|
It shouldn't be too hard to wrest control of the empire back, as we have 33k troops at our disposal. Although maybe it'd be better to wait for another election. Also, I love Manichean Seljuk.
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2015 03:18
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 00:57 |
|
|
I honestly didn't expect Seljuk to be Manichee. I tweaked the Seljuk event so that he'd remain the religion of whatever court he showed up in, as long as it was in the Zoroastrian group. Otherwise, only then would he force-switch to Manichean. I thought all the lords of the Central Asian steppes were proper Zoroastrian at this point, but apparently not!
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2015 03:39
|
|
|
mythomanic posted:It shouldn't be too hard to wrest control of the empire back, as we have 33k troops at our disposal. Although maybe it'd be better to wait for another election. Also, I love Manichean Seljuk. Wait!? To get back what was so wrongfully stolen from us? No sir there can only be one answer for this heinous crime,War.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2015 03:43
|
|
|
It's a shame Manichean presumably has no mechanics in Gothmod!Ikasuhito posted:Wait!? To get back what was so wrongfully stolen from us? No sir there can only be one answer for this heinous crime,War. We were legally passed over according to the laws of Succession established by our own Imperial ancestor. Sundering the empire by civil war would be a far greater crime. Now, if some unfortunate accident happened to befall our current Emperor, who knows what might happen to us, once we accumulate a nice circle of compatriots?
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2015 05:22
|
|
|
Jack2142 posted:To be fair the Zoroastrians and Muslims have indeed besieged Constantinople, several times in actual history however the city itself never fell to an outside invade till 1204 with the 4th Crusade thing .The biggest divergence here is that the Zoroastrians managed to hold and convert most of the ERE at the start unlike in real life when the whole clusterfuck of Byzantine-Persian Wars, while long wasn't a multiple generation long occupation of Syria etc. by the Sassanids like in the LP. so similar to real history, but with the eastern empire lost much earlier. the middle ages of the byzantine empire began early. and hey, they're making a little bit of a comeback right now!
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2015 05:37
|
|
|
Kings dying off like flies, it's like we're back in the first few CK2 updates.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2015 06:02
|
|
|
Raserys posted:Kings dying off like flies, it's like we're back in the first few CK2 updates.   Maybe the Mad Emperor was on to something and something killed those kings.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2015 06:10
|
|
|
So Pons is an internal Hannibal Barca. Can we get an overview of the wild frontier of eastern Europe? What's that big purplish-grey blob making headway in the Urals and Kola?
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2015 06:23
|
|
|
Pons is right in his thinking about the Romans. Who kicked off the reconquest of the British Isles for Christ? Who brought the Franks and the Swabians into the light of God? Who reinvigorated the empire to strike back at the fireworshippers who treacherously seized all of Arica? Where would Hispania be if not for Gothia? The throne belongs to Pons, by right. The Romans must be taught the error of their ways.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2015 12:03
|
|
|
Rodyle posted:We were legally passed over according to the laws of Succession established by our own Imperial ancestor. Sundering the empire by civil war would be a far greater crime. That might have worked if King Pons was not a diplomatic black hole. Pons reclaiming the empire can only be done at swordpoint.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2015 12:25
|
|
|
YF-23 posted:That might have worked if King Pons was not a diplomatic black hole. Pons reclaiming the empire can only be done at swordpoint. It must be done at sword point. Carthago Nova must be purged of its arrogance.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2015 12:27
|
|
|
YF-23 posted:That might have worked if King Pons was not a diplomatic black hole. Clearly he should aspire to improve his diplomacy then.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2015 14:02
|
|
|
For a bit of "fun", I went through the title histories of Gothia and the Carthagennan Empire, took screenshots of the whole things and stitched them all together. Kings of Gothia to AD 1000 Emperors of the Carthagennan Empire/Western Roman Empire to AD 1000 I got lazy with the middle Roman Emperors, so the ones with the dynasty represented by the blue eagle on black are all of the 'Occidentalis' dynasty, while emperors Faltonio to Pinniolo are of the 'Hispanicus' dynasty. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2015 15:44
|
|
|
Randarkman posted:It must be done at sword point. Carthago Nova must be purged of its arrogance. Lots of things need to be purged from this Earth. Especially the not-Karlings.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2015 16:04
|
|
|
I did not know there was an Empress Regnant prior to the division of east and west.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2015 17:09
|
|
|
AJ_Impy posted:I did not know there was an Empress Regnant prior to the division of east and west. Only appears to have been a very brief regency following Aurelians death in 275. It's entirely going off mentions of an interegnum preceding the reign of Tacitus, and coins minted in her name after Aurelian's death. Not much else is known. Generally Rome did not have (officially) reigning Empresses, though men often became Emperor by marrying the daughters of former Emperors.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2015 17:21
|
|
|
We must reclaim righteous Belgian clay!
|
|
#
?
Dec 3, 2015 19:39
|
|
|
Ofaloaf posted:For a bit of "fun", I went through the title histories of Gothia and the Carthagennan Empire, took screenshots of the whole things and stitched them all together. Huh, there's 80 years of civil war in Spain (and apparently a whole bunch of people getting impaled) until the Goths take over. Then you get Lidia the wise keeping everything stable for 50 years + invading Africa, which I think makes her way more important than the black emperor. That's really neat. Ghetto Prince fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Dec 3, 2015 |
|
#
?
Dec 3, 2015 21:04
|
|
|
Ghetto Prince posted:Huh, there's 80 years of civil war in Spain (and apparently a whole bunch of people getting impaled) until the Goths take over. Then you get Lidia the wise keeping everything stable for 50 years + invading Africa, which I think makes her way more important than the black emperor. That's really neat. See? The Romans owe everything to the Goths. They denied Pons his birthright.
|
|
#
?
Dec 3, 2015 21:09
|
|
|
Randarkman posted:See? The Romans owe everything to the Goths. They denied Pons his birthright. Hahahaha, this timeline is about to get hilariously violent and hosed isn't it.  Edit: I mean, more so than is normal for a Paradox LP. Fox Ironic fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Dec 3, 2015 |
|
#
?
Dec 3, 2015 21:15
|
|
|
Fox Ironic posted:Hahahaha, this timeline is about to get hilariously violent and hosed isn't it. "Normal" for Paradox LPs includes Crete, Hohenzollern, Judea under the laws of the Medes and Persians, Flamboyant Denmark, Azerbaijan and China conquering Spain and Austria instead of the Mongol invasion.
|
|
#
?
Dec 3, 2015 23:36
|
|
|
AJ_Impy posted:"Normal" for Paradox LPs includes Crete, Hohenzollern, Judea under the laws of the Medes and Persians, Flamboyant Denmark, Azerbaijan and China conquering Spain and Austria instead of the Mongol invasion. Yup. The WRE is about to explode at the exacts same time as a Crusader state is being established in Britain and Seljuk doing his thing in a fractured Middle East where he, if he picks up steam, could gently caress the ERE in half. The Mongols are going to have a helluva time in 200 years.
|
|
#
?
Dec 3, 2015 23:52
|
|
|
If Seljuk actually makes it to the Byzantines' door, that would be the first Paradox LP where the Turks actually conquer Anatolia.
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2015 08:45
|
|
|
Raserys posted:If Seljuk actually makes it to the Byzantines' door, that would be the first Paradox LP where the Turks actually conquer Anatolia. To be fair Rincewind's Byzantium LP started with the Turks controlling most of Anatolia.
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2015 09:04
|
|
|
Rumda posted:To be fair Rincewind's Byzantium LP started with the Turks controlling most of Anatolia. Though they did go and lose it again, so I'm not sure if that actually counts.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 00:25
|
|
|
Though most of Anatolia did end up going culturally Turkish anyway, bar a coastal strip, if I remember right. Inclusionists! 
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 00:32
|
|
|
Chapter 32: The Ashen Ladder 1000-1019  Gautya at the end of King Pons' regency was in a fractured, weakened state. The duchies of Belgica and Armorica, long held by the Gothic kings, had become direct vassals of the emperor upon the union of Gautya and the Carthagennan Empire, and so when the Goths were voted off the imperial throne, the northern duchies had become independent of vassalized Gothia.  With the kingdom in such a state, Pons was in need of both reliable allies and a reliable wife. He managed to find both in the person of Queen Antuonja II of Illyria, still unwed at the age of 20.   Although Pons' marriage proposal was crude- he allegedly beseeched her to “join me, so that I can kill the Romans better”- Antuonja enthusiastically accepted, as even leaving Illyria in union with a vassalized Gothia seemed like a good prospect. The likeliest alternative, to be gradually conquered by the Slavs of the Byzantine Empire, was far less appealing.  Military matters were on King Pons' mind from the very beginning. The church of Ansa, near the capital, was one of several churches which were endowed with icons of St. George the Dragonslayer during King Pons' reign. From the onset of his reign, Pons prepared his realm for war, militarily and even spiritually. Before taking any actions against the empire he was now a vassal of, Pons engaged in a brief Alpine war in 1001, taking Curia from the fragmenting Swabian realm. It was not a major war, but it gave King Pons move levies and more revenues use in his plans.  Because of the Carthagennan Empire's elective succession laws, King Pons' claim to the throne was actually quite weak, and due to that and due to his own lack of any diplomatic tact, he was unable to muster any significant support among his peers within the realm. Lacking an easy way to rally a faction to his own cause, Pons decided his second-best option was to simply not be part of the realm anymore. “I would rather be the sovereign king of ashes than a sniveling boot-kisser in the richest empire,” he is said to have proclaimed.   While the faction began preparing itself to confront the emperor, Pons had a stroke of good fortune. His steward at the time, Count Laurènç, was caught embezzling funds from the royal treasury, much like his predecessor had done during King Pons' regency. Now, however, Pons had no regent to control him, and he was chomping at the bit to leave Laurènç rotting in prison for the rest of his life.  That is, Pons was ready to do that until he found out how much Count Laurènç had embezzled, and how much the count was willing to hand back over. With Laurènç's fortune now at his disposal, the king began sending out queries to several mercenary companies and beefing up his armies. The time was right.    In 1003, Pons made his move. The independence faction approached Emperor Adamantius and demanded their freedom; when the emperor unsurprisingly refused, the war began. Gautya's sandwiched position between northern and southern loyalist Imperial elements was a doubled-edged sword during the war; the Gothic realm could be attacked from both north and south, but its position also meant that Roman troops began divided, and would need to cross Gothic lands without interference to be able to unify and swing their full weight around.    This was not something the Imperial army was able to do. Several Roman forces approached Gothic lands in piecemeal fashion, and were defeated repeatedly in fights like the Battle of Tigèrn and Bailijoc. The Goths were able to consolidate their forces much more quickly than the Romans, and were thus able to locally outnumber Imperial troops in many of the battles along the Gothic frontier.  Although Gautya itself played a central role in the fight, not all Goths sided with King Pons. Some members of the Triarius dynasty held dominant positions in the Imperial army even during the rebellion, who led loyalist troops into battle against Pons himself.   Through the use of local numerical superiority, King Pons' rebels were able to trounce Imperial troops time and time again. Emperor Adamantius was simply unable to consolidate his forces effectively.  And so, in July of 1004, Adamantius gave in to King Pons' demands, and granted independence to both him and Duke Verec, the British duke of Cantia. The Belgican and Armorican dukes to the north, however, stayed with the Carthagennan Empire. The Goths were free once again, but were now hemmed in on all sides. Gautya's independence was a temporary move, according to the account of King Pons. The Gothic ruler was simply incensed at being denied the imperial crown and put into a subordinate position, and had rebelled largely because of his personal frustrations with the decline in the Gothic position within the Carthagennan Empire. His rebellion did not mean that he rejected the empire in its entirety, though- he still styled himself "Emperor of the Romans", among other titles- but simply that he refused to acknowledge anyone but himself as leader of the Roman realm.  During this "inter-imperial" period, Romantic 'Gautés' culture boomed and continued to change within independent Gautya. The Grand Tournament of 1006 marked a major development in feudal culture, featuring one of the first recorded instances of a jousting tournament being held primarily for entertainment purposes and prominently featuring mounted combat. In broading military developments, this period also marked a final shift away from the earlier Gothic emphasis on pikes and heavy infantry and towards cavalry and mounted knights as the main strength of Gothic military might. In broader cultural developments, despite the Triarius dynasty's prior period in the 10th century as rulers of the Carthagennan Empire, it is with King Pons' reign that a true explosion in Medieval Gothic art commenced. Prior to this time, psuedo-Classical sculpture and painting had largely still dominated the art schools of both Gothic Gaul and Roman Hispania. Despite the effort to maintain the same style and techniques, differences between the Classical and 'sub-Classical' schools are readily apparent; the primary cause being a clear struggle by sub-Classical artists to reconcile the Classical pursuit of 'realism' in their pieces with the growing need for some sort of 'idealism' in religious works. The relatively realistic depiction of humans in Ancient Roman (and Greek) art did not work well when depicting Jesus Christ, the Apostles or heavenly angels; to show them as human was nearly sacrilege in some quarters, as exemplified with the notorious beheading of the 10th-century sculptor Avitulus due to his now-lost situla, Christ among the Soldiers.  Pons Triarius during the inter-imperial period, identified by his red-and-purple cloak and Gothic globus cruciger. During King Pons' time, this struggle was neatly resolved with the abandonment of realism in favor of a more stylized, 'idealized' form, leading to the birth of the 'Gallic' or 'Pontian' art style. Attempts at shading in painting gave way to bold, flat coloring, and in sculpture and enamelwork detailed features gave way to broad geometric simplifications when depicting the human form. Symbology became much less nuanced; in classical art, all sorts of minor details could be added to indicate a figure's character, but in Pontian art, the simplification of personal features and detail exacerbated the need for more blatant signifiers to indicate the identity of figures. For example, in the new medieval style, St. Mark the Evangelist was nearly always accompanied by a winged lion in religious art, even sometimes just by placing the lion awkwardly above or below the saint, because the winged lion was the saint's symbol. It was the easiest way to identify St. Mark in a piece where he might otherwise have been painted with exactly the same face and features as all of Jesus' other disciples. By Pons' reign, the Goths were truly leaving their mark on the culture of Europe and Christendom.   The flowering of Gautés culture was mirrored in the growth of Gothic political power. Antuonja II of Illyria, King Pons' first wife, passed away in 1009. She left the Illyrian throne to hers and Pons' daughter, Fortituda Triarius, and gave the Gothic king a very pliable ally in the east. After a brief period of mouring for his departed wife, Pons followed up with a marriage to the young Baroness Pelagia de Sarno, a notably attractive senatrix from southern Italy.  Militarily, too, Gautya was gearing up and improving itself. 1011 marked a notable example, when King Pons summoned some of his close advisers to court to practice a primitive war game. The royal retinue was used to partially reenact the Battle of Cannae, with Pons playing the role of Hannibal. Later, the king's men retired to the palace, where a war game was played on tabletop- possibly chess- and the king again emerged victorious. The Gothic court was increasingly confident in its own power, and started waiting for the right time to strike back at the Carthagennans once more.   That opportunity came in 1016, when the elderly Emperor Adamantius passed away, and his son, Decimanus, just barely won the throne with the imperial electors' support. The election had been fraught with probable corruption and very real contentions, however, and shortly after Decimanus' coronation, the King of Mauretania, Ceciliu, revolted. During Emperor Adamantius' reign, the Diocese of Tarraco had been seized by the imperial throne, and Adamantius had declared it henceforth a hereditary title and part of his personal holdings. Decimanus, King Ceciliu alleged, had promised to at least change Tarraco to elective succession in exchange for the electors' support, but he had reneged on that promise after his coronation. The Mauretanian king had personal holdings of his own in eastern Hispania, and so had been in a position to gain Tarraco in the future if the promised change had gone through. When Decimanus reneged, Ceciliu understandably revolted. And when Ceciliu revolted, King Pons saw his hoped-for opening.  King Pons' war to reclaim the Empire began on the 11th of October, 1016.  For the most part, the Goths fought this war in the same manner as the Revolt of 1004. Gothic troops largely stayed within Gautya, keeping together in a few massed armies. They attempted to smash any Roman contingents marching across Gautyan lands before imperial forces could consolidate, and emerged victorious at Fonsebraldi, Aureliacum and Chancelada doing exactly that.   There were some setbacks, however. Ten thousand Goths were lost at the Battle of Brivas in March of 1017, after which Gothic armies tended to avoid that area for the remainder of the war.  For the most part, the Goths' defensive stance worked well. By refraining from going on the offensive (with the exception of the ill-fated Arvernian attack) until Roman armies were ground down in Gautya, King Pons was free by late 1018 to send his armies across Roman Gaul and take cities at will.  Sensing the inevitable, Decimanus finally surrendered in January of 1019, although he retained Tarraco as a kingdom for himself within the empire. King Ceciliu's revolt, however, still persisted, since he was fighting against the imperial government rather than Emperor Decimanus specifically. Since Ceciliu's fight was about succession in the Kingdom of Tarraco, which just-ousted Decimanus still ruled as king, Pons was more than happy to further shake Decimanus' power, and so readily agreed to Ceciliu's demands once on the throne.  By the end of 1019, all major revolts in the Carthagennan Empire had been settled, and the Goths had retaken their place back at the top of the imperial hierarchy. Some of the frontier provinces had drifted away, namely Altava and Cantia, but otherwise the borders and structure of the first Triarian period had been restored. Of course, regaining control of the empire was only the beginning for Pons Triarius.  The world in December of 1019 Ofaloaf fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Dec 19, 2015 |
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2015 18:09
|
|
|
Oh god drat it did Seljuk take Mecca. ...Mecca is now in the hands of the followers of Mani, what is this timeline.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2015 18:31
|
|
|
Eat poo poo, Romans. Sincerely, Pons, King of the Romans. Have the Celts started conquering Norway? It's looking Eire-ly green.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2015 18:32
|
|
|
Oh no... Once we inherit Illlyria, our borders will look so ugly! Looks like we have no choice but to invade Italy! And we lost Britain 
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2015 18:42
|
|
|
Rejected Fate posted:Oh god drat it did Seljuk take Mecca. mythomanic posted:Have the Celts started conquering Norway? It's looking Eire-ly green.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2015 18:44
|
|
|
Raserys posted:And we lost Britain Bah, what need do the Romans have for some cold, wet money-sink at the end of the world!?
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2015 19:01
|
|
|
And what's going on in Egypt? Is that an independent Egyptian sultanate? Or better, Copts?
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2015 19:10
|
|
|
Pons should stick it to the Romans where it hurts. Picking a new religion.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2015 19:21
|
|
|
Ah, it finally seems we have an emperor worthy of the name on the throne! True, he still publicly follows the vile Orthodox heresy, but how long can that really last? Pons has defied the Romans at every turn, subjected their decadent realm to Gothic rule, and even now must plan the destruction of the repulsive realms that surround us! God guides him, and he will recognize this soon enough.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2015 19:26
|
|
|
Raserys posted:And what's going on in Egypt? Is that an independent Egyptian sultanate? Or better, Copts? 
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2015 19:28
|
|
|
Ofaloaf posted:Even better. Oh gently caress
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2015 19:31
|
|
|
Now I'm a little sad that they'll swap to Manichean once Seljuk manages to make it the dominant form of the faith. A Zoroastrian exile-state in defiance of Great Seljuk is cool.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2015 19:39
|
|
|
What's that big-ish purple power along the Volga?
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2015 19:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 00:57 |
|
|
Ofaloaf posted:Even better. Well it could have been worse 
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2015 19:43
|
|
