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PART THIRTY ONE: The True Confessions of Dobrava Yaroslavovna (1390-1406) More excerpts from the diary of Empress Dobrava We've continued our efforts to build up the military, of course. Ostensibly, the reason is the advance of the Ming Frontier Army— while they have humbled many of the enemies of Rome (the Gauhar Ayin, the Golden Horde, et al), they have made no guarantees about the integrity of our own territory. Of course, this is only partially true— military construction has been confined to lands controlled by the house of Yaroslavovich. This was a directive from the Senate, but a commonsense one— the army is as much for fighting the nobles of the empire as it is for opposing foreign, enemies. Or more for that, really. The nobles can plausibly be beaten. Nobody has defeated Chang Yuchun in battle yet.   You can tell that change is in the air. There's an unrest, a kind of uncertainty that hangs over everything. Peasant revolts are becoming more common, although still easily quashed by the authorities.  I've just found out my brother has been slain in battle. I am distraught, of course, but relieved that his son now sits comfortably on the throne of Kiev— oftentimes, the early death of a ruler can precipitate a dynastic struggle. As I've learned. Still, a young death in battle. The blood of the Komnenoi flows in our veins, after all. Are we cursed?   At the very least, we shall have the opportunity to avenge his murder.   And even further abroad, our dynasty prospers— Duchess Gertrude von Habsburg is dead, and Anna Yaroslavovna has inherited the throne of Holland.   And my husband's cousin, Gregory the Great of England, has been named heir to the Holy Roman Empire. I predict great things for the de Contevilles.  Further updates from the de Conteville dynasty! Gregory has been named Emperor of the Romans. Perhaps the days of the grand dynastic alliance between Henry IV and Alexios I will return? My husband tells me his kinsman formally disolved the Kingdom of England. I suppose he's taking a page from Trajan I's book— his dissolution of the crown of Sicily did much to help bring those lands into the empire, after all. And it was hardly permanent— the new line of Sicilian kings and queens have been the truest friends to the throne we could ask for!  I suppose the Komnenoi created the Order of the Sainted Emperors for a reason, but in truth they still make uneasy. Perhaps I'm still overly influenced by the rustic, simpler Orthodoxy of my father, even after all this time in the south. At the very least, I can patronize older and more traditional arms of the church.  My husband has received another letter from our dear cousin Gregory. It seems he's having some trouble from his vassals, who see him as a foreign interloper. Sounds awfully familiar! As if an empire is not something larger than a single nation! Such is the sorry lot of an emperor, I suppose.  Still, I expect bringing them back into the fold won't be too much trouble. We've bounced back from worse, anyway!  Gregory has been forced to abdicate the throne! They've got their own Komitas Branas, now— Dietrich Aberffraw. 17 years old! I wonder what duke's pulling his strings...   Poor Gregory, though! Because he'd dissolved the English crown for the good of the empire, he's got nothing left to his name but a duchy!  I've decided that we need to continue to strengthen our hold on Italy. In part because the Papal State remains a potent threat that will need to be defeated if we are to ever reclaim the city of Rome— but also because Italy is the section of the empire most remote from the advance of the Ming Frontier Army. Although after the fall of León, who knows how much that means.   Emperor Dietrich has died, and good riddance! While I, of course, had hoped for my husband's line to be restored to power, the von Habsburgs are still a part of our extended family through our marriage into the Dutch Habsburgs, so the news is not all bad. Perhaps they'll be the firm hand the Holy Roman Empire needs to weather this power struggle?  There is little to do but watch it all unfold from afar, however. Even our small campaign against Ancona was a noticeable strain on our resources, although— at the very least— we managed to stage a military campaign without going into debt. The proximity of Sicily's vast levies to Ancona helped, no doubt.  Our own meagre victory hardly seems to matter, in the great scheme of things. Refugees have begun flooding the western coast of Italy, fleeing Iberia— Andalusians, mostly, but some Spanish Catholics and Orthodox, too— and even a few deserters from Chang Yuchun's army, tired of never-ending war thousands of miles from their homes. The news they brought was momentous— the old Sultanate of Anadalusia was almost entirely destroyed, with only a small inland rump state remaining unoccupied. But by this time, the news of the destruction of an ancient kingdom can hardly be said to be shocking.   Still, there's very little we can do about all that. The best we can do is to try to help our family.   As I've learned from studying accounts of Helias' war to depose me written by officers who fought in it, Roman troops are capable of making mincemeat out of the Russian levies. This time, however, it worked to the advantage of the Yaroslavovich family.    We'll just keep chipping away at Italy in hopes of one day being able to strike at the Pope and his Church Militant. I anticipate a short struggle akin to our recent war for Ancona. We probably won't even need to bring in any troops from elsewhere in the empire— the armies of Sicily and Tuscany should suffice.  Oh.  It seems that a small portion of the mercenary corps of the Church Militant decided, on their own initiative, to try to check the Roman advance further into Italy. The Pope— and the other hundred thousand or so men he can call at the snap of a finger-- have refrained from involving themselves, so once more Roman forces arrive from Greece and Anatolia, we should still win this war. It's become a rather larger affair than I anticipated, however.  The elite armies of Tuscany and Sicily are holding their own, however. I feel like we've done much to deplete the numbers of the mercenary armies.  This is so not fair.  All right, the orces I ordered in from the rest of the empire have finally arrived, and attrition has taken its toll on the forces of the Church Militant— surely Urbino can't support such large numbers of soldiers indefinitely. It's time to end this.  Are you loving kidding me? The count of Urbino isn't even Catholic, you stupid little Ceska Lipa piece of poo poo!  I'm loving beat that little weirdo to death with his own mitre if it kills me. I can't deal with this. It's one county.  I'm going to loving poo poo myself and die if I have to throw 70,000 soldiers into another battle in this war for one county.    Ugh, finally.  Next time around, I'm going to find somebody else to lead this war for me. I'm getting too old for this poo poo.  Oh, and of course we went bankrupt because of this. Tell me, in all the paeans to the great conquests of Valeria the Apostle and Valeria the Saint, do they ever say how she paid for it all? Oh right, vassalizing a whole bunch of merchant republics. Too bad those underachievers in my pet republic in Cibyrrhaeot aren't really getting the job done. I wonder if I'd get in trouble if I just, you know, killed them?  Anyway, right now? Maybe not the best time to be a merchant republic.  Some stupid rear end in a top hat in Florence asked me to fund a new illuminated edition of that old dead nerd Petrarch's work. Do I look like I'm made of money, idiot? gently caress off and ask me 20 years ago.  We can't even afford to fill out the ranks of our standing armies.  On the bright side, eventually I'll be loving dead so I won't have to deal with any of this stupid bullshit every minute of my life anymore.  Oh, no you don't, Vyshata. You stay right there in Florence like I told you too.  Okay, fine, go and illuminate your stupid poetry book now that we've got two coins to rub together again. See if I care. Go on, take my money! I'll just let the army sit around unreinforced for a few years. I'm sure it'll take the Ming another few months to finish conquering the richest trading nation in the entire world, it's cool.  Oh wait, no, they're done already! Rest in loving pieces, I guess. Jesus Christ.   Why do I even loving bother? Should have just let that dumbass Komitas stay in charge. Well, except then the Pope probably would have decided to conquer Tuscany and put my head on a stick. Because that'd be just typical, wouldn't it?  At least some of the people who were in the poo poo back in the old days are still around. Since, like, they get it? They know the score, those old guys.  Oh, and we've sent another ecclesiarch to his death trying to convert the Golden Horde. Oh well.  Might want to reconsider your life choices there, Khan Hulegu.   I mean, getting beaten by the Ming Frontier Army-- that's understandable. Exhibit A: The smoking ruins of Andalusia. Exhibit B: The smoking ruins of the Gauhar Ayin Empire. Exhibit C: The smoking ruins of León. Exhibit D: The smoking ruins of Somalia. Exhibit E: The smoking ruins of Antioch. Although getting attacked by them might still be the sign of an angry god. But you guys also just lost Transoxiana to-- what's that-- a Manichean liberation revolt? Wow.   Let's just hope it doesn't happen to us, because that would just be typical.  If we don't all die of some gross disease first.  Constantinople's always been cosmopolitan, attracting the best and brightest from all over the empire-- your Greeks, Turks, Italians, Pechenegs, Bulgarians, Serbians, Jews, Croatians, Cumans, Arabs, etc.-- but also people from all over the rest of the world, looking to seek their fortune. Now it's still filled with people from all over, but there's a hint of desperation in the air. Mongols, Andalusians, Castillians, Levantines, Somalians have all seen their own empires smashed by the Ming Frontier Army and its cannons. Plus, the English and Germans, although they'd destroyed their own countries without any outside imput whatsoever, like the morons they are. So they, perhaps understandably, decided that the safest place to be is behind the Theodosian walls, with the waters of the Bosphorus surrounding them on three sides. Wouldn't it blow to go through all of that, and then just drop dead of consumption?  Scratch that. They're the lucky ones. Jesus Christ and St. Valeria am I too old for this poo poo.  At least somebody's still alive in Constantinople to lend us some money? Silver loving linings.  And even though the standing army's not fixed up just yet, we've got a few tricks up our sleeve.   And maybe my stupid nephew will remember everything I've ever done for him? "Ioannes the Bewitched". That's not encouraging.  Oh, good, he'll help out. Maybe the Kievans will at least be a speedbump before they get shot to pieces.  Anyway, the territory occupied by Chang Yuchun is so unreasonably huge it makes shuttling our troops between Italy and Anatolia seem easy. Maybe we'll be able to traverse the plagued hellscape of Asia Minor and drive back the Ming before they bring the bulk of their forces to bear?  The loving Pope sided with the Ming? It makes a certain kind of dreary sense, I guess— he has everything to gain from the Roman Empire getting a nice, thick slice carved off of it. And Chang Yuchun might be Sunni, but so were the Somalians, Gauhar Ayin, and Anadalusians, so it's not like he's waging holy war or something. But still. The Pope? gently caress that guy.  Attrition from the consumption epidemic took its toll on our vanguard, and Chang Yuchun's managed to bring in more of his forces.  We have reinforcements en route... But his are closer.  Not now Rurik, Mommy's busy presiding over the empire's greatest military defeat since Manzikert.  At least I won't need to bother getting any more armies from Paphlagonia all the way to Cilicia anymore...  No! Maybe we'll pull this one off! Chang Yuchun overextended himself! He's marched beyond his supply lines!  I asked who was leading the combined army at Amisos after the destruction of our main force at Cilicia. My generals all looked at one another nervously.  YES YES YES YES YES YES YES We won a battle! We killed ten thousand of the enemy, and only lost... a third of our remaining soldiers... loving poo poo. Well, how are the Ming doing in general? Surely we've put a dent in 'em, after the great victory at Amisos...       On the bright side, I'm sure all the vassals of the empire will rally around the imperial government in this time of crisis. Oh, gently caress off. Like the 1400s are a terrific time for a ducal go-getter to strike out on their own as an independent realm.  I can't loving believe that I'm spending my old age like this. Maybe the Komnenoi had the right idea when they kept on dying before 30.  I guess the Ming Frontier Army killed all their dudes too, then. Rest in Pieces.  Terrific, now I get to walk all the way to the opposite-rear end end of the empire to deal with those other assholes.        I finally got that fiefdom I was asking for, Mom!  Assassination Scorecard: Tsars Killed: 2 Badshahs Killed: 2 Sultans Killed: 7 Nosy Chancellors Killed: 3 Katepanos Killed: 1 Mad Bishops Killed: 1 Adventurers Killed: 1 Popes Killed: 2 Battle Scorecard Badshahs Killed: 1 Sultans Killed: 1 Katepanos Killed: 1 That guy who killed our genius heir: 1 Execution Scorecard Puppet Emperors Killed: 1
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Apr 23, 2014 23:40
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Is there even going to be a non-Chinese world LEFT at this rate?
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Apr 23, 2014 23:48
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 We are cursed! Cursed, I tell you! The world itself is being scourged, and God no longer favors Rome-- one of his very priests struck down our Empress! Repent and prepare yourselves for the hereafter, senators, for we shall all soon be quite dead!
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Apr 24, 2014 00:05
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You know, I wouldn't blame you for being cheap and attritioning the Pope's forces down to a more reasonable size since Holy poo poo that's ludicrous I think you were only able to get those sort numbers before the Levy-nerf patch.
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Apr 24, 2014 00:06
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Arbitrary Coin posted:You know, I wouldn't blame you for being cheap and attritioning the Pope's forces down to a more reasonable size since Holy poo poo that's ludicrous I think you were only able to get those sort numbers before the Levy-nerf patch. All that attrition happened while I was waiting for my army to get from Greece and Anatolia to Italy, anyway. The Pope's massive deathstack is an example of something that really shouldn't have happened in terms of the mechanics (which I'll get into more in the CK2 post-mortem), but it wound up being a fixture of the narrative that the Pope's set-up in EU4 is going to reflect. :vv:
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Apr 24, 2014 00:10
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OOC: The situation with the Ming Frontier is getting just the tiniest bit ridiculous, same with the Pope. Well, at least EU4 won't be boring. A-historical as all Hell, but not boring.
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Apr 24, 2014 00:13
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Yeah.... Rincewind, how big are you making those Chinese-conquered chunks?
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Apr 24, 2014 00:16
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Ming doesn't have to be a monolithic unstoppable blob in EU4. He could do what the other cross-game LP did to the Timurids and break them up using the shogunate system. Or a bunch of other things.
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Apr 24, 2014 00:22
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Sindai posted:Ming doesn't have to be a monolithic unstoppable blob in EU4. He could do what the other cross-game LP did to the Timurids and break them up using the shogunate system. Or a bunch of other things. Yeah. We haven't seen the final outcome of the advance of the Ming Frontier Army yet, but the result definitely won't just be a big blob stretching from China to Portugal or anything. Empress Theonora fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Apr 24, 2014 |
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Apr 24, 2014 00:50
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  The pig is dead! It's too bad she wasn't roasted like her hog father, but not everything can be perfect. Just as imperfectly, I can't support the immediate overthrow of the piglet. We are too weak now! God is punishing us, you know, for overthrowing the legitimate House of Branas! Anyway, here is Unitas's position for the foreseeable future: gently caress the Ming, gently caress the Sicilian tyrant, gently caress Catholics, gently caress (not literally) foreigners, and gently caress heathens. That is all.
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Apr 24, 2014 00:56
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Lord Cyrahzax posted:
So are we to assume all the other "fucks" in your oh-so-eloquent manifesto were literal? You've taken the pleasures of Old Rome to heart it seems!
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Apr 24, 2014 01:01
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This has gone too far. I can tolerate the Chinese conquest of Iberia; I can even tolerate their taking of Cilicia from us on the field of
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Apr 24, 2014 01:04
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Flesnolk posted:
Might as well. It isn't like we can last much longer under the twin barrages of the Ming armies or Yaroslavovich incompetence! Maybe those Messalians were right.
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Apr 24, 2014 01:06
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In the immortal words of the glorious Saint Valeria II, "gently caress the Pope."Rincewind posted:Yeah. We haven't seen the final outcome of the advance of the Ming Frontier Army yet, but the result definitely won't just be a big blob stretching from China to Portugal or anything. Oooh, that sounds like revolts.  Also Manicheans? How... how did they manage to survive for so long? I've had a bizarre game where the Seljuks ended up Zoroastrian but that was back in the 11th Century. This is... what?
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Apr 24, 2014 01:10
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StrifeHira posted:In the immortal words of the glorious Saint Valeria II, "gently caress the Pope." The provinces that were still Zoroastrian at the game start wound up as Manichean somehow, and then just quietly sat there unconverted for ages until this happened.
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Apr 24, 2014 01:38
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Rincewind posted:The provinces that were still Zoroastrian at the game start wound up as Manichean somehow, and then just quietly sat there unconverted for ages until this happened. Obviously, this is a fine chance to create an extremely weak nation with absolutely absurd national ideas and religion bonuses.
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Apr 24, 2014 02:19
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As a Manichean state, we gain several bonuses.
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Apr 24, 2014 02:30
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I read Manichean as 'Manchurian' somehow. And then I thought of the Manchurian Candidate.
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Apr 24, 2014 02:32
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I hope the super neat Somalian republic is not just wiped out of history entirely. I was really hoping for an East African trading/colonizing power come EU4.
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Apr 24, 2014 02:57
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I think Tamerlane would've been preferable to this.
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Apr 24, 2014 03:35
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Smiling Knight posted:I hope the super neat Somalian republic is not just wiped out of history entirely. I was really hoping for an East African trading/colonizing power come EU4. We can certainly hope that Somalia will be returned to something close to its original iteration once Rincewind fractures the Frontier's conquests. The mercantile ascension that characterised it doesn't even have to disappear, either; realistically speaking, the merchant families would just cede control of the Republic as a state once conquered and continue their money-making ventures in a more private, corporate-based venue. They would still hold so much power that the state would still be theirs de-facto by the time that the Frontier needs to consolidate its gains, with the Chinese granting them a large degree of political power and considerable positions in the government. ...But CK2 doesn't model the realistic outcome in that specific context, so it's ultimately left to Rincewind's interpretation.
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Apr 24, 2014 03:38
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I don't get this Ming Frontier army thing. Why mod an additional invasion, and a completely broken at that? 
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Apr 24, 2014 04:31
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Transmetropolitan posted:I don't get this Ming Frontier army thing. Why mod an additional invasion, and a completely broken at that? Diversity from the other mega-LPs, maybe? We have like twenty of the drat things
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Apr 24, 2014 04:41
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Transmetropolitan posted:I don't get this Ming Frontier army thing. Why mod an additional invasion, and a completely broken at that? Well, it's not an additional invasion, it's instead of the Timurids. Although by going for Iberia, I guess they decided they wanted to be the Aztecs and the Timurids at the same time. And while it's broken in the sense that it didn't behave in quite the way I intended it to, in the end what it had done to reshape the game world by the year 1444 was pretty interesting. Hopefully, when I've written the updates about that, you'll agree!
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Apr 24, 2014 04:44
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Funky Valentine posted:I think Tamerlane would've been preferable to this. Yeah, "Ming China decides to crush all remnants of the Mongols" was a pretty cool idea, but "through a fluke of the game mechanics Ming China conquers all of Iberia without any sort of land or sea connection" is the kind of thing that, to me, needs retconning.
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Apr 24, 2014 05:05
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Soup du Jour posted:Yeah, "Ming China decides to crush all remnants of the Mongols" was a pretty cool idea, but "through a fluke of the game mechanics Ming China conquers all of Iberia without any sort of land or sea connection" is the kind of thing that, to me, needs retconning. I don't know, it seems pretty plausible to me.
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Apr 24, 2014 05:08
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DentedLamp posted:Diversity from the other mega-LPs, maybe? We have like twenty of the drat things Rincewind posted:Well, it's not an additional invasion, it's instead of the Timurids. Although by going for Iberia, I guess they decided they wanted to be the Aztecs and the Timurids at the same time. Sorry if my post seemed a bit harsh, I was genuinely curious. Catching up with recent updates and suddenly "woah Ming Iberia what the hell" made me wonder if I missed something, mostly because I thought those invasions did not come with, well, navies.
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Apr 24, 2014 05:13
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 "Those loving funeral bells have been ringing for days, the wine's run out, the torches have all burned down and some monster dropped a deuce in the garden." "Guys? I think the party is over." The Senator stares at his Komnenian badge, then drops it and treads through the deserted banquet hall. As he walks out the door he stops and sighs, looks back one last time and whispers "Right in the garden, dropped a deuce right in the loving garden".
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Apr 24, 2014 05:19
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Soup du Jour posted:Yeah, "Ming China decides to crush all remnants of the Mongols" was a pretty cool idea, but "through a fluke of the game mechanics Ming China conquers all of Iberia without any sort of land or sea connection" is the kind of thing that, to me, needs retconning. They used the same sea connection the Somalians used to build all their trade posts in the Black Sea and eastern Mediterranean. 
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Apr 24, 2014 05:20
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Rincewind posted:They used the same sea connection the Somalians used to build all their trade posts in the Black Sea and eastern Mediterranean. The Somalis got proactive on that "Suez Canal" thing.
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Apr 24, 2014 05:24
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Funky Valentine posted:The Somalis got proactive on that "Suez Canal" thing. I'll probably be doing the EU4 section after WoN and its glorious canal technology is implemented...
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Apr 24, 2014 06:12
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...I hope you are being serious with that, because honestly? That would change exploration so much and I find that pretty interesting.
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Apr 24, 2014 06:29
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NewMars posted:...I hope you are being serious with that, because honestly? That would change exploration so much and I find that pretty interesting. Getting on the canal train. (The Orient Express?) Having Suez open from day 1 of an EU4 game would be mind-blowing in its implications.
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Apr 24, 2014 06:51
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Patter Song posted:Getting on the canal train. (The Orient Express?) Having Suez open from day 1 of an EU4 game would be mind-blowing in its implications. I mean, I need to see how WoN canals work with my own two eyes before I commit to it, but I totally am feeling the canal thing at this point.
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Apr 24, 2014 07:11
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It gives me joy to read of the suffering of the Yaroslavoviches. This is their curse for being dirty off-Komnenoi. True glory does not befit them. (Why didn't she try to reconquer the merchant republics? No casus belli?)
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Apr 24, 2014 09:14
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Readingaccount posted:It gives me joy to read of the suffering of the Yaroslavoviches. This is their curse for being dirty off-Komnenoi. True glory does not befit them. I'm pretty sure I didn't have a reconquest one, just the embargo war CB, although I played this a while ago. We also couldn't keep our troops paid for very long, which is why I was starting out with what I assumed would be little nothing wars against our tiniest neighbor.
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Apr 24, 2014 10:01
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Oh god I really, really, really hope that Transoxiana survives. Because goddamn, Manicheans never get any luck in CK2.
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Apr 24, 2014 10:07
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Me too, it's an awesome, crazy thing. I'm a bit saddened that we didn't do a bit better either, but I don't doubt we'll live to see the modern day.
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Apr 24, 2014 10:33
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 The Phanariote Committee  Tachat II "the Brigand" Qutuzid, 67 I... but I... Mu Zhanhai said... No matter. That's not important right now. The Cathayans betrayed our trust, my trust. Even worse is them siding with the Pope. While I can respect them for their thoughts and ideas, I must condemn them for their actions. They may have brought stability to Iberia, but the refugees tell of their deeds. Their wars in the East seemed sound at first, rooting out all the religious extremists and placing the lands under their rule, but now I can see they're nothing more than expansionistic monsters. It is with this darkness in heart I must resign. I will withdraw myself from politics to teach at the Imperial University here in Constantinople. I have grown unwise with age, and thus leave the future to my offspring. Step forward, Gurgen Qutuzid. *A young man of Turkish ancestry walks in, all clad in white*  The Varangian Committee  Gurgen II Qutuzid I may not be a Senator yet, but even I can see what is currently going on! The Cathayans attacked us! If we are to survive the Chinese hordes we must bolster our forces, and rebuild once we're done. Once the war to recapture Cilicia is over I can rejoin the Phanariotes, but for now White will dress my body. A professional army must be recruited! Mercenaries must be hired, from the Varangian North, Italian West and Turkish East alike! The Cathay menace must be dealt with if we are to ever survive this cataclysm from the East. Who's with me?
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Apr 24, 2014 14:24
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Patter Song posted:Getting on the canal train. (The Orient Express?) Having Suez open from day 1 of an EU4 game would be mind-blowing in its implications. No more crappy African colonies just to make it to the Indian Ocean.
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Apr 24, 2014 14:27
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