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Empress Theonora posted:For Byzantium, specifically, is a religious melting pot. The three largest religious groups are the Catholics (still prevalent in densely-populated Italy, since even when the empire was still standing there wasn't much of a push to convert Italy), Orthodox Christianity (still dominant in Greece, the Balkans, and the more Greek bits of the Anatolian coast, and probably also having still having a patina of being the Byzantine religion even if it hasn't been the state religion since Alexios V got his head chopped off) and Sunni Islam (centered in Anatolia, especially the interior, which has had a large Turkish and Greco-Turkish population dating back to the Sultanate of Rum, but also other communities like a Hui Muslim minority in that bit of Istria we took from Austria a million years ago, or expat communities from Somalia or wherever in the larger cities). There's a long-established Jewish community throughout the Commune, mostly composed of Mizrahi who've been around since the middle ages, augmented by later migration from the wider Jewish world because the Byzantine Empire had a reputation for internal religious tolerance, especially after the Edict of Athens. There's still some Gallicans and Bogomilists kicking around from the Reformation, although far less than there were in their early-modern heyday, and of course numerous other minorities-- some of the Pechenegs are still Tengri, for example. Thank you for this! 
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Jan 4, 2020 01:02
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Empress Theonora posted:There's a long-established Jewish community throughout the Commune, mostly composed of Mizrahi who've been around since the middle ages, augmented by later migration from the wider Jewish world because the Byzantine Empire had a reputation for internal religious tolerance, especially after the Edict of Athens. It's interesting to think that Byzantium occupies the significance to Jewish people that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth held in the OTL. Perhaps even more so given that the Golden Age of Jewish people in Poland ended in the late 1700s whereas its basically continued for almost 200 years later and counting in this timeline. That a rabbi was a major member in the revolution that brought about the Commune probably helps with internal relations as well. I wonder if the Byzantine Jewish population has continued calling themselves Romaniote or if they changed their name when Rome fell out of favor with the rest of the populace.
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Jan 4, 2020 05:51
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Necroskowitz posted:It's interesting to think that Byzantium occupies the significance to Jewish people that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth held in the OTL. Perhaps even more so given that the Golden Age of Jewish people in Poland ended in the late 1700s whereas its basically continued for almost 200 years later and counting in this timeline. That a rabbi was a major member in the revolution that brought about the Commune probably helps with internal relations as well. Ah, good old "No man or woman shall conspire to restore the Empire of Rome." It wouldn't have been a good look in the era of the revolutionary butchers.
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Jan 4, 2020 15:06
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Mr.Morgenstern posted:Well, when we come to the Early Modern Era, the rules start to change. It’s like God swapped one board game out for another. I see what you did there.
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Jan 4, 2020 18:50
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Those CK2 and EU4 screenshots Mr.Morgenstern posted for the official recap are really taking me back. They were completely different games.
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Jan 4, 2020 22:25
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I'm loving this. Going back to read the original. The Chief Savage Man LP on the US going commie got me to register.
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Jan 5, 2020 04:14
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Holy poo poo, was not expecting to see this return, but am very happy that it has. Looking forward to beating up some fascists.
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Jan 6, 2020 06:54
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Will we see space byzantium as well? *cough* shared burdens *cough*
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Jan 7, 2020 01:00
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*Byzantine space navy immediately flies into the sun and dies*
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Jan 7, 2020 04:32
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Baseball... in Space?
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Jan 7, 2020 09:09
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Kangxi posted:Those CK2 and EU4 screenshots Mr.Morgenstern posted for the official recap are really taking me back. They were completely different games. Yeah those 2014-era Mediterranean portraits are ... oof. Also reminds me of something I always thought was weird about CK2, that a lot of the map colors are completely different between the Mac and PC versions. Most notable are the Byzantines themselves, which on PC are a rich magenta color:  Whereas on Mac, which OP evidently uses, they're a much more pale pink. 
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Jan 7, 2020 15:40
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ninjahedgehog posted:Yeah those 2014-era Mediterranean portraits are ... oof. Huh, I thought it was the Historical Immersion Project Mod, which Nora used. Mr.Morgenstern fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 7, 2020 21:18
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Yeah I think it's the mod. Byz used to be a sort of nice deep purple, but at some point they changed it to an approximation of Tyrian Red.
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Jan 8, 2020 04:57
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Horsebanger posted:Baseball... in Space? Obviously, there is but one conclusion we can reach on this: in the battle of ideologies, Baseball will unify mankind and bring ByzLP to the stars. And through Baseball, we will have... Spaceballs the Let's Play Sponsor!
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Jan 8, 2020 07:40
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If the real WW2 is any indication, baseball teaches you how to throw grenades at fascists. Therefore, baseball good.
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Jan 14, 2020 19:02
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So I know I've read the entirety of ByzLP, and I know I read the entire CK2 story because I remember the "oh I'll just crank up the power on the Ming Frontier Army invasion, oh now it's an apocalypse" sequence. but for the love of communism how could I forget the time the Pope hired ALL the mercenaries.
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Jan 19, 2020 09:21
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A Chinese invasion so long before Jade Dragon is pretty funny in retrospect, especially with how often the Western Protectorate goes ham.
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Jan 19, 2020 16:20
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And so we return to the stage of history, knowing only three things. There will be greatness. There will be desire. And there will be blood. Super happy to see this come back!
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Jan 24, 2020 23:43
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Kangxi posted:Those CK2 and EU4 screenshots Mr.Morgenstern posted for the official recap are really taking me back. They were completely different games. You've got to wonder how many Emps would have stayed alive if the Holy Fury dueling mechanics were in place. Anyways, caught up with the whole thing. EDIT: Also funny to look back at everyone hand-wringing over how to nerf Ming without it being too gamey and contrived, only for Paradox to release the Manchu patch and now Ming explodes into several fragments every single game. SirPhoebos fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jan 26, 2020 |
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Jan 26, 2020 17:23
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Especially since we completely failed to nerf Ming at all :V
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Jan 26, 2020 18:38
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Dunno if it's been pointed out already, and I don't know if anything can realistically be done about it, but every update link for the old thread after part 4 of the CKII era are busted. They just send you to the start of that thread.
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Jan 26, 2020 23:08
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All the links in the OP of the original thread still work. That will work as a stopgap.
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Jan 27, 2020 02:41
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 PART SEVENTY-SIX: Begin Again! (January 1, 1936 - July 24, 1936) Excerpts from A Soldier's Life: The Memoirs of Field Marshal Theodora Papadopoulou. By the mid-1930s, described in the selected passages below, Theodora Papadopoulou had long been one of the most storied and well-known soldiers in the Byzantine Commune's history. After joining a socialist militia as a teenager at the onset of the 1883 Revolution, Papadopoulou survived the disastrous defeat dealt to the Communards by Republican forces in Constantinople (the so-called "Massacre of the Ten Thousand") and enjoyed a meteoric rise through the ranks of the Red Guard and, eventually, the regular army of the Byzantine Commune. A leading general in the First Great War, she was one of the only army officers to survive the debacle of Byzantium's defeat and the imposition of the Treaty of Jaragua with her reputation intact, and was one of the architects of the rebuilt New Red Army that fought in the Second Great War. She commanded Byzantine and allied forces in many of the most famous land engagements of the war, including the Battle of Avalon's Neck, perhaps the linchpin of the Byzantine push to relieve the beleaguered Haida forces along Avalon's Pacific coast.  Field Marshal Theodora Papadopoulou  At two in the morning, an aide woke me up with news that Poland had launched an invasion of Bohemia at the stroke of midnight.  A hasty meeting of the general staff was convened within hours. Some of my comrade-officers seemed surprised that the 'peace' that had lasted since the Polish invasion of the NGF ran out of gas in 1932 broke so suddenly, that once more life in the Near West was punctuated by the sharp cracking of gunfire, the thunder of artillery, the low drone of warplanes.  Idiots. It was patently obvious that the king of Poland was on Valeria's shitlist.  It was obvious that he'd go for a softer target than the NGF the first chance he got. Bohemia was an old-style monarchy in a world rapidly losing the patience for such things. Vladan I was popular at home for his role in liberating the Bohemians from Hungary, but he was of a dying breed. Poland dressed up its casus belli in the language of the old world of kings and queens-- some bullshit about the Valois-Vexin dynasty having a claim to the Duchy of Bohemia following the messy dissolution of the Kingdom of Hungary-- but not even the Poles themselves took that serious. This was a fascist war-- not for dynastic glory, but for power, and the blunt exercise thereof.  Discussion quickly turned to the military preparedness of the Byzantine Commune. The verdict: piss poor. The industry and might of our workers-- was hobbled by a soft, peacetime footing. Byzantine factories were tied up in the sort of palliative consumer manufacturing that helped Cavinato hang on after the 1GW, but was anachronistic by 1936. The 2GW didn't last long enough for anyone to learn their lesson.   Didn't last long enough for the officer corps of the New Red Army to pull its collective head out of its rear end, either. The Navy took all the credit for winning 2GW, just like the Army took all the blame for losing 1GW. So anyone with an ounce of ambition for a military career went right to the Navy, leaving behind a staff of officers not ready for the freight train heading their way. My daughter told me that, in private, Comrade-Tribune Erdemir described the officer corps as 'sclerotic'. I'd use stronger language than that. "Completely poo poo," maybe. But I didn't have a chip on my shoulder about showing off a university education despite being born in Bumfuck, Anatolia, like the Tribune did.  But the Commune was still where the revolution burned brightest. Whatever organizational, logistical, or strategic problems the military has, I knew the people were willing to fight.  Willing to go down swinging, if it came down to it.  But I'd rather win than go down swinging. So across the Commune, the first weeks of 1936 saw troops redeployed, borders manned, fortifications built, plans made. Across a frontline that spanned the subcontinent, RRP and WRE troops massed. Waiting. War was a matter of when, not if.    It's a rare gift to be able to the shape of things to come so certainly, and plan for that future.  A gift I could only hope the Byzantine Commune wouldn't squander.  Because the consequences of being caught with your pants down in times like this are swift and deadly.  In Bohemia, the defensive lines were being ground down by the fascists. Dug-in pickets became ad-hoc lines of retreat, which became salients, which became encirclements. Eastern Bohemia was already little more than a charnel-house; by February it seemed a near-certainty that the west, too, would fall.  And yet in Byzantium, valuable time and effort was being spent untangling the domestic political situation.  When I first met Iouliana Erdemir, I thought she was soft. Too young for the First Great War, at sea for the Second.  By all accounts, she served with distinction aboard the Hippolyta, the Navy was instrumental to the war's grand strategy, but let's face it, the war at sea was just a nautical turkey shoot. Commissioned naval officers are soft. Good at what they do, but soft, spending the war in wardrooms and bridges, staring out across the sea from the quarterdeck. Honorable service, but she wasn't in the poo poo with the common soldiers. For all that the officer corps got the blame for losing 1GW-- justifiably, even-- they were still ankle-deep in mud, down in trenches dug through hell on Earth with the rest of their men and women, enduring round-the-clock artillery bombardment, struggling to breathe through gas-masks. Well. The officers worth a drat, anyway. Not the ones running the war from their villas in México, miles behind the lines.  Also, Erdemir was loving my daughter. Reason enough to hold her to a higher standard.   Left: Erinna Papadopoulou, daughter of the famous Field Marshal Papadopoulou; Right: Iouliana Erdemir, Tribune of the Byzantine Commune As I got to know her, though, I realized there was more to her than I thought. Something that set her apart from the political functionaries who swarmed around the House of the Golden Horn, jockeying for cabinet positions or Ekklesia seats.    Or from the various mediocrities clogging the general staff Field Marshals Barthas, Hayrettin, and I had to sort through, for that matter.     Sometimes-- during our frequent meetings on the deteriorating situation in Bohemia, perhaps, or backstage at tedious civic functions, or when Erinna dragged Iouliana alone when she came to visit home-- sometimes, Iouliana would get that same faraway look I'd see from veterans of the First Great War. I had no idea what her life was like before what's in her Naval records, but I decided that clearly she'd been in the poo poo. In some way or another-- there are a lot of ways you can be in the poo poo, but they all leave a mark. Beneath the rural accent and the folksy wisdom, the sober grey suits and the quiet, knowing smiles, there was iron. There was fire.  In any case, we managed to cobble together a passable command structure for standing Byzantine forces. For the time being, anyway.   Bohemia was burning. The larger nations of Europe circled like hungry wolves, sizing one another up. As usual, though, everyone in the Near West kept a wary eye on the east. In the Ming Empire, Zhang Zhulin threw his weight around, consolidating his power, making sure everyone knew who the boss really was.  Part of this process was splitting up the spoils; some of the outlying territories of the empire were parceled out to his cronies. The Ming frontier with Byzantium in Astrakhan (or "The People's Republic of Asitelahan", because apparently Zhang Zhulin has a sense of humor) was given over to Liu Kesan. Word had it Liu was a crook-- but, then, every capitalist was. His mandate was to keep the territory in line and the oil flowing to China, and he did so with grim efficiency.   There wasn't much reason to think Liu posed an imminent threat to Byzantium-- by all accounts the Ming Empire and its satellites were more focused on the Allies than the Red Rose Pact-- but an army under General Antigone Tassi was still sent to man the line of fortifications across the Caucasus. Just in case.  Less relevant to Byzantium's immediate interests but still worth keeping an eye on was Zhongnan, a Ming client state organized from their southeastern conquests-- Thailand, Annam, the Khmer Empire, and other old nations erased from the map centuries ago. The now-infamous Cao Liuxian was given free rein over Zhongnan, which in short order became his own private little playground and piggy bank. You'd be tempted to think he was cut from the same cloth as Liu, or even Zhang himself, but there was something different about him. Erratic. Dangerous; a spark on dry kindling.  And then the loving Sicilians got antsy again. Fascist landships were rolling through Bohemia, the French war machine was revving up, and everything was clearly on the knife's edge of becoming a complete global clusterfuck, but gently caress it, let's re-litigate some riots from 1930. Sure. Whatever.  You think it'd be clear that Byzantine troops and Byzantine guns and Byzantine forts were the only thing keeping the French from just crushing the whole Italian peninsula under an iron boot.  But I guess still having a bug up your rear end about that one time the empress of a dead empire seized the throne of an even deader kingdom in the year of our Lord fourteen-loving-sixty-two is way more important than not being run over by a column of landships.  All this against the backdrop of Bohemia's last stand. Un-loving-believable, even after all these years.   With Prague fallen and the Bohemian king missing in action (one of the many drawbacks to investing so much national legitimacy in a man with a crown), the fix was in.  Yet, amidst all of this, the Byzantine Commune was still handling the the Sicilian demonstrations with kid gloves. Behind closed doors, at command posts, in barracks, officers began to talk amongst themselves. Saying that the Commune was still shackled to the past, beholden to Republican sentimentality in a world far too dangerous. Saying the Commune was soft.  So it was that April 22nd, 1936, I was approached by Andreas Vasiliakis, a high-ranking officer in the Commune's military intelligence service. He painted a picture of a decadent civilian political establishment totally unprepared for the crisis looming just over the horizon. It was a time for men and women of action to step up to the plate. It was time for a strong hand on the tiller. The 1884 Revolution would've been strangled in the cradle of it weren't for Spyromilios doing what needed to be done in those critical early days, before he was betrayed by a bunch of idealistic professional revolutionaries at the First International and left to rot. We needed another Spyromilios, Vasiliakis argued. He knew better than to name-drop Müller himself, but we both knew that was what he was really talking about. The Exteberrian Commune was too soft to survive times like these. Tribune Erdemir was too soft.  I told him that what he was saying made a lot of sense, and that I'd think about it. I then very calmly rose from my chair, politely excused myself, and left the room. I stepped out of the offices of the War Secretariat and onto the streets of Byzantion. All around me, people were going about their usual business. Cars drove to and fro. A small crowd was gathered on the steps of the Labor Secetariat across the street, listening to a woman strumming a tanbur. The sound of jackhammers and cement mixers drifted in from a few blocks away, where construction workers were breaking ground for a new apartment block. None of them had any idea the Commune was at a fork in history's road, from which two very different futures stretched out into eternity.  I hailed a cab, and told the driver to take me straight to the House of the Golden Horn. I charged in, sprinted down its corridors, and barged into the Tribune's office, winded. And I told Iouliana everything. Within an hour, that ordinary Byzantion day had been swept away. Loyalist troops were in the streets. The trains ground to a halt. Across the whole Commune, comrades turned on their radios and heard the Tribune's voice. A handful of shots were exchanged when a few die-hard Müllerists made a futile last stand on the greenbelt that marked where the Theodosian walls used to stand; it was a doomed effort no matter what, but I still was struck by the fact they picked a symbolic location over a strategic one. Idiots. Before the sun dipped below the waters of the Bosphorus, it was all over.  Was the Commune soft? Maybe, maybe.  But dictatorships are brittle, whether the person at the top calls themself a king or an empress, a kazike or a staatsrat. A few days later, news of the final collapse of Bohemia reached us.    And the Byzantine Commune continued to prepare for the worst in its own way.        Have to admit, though, when the Sicilian situation finally boiled over, I found myself wondering if I'd made the wrong choice. A mob storming the Magnaura and holding the legislature hostage felt like the sort of poo poo that should be happening in the 1610s, not 1936.  And yet the Ekklesia actually heard the Sicilians out, instead of just sending in the Army to clear them out, as they richly deserved.  At first glance, it even looked like they caved.  But even if the Commune was soft, I knew Iouliana Erdemir wasn't. Her decision on the matter was the result of her ironclad convictions, each applied to the Sicilian crisis in turn. The protestors themselves were dealt with harshly, she explained, because they tried to subvert democracy through force. But she had no desire to ratify the killing of civilians by armed soldiers and so paid out reparations to the aggrieved families, arguing that the use of coercive force to bind a nation together was an evil that shouldn't be taken lightly, or for granted. But it was a necessary evil, in times like these-- any state powerful enough to survive the dangers of the 20th century had to keep it in its back pocket. Nationalism was a poison pill, and if allowed to fester, would pull the whole Commune into its riptide. And so General Stanotas kept her command. And if this happened again, she told me, she would have given the same orders, and paid out the same reparations.  General Zenobia Stanotas And so I was invited into the Tribune's inner circle, and put in charge of the reforms the Army so badly needed.    MAP OF THE WORLD, JULY 24 1936  BASEBALL STANDINGS, JULY 24 1936 
Empress Theonora fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Feb 1, 2020 |
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Feb 1, 2020 06:22
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yessss, its Happening poor bohemia tho 
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Feb 1, 2020 06:49
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Was there a chance we could have had an early game Mullerist coup, or is that just a background event?
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Feb 1, 2020 07:36
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Yes.
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Feb 1, 2020 07:53
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I always like the little details you put in about sporting events and the like that make the world feel more alive, and somewhere where people live as well as fight wars.
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Feb 1, 2020 07:56
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LJN92 posted:Was there a chance we could have had an early game Mullerist coup, or is that just a background event? The second focus researched, Marxism-Extebarrianism, is listed as being mutually exclusive with "a shot of mullerism" so I would infer that taking the other focus pushes the commune down the Mullerist path.
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Feb 1, 2020 08:36
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 Just in case you were only skimming the update and scrolled past the list of generals: yes, all of those portraits were drawn for the game by Nora, and we're still only scratched the surface there... Excellent update, I loved Theodora's tone. I somehow had failed to realize that Erinna was her daughter, so that was a nice shock of recognition! Paris Goats having a terrible season, this bodes well... (yes Paris has two teams but they're the ones in the same league as Athens and Byzantion, so clearly they're the important ones!) jalapeno_dude fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Feb 1, 2020 |
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Feb 1, 2020 09:38
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LJN92 posted:Was there a chance we could have had an early game Mullerist coup, or is that just a background event? Yep, you can in fact go down a Muellerist path, which is a tad more aggressive in diplomatic and military matters.
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Feb 1, 2020 10:35
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LET'S GO ATHENS!
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Feb 1, 2020 15:17
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I'm a lurker, but I wanted to point out how much I've enjoyed this series going all the way back, and how much I appreciate the ENORMOUS effort you guys have put in to this.
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Feb 1, 2020 15:41
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Loving the Smedley Butler parallel with the POV of this post.
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Feb 1, 2020 19:50
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Yeah the Business Plot vibes were strong, good job Theodora. Things aren't looking great in the world today, but at least the Commune's leadership is taking it seriously and doing what they can to prepare. Hopefully, some work can be done to reduce Byzantine's reliance on consumer goods before war breaks out, but even if not, improving the Army and getting to work on new, modern doctrines could easily be the difference between victory and defeat. Remaining very worried about Italian vulnerability to France, all they need to do is push south from the Tyrol to the Adriatic and the peninsula is cut off by land. Of course the seas remain a major factor so it wouldn't be like an instant and certain loss there, but still... wouldn't be to our benefit. Also lol'd at Zhang's cheeky naming of Asitelahan  jalapeno_dude posted:
Yeah the sheer amount of work Nora and others have put into this is mindblowing!
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Feb 2, 2020 01:26
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We tried to use photographs at first, but it ended up far more practical to just have Nora draw everything. :V
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Feb 2, 2020 06:02
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I imagine finding pictures of women from the 30s wearing full general's getup would be a challenge, aye!
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Feb 2, 2020 08:07
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Hey, we may even have nice things at the end of this megacampaign....assuming Zhang doesn't faceroll everything.
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Feb 2, 2020 08:10
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I got a good chuckle out of having a potential advisor named Helvetica Bold.
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Feb 2, 2020 08:18
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SirPhoebos posted:Hey, we may even have nice things at the end of this megacampaign....assuming Zhang doesn't faceroll everything. I'm willing to bet that trying to run an empire bigger than real world China as if it's your personal mega corporation is going to have some inherent problems Guillotine shaped problems.
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Feb 2, 2020 09:01
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wiegieman posted:Guillotine shaped problems. Hiratine shaped problems.
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