I see no reason for a merge to occur. This topic is looking at something very specific, unlike the other one. I don’t really want it to be lost amongst such a large influx of generic ideas that address little bit of everything. By comparing the titles alone you can also tell that it disagrees with what is proposed there.
Although I personally consider Justinian a highly overestimated emperor, his popularity is understandable.
I believe though that you would find Heraklios’ campaigns against the the Sasanian Persians, the Rashidun Caliphate and the Avars even more fascinating. To quote G.Nafsinger, had world-shaking battles such as Yarmuk never occurred, our modern world would be so changed as to be nearly unrecognizable today.
Justinian is too early in the middle ages to fit in the game imo. Most civs’ dark ages in this game correspond to the 9th or 8th century, going all the way down to the 6th may be a bit much.
I would be happy to call it the Eastern Roman Empire. That is how they referred to their lands, and they called themselves Romans. The empire has a continuing connection to Rome, unlike the Holy Roman Empire.
Yes as far as I know all current civilizations speak their languages which they spoke around that time-line and changed a bit with every Age up depending on the civilization, to make it as authentic as possible so it only makes sense for the Byzantine Empire to speak mainly Greek as that was considered the main language throughout the Empire. Yes I know that Latin was also a language used, but it wasn’t considered the main language, and I can see letting certain units speak Latin only to cover that authenticity as well.
Greek fire isn’t a bad idea at all, to have like a defensive ability which you can upgrade for your towers, ships and units that had a flamethrower ish weapon on the battlefield would be awesome to be able to use.
Well, I don’t see any issues here considering it was the Greek orthodox Christians who built this during the Byzantine Empire era and it doesn’t belong nor connect with the Islamic culture of the Turks at all. So I see no reason for the Turks to use Hagia Sophia as their Wonder too as it doesn’t mean anything to them nor their religion.
I know today they have converted it over to a mosque but it’s roots and historical culture is Greek orthodox Christianity and nothing they do now can change that.
I agree with Katafractos and Fyrapan90, although i would prefer also the use of latin in the game, only for the reason that latin survived in the east roman empire until Heraclius and also after that inside the army, for example for the hierarchical organization in administrative and military occupation: Raektor, Sakellários, Kourátōr for the admininastrives and words like Doméstikos (derived from Domestici, the scholae palatine elite forces in the late roman empire). Generally i would really like a sort of mix between latin and greek for them and especially i hope they would use the name East Roman empire, because they never used byzantine, they feel to be romans of the greek part of the empire and with this im not assuming any nationalistic thought because in ancient and middle age there wasnt any nationalistic tought in our modern terms. I feel that the East Roman Empire should represent the Legacy of the Roman-Hellenistic empire. About the needing of this civ i agree again that they should have been in the base game, The East Roman Empire was the strongest Empire in Europe for the great part of Middle age ( The battle of Poitiers is overrated by european historiography, the real invasion of europe was stopped by the byzantines in the east, our school system always tends to ignore this fact, but it was the East Roman Empire who stopped for centuries the expansion of the Arabs in Europe, it fell only when the cannon innovation prevailed on the incredible defensive system of Constantinople). The complexity of its army and administration was unmatched by the european feudal armies, ironically i would have liked more a delay on other civs like english one for example, than the delay of the East Roman Empire.
I was about to make a correction but you said it yourself, Domestikos rather than Domesticus. Sakellarios rather than Sacellarius, (although the sak here is probably semitic and already existed in both Greek and Latin vocabularies [saccus-sakkos]) Kourator alone wasn’t really used but you can find Kouropalates instead of cura palatii which later eclipsed completely in favor of Protovestiarios from vestis.
The thing is that from ~7th century onwards even titles of Latin root were mostly used either in their equivalent Greek or Hellenized form.
e.g Consul → Hypatos Proconsul → Anthypatos
e.g Magister → Magistros Patricius → Patrikios
etc
I would want the game to portray accurately these cultural distinctions, not just for the Byzantines but for every civ. However after witnessing this joke of unit rosters that go like: Spearman → Hardened Spearman → Elite Spearman and so on and are the same for everyone, I don’t have any hope. At the very least they should get Greek voices.
There’s absolutely nothing problematic as Turks have absolutely nothing to do with it. I don’t know why would one even remotely think that Hagia Sophia could be portrayed as a turkic wonder. That would be preposterous.
yeah, i forgot to mention that they were all the hellenized form of original latin word (i put only the example of the Domestici, but i was referring to all of them). I also feel your pain watching the same roster unit for all civs, but i suppose that they wanted to mantain the original aoe2 philosophy. Also… it is quite hard to make a game perfect in every aspect for us History nerds XD
I mean, Hagia Sofia was built in the Age called “Dark Ages” in AoE 4, when Ottomans were not a thing, and didn’t rise yet.
Ottomans made their own wonders, they shined in Renaissance period, and made wonderful construction, why would they need Hagia Sofia ?
They have Blue Mosque, an huge achievement, inspired by hagia sofia, but surpass it (in term of engineering, bc way later), Topkapi palace, etc …
Blue mosque is used in aoe II btw;
Well, that’s kinda the case in AoE2. The Byzantine wonder is Hagia Sophia and the Turkish wonder is the Selimiye Mosque, which is inspired by Hagia Sophia.
Very very cool idea. Bring it on. Would love to play a Byzantine campaign. Maybe ending with the fall of Constantinople to the Turks. They could be introduce with Turks/Ottomans as a joint expansion maybe.