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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.

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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Wouldn't the privileges of estates that are net negative to state and trigger for the potential civil war events be better represented as the actual privileges those estates got with negatives (and some positives they provided to the estates) instead of just nonsensical idea of "Corruption" as a privilege with no benefits to anyone whatsoever?
As I understand it, taxes that are not collected due to corruption remain in the class, thereby benefiting it and not the crown, is that true?
 
Just checking I understand this graphic correctly. The blue bars are the maximum values, the arrows suggest the momentum towards a direction, and the central boxes give the current value and will slide along as appropriate?
1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. The central box gives the monthly moves towards the value the arrow point to.

When you hover over the Societal Value itself, you get additional info:
Societal Values2.png
 
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Imo there should be a time limit for that. Until uhhhh Age of Absolutism, you can reform Byzantium; after that, it's either Greece or full Rome.
There was a time in theb18th century where the Russians(under Catherine the Great I think) and the Austrians wanted to restore Byzantium, so it would be cool if you could do that
 
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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:
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.
One of my favorite Imperator features is back!
 
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1. We're taking the name from the province where Constantinople is located.
Thrace?
2. Makes for a more direct connection from where 'Byzantium' comes from.
Why? Why bother? What is the point? Isn't historical accuracy supposed to be one of the pillars of this game? Why go with an objectively (in the most literal sense of the word) ahistoric name when there are several perfectly good, historically accurate names you could have gone with, that don't require any amount of taking the piss out of your historically literate fanbase?
 
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If the player manages to survive as Byzantium, any alt historial event related to the revenge for the fourth crusade?
Yes.
 
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Can we expect more Eastern European/Orthodox aesthetics by the time of release, like a less Western courtroom, crown, buildings on the map, etc?
The only way to do the Eastern Roman aesthetics justice would be to do it fully and properly to a level that that truly immerses the player, rather than reactively insert a crown here and an illustration there, but we haven't scheduled that level of work before release. I hear you though, and I really hope it's something we can do sooner rather than later.
 
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1. We're taking the name from the province where Constantinople is located.
2. Makes for a more direct connection from where 'Byzantium' comes from.
i always thought byzantium came from bis antium, aka the second antium (which was the main portual location in front of rome during the roman empire) which made a lot of sense for naming considering how important it is the strait and the consequent portual importance, just now realizing this is not the case but an amazing coincidence
 
Well, if all Africans had one name for the entire continent then your argument might've been valid.

Romans were Romans, it's really that simple. It was Roman land since Romans conquered it. Since then parts of it were always continuously Roman. So it's quite legitimate to call them Romans, citizens of the Roman empire.

Westerners trying to larp as Romans to usurp part of its glory maybe worked in the dark ages of ignorance, but right now it's a bit awkward. Like those bronze age city-state kinglets adopting the title "The Highest God-King of the Entire Universe" because they conquered two villages down the river. I mean, come on. Just as the Universe didn't care about those bronze age Lukashenkas - no one really cares how Germanic simpers called themselves or the true Romans from Constantinopolis.
Its not just some germanic larpers, its the catholic church, who inherited the bureaucratic institutions of the western Roman empire, not to mention its language and capital. The catholic church had a a perfectly valid argument to consider itself the heir of rome, is not just larp.
 
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I like how half the thread devolved into arguing about the name of the country…

my proposal is to just have one name that you can’t change: ”future ottoman territory” :p
 
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Good Tinto Flavour on the Byzantine Empire.
 
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