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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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I am really curious to know why you insist on this default naming. It seems like a remarkably out-of-character decision, given the team's considerable importance and effort in achieving historical accuracy. I am honestly really disappointed. This is the only tinto flavour that is just false. Please give the proper respect to the people to whom being referred to as 'Greek' would have been a great insult. The 'Empire of the Romans' is objectively the correct English translation of the name of this state.
 
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I was thinking if it was possible to give the byzantines some sort of "weak claims" that offer them minimal bonusses compared to the regular claim or cores on territories lost centuries ago (and perhaps able to change to stronger claims upon some hard to achieve requirements), in order to signify the millenials of heritage of this old empire (some extra flavour).
 
I am really curious to know why you insist on this default naming. It seems like a remarkably out-of-character decision, given the team's considerable importance and effort in achieving historical accuracy. I am honestly really disappointed. This is the only tinto flavour that is just false. Please give the proper respect to the people to whom being referred to as 'Greek' would have been a great insult. The 'Empire of the Romans' is objectively the correct English translation of the name of this state.
Paradox uses the modern English exonyms for titles. This should hopefully make sense for most people, it allows for consistent naming and more importantly the game is aimed towards an audience speaking modern English. In most cases the modern exonym aligns with the "correct English translation" as you phrase it but there are several where it doesn't, such as Germany, Hungary, Finland, Persia, China, Japan etcetera.

And yes, that includes the state centered in Constantinople at the start of EU5 which is widely recognized in Modern English as "The Byzantine Empire". If you want this to change then I recommend you becoming a famous historian and work towards changing the historiographical consensus instead of demanding Paradox to change their naming principle in this one case.

It is fascinating to me how it is never enough for the byzantine fans. Paradox goes out of their way to try and satisfy that group by giving them a unique game option only available for the Byz tag (which as noted is far from the only tag where the modern exonym differs from what they called themselves), but now the *default* naming has to be the correct one as well! Meanwhile CK3 had an entire DLC called "Legacy of Persia" but I didn't see one single person lamenting over how that name didn't "give proper respect" to the people living there at the time.

e; Also can we not act insulted on the behalf of people who have been dead for 500 years? I sincerely doubt the Bithynian peasant toiling on his meagre farm in 1337 would care what a video game in 2025 calls the entity ruling over him.
 
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Please make the Ottoman empire red and not green or at least give us an option to make it red QnQ

While I'm not concerned about Ottoman's color, there's a more general point here. There's a game option for changing the name of a country to one's liking, although there could be more options and there could be a similar option for many other countries as well. But this is a map painting game, or at least sequel to such. The colors of countries are far more visible on the map than their names. Why not have options for changing the colors?
 
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Perhaps it exists and not shown but the year is 1337 so there should also be some small amount of Turkic population, both from settled Cumans and also Seljuks, including the members of the Seljuk dynasty that has taken refuge in Byzantine Empire. There is a Melikes family, possibly descended from Melik Constantine, son of Kaykaus II and a Soultanos family also descendants of Seljuk dynasty.
 
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Shall we be able to rename AI tags during a campaign ? I want to make sure the pesky Greeks cosplayer from Constantinople never ever ever tarnish the name of the Urbs Aeterna or the name of its noble people.
 
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Hope Portugal is soon. Cant wait for my favourite seafaring rectangle
 
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If you do add more historical options for the country names, the alternate options should be "Empire of the Romans," which is the direct translation of "Βασιλεία των Ρωμαίων," and "Romania." Not "Rhomania" because that is a modern Anglophone spelling based on ancient Greek phonetics and not medieval Greek. Other Europeans also used the name "Romania" for the ERE. For example, the Venetians called Nafplio, Greece "Napoli di Romania." The Latin Empire styled itself as "Imperium Romaniae" which means "Empire of Romania," no "h" included.

Yes, I know this gives it the same name as modern Romania, but while the state of Wallachia referred to itself as Romania for a long time, it wasn't referred to as such in other languages until very recently, even out of scope of this game's timeline.
 
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Not sure I'm sold on so much Byz flavor being focused around early-game standing armies... How much have regiments been rebalanced since the build content creators were given access to? I'm sure being able to afford paying for them will be a bit of an issue in 1337, but I worry that with just a bit of economic buildup Byz gameplay will end up just being an exercise in stomping everyone around you with fully professional armies before anybody else. It was already a pretty big problem for regular nations in the content creator build.