How many murders

[Skorpius]

I am trying to break up the Byzantine empire, it has become huge. I murdered like 8 or 9 kings and it stays stable. Is that too many murders, should we only do like two or three?

[>]

Just keep murdering.

[Devil_JCS]

To be fair, the Byzantine Empire is extremely stable if they have the admin government. You can't make dissolution factions as a vassal to them so they won't break apart. Worse still is the fact that the admin succession means that the Emperor typically always has their domain limit passed down, so the AI rarely ever revokes titles from its vassals (usually the only time it does is vs hostile religions or rivals).

What I'm saying here is that you can't break up the empire with murders if you have the DLC that makes them have the admin government type. The only ways the Empire collapses is if it's completely conquered or a splintered crusade breaks it (depending on your game rules, this option might not be worth bothering with).

Weakening their armies through murder is doable though. If you can cause a severe enough civil war, you can start picking away at them. Or, if you have the perk that lets you buy claims (and aren't an emperor yourself), you can just buy a claim on the Byzantines and take the whole empire yourself once they are weak enough. That will swap your government to Admin and probably move your capitol to Constantinople, but that's normally fine.

[Danny]

Best way is to just buy a claim with the Learning lifestyle scholar tree perk called "Sactioned Loopholes" for 2000 piety if you're not an empire rank yourself.

If you're already an empire/hegemon rank, try just buy a claim on the duchy of Thrace.
Owning Constantinple generally breaks the Byzantine empire.
As Constantinople is a HEAVY loadbearing city. XD


EDIT The first option also allows you to get ALL artefacts held by the emperor ^^

[Deusmodeus]

Murder wont do anything unless you put a non-orthodox ruler on the throne. you need to put a foreign/heretic on the throne, this will spiral the empire into several civil wars.

One really neat way is to make them a Mandala Tribute, as they will break themselves down once they adopt your mandala government.

[Skorpius]

Im going to the buy claim route, As I always go the scholar tree, thx for the help.

[Cinemax]

Reminds me of Rome season 2, when they were murdering everybody.
Caesar: "Perhaps we should... slow down. We wouldn't want to appear butchers."
Maecenas: "Certainly not..."

[E]

Originally posted by Skorpius:

I am trying to break up the Byzantine empire, it has become huge. I murdered like 8 or 9 kings and it stays stable. Is that too many murders, should we only do like two or three?

This is honestly on par for the IRL Romans too. Civil wars, assassinations, adultery and incessant corruption were like traditions they held on to for the entire duration of their 2200+ year existence.

Originally posted by Cinemax:

Reminds me of Rome season 2, when they were murdering everybody.
Caesar: "Perhaps we should... slow down. We wouldn't want to appear butchers."
Maecenas: "Certainly not..."

Is that the episode where Octavian casually draws up an entire long list of which senator to kill and steal money from?

[brownacs]

Originally posted by Cinemax:

Reminds me of Rome season 2, when they were murdering everybody.
Caesar: "Perhaps we should... slow down. We wouldn't want to appear butchers."
Maecenas: "Certainly not..."

(That was Octavian.)

[brownacs]

Originally posted by E:

Is that the episode where Octavian casually draws up an entire long list of which senator to kill and steal money from?

Yeah, it's when they've first formed the triumvirate and are murdering (via proscription, so kinda legalised murder) all the friends of the assassins (Caesar's), and more broadly their political enemies and other wealthy people they don't care about.

Some sources (Paterculus, Dio, Suetonius) portray Octavian as being reluctant, but he also won in the end, so a lot of sources are quite flattering towards him. Others (Appian, Plutarch) are less kind.

[E]

Originally posted by brownacs:

Originally posted by E:

Is that the episode where Octavian casually draws up an entire long list of which senator to kill and steal money from?

Yeah, it's when they've first formed the triumvirate and are murdering (via proscription, so kinda legalised murder) all the friends of the assassins (Caesar's), and more broadly their political enemies and other wealthy people they don't care about.

Some sources (Paterculus, Dio, Suetonius) portray Octavian as being reluctant, but he also won in the end, so a lot of sources are quite flattering towards him. Others (Appian, Plutarch) are less kind.

Yep, excellent show.

Both aspects of the guy are kinda accurate. He was known to be particularly vicious and bloodthirsty around the time of his wars with Liberatores and then Antony, to the point that it shocked some of his fellows at how monstrous he could be.
And then a famously mellow, calm and collected fellow later in life (at least in person, not in policy, his policy remained as bloodthirsty as ever, especially towards non-Romans) after he nearly got into a coma from illness, nearly died, and then woke back up healthy later on and went on to reign for decades more.

[brownacs]

Originally posted by E:

Yep, excellent show.

Both aspects of the guy are kinda accurate. He was known to be particularly vicious and bloodthirsty around the time of his wars with Liberatores and then Antony, to the point that it shocked some of his fellows at how monstrous he could be.
And then a famously mellow, calm and collected fellow later in life (at least in person, not in policy, his policy remained as bloodthirsty as ever, especially towards non-Romans) after he nearly got into a coma from illness, nearly died, and then woke back up healthy later on and went on to reign for decades more.

I thought season 1 was better than 2. Both seasons took some liberties with the actual history, often condensing things considerably, but 2 was far worse in that regard. Titus Pullo was a fantastic character though. RIP Ray Stevenson.

I won't pretend to know what the man was like, but I think it might be quite easy to become mellow/calm once you've ruthlessly killed most of your critics, amassed a previously unheard of degree of power and wealth, and created conditions that heavily incentivise flattering you and disincentivise anything that could be perceived as a challenge.

Describing him as mellow, even in later life, might be a step too far in my opinion, at least considering the number of opponents that ended up being executed (being mellow would usually imply tolerance). I'm also not sure that the rest are necessarily mutually exclusive; you could be calm, ruthless and bloodthirsty, which is fairly close to the standard description of a stereotypical high functioning sociopath.

[Cinemax]

Originally posted by brownacs:

Originally posted by E:

Yep, excellent show.

Both aspects of the guy are kinda accurate. He was known to be particularly vicious and bloodthirsty around the time of his wars with Liberatores and then Antony, to the point that it shocked some of his fellows at how monstrous he could be.
And then a famously mellow, calm and collected fellow later in life (at least in person, not in policy, his policy remained as bloodthirsty as ever, especially towards non-Romans) after he nearly got into a coma from illness, nearly died, and then woke back up healthy later on and went on to reign for decades more.

I thought season 1 was better than 2. Both seasons took some liberties with the actual history, often condensing things considerably, but 2 was far worse in that regard. Titus Pullo was a fantastic character though. RIP Ray Stevenson.

I won't pretend to know what the man was like, but I think it might be quite easy to become mellow/calm once you've ruthlessly killed most of your critics, amassed a previously unheard of degree of power and wealth, and created conditions that heavily incentivise flattering you and disincentivise anything that could be perceived as a challenge.

Describing him as mellow, even in later life, might be a step too far in my opinion, at least considering the number of opponents that ended up being executed (being mellow would usually imply tolerance). I'm also not sure that the rest are necessarily mutually exclusive; you could be calm, ruthless and bloodthirsty, which is fairly close to the standard description of a stereotypical high functioning sociopath.

Oh the show took many liberties, for example, I'm pretty sure Octavian Caesar's mommy, Atia, had already died prior to the start date of the show IRL, but they had her as central to the plot throughout... and yet at the same time there is this insane attention to detail with the Hellenic rituals, the graffiti, the set design, even the clothing being made with period correct technology. I couldn't really get behind decisions like recasting Octavian for S2, but overall I haven't seen a show like that before or since. I had hopes for the Spartacus "What If?" show but that sucked (and just got cancelled, incidentally). Here's hoping Christopher Nolan's new movie isn't as bad as it's looking in trailers... I dunno, I feel like swords and sandals is becoming a forgotten genre in the ADHD era.

[brownacs]

Originally posted by Cinemax:

Oh the show took many liberties, for example, I'm pretty sure Octavian Caesar's mommy, Atia, had already died prior to the start date of the show IRL, but they had her as central to the plot throughout... and yet at the same time there is this insane attention to detail with the Hellenic rituals, the graffiti, the set design, even the clothing being made with period correct technology. I couldn't really get behind decisions like recasting Octavian for S2, but overall I haven't seen a show like that before or since. I had hopes for the Spartacus "What If?" show but that sucked (and just got cancelled, incidentally). Here's hoping Christopher Nolan's new movie isn't as bad as it's looking in trailers... I dunno, I feel like swords and sandals is becoming a forgotten genre in the ADHD era.

She died in 43 BCE, which is a year after Julius Caesar's assassination. And don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the show. I just wish they'd tried to be a bit more historical with the actual events. Can't really critique the general ambience.

[Cinemax]

Originally posted by brownacs:

Originally posted by Cinemax:

Oh the show took many liberties, for example, I'm pretty sure Octavian Caesar's mommy, Atia, had already died prior to the start date of the show IRL, but they had her as central to the plot throughout... and yet at the same time there is this insane attention to detail with the Hellenic rituals, the graffiti, the set design, even the clothing being made with period correct technology. I couldn't really get behind decisions like recasting Octavian for S2, but overall I haven't seen a show like that before or since. I had hopes for the Spartacus "What If?" show but that sucked (and just got cancelled, incidentally). Here's hoping Christopher Nolan's new movie isn't as bad as it's looking in trailers... I dunno, I feel like swords and sandals is becoming a forgotten genre in the ADHD era.

She died in 43 BCE, which is a year after Julius Caesar's assassination. And don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the show. I just wish they'd tried to be a bit more historical with the actual events. Can't really critique the general ambience.

So you're saying that was a season 2 anachronism. Yeah that checks.

[ricardo_traeger]

You should try stratetic kills instead of kill everybody. In most cases the realm will be splitt to the heirs. So when the Kings of the Byzantine empire have, for example, have 3 sons, kill the king and wait. The damoin splitt into three parts. The oldest son get the biggest part. Wait a little bit, when the successor have also some sons, kill the successor. The domain will be splitt again. In these way, in the end, the succensors will be weaker and weaker and they will fight against each other because everybode have the claim for the whole domain.