Thank you, Dale

Mod has been updated and now works. The last two Main updates made changes to how TerrainValid works and also made shrines permanent. That's why they weren't working.

I can not build the shrines. Greyed out across the map and all technologies.

No worries, Dale. My group had been playing weekly to include using Byzantine. Of course, we always thought they were a bit 'op' ( :) ) but...with some tweaks on our part, all was well until recent updates, I guess.
I will add, thank you for all your work & advice on how to mod this great game.

Sorry, this mod will need a big update after various game changes. I just haven't had time recently to go through and update my mods for a while. Sorry, will post back here when I have.

Can't build Shrines & the Rider Family is not working per the imports. Am using a few mods, but none that would appear to affect this, at least said mods did not do so in the past.

It's impossible to build shrines ??

VERY WELL DONE ive not experienced any glitches or freezing up on my laptop.....very nice wrk if i ddnt know better id have thought it came with the original game...thank you for the challenge

Coolio. A lot of it's the way it's handled in the game. It'll say things like "The ruler of Byzantine wants to talk" or "An ambassador from Byzantine is in your chamber". Not a huge deal, just curious. Cheers!

Byzantine Empire, Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantium are interchangeable.

To answer you earlier question about how hard to make a nation mod, not really hard. Just follow this mod as a template for the bare minimum you need to add for a new nation.

Question: I've always understood the name of the nation was "Byzantium", and the descriptive version is "Byzantine". IE, The Byzantine troops came from the capitol of Byzantium". Is that not accurate?

Dear Dale,

How dare you make a fun mod that I enjoy. Can you even read ancient Greek?? Who do you think you are???

Love,
-a fan-

If I may ask, how hard is it to make a nation mod? I know nothing about modding, but I was thinking a Phoenicia nation would be cool. Esp if you could implement a seafaring-type family who can use all water tiles (1 food, 1 gold or something) and start with biremes. Anyway, TYIA!

Thanks for the great discussion and detailed answer, Dale Kent - I really appreciate.

Now I have an humble request… can we get a Rising Star called Belisarius at some point? :D

The Great Schism in 1054 between Rome and Constantinople is very clear evidence of how diverged and distinct both regions had become.

It seems that history does support calling the two Empires "distinct and not merely a continuation of ancient Rome". One could argue either way, but both East and West diverged, and grew over the following few centuries to the point that both had un-resolvable differences in language, culture, administration, religion, and polity.

But then we come to the game. I couldn't call this Empire "Rome", because they already exist. So I called them Byzantines. :)

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Politically, both were very aligned, and at certain times in the early period of the East-West Empire certain Emperors ruled both administrative divisions as one. At least, until 476 when the Western Empire fell. In 480 Zeno officially dissolved the Eastern Court and proclaimed himself the sole Roman Emperor. Some of the previous Western Empire realms continued to pretend continuance of the Roman Empire, which would eventually lead to Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire (neither Roman, nor Holy). But for all intents and purposes, the Eastern Empire continued for another 1000 years as the true Roman Empire.

Note that even though the Western Realms continued the pretence of being "Roman", they diverged from the Eastern Realm with Odoacer's Italy. This led the Pope to declare the Eastern Realm as "not Roman" and declare Charlemagne Roman Emperor in 800.

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I do agree, that what we now call the Byzantine Empire, they themselves thought of themselves as "Roman". However, they were also quite different to their Roman ancestors.

Rome followed paganism, whilst Constantinople followed Christianity. Even when Rome changed to Christianity, it was a different style of Christianity (Roman Catholic, as opposed to Orthodox).

Rome continued to speak Latin, whilst Constantinople spoke Greek. Culturally, Constantinople was much more Greek, than Roman.

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Hey guys, Eudoxia might have been a bit harsh, but they are correct: the terms Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire were coined by modern historians - treat them as an expedient for indentifying the Roman Empire after the 6th century.
The people of the Empire saw and called themselves Romans (if in Greek, "Romaioi"). Even the Seljuk Turks, after having conquered part of Anatolia (now Turkey) in the 11th century, called their new kingdom "Sultanate of Rum" - that is, "Sultanate of Rome".
You don't have to take my word, see:
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultanate_of_Rum

So the phrase in the mod's description "[they] were distinct and not merely a continuation of ancient Rome" is wrong, because they were in fact a continuation of ancient Rome.
But this does not detract from the quality of the mod! I am very happy and grateful that people such as Dale Kent are putting their love to expand this fantastic game!

Sorry, just had to respond to Eudoxia here. While the rest of the response was correct, this part is unnecessarily combative and actually wrong. The Byzantine Empire was absolutely categorically distinct from the Western Empire. It's not even a question...and ANY historian will tell YOU that.

Whether or not the Byzantines considered THEMSELVES to be the continuation (or, more accurately, consubstantial) of the old Roman state, we all know that they were actually different. If they weren't, we would have a separate name for them. They're not merely an evolution of Roman culture, as you tried to argue with your analogy to Rome evolving; this is a different state. Different language, population, religion, capitol...only thing that tied the two was the name. Despite the Byzantines' best efforts, and their political origin, they definitely are distinct. Sure, they CALLED themselves the Romans, but when you look the Byzantines over the course of 1000 years, how much really resembled Rome?

Nestoria, Monophysite, Gnosis, Paulicia are all types of heresies.

Overall, thank you for the mod! Glad to see this.

Thank you for improving this mod after the new DLC. I really like it a lot now!

I was surprised to see their shrines being better than the base games ones, but then I saw that Byzantine Paganism itself gives no bonuses in comparison with base game ones, which is a clever bit of design (you don't want heresy to spread).

I do find the names of the shrines grammatically immersion-breaking. Since the shrines usually are built before in-game you can adopt a state religion, may I give some suggestions for names that predate the Niceaean credo?

- Elymas (the false prophet)
- Hermes Trismegistus (syncretic magician)
- Lycopetrus (the heretical leader of the Euchites)
- Iamblichus (neoplatonist contemporary with Constantine, seen as divine later)
- Sophia (gnostic deity)
- Ariel (name for the gnostic Demiurge)

Or, if you prefer to keep the Christian subsects, to refer to them by the name of the founder? Shrine of Nestor, Shrine of Valentinus, Shrine of Arius, Shrine of Paul of Episparis?

anyone have the cities not appearing with names?

I really enjoyed playing with this mod. Thanks for the time and effort that went into it.

As the description says, mate, "A Christian state with Greek as the official language, the Byzantines developed their own political systems, religious practices, art and architecture", which made them distinct and nor merely a continuation of ancient Rome.

Anyways, this mod was setup to assist others with setting up their own nations in Old World. The goal was teaching modders, not historical accuracy. But thank you for your comments.

I didn't say that, I suggested some changes to fix grammatical errors and that you should change the description.

@Eudoxia OMG, you're so right! I should remove the mod at once, so the game uninstalls it from the hundreds of players who are having fun with it! What right do I have as a programmer to make mistakes of such historical significance in a computer game?

Oh the horror and injustice I have done to the kids of today. I should just repent my sins to the Orthodox Confucious, and let the Byzantine jannisaries shoot me against the Ankaran Whispering Wall of Justinian's Winter Palace!

"were distinct and not merely a continuation of ancient Rome"

So first of all, this is blatantly wrong, any Classicist or Byzantinist will tell you that. It was the Roman Empire. Yes things made it become distinct, but late Rome was culturally unrecognizable to Republican Rome, so why would medieval Rome be culturally recognizable to Principate Rome? We just call it Byzantine/Byzantium today because of 19th/early 20th century British colonialism.

Kind of weird that you're mixing middle/late Byzantine families with a late Roman emperor and military units. Also half of this is spelled wrong. It's Auxilia Palatina (neuter pl.) or Legiones Palatinae (fem. plural), not Palatini. Nestorian shrines would just be described as "Nestorion," the adjective of Gnosis is "Gnostic" (Gnosis is something very specific in Orthodox Theology), and Paulician should just be Paulician. Mind you, all of these are heresies, not characteristic traits of late antique or medieval Christian Orthodoxy.

@Dale Kent yeah but sadly i use always rome and i just like byzatin empire will be on game but im not interested to play it

@Malata I suppose you are partly right. The city was originally settled as Byzantion/Byzantium. It was still known as Byzantium between 326 - 330 when Constantine was building the new capital infrastructure, then changed to Nova Roma when it was dedicated as the new Roman Empire capital city in 330. Not long after that it was changed to Constantinople.

If anything, it should start as Nova Roma.

In the city screen, click the feather icon next to the city's name and change it if you like.

why constantinopole have the name different? in the map the name is byzatium

@BladeofSharpness based

Someone has not received basic education on manners.
Continue your good VOLUNTEER work Dale Kent. Even if so unprofessional ;-)

I dont understand what i am doing wrong. Whatever map i chose after chosing Byzantine culture is super small, and random. I try to load pre made maps but everytime I chose this mod I get a random minuscule map :(

why constantinopole have the name different? in the map the name is byzatium

@Successor1 :

That's because there was no Byzantine pantheon. Byzantine Empire was established after Christianity has already taken root.

I've bought the game and was gutted I coudln't play as Constantin. Luckily, you have solved this problem.

@Malata, dude this mod is fine as is. I truly wish ppl treated modders with better respect these days! Thank you Sir Kent for this fine mod!

Updated mod to include the true start location for Byzantine on all the premade maps, including the new Imperium Romanum.

@Malata, today's Test build includes a change I added for modders to specify the starting tile on the game's existing maps (ie: The Old World map) for their new nations. So when it goes to Main, I can update this mod and Byzantine will appear in their true start location.

Hopefully this makes me professional as I no longer "leave in the toilet trash this opportunity". :)

why you dont make compatible this mod whit old worl map??!!! old world map its most amazing map cause have real world map!!! its so unprofessional leave in the toilet trash this opportunity!!!!

bad! anyway if i chose old world map will spawn random??

No. Only base game nations are coded to start in the correct locations in the base game maps.

i play old world map so youre mod will spawn in corect position from constantinople?

@damianvincent

There are no Vikings in the game or the mod, Varangian Guard wouldn't make sense.

lol, often called the Eastern Roman Empire. No it was called the Eastern, or Roman Empire, never Byzantine, which is a purely modern, and quite frankly, derisive, nomenclature.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your creativity with the community, although I am surprised to not see the Varangian Guard as their special unit, as that's probably the most famous, even if not entirely Roman unit they had.

Great mod thank you. IMO a bit overpowered though. +1 fatigue is the main appeal of Rome + you get 40% culture + 25% money!

Odd to me that byzantines are considered outside the scope of the timeframe for the game considering the tech tree quite blatantly extends as far as the 12th century.

It's historic fantasy; We can have Egyptians building Christian Cathedrals that have a navy filled with Dromons and an army fielding Windlass Crossbows... but Byzantines building the Pyramids, fielding slingers, and trading with the Hittites... That's the hard line we can't cross.

Kudos for the mod - hopefully you'll get to put them in the game for real some day since they aren't at all outside of the scope of what's actually currently present in game.

Not that we need more Romans 🤣

I love Byzantine but nations which actually exist in that time period (like Celts, Gothic or ancient Chinese, Indian) would be better to be included

@Dale Kent can you create the old israel nation ?

Well my point mainly being is that 'hyper realism' can kill the game for some people. Especially in a game like this where, yes they aren't 'truly from the time', but they are close enough to be included.

Still, they are added with this mod, and that's all that matters; Right?