Discussion on how to nerf Byz more
- Thread starter Karpathios
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You could make province Sinop Turkish and Muslim, sources say while the city itself had a large Greek population, this cant be said of the rural areas. Furthermore shouldnt Byzantium start with being Catholic and those provinces in Greece as a vassal?
I do hope you realize that this thread is mostly people venting their frustrations about nerfs or about whining about nerfs, and don't take it seriously.
Byzantium is weak, but frankly it has a lot more going for it than the Ottomans had 150-200 years prior (when the Ottomans were sub-OPM).
In any event Chios should be a Byzantine core, the revolt in 1329 revoked the petty fiefdom grant to the Zacharia and reverted the place to nominal direct Byzantine rule. Genoa had no rule on the island again until 1346. This should then result in a core lasting until 1496. Arguably you could have a distinct revolter for Chios (though it does not seem to be the case that Chios thought of themselves as anything other than Byzantine subjects enfiefed to Genovese nobility), but I don't know what practical difference that would make.
Naxos should even more definitively be Byzantine as the last clash for it was in 1310. That should mean the core there would survive until 1460.
Trebizond warred with Byzantium in 1351 so we are looking at core expiration there in 1501.
Corfu is a harder nut to crack it was enfiefed under Epirus, but I think the enforced union of Epirus should have resulted in core timing from 1386 that should give us 1536.
Remember, 150 years before 1444 is 1294 so you have that whole Michaeline resurgence to date off for cores.
When it comes to gameplay it seems like yet another sacrifice made on the alter of the horrid use of rebels as a balance mechanism. The fun part about playing Byz is that you have a heap of cores and you are rebuilding to glory and greatness. Having fewer and fewer options for Byz just because the rebels break things might behoove us to reconsider rebels. The Turks should be able to deal with rebels. At some point there is only so much fun that can sucked out of the game to feed the rebel leviathan.
If the problem is that the Turks are forced to return cores to a revolter state, well that isn't exactly beyond the pale - if the Turks are weak enough to get broken by someone who wants to hurt them they kinda should be breakable.
In any event Chios should be a Byzantine core, the revolt in 1329 revoked the petty fiefdom grant to the Zacharia and reverted the place to nominal direct Byzantine rule. Genoa had no rule on the island again until 1346. This should then result in a core lasting until 1496. Arguably you could have a distinct revolter for Chios (though it does not seem to be the case that Chios thought of themselves as anything other than Byzantine subjects enfiefed to Genovese nobility), but I don't know what practical difference that would make.
Naxos should even more definitively be Byzantine as the last clash for it was in 1310. That should mean the core there would survive until 1460.
Trebizond warred with Byzantium in 1351 so we are looking at core expiration there in 1501.
Corfu is a harder nut to crack it was enfiefed under Epirus, but I think the enforced union of Epirus should have resulted in core timing from 1386 that should give us 1536.
Remember, 150 years before 1444 is 1294 so you have that whole Michaeline resurgence to date off for cores.
When it comes to gameplay it seems like yet another sacrifice made on the alter of the horrid use of rebels as a balance mechanism. The fun part about playing Byz is that you have a heap of cores and you are rebuilding to glory and greatness. Having fewer and fewer options for Byz just because the rebels break things might behoove us to reconsider rebels. The Turks should be able to deal with rebels. At some point there is only so much fun that can sucked out of the game to feed the rebel leviathan.
If the problem is that the Turks are forced to return cores to a revolter state, well that isn't exactly beyond the pale - if the Turks are weak enough to get broken by someone who wants to hurt them they kinda should be breakable.
I like this.
Most strategies for Byz involve building an immense fleet to blockade the straits, then pick up free European provinces. This is cheesing.
No way the Greeks could have built a fleet to rival the Ottoman fleet in real life in the Ottomans own backyard, and they would not have noticed and reacted to it.
Also, there is no way that Constantinople should be contributing that much to the trade node at that point in its history. The Ottomans controlled the seas completely.
The event you proposed would be a great way to really impact the starting strategy for Byzantium.
Without the ahistorical gold coming in from that trade node, and autonomy increases in Achaea and Morea (I don't believe Morea would qualify as an outright vassal IRL), it should make it tougher.
I would also like some DHEs to really flesh out the religious aspects of diplomacy here. Being desperate for aid, the emperor was willing to submit to the Pope in return for aid against the Turks. Make have a decision to:
accept the Papacy's legitimacy, and he will make the Ottomans a target of crusade. Switches religion to Catholicism (all provinces staying Orthodox), and having a Forsaken the True Faith +20 unrest (those peasants got pissed when he tried this).
deny it, get +5 prestige, +10% production boost/5 years, -2 unrest/5 years
I don't think this is a particularly good metric for balancing ("good play" involves doing stuff that is highly historically unrealistic), but your ideas for making Byzantium a legitimately interesting start are pretty nice nonetheless.
I agree it's difficult to emulate a real historical situation. I guess it just doesn't make sense that they were able to construct and maintain a fleet equal to the Ottomans by any stretch of the imagination. I don't see how to incorporate that into the game though. Perhaps something like a modifier to shipbuilding time depending on strength in trade node? Just a thought.
Maybe just a solid hit to Byz's trade power will do the trick.
Indeed. It isn't Byzantium they consider 'too strong' it is the annoyance or 'wrongness' of Byzantium popping up again in isolated provinces after it has died. And in a sense that it a correct assumption, but it is the approach to the problem that is the issue.
Heck, nerf Byzantium for all I care (but still make it playable as The Purple Phoenix is paid material that wouldn't do well to be invalidated), but just do it for the right reasons.
Technically I even support the guy who proposed making BYZ into a purely formable tag and make the present BYZ into a Constantinople tag, as it really didn't have much to do with the old empire any longer. It would be a nice goal to have, to restore the Empire. In this case it would simply be the international recognition that the Empire is once more worthy of being called that.
And wow... Constantinople in Asia Minor. :blink: It doesn't really matter that modern Istanbul has sprawled across the Bosporus. Constantinople never did and doesn't ingame. It is correctly a purely European city and province.
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While I'm the guy that pitched the idea about replacing BYZ cores with GRE cores upon BYZ death, I'd be okay with BYZ being a purely-formable tag too.
That's really the logical fix given game mechanics (and probably history as well). The problem is not so much Byzantium having cores, but Byzantium forming after it's been wiped out.
I don't understand why there's such a tremendous bias against ahistorical Byzantine behavior in-game. There are so many other things that are ahistorical that happen all the time which just get a pass since EU4 is a sandbox game that pretty much always ends up with significant alternate history conclusions, yet there is just something about ahistorical Byzantine presence that seems to set people on edge. Ottomans simply annex them 99% of the time in most games anyway and they're never heard from again. The fact that you even can come back as Byzantium and be a legitimate nation is the reason why i love the EU series.
Sure it's annoying that Byz can be released on some tiny island since the AI is incompetent at handling rebels most of the time, but in my mind it's really no different from Gotland or Corsica revolting in the framework of the game. Byzantines don't need any nerfs simply for being able to exist and come back if the Ottomans are collapsing.
Sure it's annoying that Byz can be released on some tiny island since the AI is incompetent at handling rebels most of the time, but in my mind it's really no different from Gotland or Corsica revolting in the framework of the game. Byzantines don't need any nerfs simply for being able to exist and come back if the Ottomans are collapsing.
My biases against it are for two reasons: first, I do not like BYZ. When I first played CKII (my first Paradox game), it was the Byzantine Empire that taught me to hate blobs, and Byzantium in particular for being a particularly persistent blob (and seemingly full of nothing but blinded eunuchs) and at the same time, being so wildly fanboyed over.
Second, it consistently lasts far too long, then springs up on an island and sticks around more or less forever. It's in part that after CK II, I just want to see BYZ die and stay dead, and part that it's such a good example of the AI Ottomans being woefully incompetent.
That a player can bring them back doesn't really bug me. However, it's return and persistence after finally dying the death it had been declining towards for hundreds of years is to me what Lenape or some other North American minor revolting in the Faroes and sticking around there for the next 200 years would be to many other players.
Well, countries you hold umbrage with is just a personal problem. Personal biases and dislikes for countries should not influence balancing in any way, shape, or form.
The example of a Native American revolting in the Faroe Islands is just hyperbole. No American natives have any connection to some Scandinavian island in the North Sea. Greek civilization had existed in the region of the Aegean an Asia Minor for over 3000 years around the time of the start date. No Turk had even set foot in the region until the 11th century AD. Singling out a resurgent Byzantium for the era the game takes place in is ridiculous, especially considering some of the other absurdities I've seen while playing.
The issues of them remaining on some tiny island somewhere is less of a problem inherent specifically to the Byzantines and more of an indication of how poor the AI is at handling such things. I'm all for improving the game with more intelligent AI to avoid such things, but I urge people to leave personal likes and dislikes out of the discussion when regarding trying to balance the game as a whole.
The example of a Native American revolting in the Faroe Islands is just hyperbole. No American natives have any connection to some Scandinavian island in the North Sea. Greek civilization had existed in the region of the Aegean an Asia Minor for over 3000 years around the time of the start date. No Turk had even set foot in the region until the 11th century AD. Singling out a resurgent Byzantium for the era the game takes place in is ridiculous, especially considering some of the other absurdities I've seen while playing.
The issues of them remaining on some tiny island somewhere is less of a problem inherent specifically to the Byzantines and more of an indication of how poor the AI is at handling such things. I'm all for improving the game with more intelligent AI to avoid such things, but I urge people to leave personal likes and dislikes out of the discussion when regarding trying to balance the game as a whole.
Fix the bugs in the military AI and teach the AI to deal with unrest and rebels. If you do that, you nerf Byzantium because the Ottomans will do their job. In the process you also improve the game all around instead of limiting the scope of your change to a single country. And finally, if the player manages to win and can successfully form the Roman Empire of old, then you also made a good chunk of your fanbase happy. Seems like a win all around to me.
Seriously?
First if we are going to go one personal biases do you understand how many people have a personal bias towards the Purple menace? I mean PDox made a DLC about this one country and people still buy it. You really don't want to start off your argument with personal bias claims.
Second - so what if it lasts too long? Not holding Constantinople deprives the Ottos of some tax, trade, and manpower ... but they are still the biggest, baddest boys around for a hundred years. So what if some pathetic island state revolts and installs a Pelologoi pretender does that actually change game balance? Some imperial pretender arises up in Rhodes, how exactly does that make the Ottos weaker? The Ottos can already crush any such pittance of a state and it won't materially change their rate of conquest.
Further in the vast majority of my games they don't even make it 1453. It is a random die roll - how fast does Albania fall, how fast do the Ottomans burn through their cores, Byz never survives the Ottoman assault unaided. Of course freakishly many other states don't die and they actually affect game balance: Timurids can hold out often and stop Persia (a main Ottoman counterbalance) from forming. Delhi and QQ both can routinely survive and prevent their historical successors (who you know are better suited for their historical roles) from emerging. Let us not forgot about Timbuktu, the Inca, the Aztecs, and Vijay who all often last inordinately long term who through off the major wealth distributions in game. Lest we get too caught up in states persisting too long we need to remember that other small, pivotal states, like Brittany, The Livonian Order, Lorraine, and Navarra all mysteriously die a century before they should. Skanderbeg dying out in the first few years is a bigger affront than most of the Byz in the islands stuff ever could be. I mean I really don't see how this is worse than Gotland - a slightly ahistorical map that changes game balance not a whit.
We can worry about putting a stake through a Byzantine zombie's heart after we get a decent evolution of Persia, India, and Mesoamerica.
Frankly, this just reeks once again of Pdox being unable to balance rebels and nerfing the fun out of something to try to cover it up.