Especially in Turkey and the Balkans the official history is ridiculous. Too many nationalists here. You'd better start reading some real scholars like Inalcik, Iorga or Yerasimos and go easy on the 19th century romantic crap.
we were bey in the OE for real, my friend, it wasn't a nickname in a game forum
So your Albanian ancestors were ruling class in the OE. Thank you for admitting that I am right.
The Balkans/Greeks always maintained european high culture.
There is no such thing as "European high culture". There was a Greek/Orthodox/Byzantine high culture. And that was shared in the Balkans and even in Russia. And there was a Latin high culture. Paradox gets this right in tech groups, incidentally. You are right that Turkish high culture was different, but they had enough employees and converts (at least half of the government) to rule Byzantine areas effectively.
Bulgarians and Greeks came together actually as the Orthodox subjects in a foreign Empire, so even while playing as the Byzantines South Slavic being a different culture is rather sound.
Bulgarians and Greeks (and Romanians and Serbs) came together because the Turks shut down the Bulgarian church and replaced it with the Ecumenical church in Constantinople. Ecumenical church helped in ruling the Orthodox for the Ottomans in return for autonomy (the Church collected taxes and acted as judge in disputes between the Orthodox) and privileges. Combined with the conversion and elimination of their nobility over the years the loss of their national church eliminated Bulgarian high culture. It was resurrected later by the Russians. Romanians were also negatively affected. Turks sent Orthodox Greeks from Constantinople to rule them. Many Romanian traders in the OE started speaking Greek in the 18th century.
On the other hand, the AI is very reluctant to expand within its own culture group. This means that the Ottomans would not be prone to expanding into Greek or South Slavic provinces.
If the AI is broken, they should fix the AI, not history.
Ottomans ruled same lands with byzantines but their culture their goverment system and their global strategy was entirely diffrent.Turks had their own culture which they brought it from the steppes of the Asia and it was mixed with Arabic and Iranian culture.Ottomans took some habbits of the west of course but it was done after 1650 in an effort to modernize state and it was not a cultural conversion.
Ottoman government system was a unique solution to a unique problem. It had enough Byzantine influence and manpower to make them rule the Byzantine sphere effectively.
Turkish culture was never directly mixed with the Arabic until 1517. Direct Arab influence after that was pretty minor as well. What Arabic influence existed in the culture came indirectly via Iran, and much of this should be ignored in this discussion, because it relates to the Islamic religion, which the game simulates with a variable called... religion. Arabs and Turks are both Sunni in the game as they should be. And the Greeks and the Balkans are Orthodox as they should be.
You are also wrong about the Byzantine Empire. Or to call it with its proper name, the EASTERN Roman Empire. ERE, as the name suggests, was not Western. It was the main antagonist of the Latin West. It had the same geopolitical mission as the OE in the West: to keep the Roman Church and Western feudalism out of the Eastern Mediterranean. It failed and was replaced with the OE. OE failed as well (but only in the 19th century, after the EU timescale). One can say Russia tried after that and failed too. So today Greeks and Bulgarians are in the EU and think they are western.
Again, Paradox got this right with the Latin and Orthodox tech groups. Of course ERE also tried to keep the Muslims out, but so did the Ottomans, Muslims other than themselves that is.
On the other hand Anatolia in that case should be either nomadic like Magna Mundi or turcoman and belonging to altaic group.
Interesting idea. Indeed the Ottomans had more problems with the Turks revolting than with Balkans revolting until the 19th century. The problem with the idea is Anatola was mostly settled, and the settled Turks were basically the same as the Ottomans. Main difference is that the Ottomans had adapted to ruling the Christians. The nomads were a minority and most of the problems they caused can be simulated with making some provinces Shia, which would be accurate.
These are populations, with language, tradition, religion etc. very different between each other. Only a couple of weeks ago I heard that the US government has admitted that many of the concepts of the US Costitution were inspired from the Iroquis League
For the 100th time, and as you agreed above, OE used converts to rule the locals. Zero difference with language, religion, tradition. Greek, Serbian, Albanian, Bulgarian were all official languages in the OE. You could petition the government in these languages. If this can be simulated with accepted cultures, fine. However, I suspect Albanian will never be accepted in this case, because Albania is composed of a couple of poor provinces. Also the US government took next to nothing from the Iroquis and there were absolutely no Iroquis in it, making you example totally irrelevant.
The biggest problem with relation between Turks and Balkans people came from whole janissary thingy (for which they were hated with burning passion, and still are in some parts).
This is absolutely untrue. You had a point with bandits, but it was a problem everywhere with mountains. Except for Bulgaria, they didn't even have proper bandits.
OE actually ruled the Balkans for 200 years with less problems than Anatolia. Balkan problems started with nationalism (still causing problems there), centuries after Devshirme practice (not "Janissary thingy") was abolished. The Devshirme numbers were small to make a major impact anyway. However Balkan romantic nationalism selectively resurrected tales of people hating the Devshirme. Turks raided villages and kidnapped kid, with moms crying etc. It is bullshit. In fact for each peasant who cried they were two who actually wanted to give their children away, because they would have great jobs (anything from janissary to grand vizier) and remembered their home. And the whole selection was organised by the local Orthodox church. If you were a poor kid in a crowded Balkan village family, getting drafted was the best thing that could happen to you, and the families knew it. Just ask Sokolovic. He became the most powerful man in the world instead of a smelly peasant and made all of his family Patriarchs, who didn't hate him at all.
Because they were not 'ruling' them at first place. Only in places where turkish peasants settled or people converted to Islam there was sufficient state presence ie Kosovo Eyalet and surroundings, some pockets in Thessaly and Bulgaria and just that.
Nonsense. OE had better state penetration compared to their contemporaries, until the 1700s. They ruled in all towns and cities. From the countryside they collected their taxes. And they distributed the land to their military class pretty much everywhere. Where do you think tens of thousands of Timariot cavalry who form the majority of the Ottoman Army came from? Of course they didn't rule that much in mountains, but that's because there isn't much to rule in the mountains in the first place.
In fact the Ottomans were EXTREMELY successful at ruling the Balkans. Just look at Dushan's Serbian Empire. It was five times the size of the Ottoman Beylik, but lasted like 10 days.
Bulgarians had a go earlier, didn't manage to do much better. And just don't get me started with Yugoslavia...
Being them 'troublesome' or not doesn't have any relevance.
Seriously, did you ever play an EU game? You surely don't now what culture means in this context.
