Succession for players aside, Byzantium is supremely powerful in all my games, unless 4th crusade happens. But strangely the emperor seems to land his sons as Doges in the middle of Anatolia. Like actual republics as governmdnts rather than imperial.
The Byzantine Empire, and how Holy Fury ruined them.
- Thread starter Anilomu
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It's a bug I assume. Since the new Imperial government type allows people to hold cities without penalties when you give a county and all the associated holdings to an Imperial character (Emperor family members) they take the cities too and become merchants. As the player you can prevent this by creating new vassals for the cities before giving the county to your relatives, unfortunately the AI is not that smart...
In my opinion if an Imperial character is given a county with both cities and castles it should keep the castle as the capital holding and continue being Imperial, which is quite possible how it was intended to be, I hope it gets patched when the bugfixes come.
And on the thread topic. Byzantium is simply overpowered if managed by the player. Getting your designed heir to succeed you is extremely easy, and if something goes wrong you always have the choice of going NK mode, appoint new council members that are fine with being bribed and get the heir via favor voting.
In fact I am confident to say Byz has never been so easy to play as the player. The first step should always be releasing Epirus and instantly declare holy war and continue doing so every time you are allowed to. Meanwhile you marry one of your sons to a Lombar princess and proceed to declare was for Lombardy when the old Lombard dies. Just like that, you have a stable Empire ready to do whatever you want, make sure to land your family members on new territories and enjoy.
The AI will always ruin everything that's for sure, but there is nothing youn can do to avoid that except fixing bugs.
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Yeah, the republic thing is weird. My game had the Most Serene Republic of Thrace form under the Byzantine Revolt. They're currently based out of Uppsala, and Uppland is the only duchy de jure part of the Kingdom of Thrace at this point. Yes, you read that right. It's... a little wonky right now.
Hey Anilomu,
I have the latest patch without Holy Fury.
I switched to the Byz emperor (in my non-ironman pechenegs game)
I tried to reproduce the situation; so here the emperor has
* Duchy of Trace: Agnatic Cognatic Elective
* Theme of Krete: Viceroyalty (that's kind of weird)
The heir is another Duke, but only the primary Duchy is lost
To test I also gave myself the hereditary Duchy of Thessalonika, with Agnatic-Cognatic Primogeniture
And I forgot to take the last screenshot :/, but basically upon death, my successor inherited the Theme of Krete, and the Primogeniture Duchy of Thessalonika. I lost the Empire and tje Duchy of Thrace, which was also Elective.
So i'm not sure why your situation is different. If you still have the save, could you check what Succession Laws the Duchies have? Maybe that would explain it.
I think it's fair that you'd lose your primary title, but the rest you should be able to keep; if not it could be a bug? or maybe the succession was being recalculated?
Vittorio
There seems to be a bug. I've got it playing as the king of elective Sweden. If I don't have enough votes to win the election it says I'll lose all my duchy and county titles inside and outside of Sweden. Sometimes it says I'll only lose the capital county and the kingdom.
Of course you can easily game the elections and prevent the title loss message but that was not the point. The point is why does the message claims you'll lose everything. And I'm not saying the titles would be actually lost (I didn't try it because I play ironman so I'm hoping it's just a bug) but just reading you'll lose everything is stressful even for me so I can only imagine how a new player would feel.
And the thing with all the republics is surely some sort of bug. I'll go check the bug reports.
So, yes, the Byz are not actually "ruined" but something is definitely off.
And the thing with all the republics is surely some sort of bug. I'll go check the bug reports.
So, yes, the Byz are not actually "ruined" but something is definitely off.
Not representative, but in my current Viking game the Byzantines have completely collapsed in less than 100 years. The Aztecs showed up early and took Anatolia and the Holy Land, and a Bohemian-Bulgarian blob took Constantinople. They basically just have the Morea and Salonica.
I have been playing as byzantium for a while now and learned alot about the new "mechanic" and how to deal with it. The AI however cannot deal with it. I'll give a quick example: In byzantium only landed characters that are direct vassals of the basileous can be commanders. I just fought an invasion war today where I lost 5 yes 5 commanders in battle, several more where wounded so I cant even count them in. I literally stopped using high ranking nobles as commanders because if I would use them I would deplete the whole nobility very quickly. Imagine if the empreror has lost several key nobles and they have regencies, the loss in levy alone is severe for the AI and makes it an even more attractive target. He himself or her also tends to die much more often. Also the nobility often sucks in martial most of the time at least in my game. I can work around that by inviting foreigners who are infidels and zealous, land them use them as commanders and then revoke the county once they died and repeat, which has also the advantage that they vote for themselves as next emperor which makes the control onf inheritance much easier with a large commander pool.
There is really no reason for any of that gamey stuff. Yeah, you won't get super commanders all the time and getting siege leaders is hard, but I had no issues with getting ones around 12 martial. Commander traits are somewhat rare, but there are regular traits that add combat bonuses too. And the marshal can improve them a bit. If you take war focus yourself you can also pass on traits to them.
For the AI it would probably help if the emperor didn't lead troops himself
Gamey? Seriously?? You cannot even use chinese commanders you paid grace for, and you call that gamey lol. The mechanic is broken the way it is, the best part is when a commander retires by itself you get the penalty for kicking him out and loose voting influence. Keeping an eye on powerful vassals is hard enough without having them dying like flies. I used "normal" commanders and then ran into an army half my strength, I lost the battle because they had a 24 martial unyielding warrior lodge dude in the center. Even had 6.000 men of the retinue in there including thousands of knights. So yea you need good commanders and a way to replace them quickly.
Exactly. If every ruler stopped leading armies and dying in battle constantly maybe there wouldn’t always be at least one claimant war always going on in the ERE
A bigger issue is that your prospective heir can get maimed in battle, at which point he can't inherit.
Anyone with a defect is essentially blocked from inheritance, like they would be blinded. That includes inherited traits like clubfoot. The absurd thing is if your hellenic you are bound to get hurt when you join the lodge.
Isn't it only -50? For the player that's not a problem, but might be for the AI.
Thats what I thought to. I checked the files and it says #The Basileios must have an untarnished body. So if the current ruler is disfigured he looses voting power. I couldnt find an entry regarding the heir but I cannot nominate my legitimate son who has a clubfoot. The other two kids are both possible candidates. I really dont know whats going on but I assume he is blocked due to his clubfoot, although I cannot proof it.
Clubfoot, harelip, any forming of maiming. It's not instantaneous, though, my one-eyed brother briefly remained heir before being disqualified.
The upside to this is that it applies to your commanders too - the very thing that make you eligible to be the Emperor can also end up disqualifying you.
- Reduced Born in the Purple and Despot weight in Imperial Elective.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/early-patch-notes-for-3-0-1.1132993/
Do you still believe that?
I wrote that post long before the new patch notes were announced.
Imperial elective is getting a lot of changes in 3.0.1; some good for the emperor, some bad. We'll have to actually play the new version before we can know how it shakes out.
My prediction: it'll probably be a little trickier to get your chosen heir elected, but as long as we can call in favors for succession support, there's still not much excuse for losing, it'll just sometimes take a bit of effort. And the bug fix for emperor voting power is going to matter quite a lot.
Here' the three relevant changes listed for byzantines, I assume there are more that are not listed because bugs *cough cough*
- Byzantine Elector AI behavior now takes more into consideration the candidate's martial/intrigue/diplomacy when determining whether to pick him or not.
- Reduced Born in the Purple and Despot weight in Imperial Elective.
- Decreased the frequency of battle events a bit in general (mostly for the AI) and for some of the most lethal events.
Nr. 1 doesnt change much for the player, they rather prefer characters with high stats which is good for the AI, the player still owns the election with bribes.
Nr. 2 doesnt change much, born in purple hardly has any effect, the despot title is just an honorary title you give your destinied heir for extra prestige and oppinion.
Nr. 3 is actually changing something for the AI, like I said and was downvoted for, the AI will loose less of its nobility in warfare now. I only use 1 maybe 2 people from the nobility rooster because of the deathrate. Half the empire is ruled by children already if I didnt have full women rights, my armies would be lead by mayors with less than 10 martial. Imagine the poor AI.
I went through the bugfixes and as expected there is tons of stuff related to the byzantines...
These two are important as they diminished the voting power of the emperor especially in an epidemic. I had like -80 when the black death came through for no reason.
- Byzantine Emperors should no longer incur in discharged_hero modifiers when their commanders get sick or are in seclusion.
- Fixed Roman Emperor losing voting power for discharging a Commander when he appoints said Commander to a Council position.
- Byzantine Elector AI behavior now takes more into consideration the candidate's martial/intrigue/diplomacy when determining whether to pick him or not.
- Reduced Born in the Purple and Despot weight in Imperial Elective.
- Decreased the frequency of battle events a bit in general (mostly for the AI) and for some of the most lethal events.
Nr. 1 doesnt change much for the player, they rather prefer characters with high stats which is good for the AI, the player still owns the election with bribes.
Nr. 2 doesnt change much, born in purple hardly has any effect, the despot title is just an honorary title you give your destinied heir for extra prestige and oppinion.
Nr. 3 is actually changing something for the AI, like I said and was downvoted for, the AI will loose less of its nobility in warfare now. I only use 1 maybe 2 people from the nobility rooster because of the deathrate. Half the empire is ruled by children already if I didnt have full women rights, my armies would be lead by mayors with less than 10 martial. Imagine the poor AI.
I went through the bugfixes and as expected there is tons of stuff related to the byzantines...
These two are important as they diminished the voting power of the emperor especially in an epidemic. I had like -80 when the black death came through for no reason.
- Byzantine Emperors should no longer incur in discharged_hero modifiers when their commanders get sick or are in seclusion.
- Fixed Roman Emperor losing voting power for discharging a Commander when he appoints said Commander to a Council position.
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Let's hope they'll also reduce the frequency of the claimant factions. Especially when the leader and supporters of the faction are not related in any way or don't have common interests with the claimant.
And what about the making sons into doges behavior? Was that reported as a bug?
And what about the making sons into doges behavior? Was that reported as a bug?