Byzantine

[Vityviktor]

I'm sure it will be in one of the first expansions/updates. I can imagine something as Byzantine government in the free content, and events and more detailed flavour being part of the expansion along with the cosmetic content, like its own portrait and unit set (remember we know there will be a Western/European portrait and unit set, but no words about Byzantine or East, South, West Slavic, Norse, etc). Of course, all of this is pure speculation.

 

[ray243]

"Byzantium is its own beast, and requires a lot of thought to do right. The CK2 solution was not optimal, and we didn't want to repeat what we did there. Just slapping an elective variant on it and renaming its government to 'Imperial' doesn't do it justice, we would want actual mechanics to represent the intricacies of byzantine politics. All I can say at this point is that whenever in the future we choose to deal with Byzantium we will make sure that we do it well"

So this pretty much saying we're getting a DLC?

It depends if the team is willing to rewrite massive sections of the game to be able to support Byzantine mechanics. CK3 based on what they have revealed so far, does not seem well-equipped to handle the Byzantines at all. It's still locked firmly in feudal gameplay mechanics.

In order for Byzantine politics to work, because you talk about politics at the highest level, politics needs to work at the lowest level first. This mean figuring out what unlanded characters are able to do, when they do not have access to an army or a court. It means even minor political offices have to be simulated, namely offices that has a lot of political power but no actual territorial control.

Someone who is appointed the commander of any of the imperial guard units ought to be more influential and more powerful than a strategos in a far-away theme. It also means the Praetorian prefect or the Logothete isn't just a duke or count who has a seat on the council, but it is a separate political office from being a Duke. Those offices ought to be more desirable than simply being a Duke or a count of a province. It means your entire gameplay does not revolve around upgrading buildings, taxing your peasants and training your army. As the Logothete, you have no land that you control, just the administrators under you. And it is those administrators that handle paperwork, appointment of other officials and etc. Your power lies entirely in the office you hold, and the people you directly control. Your office is also not your title. Your heirs cannot simply inherit it, but rather they have to earn it ( be it via nepotism or via merit).

I cannot see the dev team being capable of implementing that level of detail for the Byzantine empire to work, because the game as designed never give much thought to non-feudal gameplay mechanics. Playing as the Byzantine empire is to play a management simulator. If the team did not think about implementing those mechanics early in the development cycle of CK3, then it is far too late to ask for any meaningful Byzantine DLCs.

 

[fr-rein]

I cannot see the dev team being capable of implementing that level of detail for the Byzantine empire to work, because the game as designed never give much thought to non-feudal gameplay mechanics. Playing as the Byzantine empire is to play a management simulator. If the team did not think about implementing those mechanics early in the development cycle of CK3, then it is far too late to ask for any meaningful Byzantine DLCs.

Same with Rota succession system.
In Eastern Europe, succession was a messy business. One of the features was that a land was never set to be owned forever by a branch of family (non-main inheriting brother for example). Instead, while key successor would become a duke of main title, rest according to succession queue would gain other titles. If you as a duke of Chernihiv became a duke of Kyiv, you would normally relieve your title of Duke of Chernihiv.

Notably, it was modified later to make patrimonial lands an exception for major duchies when Rus reached peak and, effectively, those "duchies" were sizes of Kingdom (Chernihiv, Galicia-Volhyn, Vladimir are biggest examples that span across dejure kingdom sizes).

The system survived well into XV century until it was fully scrapped, with Muscovite civil war being one of last major cases of it's manifestation (it ended right around the end of game timeframe).

The problem is that it couldn't be easily made in CK2. Court for many such princes was a separate thing from local title. In fact, to an extent even landless succeeding princes had courts and rights. If their turn was skipped, a war would break out (with a help of allies but still). When they would succeed, they would move their court to a new title.

It is a distinct modification of classic feudal gameplay that, like Byzantine, to some extent needs having landless (in classic meaning) characters as playable. Can it be done in CK3? Just like Byzantines, probably not.

I understand a desire to have separate DLCs for regions. But it seems that they are doing CK2 mistake of not supporting such systems in hardcoded way and would use workarounds of CK2 instead. It is a terrible prospect, these two unique systems (Byzantine + Rota) were those elements I wish were better in CK3.

 

[Arko]

So this pretty much saying we're getting a DLC?

Or a patch.

 

[Masternachos]

If DassiD is writing down facts, and only facts, how can you click the disagree button? Do you disagree with the facts? Do you have "alternative" facts? I hope we aren't dealing with alternative facts here, that would make any discussion impossible if we all are going to have our own personal reality and not a common reality and facts.

Not having clicked disagree myself, I can see how one can use "respectfully disagree" to express something like "Your facts are out of context" or "You're missing the point" or something like that.

 

[Masternachos]

Going back to EU2 it used to be a self aware joke, but it's not self aware anymore.

Well yeah, in Europa Universalis any existing Byzantines is a relic exclave and wanting the devs to add a bunch of stuff to a country that historically ended a decade after the earliest start date is "fanboyist" (not to mention having Byzantine stuff in Victoria 2!), but the Byzantine Empire USED to be something, and CK3 (especially the two confirmed start dates) are WHEN it's that thing it "used" to be.

 

[treb]

Well yeah, in Europa Universalis any existing Byzantines is a relic exclave and wanting the devs to add a bunch of stuff to a country that historically ended a decade after the earliest start date is "fanboyist" (not to mention having Byzantine stuff in Victoria 2!), but the Byzantine Empire USED to be something, and CK3 (especially the two confirmed start dates) are WHEN it's that thing is "used" to be.

The Byzantine stuff in Vicky 2 isn't that outlandish, the Greeks actually fought a war against Turkey from 1919 to 1922 in an attempt to claim back former Byzantine land in Anatolia, had they been successful in taking Istanbul and the Greek populated parts of Anatolia. they probably would have modeled there state as a legitimate successor to the Byzantines.

 

[Imgran]

It is a distinct modification of classic feudal gameplay that, like Byzantine, to some extent needs having landless (in classic meaning) characters as playable. Can it be done in CK3? Just like Byzantines, probably not.

This is why I want Estates, as subsections of Barony level holdings that can be bought for money. Estates would give you a location to call home, and therefore a place to set up a landless court. allowing you to actually play as a landless character and opening up the game to model the rest of what is needed for the Republican, Theorcratic and Imperial model.

Basically we need something to model the upper middle class. Estates could be that something.

 

[Masternachos]

The Byzantine stuff in Vicky 2 isn't that outlandish, the Greeks actually fought a war against Turkey from 1919 to 1922 in an attempt to claim back former Byzantine land in Anatolia, had they been successful in taking Istanbul and the Greek populated parts of Anatolia. they probably would have modeled there state as a legitimate successor to the Byzantines.

Now I knew Greece and Turkey fought each other (Treaty of Sevres, Treaty of Lausanne, population exchange, etc) but I didn't know the role the Byzantine Empire had in all that (aside from it maybe being why those regions were ethnically Greek).

 

[Imgran]

Now I knew Greece and Turkey fought each other (Treaty of Sevres, Treaty of Lausanne, population exchange, etc) but I didn't know the role the Byzantine Empire had in all that (aside from it maybe being why those regions were ethnically Greek).

That area was ethnically greek long before the Byzantine Empire. Until the Turks committed an internationally sanctioned genocide by driving Greeks out of western Anatola -- land inhabited by ethnic Greeks for literally the entirety of civilized human history up to that point I might add -- that land was about as Greek as it gets.

As to the Byzantine connection, no real surprises there. The Greeks looked back to an ancient, powerful Greek Empire in the same way that Italy in the same era looked back at Rome and Germany modeled itself as the Third Reich ("Reich" = basically the HRE). Peoples looking to expand aggressively tend to look to ancient borders for an idea of what to grab. that's one of the reasons Italy went after Greece a few decades after the Greco-Turkish war.

If the Greeks had won the war and occupied Constantinople (as it was still named at the time), there is a zero percent chance or less that the capital of Greece would be Athens today.