Consolidation
This is us. Also note our highly attractive wife, which is probably why our character focus is on chastity and piety.
Our capital of Constantinople....
...which hosts a lot of interesting buildings, buildings who have stood since late antiquity, like the Theodosian walls and the Imperial Library....
...and the Hagia Saphia.
(Note that I am using the unique buildings mod which puts a lot of flavour buildings in important cities like Carthage, Rome, Constantinople, Antioch etc.)
We have some money, a lot of negative piety (incurred by blinding and castrating usurpers), way too many vassals to control and a lot of prestige.
RANT: The blinding/castration penalty is way too high. Each action costs you 50 piety. Which means one blinding wipes out two years of piety production.
We finally converted Antioch. Orthodoxy once again reigned there.
To help with administration, we gave our son the holdings of our father.
Our realm. Not much has changed here. Note that our son is still busy defending against raiders.
Said barbarian raiders constantly sail down the wolga to raid constantinople (which after all is the richest city in the game), which is why our personal guard (the former standing army of sicily together with ~1500 cataphracts) has to stay there at all times. The Varangian Guard has not been reformed because we lack money and piety, further weakening our standing forces.
To help with our piety problem (which was giving us a huge malus to our relationship with zealous people and priests) we went on a pilgrimage to Antioch.
...we played good samaritan on the way....
...and arrived at Antioch.
Huzzah.
We returned only to find the peasants in revolt. They quickly were dispersed by our standing army...
...and the leader executed.
These are part of our laws:
"Okay, we need to get rid of those Sunni nobles in the east. They constantly ferment rebellion, refuse to convert and pay little to no tax. They plot against us. They hate us and we hate them. Lord Chancellor, revoke all their titles."
"We cannot."
"Why not?"
"Because title revocation is forbidden."
"OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. DO YOU MEAN I HAVE TO TOLERATE THEM?"
"Yes."
"....You're kidding, right?"
We tried to get this law changed.
HOLY CRAP. This is nothing like changing the laws of a small duchy or even a kingdom like Sicily. In the Grand Empire, it takes over 1k in bribes and two years to get enough nobles to vote for your law changes.
And then it hits you with a -30 relationship penalty due to having changed a crown law. You know what that means?
If you guessed more rebellions, you were right. Well, at least this allowed us to get the counties of Thrace back under our direct control.
We decided to turn some of the former rebel territories over to merchant republics. We founded one such on the Crimea.
"A GREEK MERCHANT REPUBLIC?"
"Well, we need something against Venice."
The pope declared war to recover Tusculum.
This was a mistake and he had to pay us a heavy indemnity.
We used that money to push back the Bulgarian menace, trying to recover one important county.
The Bulgarians proved no match for our combined forces.
With the prestige from that war, we decided to rebuilt the Imperial Administration.
The theme system, which had served many emperors well, needed to be reformed to provide us with more money and more/better troops. Again it took us over three years, but...
Woohooo.
(These are the most important reforms there are for the Byzantine Empire. If you do not reform the Theme system you get hit by constant negative modifiers, as it reflects the technological change in the world)
Of course, that -15 opinion coupled with the -30 opinion for changing the crown law meant that our vassals hated us, basically restricting our freedom from doing anything until the relations were repaired. This was finally done and we put the new levies to the test:
We tried to recover more from Moesia Prima, thus restoring a chunk of the danube border. The war was quickly over and boring, our 20k forces sieged through all the contested holdings and then smashed the puny 3k army of our enemies.
....Sure, why not?
All hail the blues. We invested 25 Gold while betting on the blues...
...thus proving once again betting on sports is fucking stupid.
The Bulgarian king died and we declared war to recover even more of the danube border, this time attacking the duchy of Bononia.
With our victory, almost the whole northern danube frontier was restored.
We created the kingdom of Antioch to better administrate that part of the empire....
EXTORTION. That money is enough to pay for six walls. But we need to be seen as pious. Otherwise we would never be able to attack the muslims.
(BTW, if you decline it is another -100 piety for you)
I hope at least they name a monastery after us
Finally, enough piety to conquer a large chunk of northern Syria.
The muslims however were crafty enemies. They jumped on one of our smaller armies while we were gathering forces.
Thankfully, the sicilian levies and fleets arrived just in time.
Hooray.
Our northern army was attacking the northern muslim army.
Unfortunately, that army included nearly 4k in elite camel mercenaries.
It was a pyrrhic victory for the muslims. While they nearly eliminated our northern army, it cost them almost all of their special troops (falsely shown as horse archers above).
Our western army linked up with the remains of the northern army. The battle was decisive.
We won the war.
Some say hummus is overpriced.
Another war in the north restored the danube frontier, a feat not seen since the days of the old Eastern Roman Empire.
With the usurpation of the kingdom of Bulgaria, the northern tribes disintegrated into smaller fiefdoms who were no threat to organized Rome. The northern Danube frontier was secure, leaving the empire to concentrate on the west, south and east.
The empire was doing well. The most important reforms had been passed and the northern frontier secured. Some gains had been made in the east as well, consolidating the hold on Antioch. But those spoils would not be used by this emperor.
) You can certainly afford to hire a cupbearer that can be trusted.
