If there ever comes a Byzantine variant, what would it be?
Trebizond Empire, Georgia Kingdom those are the most popular
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Nicene empire would make for a decent variant and have a good campaign, coincides with the fourth crusade and the sacking of Constantinople. Could even feature a bit where they ally with Genoa to overthrow the Venetians who had taken control of the city.
Sidenote: Genoese crossbows are the only unit that counters the Venetian Condotierro (aside from springalds)
Here to recommend that it doesn’t get a variant, and instead gets the name change to the correct name of Roman Empire that it should have.
Its current name undermines its identity, purposefully so. A term popularized by HRE scholars.
I feel tempted to say that it is ironic that the Holy ROMAN EMPIRE features Roman in its name, yet the Byzantine doesn’t–however, it isn’t ironic nor is it funny, it is straight up misleading and furthering that very same propaganda aiming to legitimize the HRE over the actual Romans.
If I didn’t already know, I’d guess the developers were Canadian from the insanely biased angle. The game launched with English, French and HRE–gave a variant to each one of them (2 to French) before adding Spain and on top of that, tries to mislead people on the identity of the “Byzantines” in a suppoused history game.
Almost every faction in the game has a contemporary name… Chinese, Japanese, French… these are all the same.
Contemporary? That isn’t how names work. From the ones you noted, only one of them is an actual endonym, and only halfway so because it is being filtered through English. You don’t actually think Japanese people call themselves “Japanese” in their language, right? Same with Chinese.
Our understanding of history in 2025 is far beyond calling the medieval era of the Roman Empire the “Byzantines”. It’s a german invention perpetuated by English academics whose modern equivalent are a breeeding ground for misinformation on the global stage.
Care to guess why the English perpetuated this? You’d be surprised to find out who were on the ballot for HRE elections. Again, it doesn’t surprise me that a Canadian company is behind this kind of bias.
To go back to your “contemporary” statement–The Romans did not call themselves the Byzantines. So there you go.
Technically the HRE was founded in Rome by the papacy circa 962: Coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor - Wikipedia
Right, contemporary means “occurring in the present time”. All of the names in this game are based off of modern terminology.
Anyways, I’d love to hear more ideas on Byzantine variants. The civ has a lot of history with splinter factions that they could pull from.
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I know what contemporary means, and I thought you were clearly referring to the contemporary of the past as today’s contemporary understanding is that the state’s name was the Roman Empire, with the Byzantines serving as clear intentional biased misinformation.
To keep in line with this thread, it would not surprise me if these developers went ahead and created variants from some of the false states born after Crusaders from germanic lands that destroyed the Roman Empire in their greed–such as the perversely called “Latin Empire”.
Why don’t we make a “Byzantines” variant called the Sultanate of Rum while we’re at it?
That should never happen!
But I do understand the concern.
I think they recently revived a thread ( The REAL problem of the variant civs) about variant issues, and here I was precisely saying that in the last DLC the devs acknowledged that “they didn’t make the first four versions with enough historical depth”, and that’s precisely why the new variants (Lancaster, Templars) had that.
So at least in the future, I also hope they make more historical variants, “if it warrants it” and not just for the sake of fill.
I think there are some civs that are really good candidates for variants at historical context:
- Timurids (Mongol Variant)
- Conquistadors (Spanish or Castilian Variant)
- Aragon (Spanish Variant)
- Ming Dynasty (Chinese Variant)
Well, the Sultanate of Rum was practically the predecessor from which the Ottomans emerged, so it would be more of a variant of them than Byzantine. That said, I didn’t find many unique units or landmarks that would make an interesting variant, and since it predates them, wouldn’t the term “Ancestor Civ” be better? Although I think there are better options.
And for those who don’t know what the Latin Empire was:
Latin Empire (1204-1261):
It was a kingdom formed by Crusaders who seized and invaded the Byzantine Empire, instead of going to the Holy Land. It was a temporary kingdom, which was later annihilated and returned to the control of the Byzantine Empire under the Palaeologan dynasty.
In other words, they should never be a Byzantine variant. The Latin Empire was to the Byzantines what the Mongols were to the Chinese, or the Mongols to the Russians, or the Timurids to the Persians.
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Before considering more variants for the Byzantines, I think they should first fix the mercenary problem:
They have too many anachronisms in mercenary system
And in this, I share Croissantini’s idea that some aspects of the Sultan Ascends DLC were done by saving resources, not only with the variants but with the Byzantines themselves:
- Their mercenaries were units from practically every civic group present at the time, and not necessarily the mercenaries they had historically employed.
At least the most drastic cases are the following:
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Lansknecht (1470->)- Anachronistic. They appeared after the Swiss pikemen became famous, defeating the Burgundian state and even killing its king. And this happened “after the fall of Constantinople.”
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Strelty (1545->) - Anachronistic. It appeared after the fall of Constantinople; it makes no sense for the Byzantines to have it.
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Javelin Thrower of Mali (1300-?) Not only was the Mali Empire founded late for Bizantinos, but it was also too far from Constantinople to travel there as mercenaries.
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Grenadier of Ming (1380-?) Not only was the Ming Dinasty formed late for Bizantines, but it was too far away for them to give this unit as mercenaries:
Possible solutions:
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Replace the Landsknecht and Streltsy with other, more historical units from European kingdoms. The Byzantines had an absurdly large number of historical mercenaries to be using anachronistic ones from: Genoa, Venice, Alans, Turks, Georgians, Armenia, Aragon, Wallachia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Norway. If you don’t want to be specific, you could use Crusader units, if that’s what the Crusades used them for: helping the Byzantines.
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For the Silk Road Javelin Thrower and Grenadier - The Byzantines already had a corps of Javelin Throwers and Grenadiers, and even a “Dromedari” for camels. Instead of a foreign contract, it could very well be an “Extra Units or Veterans” contract, with the same or similar abilities as those mentioned above, but a different, more Greek skin.
If the Byzantines don’t fix this problem, I’m unlikely to want a variant, since the worst they could do is make the variant to “fix” the historical issues of the original.
If that happens, I will NEVER play the original, but only with the variant, and that only if it’s historical.
Fortunately, the Templars, who have Civ units that haven’t been released yet, are the best example that it’s possible to add new Civ units that haven’t been released yet and that better respect the historical margin.
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Hello, before aim for a Byz variant (which I will be the first excited for), maybe some things have to be reworked in the mercenary system but also on the main roster.
I invite you to comment on this post
In the current statement we can’t put Templars units in the mercenaries camps because it is going to duplicate the civ. The actual system, with his anachronism and mistakes, is good because you don’t feel you play a clone of existing civs. Maybe add a fourth contract with 3 crusader units ?