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A slightly off topic question but why is it that western tech nations get the Byzantine refugees event that gives them cheaper tech but Byzantine ideas do not? Apparently refugees from Byzantium are good enough to improve western tech nations while they are not good enough to improve their own eastern tech nation?
Byzantine tech shouldnt be eastern but it shouldn't be western either. A good idea is to give them a westernization event, but historically most of the Greeks were against westernization. It reminded them of crusaders, loansharks, unholy German emperors and the pope. It's better to have the Turks than the latins, they said.
If we get an expansion based around ottomans (which they deserve), I hope it will contain a new tech branch for Byzantium along with new events.
After all.... They built the city of the world's desire...
My suggestions for more realism in Byantium: add 5 loans to signify their indebtedness to the Italian states, give them an event with a medium MTTH that spawns rebels in their periphery to show tensions between Catholic and Orthodox parts of the army.
Then give the Ottomans a unit of artillery and a series of bonuses
Catholic rebels? Seriously? In what periphery exactly?
The loans and the artillery seem accurate. I would like to add a negative diplo rep and reduced income from taxation to byz. But. Then we should also add historical rivalry between ottomans and every single nation + less Sunni provinces. Also the fall of Constantinople should give other orthodox an event similar to Rome when captured by a catholic. Lastly Byzantium should start guaranteed by the ottomans.
Congratulations! We just broke the game!
I believe in your good intentions, but try to be constructive.
Edit: I really liked my idea of an expansion around ottomans. I can even see the title in my mind "Conquerors of Rum"!
Honestly I was just being flippant at the frankly ridiculous level of buffs people request for Byzantium. By 1444 it was on the way out, and the de facto effect of these buffs whenever the player isn't playing Byzantium or the Ottomans is a stalemate in Greece/Anatolia which inevitably ends with some other power stepping in, leading to a ridiculous situation in the region.
Maybe let Byzantium start as a depositic monarchy, and if it reconquers Greece, give it an event that gives it a special monarchy, with a parliament (to represent the senate) +5% discipline and -5 years of seperatism and maybe -0.05 global autonomy (before factoring that Byzantium is an empire)
Honestly I was just being flippant at the frankly ridiculous level of buffs people request for Byzantium. By 1444 it was on the way out, and the de facto effect of these buffs whenever the player isn't playing Byzantium or the Ottomans is a stalemate in Greece/Anatolia which inevitably ends with some other power stepping in, leading to a ridiculous situation in the region.
True. I remember when the game came out how aggressively the ottomans expanded and I kind of miss it. I think though that this was intended by the developers so that Genoa and Venice get some love, since they used to be the first targets (even before Byzantium).
A unique government type for BYZ would be cool, but it's a low priority given that Byzantium only existed for 9 years of the EU era. Despotic Monarchy seems like a decent fit in terms of the bonuses and general concept.
More important I think would be to give Ottomans a more interesting and appropriate government type in 1444. For instance it could incorporate some Horde-like rules for succession to simulate the strengths and weaknesses of the early Ottoman 'open succession' system.
Byzantium doesn't need to be stronger, and I don't think anyone really is arguing that it should be. It just would be nice if it was more rewarding to play. As it is you just get handed some free admin/diplo/mil points and some flavor missions and...that's about it. Honestly, the Purple Phoenix DLC was probably more useless than the American Dream DLC.
The easiest way to make it more rewarding is to improve or make unique their government type or their idea set. Especially since they've progressively lost over half their initial cores, their strong initial castle walls (now it's no harder to siege Byzantium than it was to siege London or Liguria or Stockholm), and had coring costs drastically increased making it harder to develop into a viable state that can hold off the Ottomans. It'd be nice if you got rewarded with some strong potential if you rebuilt Rome or had some events or ideas that helped you feel like you were rebuilding Rome. Instead, you're just playing a generic purple country that holds Constantinople and faces the big green blob.
If you increased their power through missions/events/ideas that all involved staying alive, you wouldn't really change the power for Ottos to crush them (since AI Byzantium would never survive to use those) but you could give flavor for players, and rewards for succeeding against the Ottos.
A unique government would be an awful thing to do for Byzantium. Why? It'd be just another country where you'd be stuck as the same damn government type for the rest of the game barring revolution/giving into rebels. I hated the empire government before 1.12, you were stuck as it for the rest of the game.
I like being able to switch to administrative and then to absolute and then go into either constitutional or enlightened despotism. It gives you choice on how you wish your country to be, especially now that they've introduced special mechanics for the constitutional monarchy, while still having the ability to switch to a republic through revolution/revolt. Being stuck as one specific government type for the rest of the game (especially since there's no historical events like the English Civil War or Ming westernization which gives you a way out of its unique government type if you wish) just seems downright unappealing.
Make it a despotic monarchy at the beginning and be done with it.
While I'm not personally taking a position as far as Byzantophile v. Not, I really do think that the devs have spent enough time making special stuff for them. Byzantium has more unique stuff (and succeeds more often) than Prussia, an actual great power of the period. Once they've got some of the more historical issues fixed (Spain never going to America in the latest patch; Prussia and Netherlands never form; etc) then they can and indeed should go back to messing with popular tags for fun, but I really do think that a whole DLC ('Purple Phoenix') dedicated to Byzantium is, considering the game starts in 1444, more than enough. For now.
I don't want to be rude, but those ideas are way too OP and unbalanced, and quite frankly there's no way they can get implemented because of that. Byzantium is by no means an important or relevant power to the period, and those are ideas that one would give to a nation that was. The changes to their ideas I suggested moreso just rearrange them to let the player use them more effectively than actually changing the modifiers themselves.
Traditions: -10% Advisor Cost, +3 Tolerance of Own
Idea 1: -20% Mercenary Cost
Idea 2: +10% Manpower, +5% Goods Produced
Idea 3: +10% Tax Modifier
Idea 4: -10% Stability Cost
Idea 5: +10% Global Trade Power
Idea 6: +5% Discipline
Idea 7: +3% Missionary Strength
Bonus: +2 Prestige
Proposed rebalance:
Traditions: -5% Idea Cost, +2 Tolerance of Own
Idea 1: -20% Mercenary Cost
Idea 2: -15% Core Cost
Idea 3: +10% Global Trade Power
Idea 4: +3% Missionary Strength
Idea 5: +10% Manpower, -10% Culture Conversion Cost
Idea 6: +5% Discipline
Idea 7: -10% Stability Cost
Bonus: +2 Prestige
spyroware's reblance:
Traditions: +3 Tolerance Own, 1 Prestige
Byzantine Diplomacy: 1 Diplomat
Reconquista: -20% Core-Creation Cost
Greco-Roman Foundations: -5% Idea Cost, 1 Prestige
Patriarchate of Constantinople: +3% Missionary Strength
Army Reform: +15% Morale
Byzantine Industry: +5% goods produced, 15% Provincial Trade Power
Cultural Primacy: -20% Culture-Conversion Cost
Ambition: +2 Diplomatic Reputation
The 3 Tolerance Own is core for Byzantium so it stays as is. The removal of 30% merc costs & 10% advisor costs are actual nerfs early, the advisors one in particular is a quite strong tradition during the first half of the game.
The diplomat is there for roleplay value and gameplay necessity now that we don't get embassies. You unlock the diplomat and you go begging for alliances in Europe. Most of the later Palaeologi are known as the "beggar Emperors" for their constant travel to foreign courts to ask for help, Manuel even visited England in person.
I hate the prestige finisher, it's very dull and superfluous at that stage (though prestige has become progressively harder to get). So I give BYZ one point as tradition for its recognition as an Empire, and one relatively early to so that if you get prestige points from a few wars you can actually maintain it and it's a modest help with diplomacy and morale.
Don't forget, Byzantium lost a whopping 10% morale with the new patch. The 15% morale, coming much later, is there to give that back plus a pesky 5%. You give it 5% discipline which is actually stronger because discipline scales far better late game.
The vanilla Global Trade Power is much stronger than my proposed Local Trade Power which better complements expansionary ideas instead of being a blanket TP bonus. As for the 20% Core cost, a successful Byzantium would be the geopolitical successor of the Ottomans (much like the Ottomans were Byzantium's) and they get -33% and start with more cores than you, while you've lost cores on half the Greek Provinces since release and your same religion peoples have extra coring costs ideas/traditions.
You do give 10% less culture conversion yet culture conversion has become prohibitively expensive with the latest patch to the point where you just don't do it. It was already difficult to begin with, Anatolia is rich, and if you wanted to add Sicily/Southern Italy for the luls these got super buffed. So even with 10% I wouldn't do it. With 20%, I may actually consider it, like, for Malta.
The finisher is diplomatic reputation, it could be 1 it could be 2, I havent really caught up with the numbers after the changes in AoW (?). It feels like a real reward for restoring the Empire, now you can go head to head with diplo powers like Austria - you know, the other Roman Emperor - on things like snatching that PLC throne (you're already Orthodox so you already have alot of maluses and bad events for even trying)
You give 5% idea cost as a tradition which is quite strong early on for Eastern. I try to balance that by giving it slightly later though still at point when it feels right - early one you have some cores so at least admin points aren't that scarce.
They're very strong ideas make no mistake, favouring a high risk/high reward narrative as I said in my original post. But I don't really consider them OP. Though I do get you at some level, it's somehow become accepted that NI's should have irrelevant ideas thrown in just to "balance" things out. Why? Fun is fun. I don't undestand why, and this goes for every country that has two lame ideas for every good one. Devs, update pls.
So all in all I've just removed the fillers, extra manpower (you already have the theme system and are Orthodox), extra tax (who cares) and stability (in its heyday Byzantium would lose like 3 stability on monarch death so yeah). I think deep down we're quite similar in our principles and what we think Byzantium needs.
Maybe make it a Despotic Monarchy instead, but to be honest I think that it had decayed enough at the start of the game to be adequately represented by Feudal. The Pronoia system was based on inheritance by the late 13th century, even.
They went from 20% vassal income, 10% army morale, and -0.10% autonomy to 10% manpower, 25% vassal income, and -0.05% autonomy.
Really though, the bigger issue is that the empire government type doesn't exist anymore. So, all of those people who convert their CK2 Roman Empires can't get that government type anymore.
If the forum is just a small sample of Paradox users, then we can expect the larger population to have the same preferences proportionately. By that logic, there must be a pretty decent percentage of people who enjoy playing the Byzantines to want this to be implemented.
Holy mother of baby jesus, that's one bold assumption! The forum subsample must be skewed, at least towards hardcore players and does thereforre not represent "a random sample of the true population". On the other hand, hardcore players are probably disproportunally important for the game so they should be listened to and on top of that, the roman empire is probably popular even among the general public. So yes byzantium love is warranted imo. Just stop trying to use "science" to prove your point.
So all in all I've just removed the fillers, extra manpower (you already have the theme system and are Orthodox), extra tax (who cares) and stability (in its heyday Byzantium would lose like 3 stability on monarch death so yeah). I think deep down we're quite similar in our principles and what we think Byzantium needs.
That's exactly the problem; every idea group needs filler. Otherwise it does become to overpowered, and you have no filler whatsoever. I try keeping the framework of the original ideas without going overboard; it's about optimization, not overhauling. But yes, I would agree that we're similar in our principals, which is good, I'm just advocating a more moderate route.
Imperial power was weak in Morea because Morea was disconnected from Constantinople and there was no effective way to ensure transportation and communication there, not because the Byzantines were feudal. If anything, it would be a March regardless of Government Type if we're going for historical accuracy (just how Byzantium would start off Catholic as well, if that was the goal). But, that's not the best idea for obvious reasons.
Holy mother of baby jesus, that's one bold assumption! The forum subsample must be skewed, at least towards hardcore players and does thereforre not represent "a random sample of the true population". On the other hand, hardcore players are probably disproportunally important for the game so they should be listened to and on top of that, the roman empire is probably popular even among the general public. So yes byzantium love is warranted imo. Just stop trying to use "science" to prove your point.
It should also be noted that, loud as they may be, dedicated Byzantophiles are probably a rather small percentage of the forums. There is most certainly a sample bias in threads dedicated to Byzantium - every dedicated Byzantophile will want to look at it, but the non-Byzantophile majority will likely just ignore it.
