Balance for Byzantium in Early Bookmarks?

[RedTemplar]

Does anything in CK2+ work to alleviate the tendency of the Byzantine Empire to snowball and never fall when starting from early bookmarks? In many of my vanilla playthroughs, it seems like the Muslims never build up the steam to topple Byzantium, and 8/10 games or more, they always survive the entire game as a large, thriving empire. I'm looking at using CK2+ in my next AAR project, but I'd like to avoid another massive mega-empire.

 

[kviiri]

CK2+ makes things generally harder for larger empires. Imperial decadence and more potent factions quite often cause the Byzantines to lose territory in civil wars, by my experience.

 

[queermobile]

It certainly seems like it. I was playing as the Bavandids recently and the Byzantines absolutely fell apart within the first 50 years. It seems like the Basileus loves to go nuts on revoking titles and builds up massive tyranny quickly.

 

[kviiri]

It depends a lot on their leaders and surroundings. The strongest Byz in plus I've seen so far extended far into Tunisia in Africa and snaked towards Russian lands while maintaining its border against the Caliphate intact. But then again a bit of bad luck can reverse quick profits, they got an unpopular child empress and claim wars started. It ended with the empire losing most of its acquired territory, with the original empire split into three independent parts.

 

[vukica]

it depends on circumstances.

ck2+ adds a special CB for "strong basileus". they can reconquer stuff. they usually take croatia and serbia. i've also seen an expansion to syria in one game. pretty stable for me.

 

[TheStrangerOrg]

in my games its usually the byzzies that stay strong, unless i weaken them, but the karolingian empire often falls apart, as well as the abbassids. The ummayads depends on what start. if you start in 769 they often die to many religious and cultural revolts, if you start in 861 then they go strong.

 

[Steelcan]

Mu current game (1000 bookmark) were doing really well up until about 1085 where some random russian count ended up with the throne after deposing a Makedon child. He's since retaken the throne but a lot of the empire went independent

 

[Tizazef]

How well the Byzas do is sort of down to luck, sometimes they go wild and crown a Supreme Patriarch within 80 years (in other words they've conquered down the coast of the Holy Land all the way to Alexandria), sometimes (esp. if the Emperor gets killed by muslims in combat and sets a 2 year old empress on the throne) they explode and start looking like the Latin Empire by 800.

 

[RedTemplar]

That's encouraging -- it's kind of boring if the Byzantines stay unstoppable too consistently from early starts.