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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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Is it dynamic who leads the Byzantine Succession Crisis disaster? Obviously it was John Kantakouzenos who led it in our timeline, and with how much EU5 seems to be focusing on being historical for release, it is unusual to see the civil war which nearly brought down the entire empire being led by...not the right guy.

Also in our history it was the pretender who won, so it also seems unusual that we can't seem to pick which side we want to play as in the civil war. Is there a choice on who to side with?
 
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I think the name "Eastern Roman Empire" is perfectly fine, as it emphasizes Roman-ness in terms of historical background, while also emphasizing the fundamental nature of the state: its power center was further to the east than the Roman Empire of the Classical period, being centered in New Rome AKA Constantinople rather than Rome itself, as well as the "otherness" of how it was viewed by Western Europeans as an oriental state. It works even without the presence of the Western Roman Empire.

"West Francia" would work as a historiographical term if there was some long-standing conflict between those in modern France and Germany as there is around the "Byzantine Empire."

It's definitely better than "Byzantium", but it's still not as good as historical alternatives just as "West Francia" will never be as good as "France" in a 1337 setting. There are two problems with it - it's ahistorical and it's illogical. Ahistorical since no one was calling it like that back then and illogical since there can't be an "eastern" empire if there's no "western" empire. One can not exist without the other. When Western Roman Empire (name which even back then was also ahistorical IIRC, but ok, it's fine to differentiate them that way) ceased to exist - Eastern Roman Empire automatically became simply the Roman Empire.

These are facts. The way I see it there are three options:

1. one can ignore the topic and never think about it again
2. one can accept the facts
3. one can keep ignoring the facts and arguing against them

From my experience I recommend the second option. It's illogical to fight facts, they always prevail in the end. Arguments like "historiography!", "used to emphasize the medieval nature" and so on are fine, but they are no reason to not include historical variant in the game, because how could it be a valid reason for that? Because some people have no idea about anything more than "Byzantine" and would be confused? Some people simply prefer that name? Fine, "Byzantium" option will still be there for them, no problem. I don't want to force anyone to play as "Basileia ton Rhomaion/Empire of the Romans" if they don't want to play as it, why would I? But if someone knows history and values accuracy - historical option should be there for them, because I'm not fond of playing as "Byzantium" that much. Especially since there already is a rule for that and it's not a matter of months of additional research and writing thousands of lines of the code. It's probably just a matter of adding few lines of code. And literally everyone would be happy and there would be no need for such discussion. CK3 devs managed to do it, I doubt EUV devs are worse than them.

There's also another thing. As mentioned - it's not really a big problem for us, since I'm pretty sure there will be a mod changing that maybe even on the release day (or soon afterwards) and if not - it'll be easy to change it myself with just editing one or two lines of .txt files. So having that option in the game is not of critical importance. Arguing against such historical name in game rule is fine (even if it's just to make byzaboos cry), but arguing against it because "it's stupid, they weren't Romans, it wasn't Roman Empire, it ceased to exist in 476, pope was right, Irene! It wasn't pagan so it can't be Rome anymore, they didn't control the city, they spoke Greek, it doesn't matter how they called themselves, continuity lost in 1204, HRE was legit" and so on and so on is baffling. Some of it is likely just trolling, but the serious ones are a mystery.
 
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One of our internal Greek devs (we have two) will make a pass, although please note that for the content (not for flavour naming, like that of locations or flavor names), we favor terms adapted in English over the endonyms. E.g.: 'Theme System' over 'Thémata'; although I've just corrected 'Thema' for 'Théma'.
Awesome, I agree that its better to use Anglicized forms in most cases over the direct Greek forms, at least for words that aren't names of people or places. I mainly hope that for when Greek words are directly used that some sort of universal standard for how they're written is used.
 
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It's definitely better than "Byzantium", but it's still not as good as historical alternatives just as "West Francia" will never be as good as "France" in a 1337 setting. There are two problems with it - it's ahistorical and it's illogical. Ahistorical since no one was calling it like that back then and illogical since there can't be an "eastern" empire if there's no "western" empire. One can not exist without the other. When Western Roman Empire (name which even back then was also ahistorical IIRC, but ok, it's fine to differentiate them that way) ceased to exist - Eastern Roman Empire automatically became simply the Roman Empire.

These are facts. The way I see it there are three options:

1. one can ignore the topic and never think about it again
2. one can accept the facts
3. one can keep ignoring the facts and arguing against them

From my experience I recommend the second option. It's illogical to fight facts, they always prevail in the end. Arguments like "historiography!", "used to emphasize the medieval nature" and so on are fine, but they are no reason to not include historical variant in the game, because how could it be a valid reason for that? Because some people have no idea about anything more than "Byzantine" and would be confused? Some people simply prefer that name? Fine, "Byzantium" option will still be there for them, no problem. I don't want to force anyone to play as "Basileia ton Rhomaion/Empire of the Romans" if they don't want to play as it, why would I? But if someone knows history and values accuracy - historical option should be there for them, because I'm not fond of playing as "Byzantium" that much. Especially since there already is a rule for that and it's not a matter of months of additional research and writing thousands of lines of the code. It's probably just a matter of adding few lines of code. And literally everyone would be happy and there would be no need for such discussion. CK3 devs managed to do it, I doubt EUV devs are worse than them.

There's also another thing. As mentioned - it's not really a big problem for us, since I'm pretty sure there will be a mod changing that maybe even on the release day (or soon afterwards) and if not - it'll be easy to change it myself with just editing one or two lines of .txt files. So having that option in the game is not of critical importance. Arguing against such historical name in game rule is fine (even if it's just to make byzaboos cry), but arguing against it because "it's stupid, they weren't Romans, it wasn't Roman Empire, it ceased to exist in 476, pope was right, Irene! It wasn't pagan so it can't be Rome anymore, they didn't control the city, they spoke Greek, it doesn't matter how they called themselves, continuity lost in 1204, HRE was legit" and so on and so on is baffling. Some of it is likely just trolling, but the serious ones are a mystery.
I'm sorry, but I couldn't read all of this. It just comes across as emotionally driven arguments disguised as "facts." The ERE was Roman, but discussions of identity are complicated, so it's understandable to add qualifiers.

Also, if you really want to play with the option to call the nation "Roman Empire," Paradox games are historically extremely easy to mod, so I'm not sure why you're so upset.
 
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I'm sorry, but I couldn't read all of this. It just comes across as emotionally driven arguments disguised as "facts." The ERE was Roman, but discussions of identity are complicated, so it's understandable to add qualifiers.

Also, if you really want to play with the option to call the nation "Roman Empire," Paradox games are historically extremely easy to mod, so I'm not sure why you're so upset.

If you had read all of this you'd know that:

1. I'm not upset or "emotionally driven" just often try to present my case as clear and detailed as possible
2. I know it'll be extremely easy to mod so it's not that big of an issue itself (I changed names of many states to endonyms in my EUIV). I'm more triggered by people writing nonsense than the lack of the most historical variant in the game.
 
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La única manera de hacer justicia a la estética de la Roma Oriental sería hacerlo de forma completa y adecuada, hasta un nivel que realmente sumerja al jugador, en lugar de insertar una corona aquí y una ilustración allá de forma reactiva, pero no hemos programado ese nivel de trabajo antes del lanzamiento. De todas formas, te entiendo, y espero de verdad que podamos hacerlo pronto.
Just add a Byzantine crown for launch, then make the best DLC Paradox has ever made and we'll give you all the money you want....!!!
 
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I think it's kind of childish tbh, and makes me tempted to Well Ackshually about the fact even the WRE wasn't based in Rome at the end, but not worth getting upset about.
I mean the Roman Empire had not been based out of Rome for a *very* long time. Centuries even.

I also take exception to some of these advances flavor text. Like Shield of The West, they were Romans, they had an Empire, they werent there to protect 'the west' from anyone or any thing. They were there to make the governing of the Roman Empire easier, and then the rest of the Empire caught fire and burned.

They were last man standing.

The Devs, or someone on the Dev Team, seems to have this preconception of what The Roman Empire was, and doesnt want to let it go even in the face of historical evidence (They spoke a language that wasnt Greek (albeit it was related) they didnt call themselves Greek, Byzantium was an invention of renaissance historians in an attempt to divide history up into sections and to attack the legitimacy of The Roman Empire, Rome hadn't been the Capital of *any* Roman Empire for centuries and centuries, the HRE doesnt control Rome but they get to call themselves the HRE, the Eastern Romans never saw themselves as a shield of anything, they were the Roman Empire etc etc)

Honestly a good way of redoing Shield of The West is to instead reflect on the dire straits and desperation of the ERE to press into service anyone who can see lightning or hear thunder.
 
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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.

Crete should have less Greek population as it was under the control of the Venetian at this point, as the duchy of Candia. There were several waves of Venetian settlers and overall it never seem like Crete had a huge population.
 
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I mean the Roman Empire had not been based out of Rome for a *very* long time. Centuries even.

I also take exception to some of these advances flavor text. Like Shield of The West, they were Romans, they had an Empire, they werent there to protect 'the west' from anyone or any thing. They were there to make the governing of the Roman Empire easier, and then the rest of the Empire caught fire and burned.

They were last man standing.

The Devs, or someone on the Dev Team, seems to have this preconception of what The Roman Empire was, and doesnt want to let it go even in the face of historical evidence (They spoke a language that wasnt Greek (albeit it was related) they didnt call themselves Greek, Byzantium was an invention of renaissance historians in an attempt to divide history up into sections and to attack the legitimacy of The Roman Empire, Rome hadn't been the Capital of *any* Roman Empire for centuries and centuries, the HRE doesnt control Rome but they get to call themselves the HRE, the Eastern Romans never saw themselves as a shield of anything, they were the Roman Empire etc etc)

Honestly a good way of redoing Shield of The West is to instead reflect on the dire straits and desperation of the ERE to press into service anyone who can see lightning or hear thunder.
Yeah, the whole use of 'decadence' was also pretty cringey, very Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire terminology and outlook.

Like all the events and stuff seem reasonably good and they did their homework for several of them, aside from the eye-rolling "Plethon spreads Hellenism" nonsense, but there seems to be a really outdated viewpoint in the flavour text.
 
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Streamers showed allying Serbia day one but at this stage they were about to attack and in fact Serbia is shown to get an early event for claims on Macedonia in different streams. Is Serbian AI not hostile to Byzantines at start?
 
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Reform%20Theme%20System.png


I feel as though the Thematic system should bring one's nation towards centralisation. It was a highly bureaucratic and efficient system with its roots in Roman administration. It's the furthest thing from a decentralised policy.
Yeah, I would agree.

Evolution towards Centralization:
Over time, the themes were divided and subdivided, and the emperor's control over them increased. The civil fiscal administration began to be organized around the themes, further integrating them into the imperial system. By the mid-9th century, the strategos had complete control over both military and civil affairs of their theme, solidifying the theme's role as a basic unit of imperial administration.
 
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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:

Let’s now start with the content itself:



View attachment 1309402
View attachment 1309403
As usual, please consider all UI, 2D and 3D art WIP.

View attachment 1309404
View attachment 1309405
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:

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:

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

And some other unique policies:

It also has quite a bunch of starting works of art:

The Theodosian Walls are also represented through a unique building:

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:

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.:

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:

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:

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:

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!
This might not be the place for this but will a similar name-setting system be used for any nations other than the Byzantines, I think it could be a good idea for nations like Persia, the Inca, the Aztecs, the Iroquois and other places with an iconic exonym but also an endonym that many prefer
 
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