The Byzantine Empire in reality fell in 1453 and didn't play any role anymore in European history. In EU5 the Byzantine Empire at the start date of 1337 is weakened by corruption and internal problems, and is often conquered either by one of the Turkish beys or by its northern neighbors Bulgaria and/or Serbia. That is of course only if the Byzantine Empire is played by the AI. A player-run Byzantine Empire naturally does a lot better.

Yesterday the first DLC for EU5 was released, Fate of the Phoenix, which adds a lot of content to the Byzantine Empire. While the free patch 1.2 changes a lot of things for other countries as well, the Fate of the Phoenix DLC is only affecting the Byzantine Empire, and indirectly the regional neighbors. That in itself is a problem: If you don't want to play the Byzantine Empire, there is zero reason to buy this $10 DLC. On the other side, if you buy the DLC, you are going to play the Byzantine Empire, and thereby take the history of Europe down a predictably ahistorical path: A player-run Byzantine Empire is going to crush the Ottomans early and probably all other Turkish beys as well. If anybody is besieging Vienna in later centuries, it will be Orthodox Greeks, not Muslim Turks. You can't play Fate of the Phoenix without seriously altering European history. The DLC is thus only interesting for people who prefer history simulations to strongly deviate from reality.

The interest of the DLC is obfuscated by the free patch. If you play the Byzantine Empire before and after, as I am doing, a part of the difference in experience is due to new content like bureaucracies. But that is free patch content, not DLC content. So my comparison games are inherently flawed. What I should have done to identify the interest of the DLC is to play the Byzantine Empire twice under patch 1.2, once with and once without the DLC.

Apart from the ahistorical direction, I also dislike Byzantium for a different reason: It appears even more scripted and railroaded than other countries. The Byzantine Empire in EU5 in 1337 has some big strengths, "balanced" by some big weaknesses. For example your estates all have unique corruption privileges that make them not pay taxes. The problem is that every player of the Byzantine Empire will play this in exactly the same way: Use the strengths of the Byzantine Empire to expand into Turkey in order to preempt their rise; while one by one removing the bad privileges, bureaucracies and laws that keep you down. The economy is in a terrible state, and that the player will have to fix as well. But if you look at the various content creators that are currently flooding YouTube and Twitch with Fate of the Phoenix EU5 videos, after several decades they all look very similar. Yes, there are two options of whether to style your empire as "roman" or "greek", but everybody a few decades into the game has fought some successful wars in Anatolia, has much improved their economy, and has removed the same bad privileges.

Due to me having bought the Premium Edition of Europa Universalis V, I will get the first three DLC automatically. But if I play EU5 for many years, I can totally see myself not buying many DLCs, except for those that provide content for a country I am already interested in. That is in stark contrast to previous games, like Victoria 3. While the base game of Victoria 3 is currently available for just $15, the "ultimate" bundle with older DLCs adds another $60, and that doesn't include the latest $30 expansion The Great Wave. Even if I just wanted to buy all the major gameplay-changing DLCs for Victoria 3, I would have to pay $65 to get access to all game mechanics, without the country-specific content, and all those prices are lower than usual due to a big Paradox sale. And with the latest DLC having apparently "broken" the game and being rated "mostly negative" by Steam users, I don't think I will buy all this.

So I am not yet totally convinced of either the EU5 nor the Victoria 3 DLC business strategy. In fact, the only Paradox game where I like the DLC business strategy is EU4, where you can cut through the jungle of game changing DLC by simply subscribing to all of them for as low as $5 per month.