[RFC DoC] A story of Byzantium

[mayor]

christos and others: please take our nationalistic talk to a more apropriate thread.. (create your own in OT for instance) or to VM/PM but stop spamming stories with this crap

 

[christos200]

Lone Wolf posted this first. I dont want to spam but his post gone too far.

 

[mayor]

I don't care who started it.... This nationalistic crap is getting way out of hand. like I said if you feel you have to defend your country or something do it somewhere else.

 

[Alexius08]

That massive Russian stack in the Caucasus is something you need to watch for.

 

[Lone Wolf]

We greeks have the blood of the ancient greeks. Even the events on ancient and modern greek history are almost the same. Leonidas with 300 spartans fought against 800.000 persians and papaflesas fought with 300 soldiers at 1825 against 15.000 turks.

You did see my disclaimer about the Fallmerayer theme (Fallmerayer being the scholar who started the whole "true Greeks are extinct" theory) being sarcastic, right? I don't actually subscribe to it. Even on his own premises his theory was dubious - and his premises were all wrong. I suspected that regardless of my disclaimer, it would provoke a reaction from you

wait..what? why is the Turkish capital called Philadelphia?

I manually renamed Sogut to Philadelphia when I captured it. That renaming is absent in Python, and thus, when the Turks respawned, taking the city, the name was kept.

The Greek name of Sogut is actually Thebasion - but it was a rather small town. And the difference between Sogut and Alasehir/Philadelphia doesn't exist on RFC map.

 

[mayor]

ah, like that.

 

[christos200]

Oh, sorry Lone wolf. The update was great. Are you going to colonize america?

 

[Lone Wolf]

Probably not - most of it is already colonized. I may have a small colony or so.

 

[Lone Wolf]

I won't be able to win a culture victory - that's what happens when you rely on your own intuition, instead of relying on precise calculations all these Deity-playing chaps engage in. My empire still stands in 1920, and it now controls North Italy and Rome, so I wouldn't say that I really lost this game.

See a brief report tomorrow.

 

[christos200]

Maybe you should win a diplomacy or a space victory.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Maybe you should win a diplomacy or a space victory.

I'm not that popular, and am slightly behind in tech. I can safely claim a moral victory, anyway. Frankly, I think that Marathon speed in RFC is perfect for an UHV game, while a "usual" game would probably be better as an Epic.

The following years saw:

The growing of the education system

Wars with the French King

and with the Berber tribes, supported by the Mali empire

The collapse of Germany

Wars with the rebellious Arabs and the restoration of direct Byzantine control over Italy

The Russians declaring war, but never actually moving their main army, only engaging in minor skirmishing in Ukraine. (The AI, apparently, has issues with one-tile bottlenecks pathfinding)

Holy Elders at Mount Athos apparently drinking too much

More wars with the uncharacteristically aggressive Malinese

The spread of Communistic ideas in the Byzantine society

And a revolution that redistributed the land ownership in favour of the peasants over the old dynatoi, and overthrew the Emperor's power, replacing them by two elected Councils with a democratically elected Synklētos (Synate).

Which managed to solve many of the state's problems.

After a Congress gave Rome to the Dominon of British Continental Counties, Britain declared war on Byzantium.

This war ended in a resoration of power of the Second Rome over the First one.

An aristocratic rebellion in Anatolia destabilized the situation in the Politeia:

But after its defeat, things returned back to normal.

That's how the Empire/People's Byzantine Republic/Union of Red Themes looks like in 1913 AD.

And the other continent:

After many trials, the Empire is again the dominant Mediterranean power. It finally controls Elder Rome and its three cities - Konstantinopolis, Dyrrachion and Athena - are the most cultured cities on Earth. While the rulers of the Empire were unable to achieve their goals, they certainly had won a moral victory.

Roma and Constantinopolis. Ivory diptych.

 

[strijder20]

Can't see most of the images.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Fixed. Apparently, they turned out as gifs, for no reason whatsoever.

 

[christos200]

Is this the end? This was a great story. For a next game can you do a greek story?

 

[hoplitejoe]

very good story, looking forward to the next one.

 

[Optical]

Nice work!

@The Holy Mountain: Why does that always turn out to be in such useless spots?

 

[Tigranes]

A year later, Byzantium captured Tebriz, which was renamed Alexandropolis, in the name of the reigning emperor.

Alexandros.

Where do you find names and coins for your past 1453 Emperors ? Alexandros seems to resemble Manuel Comnemos (1143-1180) . How about others?

 

[Lone Wolf]

From an artistic point of view, I don't like the way Byzantine coinage developed after year 700 (though some of the Macedonian dynasty coinage isn't that bad, and some Komnenoi coins do have certain elegance), and all the coins I inserted come from the 330-700 periods, or photoshopped. I was following the aesthetic, not historic appeal. I also wasn't following the emperors' timeline after Herakleios - a different history would see different people on the throne.

The Photoshopped ones are:

"Ioannes crowned by Christ" - a detail of Byzantine ivory plaque showing Christ and Constantine VIII Porphyrogenitos (r. 913-959), put though filter.

"Petros" and "Andronikos" - are actually details of late Roman/Early Byzantine marble consular dyptichs, filtered.

 

[W|M]

Nice work!

@The Holy Mountain: Why does that always turn out to be in such useless spots?

More importantly, why is it always in Alaska in RFC?

 

[Linkman226]

Most mountainous area.