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Byzantine Collapse?

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secretfire

Second Lieutenant
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Sep 4, 2014
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Question.

In one of the current games I'm playing (I have a few saves going concurrently) - I'm playing as egypt. Looking up north, I noticed the Byzantine Emperor converted to an orthodox heresy. Ok, no big deal....I notice every so often he has a lot of rebellions going on....isn't converting anyone. Eh, not my problem, I figure. .... a half decade passes or so.

He's now a count. As in, all he has left is a single duchy, and -every freaking dutchy has gone independent-.

Is this because of the levy bug? I've never seen Byzantium collapse so fast so completely without any outside invasion. It all just...fell apart.
 
It could be the levy bug, but equally it could be the Byz AI having atrocious luck, I have seen almost complete collapses of the Empire within a decade or so of a game start, especially if Basil gets killed in the Old Gods start date, but it is rare admittedly.
 
One way that the levy bug compounds on itself to create situations like this is that after stuck levies ruin relations with vassals and cause a breakdown, neighboring powers cannot declare war to scoop up the weak independent kingdoms.

The result is a lot of fracturing.
 
The Byzantine Empire can fall apart by itself if it gets an unpopular ruler and loses badly enough to the Fatimids/Seljuks. The levy bug makes this almost inevitable though.
 
From 769, the Byzzies are almost always Iconoclasts instead of mainline Orthodox. Also, it seems that the vassals are quite rebellious in terms of CA. I find when I play them (which I really dislike now) that the new Imperial administration really pisses off the vassals. Not only do you have a flat rate malus to relations for the law, but every time you have a duke die and you give away the duchy as a viceroyalty, you suffer a -1 to relations. That doesn't seem like much, but there are so many duchies in the empire that it starts adding up pretty quickly.

n00bypl4y3r said:
What is this "levy bug"? I haven't seen anything unusual in my games.
Click to expand...

The only place I've seen such a "bug" is in chatter on these forums.
 
heliostellar said:
The only place I've seen such a "bug" is in chatter on these forums.
Click to expand...
I have seen it. It is there but it takes time to develop. The bug hits every realm individually only when some particular conditions are met. As each realm gets a levy it can't get rid of, that realm loses its ability to attack its neighbors and starts building up vassal penalties. Which means after a century or two, your neighbors, one by one, slowly lose the ability to attack you, or each other, or grow through war, thus allowing you to pick and choose who to attack next.

At the extreme, adventurers or rebels could theoretically become the only non-human attackers left. (I don't know if it ever gets that far in reality though. Levies can still be destroyed you know.) Until it's fixed as planned next week, just keep games fairly short and you will never see such a bug.
 
heliostellar said:
From 769, the Byzzies are almost always Iconoclasts instead of mainline Orthodox. Also, it seems that the vassals are quite rebellious in terms of CA. I find when I play them (which I really dislike now) that the new Imperial administration really pisses off the vassals. Not only do you have a flat rate malus to relations for the law, but every time you have a duke die and you give away the duchy as a viceroyalty, you suffer a -1 to relations. That doesn't seem like much, but there are so many duchies in the empire that it starts adding up pretty quickly.



The only place I've seen such a "bug" is in chatter on these forums.
Click to expand...

Go look through some countries in your games that haven't expanded in a while and look at vassl opinions of the ruler. I'd guarantee you'll see some -50 (or more) opinions due to 'raised levies'.
 
mechl said:
Go look through some countries in your games that haven't expanded in a while and look at vassl opinions of the ruler. I'd guarantee you'll see some -50 (or more) opinions due to 'raised levies'.
Click to expand...

I have noticed that in some cases with my own levies when I go to the Military screen to disband all my demesne and vassal levies there is still sometimes a small stack that I have to manually select to disband. They are not retinues, mercs, or event troops either. Perhaps that's the problem?

It doesn't happen all the time.
 
Yes, that is the problem. It happens for the AI too, and the AI can't do what you do and manually disband the levies.

The result is that the AI are stuck with levies raised, hurting relations and, more importantly, eliminating their ability to declare war. Aggressive war declarations require that no levies be raised.

Anyway, the problem has supposedly been solved by Paradox programmers; they just haven't released the hotfix yet, for some reason.
 
thekaje said:
Anyway, the problem has supposedly been solved by Paradox programmers; they just haven't released the hotfix yet, for some reason.
Click to expand...

Probably because "Paradox" consists of one or two people right now. The rest don't get back from vacation until the 12th. Although it certainly isn't apparent from the 2.3 patch, there is likely a process for testing a patch before it is released and that process requires more than just one or two people.

To the OP, your issue could certainly be caused by this bug (which is thoroughly documented and reported in the Bug Reports thread). What has likely occurred is that the Byzantine Emperor's vassals have either successfully forced ultimatums for independence. Since many or most of them can't declare wars due to levies being raised, nobody has attempted to take the Empire title away from the current emperor and now they are all just sitting idle because there is nothing else they can do.
 
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