Byzantium

[MattyG]

I was thinking of technology as well as the culture. I still don't understand why you say Byzantium can't take anything in Italy; Genoa should not be master of the peninsula, and there's no reason why it couldn't accept Byzantine provinces in Italy any more or less than it can accept the existence of the Papal States or Sicily. You don't have an obligation to secure every last province of your own culture.

One thing to bear in mind is that the cooperation is not over the whole 400 years; it would usually end with the Palaiologoi turmoil in the 1630s, and I'm not proposing either side can lose the culture by fighting each other either during or after the turmoil, as by then they have enough support among Greek dissidents or Neapolitan nobles or whatever to keep hold of it. So in a sense the powers can have their cake and eat it; they can cooperate in the 16th century, but then when it all goes wrong for the Palaiologoi, BYZ and GEN can fight each other for all they're worth. If you like, you can view it as more of a Molotov-Ribbentrop pact than an Entente Cordiale.

Perhaps it shouldn't require just a DOW to remove the cultures - maybe you lose the culture if you start occupying key provinces of the other power. That way it's more likely that the aggressor is punished for getting greedy than the poor fool who gets stabbed.

OK, but still I don't see it. If I am Genoa and I don't own the Peninsula and Byzantium's empire has stretch out as far as Italy, then what's in it for me to give Byzantium Italian culture? I'm only encouraging them to take more, not to back off as part of coorperation. And at the same time, it I am Genoa and I have not captured all of Italy, then my need for going after distant Greek provinces that will be harder to take and are not as wealthy is ... hard to fathom. OK, Krete maybe, if only because it can be a tough one for Byzantium to get as well, and is a strategic island port.

Ditto on the reverse for Byzantium, with it being the lesser partner.

Again, if someone can reveal a realistic scenario where it is in BOTH countries interest. I await with bated breath some examples from real multiplayer games where it actually worked for both sides and why.

 

[MattyG]

On the coorperation issue.

So, Byzantium can get Italian culture and Genoa can get Greek culture, but only effectively if they agree to this.

Now, Byzantium's only use for Italian culture would be for those Italian provinces that Genoa doesn't own, right? The same is true for Genoa owning Greek provinces that Byzantum doesn't already have.

How can this be? How is it that Genoa gives to Byzantium the support of nobles/ruling classes in Apulia? Why would they pay any attention to what Genoa think about this? Why should the lords of Corfu support Genoese rule because Byzantium says they should?

For me, it doesn't follow that Byzantium and Genoa can give away these cultures, which is effectively what happens. It the Italians are going to accept Byzantine rule, it should relate to how the Byzantine's rule them, not to what Genoa thinks, and vice versa.

If we want to have a prizes that are mutually-agreed to between Byzantium and Genoa, I think that they need to be something that these countries can justifiably give away.

 

[Incompetent]

...

I do see what you're getting at; I was playing Devil's advocate more than actively disagreeing. The culture thing is a bit of a strange reward for cooperation to say the least. The latin tech idea is a great one, and perhaps a much more fitting prize for the sacrifices Byzantium has to make.

But at the same time, I can see why Byzantium players will want at least some prospect of westward expansion, even if it is somewhat difficult. Also, Genoa is supposed to be gunning for domination of the Med, and the Greek islands are a key part of this. Perhaps Genoa could get Greek at some point thanks to Krete rather than Byzantium, and then keep it later when the Palaiologoi fall out of favour (as there are enough supporters of the Palaiologoi to justify this) - at this stage BYZ is fair game, as Genoa can justify its conquest on the basis of the claims of the (now assimilated) Palaiologoi.

 

[MattyG]

I do see what you're getting at; I was playing Devil's advocate more than actively disagreeing. The culture thing is a bit of a strange reward for cooperation to say the least. The latin tech idea is a great one, and perhaps a much more fitting prize for the sacrifices Byzantium has to make.

But at the same time, I can see why Byzantium players will want at least some prospect of westward expansion, even if it is somewhat difficult. Also, Genoa is supposed to be gunning for domination of the Med, and the Greek islands are a key part of this. Perhaps Genoa could get Greek at some point thanks to Krete rather than Byzantium, and then keep it later when the Palaiologoi fall out of favour (as there are enough supporters of the Palaiologoi to justify this) - at this stage BYZ is fair game, as Genoa can justify its conquest on the basis of the claims of the (now assimilated) Palaiologoi.

The prize for building an empire west is the same as that for Genoa building it eastwards, the Bavarians going south and Brittany going into Spain. You get bigger and richer and you crush your opponents! It really is enough of a prize. You should also not have to need the carrot of assimilating cultures, just because of all your hard work in crushing them first.

Anyone else want to buy into this great debate, or have I broken all your spirits?

 

[Sekenr]

I'm rather wary of getting back into this discussion since I missed most of it, but I will anyway. I really don't understand why do you address this cultural exchange as some sort of treaty between Byz and Gen. Like cultures are commodities or goods to trade. In my mind I always imagined aquiring Italian culture as a side-effect of choosing the western path and involving in Italian affairs, like a natural outcome.
Besides in RL Italians were lords of some Greek provinces for some time, so I don't see why it can't work the other way around in Aberration.

 

[MattyG]

I'm rather wary of getting back into this discussion since I missed most of it, but I will anyway. I really don't understand why do you address this cultural exchange as some sort of treaty between Byz and Gen. Like cultures are commodities or goods to trade. In my mind I always imagined aquiring Italian culture as a side-effect of choosing the western path and involving in Italian affairs, like a natural outcome.
Besides in RL Italians were lords of some Greek provinces for some time, so I don't see why it can't work the other way around in Aberration.

Well, excactly, to some degree. I don't like the exchange thing either and I have spent pages outlining both why its makes no sense and why it doesn't work either from a game perspective.

There's also the issue of critical mass. The ruler can only favour so many different lords and the cultures they come from. It's tough enough even in a modern and enlightened country like Canada to ensure that the Francophones feel like they are truly part of the country.

While many Greek states may have had Italian lords, this is Aberration and it can equally be said that that situation did not exist in any significant degree.

Finally, there's game balance. There is a philosophy for this mod, which is that it is for MP, and should have as many moderate-sized powers as possible. Giving one country THREE major cultures flies violently in the face of that. It's like giving someone French and German culture. You can argue it backwards sideways and from every angle you want culturally and historically. But at the end of the day its still a huge mistake from a game perspective. Accordingly, Burgundy might have the luxury of obtaining German culture or French, but it won't be able to keep both. It's asking for trouble.

 

[unmerged(21937)]

Molotov-Rippentrop analogy is a pretty good one, I'd say. It is really a gamble for both sides and their cooperation might easily not live beyond getting the cultures. I mean, Greek culture is a very nice and large carrot for Genoa. It's a big culture, with rich provinces and next door to Genoa. Italian is also a similiar carrot for Byzantium, being one of the best cultures there is. So in the essence, the point to give each other the cultures is to encourage them both to stab later to take it all. So it's planting seeds of conflict instead of harmony.

Also, the way the chain works, it will need Byzantium to subdue Sicily pretty badly too, which should be to their both advantage as well, assuming a crowded cutthroat MP game.

 

[unmerged(8881)]

MP game experience:

In the MP game I'm playing Genoa in at the moment I'm the undisputed master of Italy, Sicily is a two-province vassal and the Papal states have just Rome and Marche. Nevertheless I'm a long way from being a dominant force in Europe. Hansa, Byzantium and Brittany would all smash me in a one-on-one encounter, and meanwhile Eire's running away with the game in the New World.

I've really got nowhere to expand, I've already turned Savoy into a one-province vassal, annexing the rest. So this event rolls around, where I can give Byzantium italian culture to get greek culture for myself. There's no way I'm going to do it.

Byzantium already owns all greek provinces except for Krete, and I own all italians except for Sicily and the Papacy, so what I'm asking for is war if i take the culture-trade option. I might win (doubtful), Byzantium might (much more probable), or it might be a stalemate. There's no point us agreeing to the trade if neither of us attack, as we'd be better off getting the minor rewards for not doing it. Given Genoa's intended direction as a naval/trading nation how is asking for war meant to be viable?

Byzantum and I have actually been cooperating, despite taking the 'non-cooperative' option in the culture events, to try to limit Hungary primarily. Could an alternate cooperation option be developed along these lines?

 

[unmerged(30761)]

There needs to be an external threat to both cultures.
Should the Kaliphs be beating up on the Byzantium, and that is easy to do if the itallian event happens after the turkish event and kaliphs get the turkish event too. this way genoa could harbor greek nobility and try to take back stuff from the kaliphate.

Or Savoy itallian culture from sicily/papal states as genoa beats up on these 2 and that causes Savoy to war upon genoa. then Byzantium harbors genoese nobility.

 

[Sekenr]

Unfortunately I cannot contribute much from the MP side, my only concern is making playing Byz fun midgame, which is lacking, since Byz can't colonise.

 

[MattyG]

Molotov-Rippentrop analogy is a pretty good one, I'd say. It is really a gamble for both sides and their cooperation might easily not live beyond getting the cultures. I mean, Greek culture is a very nice and large carrot for Genoa. It's a big culture, with rich provinces and next door to Genoa. Italian is also a similiar carrot for Byzantium, being one of the best cultures there is. So in the essence, the point to give each other the cultures is to encourage them both to stab later to take it all. So it's planting seeds of conflict instead of harmony.

Also, the way the chain works, it will need Byzantium to subdue Sicily pretty badly too, which should be to their both advantage as well, assuming a crowded cutthroat MP game.

Molotov-Ribbentropp may be a good analogy, but its also from a different time period.

The event structure is graceful and interesting but in practice this 'cultural exchange' simply does not work as intended. The feel is cool but in practice thepolitics of it does not function.

I have a standing challenge for anyone to provide a realistic scenario in which is is worth it for both Genoa and Byzantium to actually go for this.

*Pock*

That's the sound of the ball being lobbed back into your court (and everyone else's).

 

[Incompetent]

Unfortunately I cannot contribute much from the MP side, my only concern is making playing Byz fun midgame, which is lacking, since Byz can't colonise.

The 17th century has a civil war and the rule of Michael Doukas (who hands out a bunch of extra cores), so there ought to be some stuff happening. Perhaps the problem is that by this stage in SP you've already achieved world domination. Even the lack of explorers won't stop you colonising - IIRC when playing Byzantium, I got to be the dominant power in North America by the early 17th century, mostly on the back of a couple of conquistadors, coupled with diploannexing Genoa and Sicily.

@MattyG: Eh, put me in the 'ditch it' camp. I tried to come up with reasons for keeping the cultural exchange, but I couldn't think of anything convincing. Latin tech is probably a better carrot for BYZ. As for Genoa, they could get Greek culture after all, but only get it once the Palaiologoi are deposed, as the Palaiologoi and their supporters turn to Genoa for support against the new regime in Constantinople. I don't think it's too unbalanced for Genoa to get Greek culture, as I can't see any prospect of Genoa getting cultures besides Italian and Greek.

 

[MattyG]

This deal can now work, I think. Because even though there is a 'swap' the goods are not mutually exclusive, as it were.

As Byzantium, Latin tech is a carrot worth risking giving greek culture to Genoa, because you can expect to not be behind technologically by the 1700s as a result. And for Genoa, giving the Romans a leg-up in techs could be worth the game if you think you can still dominate them.

However, the margin for political error here is small. It will likely only work if they are on rough par in terms of power.

If we wanted to ensure that a deal of some kind was going to be acceptable to both more often, then the carrot for Genoa would need to be something else.

Not sure if I suggested it before, but the carrot could be cores. Cores represent peer acceptance of claims (however grudging). By heading west culturally, the Byzantines eventually become westernised (latin tech) but they also begin to have more authority in the west, and can be a valid supporter of otherwise-dubious Genoese claims. Accordingly, the Byzantine-Genoa deal could be as latintech-for-cores swap.

I'd also like to see an additional trigger condition, which is that Byzantium has NOT spread very far east. If it is westernise, then it is heading west, not absorbing the difficult and technologically-backward peoples to the east. The Palaiologoi-Italian path should be a denil also of the old eastern empire. The final event cannot trigger if they own the Turkish provinces, or maybe even anything caucasian. And indeed I even would go as far as to say that they lose some cores in this arena as confirmation of their western-oriented view for the prior 200 years.

Matty

 

[Sekenr]

The 17th century has a civil war and the rule of Michael Doukas (who hands out a bunch of extra cores), so there ought to be some stuff happening. Perhaps the problem is that by this stage in SP you've already achieved world domination. Even the lack of explorers won't stop you colonising - IIRC when playing Byzantium, I got to be the dominant power in North America by the early 17th century, mostly on the back of a couple of conquistadors, coupled with diploannexing Genoa and Sicily.

No WC I only got all my cores and Eastern path. I'm waiting for something to happen, but it drags on for so long that my reputation have reached HONORABLE. Thats crazy!

 

[Incompetent]

Going through the files, one thing I've noticed is that Byzantium takes up an awful lot of tags. Apart from BYZ, no fewer than 6 tags are used by countries which can only emerge in the 18th century or later, and under many options don't appear at all. Surely we can do better than this?

 

[MattyG]

That's the problem with well-made civil war events. Civil wars are handled in two ways.

First, by having revolts combined with revolt risk increases for several years, as in the Wars of the Roses or the games' built-in generic civil war event. This is a simple and convenient approach that requires only one event and if the desired result is only disruption (not a real sundering of the state) then you don't event need a tag for the potential revolters.

Second is to construct them with care and have separate states break out by event which are more self-sustaining, produce income, have leaders (even ones of high quality!) and their own events too. But this requires a lot more careful work, a tag, and all the others things that come with an independent country. But it works a lot better.

The structure for Byzantium's civil war is very elegant, but the elegance takes up six tags: one for each revolter (u01 to u03) and then, if the civil war is left unresolved, these individual revolters coalesce into idependent states of Terbizond, Greece and somethingelsethatIcan'trecall.

If we are desperate for tags, then we can instead get rid of the transformation phase of the civil war. Instead, the events that signify one side has one and which reforms Byzantium, just has a longer lifespan, and the original revolters stay as they are. The Radicals can remain as a User Defined tag but with a name like People's Republic of Hellas or somesuch. The Merchant faction can simply begin the civil war as Greece, freeing up one of the User Defined tag. And Trebizond can be handled the same way. Obviously, we'd need to tweak all the events to eventually establish non-agrressive ais for each once the division of the country has been 'accepted' and various other elements like that. Certainly the revision of Byzantium would be better with this all simplified.

If there is something else we need to alter about the Byzantine Civil War is that it is too easy for players to avoid. The Centralization part of the trigger means that you can sidestep it easily. It needs to be much much harder to avoid.

However, in general, we need to accept that good civil wars require tags.

 

[Incompetent]

However, in general, we need to accept that good civil wars require tags.

Of course; I was more thinking we could cut it down to BYZ, GRE, ATH, TRE and one user defined, as the first four have clear associations with Byzantium, while the User Defineds come in handy elsewhere as 'generic' tags.

So, we have the following possible states, not all of which can exist at once:

Byzantine Empire: BYZ, obviously.
Greek Republic (avoiding the civil war): GRE. As for the name, we have a lot of choices, but I'd say Greek or Hellenic Republic is the shortest way of conveying a republican state.

Gidoi: BYZ or ATH
Doukai: TRE
Merchants: u01
Radicals: GRE

Four factions, which means the Byzantine player plus three others. We could actually use just four tags here if we do it the right way, in the same way I allowed players to go from being the TO to fighting the 'White' TO, though it would make the events somewhat more complicated. On this basis the Gidoi would be BYZ, as they control Constantinople. But it is a lot of work for one tag, so we can use the ATH tag say for the Gidoi.

For the Doukai, it has to be TRE. The only difficulty is coming up with a name that could work for a civil war faction and for an independent state - Anatolia or Anatolian Empire perhaps? Trebizond sounds a bit weedy, if they're in charge over most of Greek Anatolia.

The merchants are purely a civil war faction, so they can be a user-defined Merchant Faction or whatever.

If fragmentation occurs, the radicals swallow the mercantiles, and together rule most of 'Greece proper' and the islands. Unlike the Gidoi and Doukai, they wouldn't be calling themselves Byzantine emperors, so we can give them an 'official' rather than a 'factional' name for both before and after the civil war: Greek or Hellenic Republic works fine here, so they can use the GRE tag.

 

[MattyG]

That reads like a longer version of what I wrote above.

Plus the interesting idea that the merchants and radicals would merge. I don't think these two factions are very closely aligned: one are the lower and working classes (a touch early for Engels, but this is Aberration ...), the other the wealthy merchants. Maybe united in dislike of Isaakios Gidos' attempt to wrest control, but that's about it.

Let's take that idea further a little more, let's reconfigure how the civil war works. At the moment, roughly, everyone is trying to capture the capital and therefore win the war, immediately absorbing the others. If instead we instead remove the auto-end to the civil war and make it that these new states will remain independent unless conquered. Except that we make the rules for conquest different. Once the capital plus one province of a country is controlled, it triggers an event with an inheritence command.

Furthermore, if one of these does this twice, the final other independent concedes and Byzantium is fully reformed.

Alternatively, the two of these will each absorb one other and continue to battle it out for the right to be Byzantium.

Finally, if nothing else has happened, by 1750 ish all those inherit/absorb events end and the ais revert to something more general for each, not having the other three as targetted foes.

 

[Incompetent]

Plus the interesting idea that the merchants and radicals would merge. I don't think these two factions are very closely aligned: one are the lower and working classes (a touch early for Engels, but this is Aberration ...), the other the wealthy merchants. Maybe united in dislike of Isaakios Gidos' attempt to wrest control, but that's about it.

Er, I'm just reading from the event descriptions here. Are you saying this shouldn't happen?

Let's take that idea further a little more, let's reconfigure how the civil war works. At the moment, roughly, everyone is trying to capture the capital and therefore win the war, immediately absorbing the others. If instead we instead remove the auto-end to the civil war and make it that these new states will remain independent unless conquered. Except that we make the rules for conquest different. Once the capital plus one province of a country is controlled, it triggers an event with an inheritence command.

Furthermore, if one of these does this twice, the final other independent concedes and Byzantium is fully reformed.

Alternatively, the two of these will each absorb one other and continue to battle it out for the right to be Byzantium.

Finally, if nothing else has happened, by 1750 ish all those inherit/absorb events end and the ais revert to something more general for each, not having the other three as targetted foes.

Good idea. But what happens in the case of the player-controlled faction?

 

[unmerged(21937)]

There is a clear rationale for merger of Merchants and Radicals. It's not an Marxist-Engelian class struggle, but a struggle for democracy, alike French Revolution. Radicals demand equal representation for peasant, bugher and noble. Merchants don't like to share with peasants. However, both factions share the ideal of republicanism and abolishing the old monarchy and when the conflict draws out long, they reconcile, reach some kind of compromise and unite into a republic of Hellas. As opposite, Gidoi and Doukai want to return to old system of strong nobility, they just fiercely disagree who should sit on the throne. These guys won't admit other's superiority as long as their emperor and his successors still live.