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Tinto Flavour #23 - 30th of May 2025

Hello, and welcome one more Friday to Tinto Flavour, the happy days in which we take a look at the flavour content of Europa Universalis V!

Today, a day after an infamous anniversary, we will be taking a look at the Byzantine Empire - or Eastern Roman Empire, as you’re free to pick the custom name you prefer for it, as it’s a game rule that you can set before starting the game:
Game Rule Byzantium.png

Game Rule Eastern Roman Empire.png

Let’s now start with the content itself:

Once a proud Empire that stretched from Egypt and the Levant to Iberia and Italy, Byzantium now faces a decadent period that began almost three centuries ago. During his reign, Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos saw fit to dissolve several key institutions, such as the Navy, in an attempt to save the dying economy of the country, while the Theme System continued to be a shadow of what it was, as the Empire lost territory across all fronts.

His successor, Emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos, is now faced with the difficult task of safeguarding what remains of our once-glorious Empire. To our east, the Ottomans have started amassing a large army to wipe out our remaining holdings in Anatolia, threatening to set foot across the straits. At the same time, King Stefan Uroš IV Dušan Nemanjić eyes Thessaloníki and Northern Epirus like a vulture. Meanwhile, our treasury runs dry of precious coin, and the country may yet be thrown into a perilous civil war, as the family of our Emperor conspires with the Dynatoí behind closed doors.
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Country Selection.png

Country Tooltip.png

As usual, please consider all UI, 2D and 3D art WIP.

Byzantium1.png

Eastern Roman Empire1.png

As I don’t want to spark yet another Byzantine discussion, and its subsequent civil war, here you have a couple of map screenshots, with a different country name option each!​

Byzantium (which is the name that I will use from now on, as being the most commonly used by the community) starts with a bunch of reforms and privileges:
Estates.png

Most of the Estate Privileges are generic ones, but there’s a unique one for each estate. We will show them in a later section of the TF, as they’re related to the Byzantine Succession Crisis, a disaster that may happen to Byzantium early on.

Regarding the starting reforms, the first is a generic one, while the other two are unique ones:
Reform Autocracy.png

Reform Theme System.png

Building Thema Headquarters.png

Reform Kritai Katholikon.png

Byzantium starts with a ‘State Patriarchy’ policy, as shown last Wednesday:
Policy State Patriarchy.png

And some other unique policies:
Policy Pronoia System.png

Policy Byzantine Law.png

It also has quite a bunch of starting works of art:
Works of Art1.png

Works of Art2.png

The Theodosian Walls are also represented through a unique building:
Building Theodosian Walls.png

Byzantium also has a bunch of advances; we are going to focus on the early-game, historical ones, as they also unlock some Byzantine unique units:
Advance Heart of Orthodoxy.png

Advance Late Cataphracts.png

Unit Byzantine Cataphracts.png

Advance Akritai.png

Unit Akritai.png

Advance Shield of the West.png

Cabinet Action Extensive Conscription.png

Advance Poikilia.png

Advance Expand Varangian Guard.png

Unit Varangians.png

Advance City Taker.png

Unit Modernized Helepolis.png

Let’s now move on to the narrative content for Byzantium. As I mentioned previously, a Succession Crisis is latent in the country, and that would historically lead to the Byzantine Civil War of 1341-1347, which allowed King Stefan Dusan of Serbia to occupy Macedonia and proclaim himself emperor, the Bulgarians to recover some borderlands, and seriously debilitated the country, making it easier for the Ottomans to gain a foothold across the Sea of Marmara, from Gallipoli.

We’re portraying this latent crisis and the general state of decay of the country by some starting privileges, plus some starting inflation, low funds and stability, etc.:
Privilege Corruption Nobility.png

Privilege Corruption Burghers.png

Privilege Corruption Clergy.png

Privilege Corruption Commoners.png

This situation will also spawn in your neighborhood a couple of months after the game starts, although we will talk more in detail about it next Friday:
The Turkish Threat.png

And it’s very likely that this disaster may end up triggering early after the start of the game, if you are not careful enough:
Succession Crisis.png

Succession Crisis2.png

Succession Crisis3.png

It is something we internally call Semi-Generic Disaster. This means that while it uses the texts, panel, etc. of the generic ‘Succession Crisis’ disaster, some countries have unique triggers, events, and content attached to it, so the player can experience similar, but different crisis. The Byzantine Succession Crisis is one of those, therefore.

Independent of whether the player succeeds or not in defeating the Succession Crisis, and not weakening much in the process, Byzantium has a bunch of Dynamic Historical Events:
Event Hesychasm.png


Event Decline Palaiologos Renaissance.png


Event Reforming Kritai Katholikon.png

Reform Reformed Kratoi Katholikon.png


Event Acritic Songs.png


Event Song of Armouris.png


Event Kosntantinos Armenopoulos.png


Event Center of Learning.png


Event Gemistos Plethon.png

Event Gemistos Plethon2.png

Byzantium also has some alt-historical events, one of the few exceptions we make in the game, to include some plausible content in case that Byzantium avoid its decadence…

… However you will have to find it by playing the game when we release it, as that’s all for today! As today is Friday, this will be the schedule for next week:
  • Monday -> Tinto Maps Feedback about the Steppes
  • Tuesday -> Tinto Flavour about the Golden Horde
  • Wednesday -> Tinto Talks about Islam
  • Thursday -> Fourth ‘Behind the Scenes’ video!
  • Friday -> Tinto Flavour about the Ottomans and the Rise of the Turks situation!
And also remember, you can wishlist Europa Universalis V now! Cheers!
 
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Lord Lambert said:
Yeah that is about as worthwhile as Voltaire's claim about the HRE.

Clowns with delusions of grandeur using the Roman Empire as a basis for their legitimacy try to delegitimise the actual Roman Empire.

idk man, you should know better. Please stop trolling :)
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I'm not trolling, calling it Empire of the Romans goes against how the naming convention works in the game and against the fact that there's already a Roman Empire formable:)
 
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Kotyk-durkotyk said:
Maybe it should be an option because different nations use totally different styles.
Maybe it is an American standard or somewhere else, but for me comma separators for thousands look odd and unusual.
So the best would be make it an option.
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Is this not why we have language settings? It's commas in English. (At least the US, and I'm fairly sure the UK as well.) I can't imagine it would be too difficult to change the style along with the text.
 
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"Consolidated Corruption of the Common People" sounds so funny. Maybe it should be changed to "Ingrained/Entrenched/Pervasive Unruliness..." instead? Yeah I know you wanted a four-set, but maybe it would be best if each privilege used different synonyms instead.
 
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Lord Lambert said:
Please tell me you're joking.
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I don't want to repeat myself and I don't know why you think that, I'm not saying that Byzantium wasn't Rome(it was Rome), I'm saying that the way you want to name it goes against how they have been naming countries so far in the game
 
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matfer13 said:
I don't want to repeat myself
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I suppose this is what it must feel like if you find out your science professor legitimately believes in Santa.
 
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ray243 said:
Do we have an idea what is the population of the Byzantines land in Europe Vs the population they have lost in Anatolia?

Asia Minor and Anatolia has long been the heart of Byzantine manpower, and the losses of those areas made it challenging for the Byzantines to recover.

I hope there's something to reflect this as the Byzantines that controls the bits of Greece and Europe was never as populated compared to the lands in Anatolia.

Even after the crusaders had taken over parts of the Byzantine lands post 1204, most of them find themselves often not commanding or controlling as much population in the areas they controlled.
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We have now in this game some super cool and useful filters for things like this. For instance, if I select the Culture map mode, and then hover the Greek culture in the 'Culture' tab of the 'Society' panel, you can check that there are 3.6M Greek pops in the world, and how they're spread:
Greek Culture.png


Then, as it belongs to the 'Hellenic' culture group, you can hover it, and then in any of the cultures, like the 'Pontic' one, to check where you can find it:
Pontic Culture.png


This way, the players will be able to know where it is interesting for they to expand or improve their diplomatic and cultural influence, without having to know beforehand which pops or culture is linked to another.
 
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I am baffled at why the Byzantines don't have their own dedicated clothing, I know that historically they would stop existing just 100 years into the game but surely they could receive some generic eastern european clothes that could be shared with Russian principalities and are closer to the late Byzantines of the popular imagination, these Western European clothes will ruin the fantasy of playing as an Orthodox nation surrounded by enemies on it's last leg.
 
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Aquila SPQR said:
And the whole Europe called Native Americans "Indians" yet that didn't make them inhabitants of India in any way. Stupidity of medieval westerners and their poor naming conventions isn't any real argument here, mate.
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well the convention gained traction and is kind still used because even at that time India inhabitants were called hindus and calling natives indians is like a joke about the whole "we went to fake india"
 
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bokorthedust said:
How much territory does the Extensive conscription cabinet action cover? Or is it country wide? The reinforcement cost does seem to imply that, but I was under the impression that all cabinet actions had smaller (province, area or region level) territorial scope.
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This one is set to impact the country level. Is a nice bonus, but remember that if you use a Cabinet Action on this, you won't be able to sue it on other things, like increasing Control in a province, changing a Societal Value, or Integrating a newly-conquered Province. The use of Cabinet Actions is strategic, therefore.
 
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Pavía said:
We have now in this game some super cool and useful filters for things like this. For instance, if I select the Culture map mode, and then hover the Greek culture in the 'Culture' tab of the 'Society' panel, you can check that there are 3.6M Greek pops in the world, and how they're spread:
View attachment 1309586

Then, as it belongs to the 'Hellenic' culture group, you can hover it, and then in any of the cultures, like the 'Pontic' one, to check where you can find it:
View attachment 1309588

This way, the players will be able to know where it is interesting for they to expand or improve their diplomatic and cultural influence, without having to know beforehand which pops or culture is linked to another.
Click to expand...
Kind of unrelated, but I think the Pontic culture should partially belong to the Kartvelian group, as Laz people had a big impact in the ethnogenesis of Pontic Greeks. I hope this is something you will consider doing.

Also, I doubt there were many Pontic Greeks in Samtskhe (the province of Meskheti). They were probably so few in number that they shouldn't even feature on the map.
 
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I wanted to ask:

How does controlling the Dardanelles and Bodphorus work in terms of Trade revenue?

These are major Trade choke points and full control on both sides should mean High Revenues from trade routes passing through.
 
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Aquila SPQR said:
And the whole Europe called Native Americans "Indians" yet that didn't make them inhabitants of India in any way. Stupidity of medieval westerners and their poor naming conventions isn't any real argument here, mate.
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We still call Africa Africa to this day and that is allegedly because the Romans mispelled the name of a tribe and yet you don't see many people complaining
 
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