While a single game of EU5 over 5 centuries of game time already takes up to around 100 hours, I am now 240 hours into the game, and had to consider replayability. What is it, that makes one game of EU5 different from another? The answer is mostly location. For example, I already played a game as Holland, in which I conquered Utrecht early in the game, and later formed the Netherlands. If I would now play a game as Utrecht, conquer Holland early in the game, and later form the Netherlands, that game wouldn't be much different than what I already played.

But besides location, there are also countries that have particular starting conditions or special rules. So I decided to play one of those, the Byzantine Empire. In EU4, the Byzantine Empire is already very small, and usually gets quickly overrun by the Ottomans. In EU5, the Byzantine Empire is still stronger, and larger than the Ottomans. That gives a player the opportunity to preempt history, attack the Ottomans early, and reverse the decline of the Byzantine Empire.

That isn't easy, because the Byzantine Empire in EU5 starts with strong negative modifiers in the form of estate privileges, which result in nobody but the peasants paying taxes. And they don't pay very much, so the financial situation is dire. Also the initial ruler has a very low life expectancy, and his heir is still an infant. This is definitely not a country that I would recommend to a new player. However, removing estate privileges and strengthening crown power is already a regular part of gameplay for about any country in EU5. And so are country finances.

I will not go into the details, but let's say that my gameplay of the first decades of the Byzantine Empire involved a lot of brinkmanship (e.g. razing all my forts to save money) and borderline exploitation of game mechanics. But I basically brought the Ottomans down to a single province, and are militarily secure against divided Turkish countries. While the Byzantine Empire starts with a lot of non-integrated provinces, the lands in Western Anatolia are actually Greek in culture, and the Byzantine Empire has lots of cores there. So it is easier to conquer these and get control there, than to increase your control in Greece.

Once the Byzantine Empire gets all its estates to pay taxes and increases control over its existing and conquered territory, it has a rather strong position. There are a lot of expensive resources in the area, like gold, gems, or silk. And as the name suggests, Byzantium is already an empire, the highest possible country rank, which gives various benefits like for example more cabinet members. Once the finances were in order, I was able to afford the new feature of patch 1.1.0, a local governor. That is a very expensive to maintain building which provides a local source of 80% proximity, like a second capital. I built it in Thessaloniki, and that much improved my control in the Greek part of the country. Constantinople also starts with some advanced buildings, some actually from later ages, like a dock. And there are several hospitals in the country, which helps a lot with the plague. So the outlook for my Byzantine Empire is now rather good.

There is one other reason that I am playing Byzantium now: The first major DLC for EU5, now postponed into the next quarter, is Fate of the Phoenix, a DLC that adds specific content for the Byzantine Empire. In EU4, DLCs often came with changes to game mechanics, which resulted in the annoying situation that you had to buy a specific DLC in order to get access to a specific game mechanic, like for example army drilling. The promise for EU5 is that all changes to game mechanics will come in free patches, and buying the DLCs will only add content, usually country- or region-specific. It is not very clear how that will work, and how much value a player gets out of such a DLC. As I am very curious about this, I decided to play the Byzantine Empire now, before the DLC, to then be better able to judge the improvements the DLC brings.