We’re starting an intensive Historical Roleplay LP for Europa Universalis IV Third Rome. PC Gameplay on Hard Difficulty. I’m really curious and excited about the new “Immersion Packs” for EUIV and I want to try that one out, together with You 🙂
So, here’s a link to the Playlist, if you just want to get started with the Video part of the Roleplay LP. More about it further down 🙂
Why this focus on History and Roleplay? We want to relive the Spirit of the “Third” or “New” Rome in the early modern Russian states. What defines that spirit?
It is the replacement of the fallen Byzantine Empire. The Ottomans also tried to claim to be the “Third Rome” but while that was a claimable term for their Muslim contemporaries, the Christian story is emphasized in the EUIV DLC. The Orthodox Story, to be concise.
So, after the fall of Constantinople, Moscow gained the “story” of being the “Third” or “New” Rome, partly to the fact that Ivan III had married Sophia Paleologue in 1472. She was a cousin to the last Byzantine Emperor and so “carried his divine rights” in the minds of the people.
Oddly, the first wife of Ivan III was Maria of Tver who died 1467. She also kind of had a claim on the “New Rome” legend as in 1393 a monk has already fled the besieged Byzantine lands to Tver and actually had claimed Tver to be “The New Rome” for its ruler, Boris of Tver.
More on the topic of “Third Rome” can of course be found on Wikipedia. If you have any better links, please send them in the YouTube comments. I’ll include them into the post with a mention of you.
So, the legend was carried to Russia as the keeper of at least the Eastern Christian Faith, the Orthodoxy. Our LP will have much to do with Religious Decisions.
Now – to the Historical part of the LP. It’s impossible to explain everything or look everything up but we will try. I would love to get some input from you as well in the form of links or other content to maybe provide a “historical” introduction into the LP episodes. The schedule will not be that frequent, due to the higher production quality. It will be a comfy LP, with some kind of talking through some of the historically interesting things we discover while playing the game.
Roleplay: I have a distinct idea on how to handle Roleplay in Europa Universalis. Roleplay adds randomness to a LP, which makes it not a streamlined experience leveraging certain gameplay aspects. It makes a great story, a legend of the the making and continuation of plans bound to the characters in our realm, mainly the rulers. It creates a captivating story and it emphasizes personalities.
A ruler with strengths in Diplomacy would act more in the diplomatic realm, a ruler with strengths in Military would probably try to use his or her military more, a ruler with strengths in Administration might reform the country and try to improve it from within. Adding to that are the Personality aspects they added into the game a while ago that will also lead our hand when it comes to state decisions and overall strategies.
Of course every ruler has a will to be successful, we’re not roleplaying “into the blue”. And maybe a successor will want to continue his predecessor’s campaign first, if it looks like it could be a success, and it’s in one of the late(r) stages. These decisions we’ll make depending on the situation.
We have arrived at the first Video. Now, I’ll handle the video posts like this: I’ll give you the title of the video, then put the video below and below the embedded video you’ll find a little description of what is the topic of the video and what will happen. There won’t be new posts, you can just bookmark this page and it will get updated as the episodes fly in. A little bit like a mix of history, description and story. May the LEGEND OF THIRD ROME begin 🙂
- Muscovy 1444
We decide the game settings – Hard, Random Lucky Nations, no Fantasy New World and start the game. We explain what we want to do and how the roleplay will go, kind of like the initial paragraph here. We also go into the political position of Muscovy.
We have a lot of vassals and it will be one of our first goals to stabilize the relations with them and control their liberty desire. Also, a little bit of development would do good to reach one of the goals of the Age of Discovery: A Great City. Which city should that be? Of course, Moscow is our candidate here in the future.
Then, we take some rivals and go for the strongest rivals we have a the moment and the most fierce as their relations to us are the worst around: Novgorod and Lithuania. Lithuania because our wife’s grandfather had the Orthodox reign of Lithuania taken from him in his older days and Novgorod because they despise us and are our enemies and we’d really love to have some of their provinces, especially – Novgorod with its trade center.
So this is how we set up our game, how we position for the future 🙂 Let’s hope our plans go well.. - Muscovy 1444-1451 Grand Kniaz Vasiliy II. (in progress) ON HOLD, LITTLE BABY JOINED FAMILY SOME WEEKS EARLY 🙂