Rome Era Chapter XIX: The Magnificent Three- Basil II, Al-Mansur & Cnut the Great

This mod is the nineteenth part of a Mod series called "Rome Era". The main objective of these mods is to reproduce the most important events of Roman history. ALL THE CHAPTERS after XIII are considered to be more focused on MEDIEVAL STUFF THAN ROMAN HISTORY.

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LOADING ORDER:
1-Realistic Campaign
2-Chapter
3-All the other required mods
4- Extremely recommended ( but optional) for economy, food and technologies: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=396015150&searchtext=radious

Historical Context:

Basil II Porphyrogenitus (Greek: Βασίλειος Πορφυρογέννητος Basileios Porphyrogennetos;[note 2] 958 – 15 December 1025), nicknamed the Bulgar Slayer (Greek: ὁ Βουλγαροκτόνος, ho Boulgaroktónos),[note 3] was the senior Byzantine emperor from 976 to 1025. He and his brother Constantine VIII[note 4] were crowned before their father Romanos II died in 963, but they were too young to rule. The throne thus went to two generals, Nikephoros Phokas (r. 963–969) and John Tzimiskes (r. 969–976) before Basil became senior emperor, though his influential great-uncle Basil Lekapenos remained as the de facto ruler until 985.[note 5] His reign of 49 years and 11 months was the longest of any Roman emperor.[note 6]

The early years of Basil’s reign were dominated by civil wars against two powerful generals from the Byzantine Anatolian aristocracy: first Bardas Skleros and later Bardas Phokas, which ended shortly after Phokas’ death and Skleros’ submission in 989. Basil then oversaw the stabilization and expansion of the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire and the complete subjugation of the First Bulgarian Empire, its foremost European foe, after a long struggle. Although the Byzantines had made a truce with the Fatimid Caliphate in 987–988, Basil led a campaign against the Caliphate that ended with another truce in 1000. He also conducted a campaign against the Khazar Khaganate that gained the Byzantine Empire part of Crimea and a series of successful campaigns against the Kingdom of Georgia.

Despite near-constant warfare, Basil distinguished himself as an administrator, reducing the power of the great land-owning families who dominated the Empire’s administration and military, filling its treasury, and leaving it with its greatest expanse in four centuries. Although his successors were largely incapable rulers, the Empire flourished for decades after Basil’s death. One of the most important decisions taken during his reign was to offer the hand of his sister Anna Porphyrogenita to Vladimir I of Kiev in exchange for military support, thus forming the Byzantine military unit known as the Varangian Guard. The marriage of Anna and Vladimir led to the Christianization of the Kievan Rus’ and the incorporation of later successor states of Kievan Rus’ within the Byzantine cultural and religious tradition. Basil is seen as a Greek national hero but is a despised figure among Bulgarians.

Changelog:

1- THIS MOD REQUIRES AD MODELS, you need to load it before their mods: Anno Domini 919

2- Size increased( Startpos and campaign,Melee infantry 400, missile infantry 300, cavalry 120)

3- The starting position of some factions has been changed to represent a more historically accurate scenario. Now the east frankia regions are allies betweem them.

4- Diplomatic effects have been changed so now small factions will respect bigger ones, getting into deals easily. This wants to reproduce the real situation of the epoch where the small kingdoms tended to respect the more powerful ones even if they had periodic wars. JOIN empire option has been added for AoC.

5- Ai improvement, more changeling campaign where the Ai will be more aggressive. Nevertheless, this in hand with point 4 will reproduce in global, harder wars with the Ai but less common. So to win a war against will be harder than in vanilla but you will have wars with fewer factions( if you use diplomatics wisely)

6- 4 turns per year

7-All cities are walled, minor will have 8m walls and majors 15m walls.

8- New battle system with a more realistic moral system as well as slower combat. AI will flank more, less effective projectiles, more rigid spear lines, front cavalry charges against closed infantry formations are unuseful( this tries to represent that horses didn’t make front charges against infantry formations, it was more a moral shock game. They were just able to flank or attack from the rear. Something that was partially fixed in the future blinding the horses by different techniques.)

9- Muslims have a mix of arab and berber/eastern generals.

Cavalry has more mass entity and light infantry less, like this cavalry will still destroy light infantry units. The mass entity increment also allows the cavalry to retreat from a melle with fewer losses. To go back and charge again.

I have just transposed one of my battle mods to this one, you can see the entire battle changelog here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2204246229&searchtext=realistic

Credits to the original author of the startpos i have used for the mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3340616070&searchtext=