Broken Dev regrets

[Garbageolopogos]

IDK. The Emperor that just restored the Roman Empire?

Yes people would turn against him, but with enough prestige and power emperors and most rulers could probably introduce some wild new religious ideas. Would they last? Probably not

Emperor getting too much into classics is no more silly than, for example, another emperor deciding to burn all the icons and tapestry, because he lost some battles to saracens.

"some wild new religious ideas" and iconoclasm are about a million lightyears away from worshiping zeus lmao. "emperor getting into classics" - dude, reading Plato doesn't mean reviving a centuries dead religion.

Are you guys being serious?

But lets not forget that christanity in Rome literally originates with such an Emperor.

No it doesn't! Christianity was already widespread in the Empire when Constantine converted, and he only made it legal to practice Christianity and gave some funding and support to churches. But it didn't become the state religion for another like 40 years.

Contrary to the mechanics of CK3, the Roman Empire christianized in a bottom-up way, not by the emperor clicking a magic button and all his vassals converting because he has a high learning stat.

 

[Koppel235]

Yeah, no. Orthodoxy was actually central to how the Byzantines viewed themselves. Even at the very end of the empire when embracing the Catholic view of Christianity could have brought them some aid they stuck with Orthodoxy. It was core to who they were.

Hellenism is silly nonsense and nothing more.

Just saying tying to my comment above during the 11th century there serious suspicions of crypto-paganism likely of Neoplatonism of a lot of Byzantine philosophers and members of the cultural elite like Michael Psellos and his student John Italos.Psellos didnt go to trial because he was good friends with the Patriarch but Italos was put to trial though and forced to recant.Thats why the CK2 version is closer to historical reality than the absurd version we have now in CK3.

 

[Koppel235]

Contrary to the mechanics of CK3, the Roman Empire christianized in a bottom-up way, not by the emperor clicking a magic button and all his vassals converting because he has a high learning stat.

Except not really.Even after the edicts of Constantine I and his successors,the number of Christians was small compared to pagans.The Christian number increased due to legislation of Theodosius and his succesors and even then there was still a large pagan community in the East till Justinians time.

 

[InsidiousMage]

Just saying tying to my comment above during the 11th century there serious suspicions of crypto-paganism likely of Neoplatonism of a lot of Byzantine philosophers and members of the cultural elite like Michael Psellos and his student John Italos.Psellos didnt go to trial because he was good friends with the Patriarch but Italos was put to trial though and forced to recant.Thats why the CK2 version is closer to historical reality than the absurd version we have now in CK3.

Some philosophy nerds getting into classical paganism is not a sign of wider elite interest in the same. Again, Orthodoxy was a core part of Byzantine identity and pagan revivalism is in no way, shape, or form historical.

 

[Garbageolopogos]

Except not really.Even after the edicts of Constantine I and his successors,the number of Christians was small compared to pagans.The Christian number increased due to legislation of Theodosius and his succesors and even then there was still a large pagan community in the East till Justinians time.

Right, the difference between Hellinism in CK3 and Constantine is that Constantine converted to an EXISTING RELIGION that was spreading rapidly across the Empire. Yes state policies helped it spread further, but again it is completely laughable for you to compare this to clicking a button in CK3 and having every vassal convert to a totally foreign and alien religion that they would almost certainly know almost nothing about. Hellenic philosophy was basically lost to the west until the late CK3 period anyways, 99.99% of these people in the game's time would have never even heard of Plato or Aristotle, and the Roman state faith was hardly something that people were interested in.

You simply cannot compare Constantine's conversion with something like Manuel I introducing vestal virgins and public sacrifice.

 

[Koppel235]

Hellenic philosophy was basically lost to the west until the late CK3 period anyways, 99.99% of these people in the game's time would have never even heard of Plato or Aristotle, and the Roman state faith was hardly something that people were interested in.

Hellenic philosophy was pretty much known to the Byzantines and the Arabs non stop during the time period of the game.

 

[klopkr]

Christianity had been a growing force in the Roman World before Constantine had his experience and made it his personal religion. Julian the Apostate was the closest Hellenism had to prevent Christianity from officially becoming the state faith of Rome. How effective he could have been if he had lived longer is debated.

Sure. Personally I don't like how the event is written. I think if you want to reintroduce hellenism to Rome you need to start with an event allowing tolerance for heathens and then some events around reintroducing and patronising pre-christian philosophy to the empire.

If a powerful enough emperor who just restored rome did turn around and say "we're hellenic now, down with christ' he would enter hardmode, but an emperor with some of the power of rulers during this time period or romes past could probably survive... succession would be a different question. We are talking about the games version of basically Augustus 2.0 or at least Diocletian.

When I play hellenic rome runs I always seed hellenism back into the world starting from a wanderer these days before making a play for rome.

I think the Ottomans are actually a good example of what religious change in a new Roman Empire would actually look like. They basically did become the new Byzantine Empire. But they started with a religion with a decent base of faithful warriors and conquered their way to their empire.

That's the true Roman way of doing most major changes anyways. Conquer your way to installing your new laws and beliefs.

I think people like to act like the Abrahamic faiths are magical religions that were bound to become the most powerful ones and could never have been stamped out. We see how major conversions have happened all over the world in many different ways. I would argue the dominance of Christianity in Europe and Islam in the middle east really is nothing more than outcomes of the political realities of those areas.

If the Mongols conquered more and held it long enough and had stronger stances on converting others to a specific faith it could easily have come to replace Abrahamics. I don't disagree that the immediacy of the Roman event is a bit intense but really all it takes is a strong enough ruler with loyal enough body guards to impose all sorts of stuff on their empire to lead to immense lasting effects.

 

[apollo1989vieten]

Except not really.Even after the edicts of Constantine I and his successors,the number of Christians was small compared to pagans.The Christian number increased due to legislation of Theodosius and his succesors and even then there was still a large pagan community in the East till Justinians time.

Christianity was minority still in Constantine’s time, but it was a significant minority. Senators had converted before Constantine. It is speculated, though it is highly unlikely, that Philip the Arab may have a closet Christian.

Hellenic philosophy was pretty much known to the Byzantines and the Arabs non stop during the time period of the game.

Having access to the philosophies is not the same as knowing how to recreate a dead faith.

 

[klopkr]

Having access to the philosophies is not the same as knowing how to recreate a dead faith.

Though true. We don't technically have enough detail in CK3 to say it's totally the same hellenism as Romanesque or Greek Hellenism of the centuries prior.

It could just be pseudo hellenism and that's hellenistic. That's the way I always read it at least. Just a mish mash of medieval views and knowledge about hellenism revived.

 

[Garbageolopogos]

Hellenic philosophy was pretty much known to the Byzantines and the Arabs non stop during the time period of the game.

Justinian closed the academy and after that it was limited to a portion of aristotle, a little bit of platon, and a handful of neo platonic philosophers. As to the Arabs, I would love to hear your defense of the historical plausibility of the caliphate converting to Hellinism lol.

It's kind of beside the point though because Plato and Aristotle don't even take Hellenic religion seriously.

 

[Voidian]

Yeah, they said a lot of silly things, and tried them for half a decade, they all failed, CK3 had some of the worst rated DLCs, with the absolute worst player retention across all of their games up until RtP

Now they are starting to get back to the roots of CK, to the content people actually want and have been telling them about from the start.

Here's a "wild" prediction, after the first significant, permanent pump in player numbers from RtP we're going to see the same thing again after the nomad DLC, and the chinese DLC, the rest are irrelevant, mark my words and quote this topic again next year.


That is, if they don't screw up the execution, like in Legends of the Dead (which really has nothing to do with epidemics, the DLC itself is only about legends, and almost nobody liked them)

The only part that gets me about what they said was their intended goal, when they decided to butcher the DLC production and post-release from Ck3 (and vic3), releasing content at a glacial pacing, delivering half the content for double the price, was the fact that they said people were refusing to get into the old paradox games when they saw so many DLCs in the steam store, so the idea was to reduce DLC numbers, but greatly increase the content, so that people would see 3~4 DLCs having the same content of 20 DLCs from the CK2/EU4 times.

Instead we got 1 real DLC a year with less content than most CK2 DLC, double the price, and they STILL delivered a bunch of nonsense DLC that clogs the lists with those "flavour" and cosmetic packs, so we lost content & quality for nothing.

Had they meant what they said we shouldn't have had any DLCs other than T&T and RtP, everything else should have been added to these DLCs as extra side-content, keeping the price, and releasing at least 2 on this scale a year.

(Yes, I'm ignoring Royal Court, that was just a april's 1st DLC meant to troll & bully the people who got excited over the release of CK3 and decided to purchase the first season pass before they knew what they were getting)

 

[Atossa]

Dev posts in the past made mention of some regrets from the CK2 DLC, yet it seems some of the things are being repeated.

They mentioned they were unhappy with the cheesiness of reviving Hellenism in CK2, yet RtP adds a cheesy way to revive Hellenism by restoring the Roman Empire to its fullest extent.

They said that they were unhappy that CK2 nomads made the steppe full of want to be Ghenghises, yet that is what the CK3 nomad DLC is shaping up to be.

Given that game development is a engine that feeds on the life and sanity of it's developers, do any of those devs who said such things currently work at paradox?

 

[InsidiousMage]

Given that game development is a engine that feeds on the life and sanity of it's developers, do any of those devs who said such things currently work at paradox?

The Genghis quote is verbatim from the Floor Plan DD by the guy who is still in charge of CK3's dev team.

 

[apollo1989vieten]

The Genghis quote is verbatim from the Floor Plan DD by the guy who is still in charge of CK3's dev team.

Good find. I had remembered seeing it somewhere, but not exactly sure where.

People can leave a team or a company for various reasons. Not being happy with the direction the game development or studio is taking or being burnt out from the development can be a couple of reasons why someone leaves, but there are plenty of other reasons too.

I am not sure why Wokeg decided to leave, but I am guessing there were more impactful reasons why the decision was made than disagreements over how CK3 development is progressing.

 

[apollo1989vieten]

Though true. We don't technically have enough detail in CK3 to say it's totally the same hellenism as Romanesque or Greek Hellenism of the centuries prior.

It could just be pseudo hellenism and that's hellenistic. That's the way I always read it at least. Just a mish mash of medieval views and knowledge about hellenism revived.

If you are trying to revive a dead faith, you are going to also have to recreate the rituals. We know more about how Hellenism worked than the medieval Byzantines, and even that knowledge is pretty small.

The Ancient Greek philosophies were filtered through the lens of the realm’s state religion. Even without those religious filters, we couldn’t really recreate Hellenism based on them alone. That would be like trying to create a faith solely based on Hakuna Matata.

 

[Aidanator800]

Varangians would strongly disagree to that. Especially considering their faith having more in common with hellenism. And even more so if said emperor is a capable and generous ruler otherwise.

There were plenty of emperors who were killed and/or overthrown while the Varangian Guard existed, you know. Romanos III, Michael V, Michael VI, Romanos IV, Alexios II, Andronikos I, and Isaac II are all names that immediately come to mind off the top of my head. Especially in a situation like this, where the entire population of Constantinople would be united against the emperor, there'd be little the Varangians could or would do. Again, just look at Michael V and Andronikos I, both of whom were overthrown by the populace of Constantinople itself while the Varangian Guard existed.

 

[InsidiousMage]

Good find. I had remembered seeing it somewhere, but not exactly sure where.

Yeah, that's basically the "CK2 mechanics were unsatisfactory, could be better" DD. Its kind of interesting to look back at see how much is still left and some stuff that seems like they forgot about. Like, modifier stacking is on there as an area needing work but they've only gotten worse since then. Also, does RtP cover the stuff about improving imperial gameplay? Is there more they want to do that doesn't involve Chinese government? And do the clothing packs for North Africa and Poland count for them adding content to those regions? It would be interesting to hear about that like what the Vicky3 dev team did with their checklists for stuff that needed improvement.

 

[Aidanator800]

And do the clothing packs for North Africa and Poland count for them adding content to those regions?

This is the biggest question for me, personally. Out of the 3 flavor packs we've gotten so far (+Roads to Power, which I count as at least partially a flavor pack for the Byzantines), all of them came with pretty significant clothing overhauls for their respective regions, which might end up conflicting with the content creator packs for those regions if a flavor pack is made for them.

 

[InsidiousMage]

Roads to Power, which I count as at least partially a flavor pack for the Byzantines

I would go so far as to say that flavor packs are probably dead and what would have been flavor packs will now be part of either a core or major expansion DLC. I think the price increase really killed them as a viable type of DLC and they were fairly limited mechanically. Like, you couldn't do Khans of the Steppe as a flavor pack. It also kind of allows Paradox to release an extra DLC per year.

 

[apollo1989vieten]

There were plenty of emperors who were killed and/or overthrown while the Varangian Guard existed, you know. Romanos III, Michael V, Michael VI, Romanos IV, Alexios II, Andronikos I, and Isaac II are all names that immediately come to mind off the top of my head. Especially in a situation like this, where the entire population of Constantinople would be united against the emperor, there'd be little the Varangians could or would do. Again, just look at Michael V and Andronikos I, both of whom were overthrown by the populace of Constantinople itself while the Varangian Guard existed.

The Varangians can’t or not doing anything didn’t have anything to do with the religion. When the guard was established, they were pagan but quickly became Christian as the lands they came from converted. Most of the guard was Anglo Saxon when Alexios I took power, so they were Christian not pagan.