If the ROC government still sits on Taiwan selling computers to the US and telling anybody who will listen that they are the legitimate government of all China, yeh nobody is taking that seriously. If, through whatever improbable sequence of events, someday they again hold most of the mainland and the rump of the PRC government is off on Long March II, I think most countries in the world would then take them seriously.
That's what I meant. If the player manages to get BYZ back to its borders at the death of Basil II, why should they not then claim the rest of Italy? If the player manages to get BYZ back to its borders at the death of Justinian I, why should they not then claim France, Spain & Portugal?
Er-what do claims or cores mean here? Causus Belli? International recognition of the legitimacy of these wars? Provinces that are easy to rule? If Taiwan somehow won an insane war and held the territory yes, it would get recognized. They probably even would have a much easier time ruling over China than, say, the Japanese. The international community might view it as merely a civil war and not get upset with the balance of power shifting the sameway they would freak if Japan were to invade China and try and conquer it...
But if Byzantium somehow conquered all of Italy-the Kings of France and Spain would ally against them for encroaching on areas they had claims to (Byzantium, in game terms, would aquire a lot of BB by conquering Italy and possibly trigger BB wars if they weren't carefull.) I doubt Catholic Italians would seamlessly become loyal to the new Emperor (the native population would have high revolt risk). So why should the Byzantines get any claims or cores in the West?
The player is presumably free to manufacture a CB somehow on Italy, invade, take the BB hit and the revolt hits and, with a dynamic core system, eventually incorporate those holdings into his own empire after a long period of unrest. You could probably even eventually invade Europe and convert all of Europe to Orthodox. The game engine should realistically make that difficult, but possible. But I don't see why conquering all of Europe should be any easier for the Byzantium than other countries or why Byz should get a special incentive to do so.
I would like to take this moment to vent about what made me, personally, tired of Byzantium in EU3:the Pentarchy decision and the awesome missions Byzantium got.
The decision and missions helped flesh out a kind of wildly optimistic scenario where Byzantium resurges and inflicts crushing defeats on both Islam and Catholicism so that Orthodox is the major religion (and the very idea of a Papacy is destroyed, I guess? Somehow?)
Once you put that in, you have to answer the "if we are going to have the Pentarchy event, why not have event X" irritating questions. We now have an
incredibly optimistic victory scenario for the Byz given special recognition in game, helped along by both by mission chains and eventually a powerful decision. But why isn't there an mission chain for the Ottomans to take Vienna and even Rome? Why isn't there mission chains for the Kingdom of Jerusalem or the Knights to keep crusading till take Mecca and Medina? Mission chains and decisions for France, Spain, Poland or Austria sketching out their most wildly ambitious and unrealistic goals?
I...actually would be okay with all those. As long as attention is lavished on all the major players equally. Otherwise, they should not get special bonuses, missions or events to achieve highly implausible things. A Spanish invasion of China and eradication of Protestantism should probably be done in game, using the engine manually rather than by special incentives. The same should be true of a Byzantium best case scenario.
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