Shouldn't Byzantium have more cores?

[Issac1709]

Buffed Byzantium: Added level 4/8 fort that you cant afford

 

[Carmilla]

Or

Buffed Byzantium: name changed to Roman Empire, tag name doesn't change

If they were given the correct name on the map then I'd cry out of sheer joy to be honest. I'd happily trade it for all the cores and trading a province for another vassal.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1444 starting cores remain an inconsistent mess, if you were to apply the game's own rules to them.

 

[Shaaaq]

Buffed Byzantium. Historical rulers pre-1444 with increased monarch point stats.

Buffed Byzantium. Byzantium now automatically takes loans from Genoa and Venice.

 

[Aries666]

No

 

[IIWW]

Buffed Byzantium. It now auto-discovers random province on east-american coast in 1750.

 

[Kapitalisti]

In next patch, Byz will start as OPM with Constantinopole only.

And in the patch after that Byz starts without a core in Constantinople. With the Ottomans hardcoded to have "City of Worlds Desire" active right from the start.

 

[Wizzington]

How dare you, sir.

You should introduce a new 'thing' where Byzantium is buffed every patch. But make it a tiny, pointless and irrelevant buff -- just enough to have "Buffed Byzantium by..." listed near the top of the change notes.

Maybe I'll change the shade of Byzantium ever so slightly every patch until it ends up hot pink.

 

[hwoosh]

As far as I know, the main reason more and more cores got removed from byzantium was that it was just incredibly easy to vassalize them and feed them all their cores back. I do think this is a solid reason gamplay wise

That's true, but the better solution would have been to keep the cores and simply set the province histories so that the core expiry is calculated from an appropriate date in the 1300s, not 1444. That way, the cores would expire in the late 1400s or early 1500s, making it harder for players to use that vassal-feeding cheese in most situations.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Maybe I'll change the shade of Byzantium ever so slightly every patch until it ends up hot pink.

I like hot pink nations. I am still disappointed you guys took that swan flag out of the client state options. Nothing said "historical immersion" like a pink swan flag with a black background (and another client state with that inverted), both map-colored pink and subsidized to be among the world's most formidable military powers. That was truly a terrifying presence in the world.

Certain nations could use a pretty bow in their flag too, quality depending on difficulty of nation.

 

[zamieo]

Hello,

I've recently taken up EU4 again, lots of New patches plus the Common Sense and Art of War DLC.
Exciting, as always I fire up a New game With Byzantium, my favorite.

So far so good, managed to ally Poland-Lithuania, Wallachia and Aragon.
Ottomans declared war on me around 1450, the war is going well for now, Ottomans are winning Battles but slowly losing Manpower and get whittled Down by the sheer number of forces opposing them.
Hoping the Beyliks and Mamluks will decalre on them soon, too.

But here's my question: I see the Byzantines now have a reduced number of cores.

But shouldn't at least some of the Anatolian west coast (Smyrna, Nicaea, Nicomedia) and maybe Trebizond have Byzantine cores on them? Some of these areas were owned by Byzantium as late as the 1330s, and still had large greek populations. Trebizond also was one of the byzantine successor states after 1204.

Maybe this has been discussed to Death before, but given the very concept of what a core is - there should be more Byzantine cores IMO.

Or maybe People disagree?

They should, probably, have more cores, but I believe the reason many of the cores were removed is that Byzantium could spring up way too easily due to rebellions and stuff.

 

[JasperClay]

Hello,

I've recently taken up EU4 again, lots of New patches plus the Common Sense and Art of War DLC.
Exciting, as always I fire up a New game With Byzantium, my favorite.

So far so good, managed to ally Poland-Lithuania, Wallachia and Aragon.
Ottomans declared war on me around 1450, the war is going well for now, Ottomans are winning Battles but slowly losing Manpower and get whittled Down by the sheer number of forces opposing them.
Hoping the Beyliks and Mamluks will decalre on them soon, too.

But here's my question: I see the Byzantines now have a reduced number of cores.

But shouldn't at least some of the Anatolian west coast (Smyrna, Nicaea, Nicomedia) and maybe Trebizond have Byzantine cores on them? Some of these areas were owned by Byzantium as late as the 1330s, and still had large greek populations. Trebizond also was one of the byzantine successor states after 1204.

Maybe this has been discussed to Death before, but given the very concept of what a core is - there should be more Byzantine cores IMO.

Or maybe People disagree?

1.) Welcome Back!

2.) Yes, I've been finding that the Ottomans don't do quite as well in 1.13. In my current Sweden game, Byzantium is actually still alive in ~1510, with nearly all of Greece. Bosnia, Genoa, and the Mamluks are the greater regional powers: it seems like the Genoans + HRE actually beat an Ottoman + Crimea war pretty badly. Emperor might need a nerf, at least with so many princes, in the early game.

3.) Yes, they should have more cores.

4.) It has been discussed to death. Byzantium is ahistorically strong, already, to allow them to be winnable. They should start out bankrupt, and all provinces should have 50% autonomy. I'd personally love to see them with cores in those areas, but it's a good gameplay compromise to remove them. I'd prefer, honestly, if EU5 started at the MEIOU date - this is really an excuse to request a more dynasty/government-focused game - but even then, I think the 1341-47 civil war was the real death knell, anyway. Basically, when you start playing a Byzantine game, pretend that the Ottomans supported the winning side in that Civil War, and received the right to purchase territorial concessions in return (i.e., de jure recognition of the loss of Anatolia). That's sort of like what the EUIV start represents.

 

[CzokletMuss]

@Wiz, perhaps there should be an official stickied Byzantine thread? The Byzantine issues pop up at least 2-3 times every week of every month for the last 2 years

 

[tkorsvold]

no

I guess that's a straight answer, at least

I can always add a few cores via the console!

 

[JasperClay]

If they were given the correct name on the map then I'd cry out of sheer joy to be honest. I'd happily trade it for all the cores and trading a province for another vassal.

Eh. There's enough of a difference between the Empire of Justinian and Heraclius to argue for a name-change right there. In fact, that is what happened. Basically, Justinian was signing everything in Latin as "Roman Emperor" and Heraclius started signing in Greek as "Roman King". I'm not saying Byzantium has the wrong government tier: that's really an abstraction about the prestige of a given title, and if the game doesn't currently remove tiers from shrinking, Byzantium should remain an empire. What I am saying is, while both Byzantium and the ERE aren't really accurate names, neither is The Roman Empire. It'd be better rendered as either 1.) R(h)omania or 2.) The Kingdom/(Empire) of the Romans. I personally prefer Rhomania/Romania, if we're going with transliterations. The actual official name of the place was the Basileia Rhomaion (translating directly as, basically, The Roman Kingdom), which is what the name should be, but then we gotta start writing Russia in Cyrillic, and stuff like that.

EDIT: Basileia, by the way, isn't directly a Greek word that necessarily only means "Kingdom." In other contexts, it's just usually translated that way.

 

[ThePatriotOfDreumel]

Buffed Byzantium: All provinces start with 0.01% less autonomy.

 

[Kapitalisti]

@Wiz, perhaps there should be an official stickied Byzantine thread? The Byzantine issues pop up at least 2-3 times every week of every month for the last 2 years

"Byzantium sticky:

-No

"

But I meant...
No.

What about...
No.

 

[tkorsvold]

4.) It has been discussed to death. Byzantium is ahistorically strong, already, to allow them to be winnable. They should start out bankrupt, and all provinces should have 50% autonomy. I'd personally love to see them with cores in those areas, but it's a good gameplay compromise to remove them. I'd prefer, honestly, if EU5 started at the MEIOU date - this is really an excuse to request a more dynasty/government-focused game - but even then, I think the 1341-47 civil war was the real death knell, anyway. Basically, when you start playing a Byzantine game, pretend that the Ottomans supported the winning side in that Civil War, and received the right to purchase territorial concessions in return (i.e., de jure recognition of the loss of Anatolia). That's sort of like what the EUIV start represents.

I agree With JasperClay here. I'm pretty sure the 1444 start, even though playing Byzantium here is difficult, is actually an ahistorical reprensentation of the Byzantine strenght.
Looking at the military capabilities in this era, they're probably much stronger in 1444 EU than they were in reality.

But I still think they should have more cores

 

[ThePatriotOfDreumel]

This must be enough of an reason for the stickied Byzantium thread.

If you make a stickied thread, I will never post this again.

 

[MCBC6]

I'm just gonna keep coming up with good ones

Buffed Byzantium: has truce with ottomans until January 1, 1445