Let's Smite Some Ragheads as the Knights of Rhodes!

[Infantryman]

Excellent LP! But you triggered the collapse intentionally, didn't you? In the late game you have discarded your careful, gradual expansion and went completely overboard, accumulating massive infamy and putting your administration under excessive pressure. But good thing is, that sort of thing can actually happen in MM. In almost every vanilla Paradox game, once you get too big, you're virtually invincible. For instance, in almost every Victoria game, Germany eventually becomes indestructible. Once I did an experiment and made all countries declare war on the Germany. Krauts raped all of them, annexing lots of their lands in the peace deals, and getting even stronger as a result. Admittedly, the British and Americans didn't bother to attack them at all. Ah, yes I did the same experiment on the Britain. And guess what? All world's fleets combined could not defeat the Royal Navy .

 

[Furious Flaming Faggot]

Yeah. MMU is still flawed and hamfisted, but a major plus is that over expansion now has actual severe penalties.

 

[Crooked Bee]

 

[Furious Flaming Faggot]

A look at the diplomatic map. As you can probably guess, red means I'm at war with them. Interestingly i am allied with Russia because they are at war with one of the same countries as me.

How depressing.

#

Oh snap! The fan has just been struck by a fresh wave of shit. A prominent Order Knight and landholder fosters a major armed revolt, using his wealth to arm the citizens of Constantinople. Many other revolts spring up in the heartlands, to salvage what they can out of the Empire.

Meanwhile, genocide.

The Pretender rebels win a bloody victory against the besieging Austrian forces.

Double bankruptcy!

ARABS

MUSLIMS

COWARDS

TRAITORS

Oh, hi there Tripoli.

It'd have been cool if i managed to get a Revolution. This guy would have made a pretty awesome Napoleon.

Lucky bastards.

I get a forced white peace with the Africans. This happens if there is absolutely no fighting between two countries for a few years. It's to prevent the AI from stubbornly refusing peace forever even if they have absolutely no way of reaching you.

MORE ARABS

HUNGRY PEASANTS

SLAVS

There's only one way to deal with this! Useless propaganda and needless bloodshed!

I'd use the mob emote, but I'm not sure that really applies to armed pretenders.

These are interesting events. This happens when you have a nomadic province that doesn't neighbor any other countries, but neighbors one of your provinces. It doesn't do anything to the raided province and just gives the successful raid modifier to the nomadic province. Besides the prestige hit there doesn't seem to be any reason to scold the nomads, unless you want to settle them.

The civil war finally reaches a climax. The Empires core provinces are occupied by foreign invaders or rebels and traitors. There is no way out of this collapse. The Grandmaster himself is captured in Constantinople. Revolutionaries tear down noble estates and Churches, preaching heretical dogma and dangerous ideology. Nationalists rip apart the Empire, scrounging for what territory they can gather. Foreign invaders also take what they can, only pausing for thought when they are met by hardened groups of rebels and Revolutionaries.

Is there anything more to say? The nation is dead. The Empire is gone, even despite its glorious zenith.

The Empire would be torn apart by revolt, and the oppressive theocracy would be overthrown. Many Catholic legacy states would rise up, surviving through to the 20th century. The religious intolerance of the Order would fade under a wave of secularist philosophy, but its legacy would persist in many other ways. The curious mixed Greek, Arabic and Turkic culture of the Empire, united by Catholicism would flourish, even as the provinces of the Empire wandered away from the roots of the Order.
The Knights of St. John would not be remembered too well by historians, particularly those of Islamic faith, but Byzantium's legacy is undeniable. For a while it was mighty, and then it was not. Its impact would persist, shaping the East much as the old Roman Empire shaped the West.

Ultimately, it is irrelevant how the Grandmasters are remembered and perceived by History. They did what they believed they had to, they did it well, and they triumphed for many centuries. One shouldn't judge the ancestors too harshly, for he too will one day be judged.

 

[Gondolin]

The Fagötterdämmerung has delivered. We're proud of you bro.

 

[gromit]

i can't find the like button

 

[Crooked Bee]

 

[Infantryman]

Oh, that's a pretty bad ending . I was hoping you'd get a coup d'etat and under a new, enlightened leader, you'd beat the heck out of all those vultures in a revolutionary fervour.

 

[Furious Flaming Faggot]

Beating the crap out of all the invaders is pretty hard with only a few years left. I like to imagine the central regions of Byzantium becoming a Revolutionary Absolutism of some sorts, eventually re-subjugating the other major provinces in the name of new Revolutionary ideology. In my future LPs i will avoid implosions of this sort. I think two Empire collapses are enough.

 

[gromit]

Can you post an end-game religious map for us?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

Well that certainly was entertaining.

 

[Lumpy]

Derp, I don't get it, why did you invade everyone near the end?

 

[ironyuri]

 

[Hellraiser]

The lands the Empire has ruled will forever bear its mark. This legacy shall not be forgotten.

 

[LusciousPear]

Woof.

 

[Lumpy]

Alright, where the fuck is the new LP?

 

[Furious Flaming Faggot]

Good timing.

 

[eklektyk]

excelent ending. as always.Congratulations!

 

[Krraloth]

*casts furious Necromancing*

May I suggest a book that deals with the same topic (more or less) than this glorious LP?

The Sword and the Scimitar of David Ball.
It is the tale of the glorious resistance of the Knights of St. Johns in Malta in 1565.
Nice book, it features jews too.