Looks like they've removed Constantinople's name for some reason, probably to obfuscate the time period further (e.g. Constantinople vs Konstantiniyye)
Nah the starting date is quite clear from the country lines and population numbers. Mostly province names seem to require a bit more work to be correctly centered, formated etc...
The reason why the province/location name for Constantinople appears to be missing is that it’s probably too long of a name to fit in its small area. The UI is still a work in progress. This map has thicker lines indicating the borders of individual countries, which gives a lot of hints for when the start date is, and is enough to make a start date of ~1337 exceedingly likely, making any ambiguity of who controls Constantinople unnecessary. There was a political map of India which had population numbers from a previous TT which also helped narrow the date down to ~1337.
I mean it’s only a decade before the black plague hits Europe, the Hundred Years’ War is starting, the Ottoman Empire was just recently founded like a decade ago, the Ming dynasty overthrows the Yuan in 1368, and more that I can’t think of
Edit: Tamerlane as well starts his dynasty in 1370
Yeah I'm also a little worried. i think it will get tiresome having to deal with an event like the black death near the start of every game. also having to wait so long to colonize if you want to be historical.
>The hundred years war is quite literally what kickstarted the early modern era
According to whom...? That's a bizarre claim. The normal Europe- or world-wide criteria are one of the beginning of the Columbian Exchange in 1492 or the beginning of the Reformation in 1517. Neither of those even *relate* to the Hundred Years' War. If you're going to make such a genetic argument, you might as well say *EUV* should start in 753 BCE (legendary date, I know), because Roman ideals inspired early modern Humanism and the military revolution or whatever.
Historians usually cite the end of the hundred years war, and the fall of Constantinople as what started the early modern period. So for a game about that period, wouldn't it make sense to start a little bit earlier so you can actually go up to those moments and experience them? In EU4, both those events are 99% guaranteed to happen. With an earlier start date, you can do what these games are trying to do: create an alternate timeline. A game about so much change is not as interesting as it could be if you never see what was before
>Historians usually cite the end of the hundred years war, and the fall of Constantinople as what started the early modern period
Which historians? Cite them please. I don't think anyone's been focussing on the fall of Konstantinoupolis as a period break for quite some time. Even intellectual and cultural historians are turning against it.
>So for a game about that period, wouldn't it make sense to start a little bit earlier so you can actually go up to those moments and experience them?
No. That argument is recursive: you end up starting the game at the dawn of humanity with this logic.
>With an earlier start date, you can do what these games are trying to do: create an alternate timeline.
Or you could create an alternate timeline at 1204, of course. See what not smashing the Eastern Romans with the Fourth Crusade does. Or perhaps you'd prefer 768, to change the preconditions on which all the rest of Latin Europe operated for centuries.
No matter what time you start the game, there will always be important long-term links to early modernity. There will also be some things which are fixed, and some which are still in flux or yet to happen. That's just how it is. The question is how much of a run-up you want to the important dates of early modernity. Over a century and a half, and it's getting silly - that's my view.
> Which historians?
The vast majority of early modern and late medieval European historians for the past few centuries. If you ask anybody with a degree from a western university on the topic, they’ll give you one of four answers; the end of the Hundred Years’ War, the fall of Constantinople, the start of the Renaissance, and the invention of printed type.
Of course, it’s always more nuanced than what historians give as the “easy answers”, but these four events very neatly bookend the period of change which saw Europe transition from the medieval system towards early modern life, which is especially useful for a video game like EU which must decide on a specific and important date to set itself in.
Dates like 1066, 1337, 1444, 1776, and so on just make sense as the “beginning of an era” in layman’s terms, because they’re linked to events which define and kickstart those eras. It’s not a science, so much as a vibe upon which to structure complex concepts for easier understanding.
>The vast majority of early modern and late medieval European historians for the past few centuries.
I've cited rather a number of historians who disagree in another comment - what do you make of that? Your confidence that so many historians would cite the end of the Hundred Years' War (which I have not seen mentioned once in recent academic publications) or the 'start of the Renaissance' (which doesn't have a defined date) is surprising to me. Cite some actual specific historians, by name, with citations, please.
The norm I've perceived is either the beginning of the Columbian Exchange in 1492 or the beginning of the Reformation in 1517. In any case, my impression of the historiography was that most scholars were moving towards a more expansive idea of the late mediaeval. A couple of my friends (Duncan Hardy, Richard Schlag, etc.) are working on this "overlap" period of the 14th to 15th centuries. Some, like Tom Brady, are moving it toward the 16th century, too, but that's a smaller position.
>If you ask anybody with a degree from a western university on the topic, they’ll give you one of four answers; the end of the Hundred Years’ War, the fall of Constantinople, the start of the Renaissance, and the invention of printed type.
I'm an early modern historian at Oxford, and no I wouldn't give any of those answers! Mine is 1492. Indeed, Oxford itself institutionally agrees with me: the early modern period is defined for undergraduate examinations as 1500–1700. Lots of other major universities agree on the start date (e.g., Cambridge, KCL). Making early modern courses 1450–1800 or so is also reasonably common, but most specialists in the 15th century don't call themselves early modernists.
Alright you're obviously arguing in bad faith. You ask me for sources, yet don't provide any yourself. You are attacking me on arguments I never made. You are taking stuff I said way out of proportion.
Early modern period is not a strictly defined term. It generally just means the period between middle ages and modern period. There are no singular specific events that start the period, especially sin e the world is not globalized at all at this point in history. It's not that easy. Most sources I can find place the start somewhere in the 15th century.
Unless you actually have something to comment on my actual points, please leave
>Alright you're obviously arguing in bad faith
I'm really not trying to - I do apologize.
>You ask me for sources, yet don't provide any yourself
I mean, you didn't ask for any. Even so, I'd point you towards:
Bonney, Richard. 1991. *The European Dynastic States 1494–1660*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ertman, Thomas. 1997. *Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Greengrass, Mark. 2014. *Christendom Destroyed: Europe 1517–1648*. London: Penguin Books Ltd.
Hale, John. 1993. *The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance*. London: Harper Perennial.
Nipperdey, Justus. 2023. “Inventing “Early Modern” Europe: Fashioning a New Historical Period in American Historiography 1880–1945”, in *The Journal of Early Modern History* 27, 199-223.
Parker, Geoffrey. 1988. *The Military Revolution: Military innovation and the rise of the west 1500–1800*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pettegree, Andrew (ed.). 1992. *The early Reformation in Europe*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Porter, Roy and Teich, Mikuláš (eds.). 1992. *The Renaissance in national context*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scott, Hamish. 2015. “Introduction: ‘Early Modern’ Europe and the Idea of Early Modernity” in Hamish Scott ed., *The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350–1750, Volume I: Peoples and Place*, 1-33.
Waley, Daniel and Denley, Peter. 2001. *Later Medieval Europe, 1250–1520*, 3rd edn.. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.
Among others.
>You are attacking me on arguments I never made
I have tried only to quote you or to force your arguments to conclude what you don't intend them to without compromising their logics (i.e., conduct a *reductio ad absurdum*). Can you point me to any specific misrepresentations (not *reductiones*)?
> No. That argument is recursive: you end up starting the game at the dawn of humanity with this logic.
> No matter what time you start the game, there will always be important long-term links to early modernity.
You quite literally started talking about long term impacts when my argument was only about the short term events that had direct influence on how the early modern period started. I quite literally said to go "a little bit earlier". Maybe your definition of a little bit is different than mine, but I don't consider several hundred or thousand years earlier "a little bit".
If you don't call that misrepresenting, I don't know what is. Of course you can go all the way back to the dawn of humanity. I never suggested anything even close to that and my argument did not logically lead to that in any way shape or form. With your logic, I could complain about HOI4 starting so much earlier than the actual start of WW2. Why not have it start in 1939? That would be the equivalent to 1444 in EU4. Now, 1337 is quite early, but that is just over 100 years earlier which is not that bad. That makes roughly 1/5th of the game the 'prelude' (assuming the same end date), which is still less than HOI4 for example (where it is 3 years prelude to a 6 years war). The transition to the early modern era was a long process, and while it's roots go much further back of course, throughout the 14th century and early 15th is when most of the big seeds were sown. Among those, the hundred years war was very important for (western) Europe and marked a big shift away from feudalism and towards centralization. And the fall of constantinople marked a huge shift in power dynamics in eastern europe. And there were more of these events, like you said. And now, we will be able to change those events.
Hell, if you really don't want to go earlier, just click a later start date (or download the inevitable mod for that)
>You quite literally started talking about long term impacts when my argument was only about the short term events that had direct influence on how the early modern period started. I quite literally said to go "a little bit earlier". Maybe your definition of a little bit is different than mine, but I don't consider several hundred or thousand years earlier "a little bit".
I was pointing out that once you go past a couple of years, you're very open to a *reductio* going a much longer way back.
>Why not have it start in 1939? That would be the equivalent to 1444 in EU4.
Only if you assume that early modernity starts in 1453 (and even then, that'd be more like 1938). Assuming it starts in 1492, however...
>Among those, the hundred years war was very important for (western) Europe and marked a big shift away from feudalism and towards centralization.
That'll be news to Ertman. He places the onset of major Anglo-French geopolitical competition about a century earlier!
>And the fall of constantinople marked a huge shift in power dynamics in eastern europe
Did it? Eastern Rome had been dead in the water for decades by 1453. Its real fall was much earlier.
The start date for EU5 is one of 2 options, the start of the 100 years war - or the battle of Nicopolis in 1396. I think the favourite is 1337. This is as these are the two major events of the 14th century, which are in Europe. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_century. The 100 years war is good as it is right before the Black Death. However if we look at population figures from the Byzantine empire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_the_Byzantine_Empire#:~:text=5%20External%20links-,Population%20estimates,26%20million%20at%20its%20height. We can see that in 1320 the population is 2 million. The devs would have definitely had used this data , a 1337 start would mean that the population had decreased by just under half in 17 years. So a 1396 start would make more sense looking at the dev diary. The start being the battle of Nicopolis would be similar to the EU4 start date which was after the battle of Varna. Why not 10 years later at the fall of Constantinople, a more significant event who knows . But this would keep the trend for EU5.
I think 1337 makes perfect sense.
It requires heavy focus models for the immediate fall of large empires (the Mongol remnants and Delhi and Mali, namely), disease systems which were vital in colonization (black death is a great way to focus on those systems), it sets up so many things for the EU4 time period (hundred years’ war, tamerlane, the HRE electoral college of 1356, the Hanseatic League, Polish-Lithuanian first union, the Kalmar Union.. (yes this was quite eurocentric)
What’s best: 1337 is rarely covered by players. Hardly any CK players play that late and by that date CK3 will look very different than how it did historically. It FEELS fresh.
Don't know why you're being downvoted. Anyone who sees this and downvotes, at least tell us why you think it's a good idea for *EUV* to spend such a big chunk of its time in *CKIII*'s period instead of the period it was designed for (the early modern period)?
For me it’s just the different perspectives that each game series gives
If I want to play a grand strategy game with a character focus, I would play CK3. If I want to play a grand strategy game with a focus on the state itself, I would play EU4.
I understand why a heavier focus on characters makes sense for the medieval age considering the importance of dynastic politics to the age, but I can still see how a focus on the state itself can be fun during that time as well.
Edit: country->state
The time period just isn’t especially important to me, my main enjoyment comes out of managing the complex mechanics specific to each game.
I still like the mechanics to generally make sense for the time period (ex. Front line warfare and equipment design in HOI4 vs moving around army stacks and managing army layouts in EU4 and CK3), but beyond that it’s just not that big of a concern to me that CK3 and Project Caesar overlap in time somewhat
>managing the complex mechanics specific to each game.
>
>I still like the mechanics to generally make sense for the time period
Do you think *EUV* can plausibly make mechanics that 'generally make sense' for two time periods while being fun and manageable to play? Do you not think playing a worse version of *CKIII* would be unsatisfying?
Genuine questions, by the way! I'm just trying to understand your perspective better.
I play CK3 more so for role playing and making fun stories among characters since CK3 mechanics are much more allowing for that type of gameplay. I don’t really expand too much in that game compared to EU4 because I’m busy trying to make interesting families, fighting my rivals, and navigating around my powerful vassals. I like to start wars over some made up personal dispute I have in my head rather than the fact that taking such and such would be the most beneficial gameplay wise.
Compare this to Europa Universalis where I am much more focused on growing my nation and doing map painting. Minmaxxing is much more fun in EU4 than CK3. I sometimes do a little bit of role playing and will try to complete my focus trees, but rp in general is much less of a focus when I play EU4. I can see that mindset of playing being just as fun starting in 1337 as it is starting in 1444. I also think the general “moving army stacks” gameplay of Europa Universalis is still fitting in 1337, it’s not like warfare changed as dramatically from the medieval age to the early modern age in terms of gameplay parallels.
My problem, I think is basically that I'd get really annoyed playing a game whose norm is centred on the 16th century in the 14th century. Lots of stuff already feels too centralized in the *EUIV* earlygame; I can't imagine taking things over a century earlier would help that.
> it’s not like warfare changed as dramatically from the medieval age to the early modern age in terms of gameplay parallels.
I mean, I think it did. There's a reason early modernity is sometimes called the age of the military revolution!
Fair enough though. Thanks for the reasons. I maintain my disagreement - and that there are good reasons beyond taste to prefer a later start date - but hey ho.
> I mean, I think it did
I agree! But those shifts are already beginning by 1337, so it seems reasonable to me. Plus, I imagine a lot of the mechanics for medieval-era armies would also suit less centralized regions of the world, like Sengoku-era Japan and East Africa.
I mean, I think warfare should be overhauled in general, but that's a different story. Any argument based on when "shifts start" is very vulnerable to a *reductio ad absurdum*. Shifts were 'already beginning' in the first decade of the 13th century too, after all. Ertman's argument in *Birth of the Leviathan* places the beginning of intensive interstate competition between England and France in that decade, which also of course saw the Fourth Crusade. Never mind the transformations that wracked the Holy Roman Empire in the first half of the 13th century (here following Len Scales). That also puts you in range for the transformational Mongol Empire, which reshaped all kinds of trends in Asian history.
So maybe we should start the game in 1200! Though I'm sure you could then point out loads of trends and important things that actually started *before* 1200, ones which were very important for the early modern period. You can keep going and going with this sort of thing until it's clearly ridiculous, and that's a problem for the argument. There will always be an argument to push things earlier on the grounds of long-term trends. I just think that for gameplay reasons, it's a bad idea to go earlier than 1400 or so. The game mechanics can't possibly be suited both to high mediaeval politics *and* the 17th century, but if it's one or the other, it'd be absolutely bizarre for PDX's flagship *early modern* game to choose high mediaeviality.
> why you think it's a good idea for EUV to spend such a big chunk of its time in CKIII's period instead of the period it was designed for (the early modern period)?
You mean the period **EUIV** was designed for. This is a new game that can have a slightly different focus. Also I suspect the end game won't include French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars anymore so the design can have a clear focus on Late Medieval through Early Modern development.
I mean, *all* of the *Europa Universalis* games have been early modern-focussed. It just doesn't make sense to me to have such a massive overlap with another game.
> instead of the period it was designed for (the early modern period)?
There's a lot of good recent history suggesting that a lot of what characterizes that period started earlier than previously thought. By 1337, you have an increasingly commercialized economy, increasingly integrated global trade routes, the first modern standing armies and you're about half a century or so out from the dawn of Spanish colonialism in the Canary Islands.
It's a world that looks much more like EU4 than CK3, so I don't think you need to be worried that they'll have to make two radically different time periods work. To be honest, I'd be more worried about the other end, 1820 is probably less suited to the game than 1337.
Eh. I'm aware of the scholarship pushing for an earlier early modernity, I just disagree with it. I very much fall on the side of scholars favouring the importance of the Columbian Exchange as a periodization marker. (On this, see Anthony Grafton *et al.*, *New Worlds, Ancient Texts*.) I remember one of my early undergraduate essays making a somewhat ambitious argument that 1492 and 1517 were "dual shocks" precipitating most of the artistic, cultural, and intellectual changes of the late Renaissance!
The important thing here is that I want a game *centred* on early modernity, and this doesn't feel like that. What worries me more is that Johan seems to have indicated the game runs at least to the French Revolution. Unless they've made the greatest game of all time here, that means one of two things. One, the actual early modern end of things is severely undercooked compared to the - mediaeval - earlygame (which is the bit people spend the most focussed time in). Two, in an attempt to keep everything even, *all* of it is underwhelming because it's trying to simulate the entire span of world history 1337 to 1821, which is more or less impossible.
Neither of those sound good to me! I want a satisfying simulation of the 16th and 17th centuries, ideally the 18th too. Anything before or after that is immaterial to me. Before that, and I could just play *CKIII*. After, and I could play *Victoria III*. I see no need for *EUV* to focus on anything but its core three centuries, and I worry that making the start date two centuries early is going to disrupt that focus.
Second start date nearer to the start of colonialism would solve everyone's complaints about this date. I for one welcome the black death
Never thought I'd hear anyone ever say that >I for one welcome the black death
Looks like they've removed Constantinople's name for some reason, probably to obfuscate the time period further (e.g. Constantinople vs Konstantiniyye)
Nah the starting date is quite clear from the country lines and population numbers. Mostly province names seem to require a bit more work to be correctly centered, formated etc...
Gonna be honest, I have no idea what your comment means or its relation to what I wrote originally. Am I missing something?
The reason why the province/location name for Constantinople appears to be missing is that it’s probably too long of a name to fit in its small area. The UI is still a work in progress. This map has thicker lines indicating the borders of individual countries, which gives a lot of hints for when the start date is, and is enough to make a start date of ~1337 exceedingly likely, making any ambiguity of who controls Constantinople unnecessary. There was a political map of India which had population numbers from a previous TT which also helped narrow the date down to ~1337.
I am a little worried about such an early start date. Feels like a lot of waiting for the big events of EU5
I mean it’s only a decade before the black plague hits Europe, the Hundred Years’ War is starting, the Ottoman Empire was just recently founded like a decade ago, the Ming dynasty overthrows the Yuan in 1368, and more that I can’t think of Edit: Tamerlane as well starts his dynasty in 1370
The Russians break free from the golden horde around that time too right?
You mean eu4. It's not like nothing happend the 100 years prior. It's litteraly the start date of the 100 years war
Portugal started with exploration in the 1340s.
Yeah I'm also a little worried. i think it will get tiresome having to deal with an event like the black death near the start of every game. also having to wait so long to colonize if you want to be historical.
if we are lucky they might have a later start date?
They said in the first Tinto Talk that they want to give players a reason to start at different start dates
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I wouldn’t mind one that also has the crusade of Varna
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that would be nice
So am I. *Europa Universalis* is an *early modern* game series. I don't want to spend my entire time playing a third-rate version of *CKIII*...
The hundred years war is quite literally what kickstarted the early modern era. So this start date seems perfect for what you want
>The hundred years war is quite literally what kickstarted the early modern era According to whom...? That's a bizarre claim. The normal Europe- or world-wide criteria are one of the beginning of the Columbian Exchange in 1492 or the beginning of the Reformation in 1517. Neither of those even *relate* to the Hundred Years' War. If you're going to make such a genetic argument, you might as well say *EUV* should start in 753 BCE (legendary date, I know), because Roman ideals inspired early modern Humanism and the military revolution or whatever.
Historians usually cite the end of the hundred years war, and the fall of Constantinople as what started the early modern period. So for a game about that period, wouldn't it make sense to start a little bit earlier so you can actually go up to those moments and experience them? In EU4, both those events are 99% guaranteed to happen. With an earlier start date, you can do what these games are trying to do: create an alternate timeline. A game about so much change is not as interesting as it could be if you never see what was before
>Historians usually cite the end of the hundred years war, and the fall of Constantinople as what started the early modern period Which historians? Cite them please. I don't think anyone's been focussing on the fall of Konstantinoupolis as a period break for quite some time. Even intellectual and cultural historians are turning against it. >So for a game about that period, wouldn't it make sense to start a little bit earlier so you can actually go up to those moments and experience them? No. That argument is recursive: you end up starting the game at the dawn of humanity with this logic. >With an earlier start date, you can do what these games are trying to do: create an alternate timeline. Or you could create an alternate timeline at 1204, of course. See what not smashing the Eastern Romans with the Fourth Crusade does. Or perhaps you'd prefer 768, to change the preconditions on which all the rest of Latin Europe operated for centuries. No matter what time you start the game, there will always be important long-term links to early modernity. There will also be some things which are fixed, and some which are still in flux or yet to happen. That's just how it is. The question is how much of a run-up you want to the important dates of early modernity. Over a century and a half, and it's getting silly - that's my view.
> Which historians? The vast majority of early modern and late medieval European historians for the past few centuries. If you ask anybody with a degree from a western university on the topic, they’ll give you one of four answers; the end of the Hundred Years’ War, the fall of Constantinople, the start of the Renaissance, and the invention of printed type. Of course, it’s always more nuanced than what historians give as the “easy answers”, but these four events very neatly bookend the period of change which saw Europe transition from the medieval system towards early modern life, which is especially useful for a video game like EU which must decide on a specific and important date to set itself in. Dates like 1066, 1337, 1444, 1776, and so on just make sense as the “beginning of an era” in layman’s terms, because they’re linked to events which define and kickstart those eras. It’s not a science, so much as a vibe upon which to structure complex concepts for easier understanding.
>The vast majority of early modern and late medieval European historians for the past few centuries. I've cited rather a number of historians who disagree in another comment - what do you make of that? Your confidence that so many historians would cite the end of the Hundred Years' War (which I have not seen mentioned once in recent academic publications) or the 'start of the Renaissance' (which doesn't have a defined date) is surprising to me. Cite some actual specific historians, by name, with citations, please. The norm I've perceived is either the beginning of the Columbian Exchange in 1492 or the beginning of the Reformation in 1517. In any case, my impression of the historiography was that most scholars were moving towards a more expansive idea of the late mediaeval. A couple of my friends (Duncan Hardy, Richard Schlag, etc.) are working on this "overlap" period of the 14th to 15th centuries. Some, like Tom Brady, are moving it toward the 16th century, too, but that's a smaller position. >If you ask anybody with a degree from a western university on the topic, they’ll give you one of four answers; the end of the Hundred Years’ War, the fall of Constantinople, the start of the Renaissance, and the invention of printed type. I'm an early modern historian at Oxford, and no I wouldn't give any of those answers! Mine is 1492. Indeed, Oxford itself institutionally agrees with me: the early modern period is defined for undergraduate examinations as 1500–1700. Lots of other major universities agree on the start date (e.g., Cambridge, KCL). Making early modern courses 1450–1800 or so is also reasonably common, but most specialists in the 15th century don't call themselves early modernists.
Alright you're obviously arguing in bad faith. You ask me for sources, yet don't provide any yourself. You are attacking me on arguments I never made. You are taking stuff I said way out of proportion. Early modern period is not a strictly defined term. It generally just means the period between middle ages and modern period. There are no singular specific events that start the period, especially sin e the world is not globalized at all at this point in history. It's not that easy. Most sources I can find place the start somewhere in the 15th century. Unless you actually have something to comment on my actual points, please leave
>Alright you're obviously arguing in bad faith I'm really not trying to - I do apologize. >You ask me for sources, yet don't provide any yourself I mean, you didn't ask for any. Even so, I'd point you towards: Bonney, Richard. 1991. *The European Dynastic States 1494–1660*. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ertman, Thomas. 1997. *Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Greengrass, Mark. 2014. *Christendom Destroyed: Europe 1517–1648*. London: Penguin Books Ltd. Hale, John. 1993. *The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance*. London: Harper Perennial. Nipperdey, Justus. 2023. “Inventing “Early Modern” Europe: Fashioning a New Historical Period in American Historiography 1880–1945”, in *The Journal of Early Modern History* 27, 199-223. Parker, Geoffrey. 1988. *The Military Revolution: Military innovation and the rise of the west 1500–1800*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pettegree, Andrew (ed.). 1992. *The early Reformation in Europe*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Porter, Roy and Teich, Mikuláš (eds.). 1992. *The Renaissance in national context*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scott, Hamish. 2015. “Introduction: ‘Early Modern’ Europe and the Idea of Early Modernity” in Hamish Scott ed., *The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350–1750, Volume I: Peoples and Place*, 1-33. Waley, Daniel and Denley, Peter. 2001. *Later Medieval Europe, 1250–1520*, 3rd edn.. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. Among others. >You are attacking me on arguments I never made I have tried only to quote you or to force your arguments to conclude what you don't intend them to without compromising their logics (i.e., conduct a *reductio ad absurdum*). Can you point me to any specific misrepresentations (not *reductiones*)?
> No. That argument is recursive: you end up starting the game at the dawn of humanity with this logic. > No matter what time you start the game, there will always be important long-term links to early modernity. You quite literally started talking about long term impacts when my argument was only about the short term events that had direct influence on how the early modern period started. I quite literally said to go "a little bit earlier". Maybe your definition of a little bit is different than mine, but I don't consider several hundred or thousand years earlier "a little bit". If you don't call that misrepresenting, I don't know what is. Of course you can go all the way back to the dawn of humanity. I never suggested anything even close to that and my argument did not logically lead to that in any way shape or form. With your logic, I could complain about HOI4 starting so much earlier than the actual start of WW2. Why not have it start in 1939? That would be the equivalent to 1444 in EU4. Now, 1337 is quite early, but that is just over 100 years earlier which is not that bad. That makes roughly 1/5th of the game the 'prelude' (assuming the same end date), which is still less than HOI4 for example (where it is 3 years prelude to a 6 years war). The transition to the early modern era was a long process, and while it's roots go much further back of course, throughout the 14th century and early 15th is when most of the big seeds were sown. Among those, the hundred years war was very important for (western) Europe and marked a big shift away from feudalism and towards centralization. And the fall of constantinople marked a huge shift in power dynamics in eastern europe. And there were more of these events, like you said. And now, we will be able to change those events. Hell, if you really don't want to go earlier, just click a later start date (or download the inevitable mod for that)
>You quite literally started talking about long term impacts when my argument was only about the short term events that had direct influence on how the early modern period started. I quite literally said to go "a little bit earlier". Maybe your definition of a little bit is different than mine, but I don't consider several hundred or thousand years earlier "a little bit". I was pointing out that once you go past a couple of years, you're very open to a *reductio* going a much longer way back. >Why not have it start in 1939? That would be the equivalent to 1444 in EU4. Only if you assume that early modernity starts in 1453 (and even then, that'd be more like 1938). Assuming it starts in 1492, however... >Among those, the hundred years war was very important for (western) Europe and marked a big shift away from feudalism and towards centralization. That'll be news to Ertman. He places the onset of major Anglo-French geopolitical competition about a century earlier! >And the fall of constantinople marked a huge shift in power dynamics in eastern europe Did it? Eastern Rome had been dead in the water for decades by 1453. Its real fall was much earlier.
Be Galicia-Volhynia then defeat golden horde and retake kiyv , ah such joy
leet time
Damn just got a Black Death dlc for ck3 just for eu5 to go “fuck you that’s my time period”…
Where did you get the second map? It's beautiful.
Cyowari deviant art
The start date for EU5 is one of 2 options, the start of the 100 years war - or the battle of Nicopolis in 1396. I think the favourite is 1337. This is as these are the two major events of the 14th century, which are in Europe. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_century. The 100 years war is good as it is right before the Black Death. However if we look at population figures from the Byzantine empire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_the_Byzantine_Empire#:~:text=5%20External%20links-,Population%20estimates,26%20million%20at%20its%20height. We can see that in 1320 the population is 2 million. The devs would have definitely had used this data , a 1337 start would mean that the population had decreased by just under half in 17 years. So a 1396 start would make more sense looking at the dev diary. The start being the battle of Nicopolis would be similar to the EU4 start date which was after the battle of Varna. Why not 10 years later at the fall of Constantinople, a more significant event who knows . But this would keep the trend for EU5.
Still feel like this is Magna Mundi reborn. Expansions will most likely deal with moving the start date back even more.
Why would you say they'd want to move the start date back more? That's ck2 territory
I'd want to play the rise of the Mongols in this not ck2 or 3.
I don't understand why people cry over colonisation. I find it more fun to expand and establish my borders and then colonise
Not sure I'm the biggest fan of that. Feels like stepping on CK3's toes a bit. Would prefer a focus on the early modern period
I think 1337 makes perfect sense. It requires heavy focus models for the immediate fall of large empires (the Mongol remnants and Delhi and Mali, namely), disease systems which were vital in colonization (black death is a great way to focus on those systems), it sets up so many things for the EU4 time period (hundred years’ war, tamerlane, the HRE electoral college of 1356, the Hanseatic League, Polish-Lithuanian first union, the Kalmar Union.. (yes this was quite eurocentric) What’s best: 1337 is rarely covered by players. Hardly any CK players play that late and by that date CK3 will look very different than how it did historically. It FEELS fresh.
Same dude. I play Europa Universalis for the colonialism and the reformation. Not 100 years war and black death
I guess the hope is what you would want to play EU for would change
Don't know why you're being downvoted. Anyone who sees this and downvotes, at least tell us why you think it's a good idea for *EUV* to spend such a big chunk of its time in *CKIII*'s period instead of the period it was designed for (the early modern period)?
For me it’s just the different perspectives that each game series gives If I want to play a grand strategy game with a character focus, I would play CK3. If I want to play a grand strategy game with a focus on the state itself, I would play EU4. I understand why a heavier focus on characters makes sense for the medieval age considering the importance of dynastic politics to the age, but I can still see how a focus on the state itself can be fun during that time as well. Edit: country->state
In that case, why not extend the timeline even further? Why have a focus on early modernity at all?
The time period just isn’t especially important to me, my main enjoyment comes out of managing the complex mechanics specific to each game. I still like the mechanics to generally make sense for the time period (ex. Front line warfare and equipment design in HOI4 vs moving around army stacks and managing army layouts in EU4 and CK3), but beyond that it’s just not that big of a concern to me that CK3 and Project Caesar overlap in time somewhat
>managing the complex mechanics specific to each game. > >I still like the mechanics to generally make sense for the time period Do you think *EUV* can plausibly make mechanics that 'generally make sense' for two time periods while being fun and manageable to play? Do you not think playing a worse version of *CKIII* would be unsatisfying? Genuine questions, by the way! I'm just trying to understand your perspective better.
I play CK3 more so for role playing and making fun stories among characters since CK3 mechanics are much more allowing for that type of gameplay. I don’t really expand too much in that game compared to EU4 because I’m busy trying to make interesting families, fighting my rivals, and navigating around my powerful vassals. I like to start wars over some made up personal dispute I have in my head rather than the fact that taking such and such would be the most beneficial gameplay wise. Compare this to Europa Universalis where I am much more focused on growing my nation and doing map painting. Minmaxxing is much more fun in EU4 than CK3. I sometimes do a little bit of role playing and will try to complete my focus trees, but rp in general is much less of a focus when I play EU4. I can see that mindset of playing being just as fun starting in 1337 as it is starting in 1444. I also think the general “moving army stacks” gameplay of Europa Universalis is still fitting in 1337, it’s not like warfare changed as dramatically from the medieval age to the early modern age in terms of gameplay parallels.
My problem, I think is basically that I'd get really annoyed playing a game whose norm is centred on the 16th century in the 14th century. Lots of stuff already feels too centralized in the *EUIV* earlygame; I can't imagine taking things over a century earlier would help that. > it’s not like warfare changed as dramatically from the medieval age to the early modern age in terms of gameplay parallels. I mean, I think it did. There's a reason early modernity is sometimes called the age of the military revolution! Fair enough though. Thanks for the reasons. I maintain my disagreement - and that there are good reasons beyond taste to prefer a later start date - but hey ho.
> I mean, I think it did I agree! But those shifts are already beginning by 1337, so it seems reasonable to me. Plus, I imagine a lot of the mechanics for medieval-era armies would also suit less centralized regions of the world, like Sengoku-era Japan and East Africa.
I mean, I think warfare should be overhauled in general, but that's a different story. Any argument based on when "shifts start" is very vulnerable to a *reductio ad absurdum*. Shifts were 'already beginning' in the first decade of the 13th century too, after all. Ertman's argument in *Birth of the Leviathan* places the beginning of intensive interstate competition between England and France in that decade, which also of course saw the Fourth Crusade. Never mind the transformations that wracked the Holy Roman Empire in the first half of the 13th century (here following Len Scales). That also puts you in range for the transformational Mongol Empire, which reshaped all kinds of trends in Asian history. So maybe we should start the game in 1200! Though I'm sure you could then point out loads of trends and important things that actually started *before* 1200, ones which were very important for the early modern period. You can keep going and going with this sort of thing until it's clearly ridiculous, and that's a problem for the argument. There will always be an argument to push things earlier on the grounds of long-term trends. I just think that for gameplay reasons, it's a bad idea to go earlier than 1400 or so. The game mechanics can't possibly be suited both to high mediaeval politics *and* the 17th century, but if it's one or the other, it'd be absolutely bizarre for PDX's flagship *early modern* game to choose high mediaeviality.
> why you think it's a good idea for EUV to spend such a big chunk of its time in CKIII's period instead of the period it was designed for (the early modern period)? You mean the period **EUIV** was designed for. This is a new game that can have a slightly different focus. Also I suspect the end game won't include French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars anymore so the design can have a clear focus on Late Medieval through Early Modern development.
I mean, *all* of the *Europa Universalis* games have been early modern-focussed. It just doesn't make sense to me to have such a massive overlap with another game.
> instead of the period it was designed for (the early modern period)? There's a lot of good recent history suggesting that a lot of what characterizes that period started earlier than previously thought. By 1337, you have an increasingly commercialized economy, increasingly integrated global trade routes, the first modern standing armies and you're about half a century or so out from the dawn of Spanish colonialism in the Canary Islands. It's a world that looks much more like EU4 than CK3, so I don't think you need to be worried that they'll have to make two radically different time periods work. To be honest, I'd be more worried about the other end, 1820 is probably less suited to the game than 1337.
Eh. I'm aware of the scholarship pushing for an earlier early modernity, I just disagree with it. I very much fall on the side of scholars favouring the importance of the Columbian Exchange as a periodization marker. (On this, see Anthony Grafton *et al.*, *New Worlds, Ancient Texts*.) I remember one of my early undergraduate essays making a somewhat ambitious argument that 1492 and 1517 were "dual shocks" precipitating most of the artistic, cultural, and intellectual changes of the late Renaissance! The important thing here is that I want a game *centred* on early modernity, and this doesn't feel like that. What worries me more is that Johan seems to have indicated the game runs at least to the French Revolution. Unless they've made the greatest game of all time here, that means one of two things. One, the actual early modern end of things is severely undercooked compared to the - mediaeval - earlygame (which is the bit people spend the most focussed time in). Two, in an attempt to keep everything even, *all* of it is underwhelming because it's trying to simulate the entire span of world history 1337 to 1821, which is more or less impossible. Neither of those sound good to me! I want a satisfying simulation of the 16th and 17th centuries, ideally the 18th too. Anything before or after that is immaterial to me. Before that, and I could just play *CKIII*. After, and I could play *Victoria III*. I see no need for *EUV* to focus on anything but its core three centuries, and I worry that making the start date two centuries early is going to disrupt that focus.
Ok, I think that’s a very fair point of view. But it’s only one century early, no? Two centuries would definitely be excessive.
I mean, a century and a half (it's 155 years off 1492, and 180 years off 1517). I think it's too long. We'll see, I suppose.
Arborea and Pisa, and maybe also more remnants of the italian comunal era: I will love play it!
Historic division of Georgia looks very accurate,
I can't be the only one who thinks the map style looks bad