own image.

City names are odd like that... what any particular culture calls a foreign city is generally not a translation of the original meaning of the name. It's usually either a transliteration of the name of the city into their language (eg. Carthago or Carchedon from Qart Hadasht), or just some peculiar nickname that the culture favors (eg. Miklagard for Konstantinopolis).

In fact, I'm betting that by this point in the timeline most people have completely forgotten what Qart Hadasht originally meant.
 
I do want to note that, in this time period, city popualtions are also going to vary widely. While a metropolis like Constantinople might have an annually consistent population, areas which aren't necessarily so supported by trade and manufacturing are going to experience massive population outflow during harvest season and inflow during the subsequent market season. Fairs are going to increase regional trading centers by thousands. Just like 'borders' weren't back then what they are today, cities operated differently in an agricultural economy than they do in industrial or post-industrial ones.
 
Yeah, absolutely. City populations fluctuated highly, depending on how many people could make a living in the city. Generally the cities grew obscenely large (and unhygienic) during peace times, but were just as quickly emptied again when famine or wars disrupted commerce. Better leave the city and practise your trade in the countryside, than be stuck in a city where grain prices explode or --worse-- that falls under sieged.
 
Enewald - The Black Death indeed solves alot of things, but you will probably be as surprised by it as I was...

Leviathan and Plushie - Indeed, and that's part of the reason some of the populations in the interior of the Empire have grown large... Anatolia and Greece in particular have not seen a significant war since the Third Seljuk War in the 1160s.

AlexanderPrimus - I'm still debating the Carthage-Tunis name, but I'm leaning towards the Byzantines calling it Carthage, maybe nicknaming it 3rd Carthage of something. It sounds like the thing an Empire stubbornly claiming descent from imperial glory centuries before would do... take a new city and forcibly rename it to the old, long gone city that was near the site.

RGB - Cairo's there... it's listed at 65k. I had it not as large because the Byzantines obviously would shift the major focus of trade in Egypt up to Alexandria. Cairo is still large and important, but its been superseded. As for Palmyra, in game it was one of the richest provinces in the imperial desmense, so for the purposes of the AAR I imagine since it's served as one of the 'eastern capitals' of the Komnenids since the Megas, it's also grown as a depot and marshaling point for the imperial armies...

vanin - Baghdad was easily one of the largest cities in the Near East... I actually guesstimated it might've been 120k or more before it's fall to the Byzantines...

Servius Magnus - Well, down the line, the Theodosian Walls become irrelevant anyway, so its all good...

Devin Perry - The irony of using a dead language to speak about dead languages. :D

Hannibal X - I actually had no idea Punic had survived that long in North Africa. I'd just kind of assumed that between the Romans and the Berber invasions it was wiped out long before...
 
@RGB: I don't think it was the gold lettering - it's just that the highlighting on the background could be switched the other way around (light at the top.)

@Karthago: Nah, it's not redundant for the Romans: Neakarkhedon. I'd think apart from the poets, it'd just be Tunis til some rebuilding happened to its north: after that, Neapolis could easily be part of a full name, but like RGB said, it would have to be commonly known as something else for differentiation. Martyropolis, Perpetoua, Augoustinoupolis would be right Christian, if you didn't want to go for the Theopolis pun. :p

[edit: Forgot Cyprian. Not that there are many Donatists left to win over.]
 
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@RGB: I don't think it was the gold lettering - it's just that the highlighting on the background could be switched the other way around (light at the top.)

@Karthago: Nah, it's not redundant for the Romans: Neakarkhedon. I'd think apart from the poets, it'd just be Tunis til some rebuilding happened to its north: after that, Neapolis could easily be part of a full name, but like RGB said, it would have to be commonly known as something else for differentiation. Martyropolis, Perpetoua, Augoustinoupolis would be right Christian, if you didn't want to go for the Theopolis pun. :p

[edit: Forgot Cyprian. Not that there are many Donatists left to win over.]

Neokarkhedon sounds kickass. Just move it north- its a great location, and the old Punic harbor is reminiscent of the Golden Horn. Rebuild the walls and cothon, and you can have an African Constantinople, nearly impregnable, with a great location and good trade routes. It could be a COT in EUIII!
 
AlexanderPrimus - I'm still debating the Carthage-Tunis name, but I'm leaning towards the Byzantines calling it Carthage, maybe nicknaming it 3rd Carthage of something. It sounds like the thing an Empire stubbornly claiming descent from imperial glory centuries before would do... take a new city and forcibly rename it to the old, long gone city that was near the site.

And that's exactly my point. :p
 
Although it will be Qart Hadasht for me.

Well it's still very much Qart Hadasht. :) It's just that the people who called it that are dead now, and its new owners speak a different tongue. :p