What are the benefits of a fantasy setting which is dominated by big empires...

Can someone explain to me how the fuck the Arabs, a desert-dwelling tribe of nobodies with primitive nomad technology, managed to destroy the Sassanid and Byzantine Empires?

It enables the player characters to explore the world without unwanted frustration. It increases the likelihood of unified language, rather than the player characters needing to learn a new language for each country or even region they visit. This also allows for individuals from lots of different cultures to exist in the same region without facing (too much) adversity. Not to mention the player characters can explore the regions of the empire without having to keep track of the politics of each one and potentially not being welcome due to bad relations between that region and the home state of a player character.

Simply put, the existence of a sprawling empire allows for easy access to all regions within the empire and its cultures, making storytelling that much easier. Finally, languages like 'Common' have a reason for existing. You are able to explain why elves, dwarves and humans are all blending together in a metropolitan environment. You can have characters go from their home vassal nation to a neighboring one, despite ancient grudges between the two nations and without (too much) prejudice towards the intruding player characters.

Empires open up the world.

Empires are usually a excuse for worldbuilders to homogenize shit and not inventing much.

I mean, the empire it's not a bad idea per se, but this pitfall is too common not to be wary of it.

>le /pol/ history

a) mobility

b) actual benefits for the conquered populations

c) they didn't exactly destroy them in two days, it 7-800 years from Muhammed to Byzantium's victory and even then it wasn't the arabs. Rome as an empire lasted half of that.

Empires can give you the best of both worlds

In the last few decades before the end of the Western Roman Empire (pic related), large parts of the WRE were only nominally part of it. Chunks of Empire paid lip service to Rome and weren't at war with it but were really doing their own thing. The Empire proper didn't really extend past the Italian peninsula. Rome had essentially lost its legions and was depending entirely on nation-state mercenary forces that really only listened to Rome when it was convenient. Gaul (or Spain, I forget which) was full of little local lords that were duking it out with each other constantly, ignoring Rome completely. Rome had abandoned Britain and the Vandals had moved in on North Africa and just kinda taken it over. And of course the entire Eastern Empire was technically part of the same gig but they were functionally separate and mostly just existed as distant allies that were really nosy when it came to picking new Emperors.

So you can your 'big Empire' but still have all the colour and 'small' scale tensions of smaller kingdoms throwing rocks at each other.

I've filled out this exact vehicle captcha four times this week Google what are you doing

>What are the benefits of a fantasy setting which is dominated by big empires?

David and Goliath relation, makes people root for the underdog and/or appreciate the 'badassness' of the Imperial military.

Boring as fuck. Make the empire the good guys.

would have to call it a republic then

Only if you have brainlet players/readers.

>good guys
>bad guys
>in the year of the Lord 2k17

The Empire is successfull.

Why?
How?
Since when?
How does it affect smaller neighbours or rival Empires?
Is it actually a centralized Empire or just a loose umbrella?

Find an interesting starting point with the Map you use. Drop in your cultures/states and the tech level etc.

Think about the driving factors and political relations at the start.

Then go with the flow. Create a History. Forcing in moral judgements only helps in creating 1 dimensional cultures.

A lot of common gaming tropes are easier to defend if there's a dominant empire in the setting.

Same system of currency used everywhere.
Everyone speaks that one language.
Cosmopolitan cities where multiple races are represented.
Unified culture and religion.
Laws make sense for modern day players.
Roads, inns and travellers are common.

Not mention that Persia persianised it's conquerors, rather than the persians being arabisised(?).
Or rather, the end result was somewhere in between, but closer to Persian than Arab

pre-Unification italy was always under the thumb of outside powers. First the HRE, then multiple incursions by the other powers. Very brief periods in the Renaissance were they truly independent with the immense trade wealth they had. The HRE was literally a single state, not dozens of small ones, even if that was de-facto the situation.

Yes. By De Jure the HRE was one state.. Oh wait but as you just said, De Facto it wasn't. And tons of Italian states tried to revolt and eventually the Empire's grip on Italy fell. But your guy's grip on history is really failing.

Venice in particular was a super powerful state, and only really fell because of Napoleon's invasion. No one could stop Napoleon, because he avoided institutions and the peace that existed throughout Europe. Italian irredentism wasn't strong at all, and even using the word 'italian' back then would just refer to a Geographic sense. Sicily, Naples, Latium, Tuscany, Venice, Ravenna, Milan, Savoy, Sardinia.. Even Dalmatia and Corsica had tons of variety and differences, in language, culture, and prominence, with all their little states and cities within them. They survived the late middle ages, and heck, late-stage fuedalism IS tiny of little states bickering and everything becoming fragmented.

Huge empires cannot exist in a Feudal society in any efficient state. I'd say the ones to do it the best were the English, but even then, you have the War of the Roses which was a famously bloody affair.

Italian city states existed for at least 400 years. Arguably 600. Dukes, Kingdoms, heck even counts went rogue on their overlords all the time and sometimes succeeded. If you do a big empire in a feudal world, there HAS to be diferences even within the biggest culture, with subsets and prejudices abound. If you want a realistic campaign, that is.

Quite honestly, the disadvantage would be the relative stability in the realm. A large empire usually has enough resources to keep order within its border, so the question, "why don't they kill the dragon themselves?" becomes an issue. You could make it that the players themselves are part of the empire's service.

Another interesting possibility would be a setting with a dying empire. You got the same language, currency, and culture, but plenty of local troubles to go with it.

The point is there's a big difference between a setting of various independent states and ""independent"" states that technically owe allegiance, and are protected from annexation, by a larger Empire in the region. Furthermore, Italy is quite defined by the influence of large Empires and is for most of it's history, the latter.

>A world with nothing but tiny kingdoms/city states is unrealistic

is the original point in question. The entire situation in Italy would not have lasted without the umbrage of the Empires that prevented their consolidation and dominated Italy. Feudal systems did the same to a degree. Having a large density of actually, really, independent polities is extremely rate historically compared to Empires or mid-sized Kingdoms dominating areas. Those times that you reference are all allowed to exist by the suffrage of the laws and culture opposing centralization.

A setting that is de jure a decentralized state with many de facto states is much different from the popularly conceptualized land of many completely independent city states, and the point was, not very realistic with no Empires imposing the states (laws, culture, etc) that keep them divided.

more intrigue and large-scale warfare, instead of individual merc groups robbing tombs

If its a well organized and well functioning empire it would be pretty boring unless the player characters are criminals or working for an imperial organization, Somewhat like modern settings.

If the empire is corrupt then each state or province or whatever they are called could be considered a nation of its own in some ways and there is loads of room for adventurer stuff.

If the empire is falling apart then the players either get to play the desperate last stand defending the empire and pulling it back from the brink, or revel in tearing it apart and building their own fortune and kingdoms from its pieces.

...

The biggest benefit, and literally the only reason it's so commonly used, is because it allows lazy worldbuilders to get out of worldbuilding early and fool themselves into thinking that they're done.

Wichura for you

At least this user gets it.

Unrelated note:
Is it what the guy says, or is it just a meme caption? Also, source of this image, because my self-proclaimed degree in Memelogy demands it.

If all the land belongs to various empires, you can't really conquer a field for yourself unless you're either strong enough to take on the entire empire or connected enough that the Emperor is cool with your shenanigans.

Contrariwise, in a more feudal land with smaller land holders, you can work some warfare into the campaign no problem.

In the case of Rome?

Not at all.

Taxes were too damn high and the Arabs basically were pussies who went out on their way to not upset the majority of the people whose royal houses they overthrew, so the change of management was welcomed.

Plenty of places they were invited in, more or less.

Also the Arabs didn't destroy the Byzantine Empire, the Turks pulled that one off.

>Both Empires being right after a really bloody war
>Maximum taxation on everyone and everything to just scrap enough cash for troops
>Fringes of the empire already being semi-independent
>Locals WELCOMING Arabs as a lesser evil
>Armies of both empires being a rag-tag bunch of half-alive soldiers and utterly disorganised beyond basic unit structure.

In short, it was about Arabs attacking when both empires were in their weakest point imaginable.
Byzantines managed to still secure a stand-still and survive for another few centuries. Sassanids - not so much.

>Also, source of this image, because my self-proclaimed degree in Memelogy demands it.

It's from Czterej pancerni i pies.

ALL HAIL BRITANNIA
ALL HAIL BRITANNIA
Seriously this is literally the plot of Code Geass.

You can play in a Empire reconquered it's lands from small Emirates.

Both fought for decades against each other. Persians did not save their arab vassals from Mohammeds expansion, so he could unite more an more tribes.

The Arabs had the advantage of not meeting either rome or persia under their terms. They evaded the heavier elements with their lighter troops. Isolated them and picked them off one by one.

However the persians for example defeated the first offensive into mesopotamia. And rome stopped the Arabs halfway into asia minor.

Rome also fucked up royaly in the religion department. They antagonised the syrian christians who then had great sympathies for the arabs.

So there were a couple of reasons. Sadly for based heracleos .

For the locals the arabs WERE the lesser evil. At least for the romans. They had a massive religios war some years before. The losers got treated very shitty.

>Rome as an empire lasted half of that.
>1400 years is half of 800

Get out

Since everyone already spoke about laws n currency and shit, let me talk about something else

If you have plenty of small kingdoms close to one another, why aren't they at war? Why aren't they trying to take the land from one another? War was omnipresent in europe right up until WW2 and the creation of the atomic bomb and NATO....except when it was under the Roman Empire.

If your small kingdoms aren't at war, there should be a pretty big reason as to why.

>greeks are totally roman guize

Don't forget the Justinian plague!

>Ethnicity matters in the Roman Empire

Yes Greeks were Romans.

Rome itself was founded by the exiles of three local tribes. The latins, the sabians and the Etruscans. The Etruscans heavily copied the greeks in everything they did. So greeks influence was all ready there at the beginning of the Roman Kingdom. Then the Romans conquered the Etruscans, adding more Greekness into the Kingdom. The Republic conquered the Greek cities in southern Italy and the Greek cities of Sicily.

Romanes eunt domus!

Does the guy really says something like that or it's just a caption?
Also, can't found English subs to it, while apparently found it on an official page of Polish national TV.

More focus on internal politics and differences between internal regions/groups, which I think feels more realistic. Small countries too often end up being "planet-of-hats"-style monoliths, whereas a large empire invites more subtle, gradated distinctions.

Also this

The obvious benefit is that it lets you simplify your setting by homogenizing it. You can still tell large scale stories in it, but now you can stick to your themes without getting lost in the granular detail of allegiances and such.

Contrary to what seems to be popular belief here, I think simplicity is better for traditional games. All this Veeky Forums and /pol/ wank just doesn't interest me at all. Tell me a good story, I don't give a fuck if it's realistic, especially not if the genre is fantasy.

From personal experience, both small kingdoms and empires end up as planets of hats. Kingdoms will have them (the smaller the more) almost always, but it's just as common to have empires that are either Not!Rome, Not!Persia, Not!China and sometimes Not!Aztec. However, the main difference that kingdom of hats just happens, while empire of hats is a clear sign of lazy worldbuilding.

Some combination of those.
Empires make it MUCH easier to run a game for new group. And if you want to switch themes in the same setting, you can always pull some sort of Western March type of deal, so depending on players and mood you can go from imperial scope to local scope OR from local scope to imperial scope (by starting with Western March campaign on the outskirts of the empire and then heading "inside" of said empire once the WM area is civilised)

People called Romanes they go the house?!

Or the Fourth Crusade

Kingdoms or empires doesn't really matter. The world building process remains the same regardless, and the type of nerds who fill their worlds with kingdoms and city states tend to think of them as completely independent of each other; essentially creating lands (or rather planets) of hats. So that they can go: "This is the savage land of vikings. This is the republic of political intrigue. This is the religious desert land. These are mongols" and so on.

Meanwhile, people who fill their worlds with empires (or make their entire world an empire) think of them as completely homogeneous with the same culture, laws, customs, fashion, currency, and language throughout all of its lands. That's quite simply not how it works. Sure, people probably pick up the administrative language after a while, but there's no guarantee that whatever the prestige language is is the same in the entire empire (case in point: Rome, where the western half spoke dialects of Latin, while the eastern half (and the Senate and presumably anyone else who was anyone in the western half) spoke Greek. Sure, they might use the same currency, but again, there's no guarantee that it's the same in the entire empire, and they probably would use the same or, at the very least, very similar currencies regardless. Sure, they might pick up influences from the culture and fashion of the capital of the empire, but they already have local ones and they're not just going away. And so on and so on.

Point is: Regardless of what you do, lazy worldbuilding is lazy worldbuilding.

Thx, put some effort into it

Remove Gondola

So how come when I'm Axum in CKII and the Fatimids are drained fighting a rebellion in the East and the Byzantines and Crusades in the West, they still muster enough troops to outnumber my entire army and crush them on the field of battle even after I destroyed the armies of Egypt in detail before they could mass?

Because the AI cheats.

The Byzantine Empire was recovering from Plague, with a side of PLAGUE and a tall glass of FUCKING EARTHQUAKES.

Currently working on two different settings. One's a trashy 1500s inspired kitchen sink, so there's several countries are fucking around with eachother.

The other is more based on the Hellenistic period, and features a few major Empires, each greatly separated by vast topographic barriers, with asshole tribals on the fringes making problems for everyone.

One of the major Empires, and where Humans are found, is separated into around 6 or so different regencies, all of which swear fealty to the capital and the God Emperor. Each regency has its own culture, ethnicities, local laws, and a mandatory local militia/law enforcement, however all laws are must be within what is allowed to them by the Imperial Tribune, and cannot contradict national laws passed by the the Emperor and the Conclave Imperia. Further, while each regency is required to have their own form of militia and law enforcement, they must also host and provide resources to an Imperial Garrison, which operates under the direct authority of the Aquiline Eye, and need not listen to local regent command and may supercede or even relieve them of thier authority.

The Conclave Imperia, consisting of the appointed representatives of the Regents, the Aquiline Eye, the different branches of the Ecclisia Canoncis, and Overseer of the Schola Regulatum, conducts thier meetings within the Thronerest Hall at the foot of the Emperor's throne, and generally meet every solstice to discuss the concerns and petition different needs and desires thier regents have for their regency. While the main point of the Conclave is to allow the different parties to air thier concerns and demands, ultimately every decision and law that comes of it depends solely on the word and approval of the Emperor, who has final say on all proceedings of the Conclave, and any Imperial Laws or policy changes that may arise from it. Supposedly there were once 9 regencies, however they were found wanting and were confiscated and consolidated

I find the best solution is to have two to three empires, and have a ton of small states in the cracks between them, especially if one or more are starting to collapse.

>Why does shit-tier game with cheating AI doesn't go as history went
Gee, I wonder...

Personally, I like small city state settings, because it concentrates more about individual persons and one man can actually achieve large things. And it also adds more tension.

>CK
>Shit tier

Not him and... yeah? The game is simply bad.
And that goes without mentioning you are trying to get your historical facst from an ahistorical eugenic symulator

>using the term "state" in a pre-Westphalian context
Please refrain

>no it doesn't since power always accumulate somewhere

It literally does not.

It would not differ in any meaningful way in regards to telling a story.

Every plot and plot device remains intact, the only difference is scale.

>Pretending there were no states before Westphalian Peace, because he knows his history from Paradox games
user, did you just pretended Greek poleis and Roman Republic/Empire weren't states? Imperial China wasn't a state? Japan post unification, but pre-Heian wasn't a state? And so on and forth...

Please, entertain us with your autism and try to explain us the magical change cause by the Treaty of Westphalia that suddenly qualified countries as "states", but the exact same countries 30 years earlier couldn't qualify.
And then apply that treaty to non-European context.

I'll make some popcorn in the meanwhile, because this is going to be great.

Fine
>using the term "state" in a pre-Westphalian, European, feudal context

What about places with no feudalism and still in Europe?
What about places that didn't take part in the whole mess and were just observing with amusements as half of Europe is at each other throat?

And you still didn't explain to us how the same countries turned into "states" within those 30 years, not to mention how and why

Pro-tip:
Using a fixed cesure to use a term that can be easily applied before or impossible to apply after said point of history, just because Even X happend is a grave mistake in historiography. It also painfully expose your linear approach to historical contex as a constant evolution from lower to higher forms, with absolutely nothing in-between or separate branches.
Things just don't work like this and the harder you push into them, the less stable, viable and universal a historical theory gets

Let me explain. The structure of politics in much of Europe between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Westphalianism (which was not necessarily established by the Treaty of Westphalia, but it is useful to use its name since it was the first broadly accepted political application of the political shift in Europe between the Middle Ages and the Modern Era) had certain properties which makes the use of terms which originated in either the Modern or Classical eras very difficult if you fail to properly define them.

For example, in the Classical era, the word "state" would be useful in the civil world, where large centralized states such as Rome, Persia, the empires of China, and others like them existed.

But many theories in history do not have universal applications. You have to redefine them when used in different contexts, or develop new theories entirely. The flaw in using the term "state" universally is that in a Classical civil context, one can assume that a body of government is inherently sovereign. That is to say, that state is legally connected to its parts, and it is not legally dependent on any other body. In the context of middle Europe, however, especially in the Holy Roman Empire, which was heavily based on Germanic tribal governments rather than on the centralized Roman governments, you cannot assume that every body of government is inherently sovereign. The Empire as a whole was not sovereign on its own because smaller entities within the Empire could unilaterally reject its authority. Similarly, those smaller entities were not sovereign on their own because they derived their own legal authority from the Empire. This can get even more complicated on smaller scales.

The point is that history isn't universal and you should be able to recognize a historical context and properly define your arguments before you make them. To argue about power in Middle / Early Modern Europe, you first have to recognize how sovereignty worked.

>Let me describe you how you can't be specific with terms, because things vary from place to place
>And that's why I have this universal theory that explains everything, every time
You've managed to churm out a 2k signs post only to contradict yourself.

What theory? I never said anything about a theory.

Some people just blindly defend false doctrine.

The sad part is that they don't even think they are doing it.

>Oh shoot, he's calling me out. Lemme try to tie him up in semantics

What are you talking about

Read the line of posts again. I'm certain you'll realize what's going on.

Unless you are a troll, that is.

I'm not going to spend half an hour reading over things just because you don't want to spend a bit of time being clear.

As soon as any sort of scarcity exists, it does.

>nobodies
Nope.
>primitives
They had large cities closer to the coasts. Also good agriculture and were very good traders. They also knew a lot about building shit, gotta save that water for my cities.
Nope.
>nomads
Partly nope. The coasts were settled for a long time.

How's that related to the 7th century?

Look at the pot calling the kettle black.

"Power" is a human construct. It's completely fictional and exists only in our heads.

Its scarcity or lack thereof depends entirely on the mentality of the collective conscious of the people that want it.

Yes user, controlling food source/means of production/any sort of wealth/anything else is just a construct.
That explains why people with access to water and food don't starve to death. By a human construct. And not because they are lucky to not get hit by a drought for 20 years, which might happen to their grandkids. But hey, it's all in their heads.

Eat a bullet.

Acces to foodsources/means of production/means of violence =/= power

Power is when you let the people with the pre-mentioned concepts boss you around.

And to drive point futher, let's stay with this food and water security example.
Let's say Republic of Central Africa is a poor country that desperately needs food and water, as there is a drought going there since late 60s and literally nothing can be done with it until the current drough will end, probably by late 2030s. Let's say we want to fight against this human construct of scaricity. After all, say, Poland, is creating a huge surplus of food they have nothing to do with, as they are embargoes by Russia and EU market is already saturated.
But they are on the other half of the globe. And Central Africa Republic has no sea access. So you need to ship the food via Baltic aaaaaallll the way to reaching Cameroon, unload it, find suitable trucks on site (or bring them with yourself) and then ship it to CAR.
All of which needs gear, fuel and manpower. And of course if there is manpower involved, then there are costs related with it. Not just wages, but in this case also provisions.
Shall I continue, or you see how this is not just "human construct", but sheer distance and local variables that can utterly fuck things up?

t. Polish Humanitarian Action worker

>Having means to control is not power
Oh, so you are stupid on purpose. Thanks for sharing.

You make a straw man instead of exploring my argument for clarity. If you explored my argument for clarity, that would display confidence that no matter what I say, you would be able to crush it. Instead you display weakness and fear. Do you already realize that you are wrong?

>I have no arguments left, so I will pretend you ignore my points
You've just managed to say in your previous post that having power is not equal with power.
But hey, it's everyone in this thread being wrong and not you, right?

Having means to control is not power simply because no one has means to control.

Everyone simply has means to surrender control.

I will not argue with someone that relies on logical fallacies. It is beneath both me and you.

>Having means to control is not power simply because no one has means to control.
Jesus fuck, have you READ this sentence before posting it?

>I will not use logical fallacies
>Post shit like this
Why are you keep digging yourself deeper?

You seem confused. If you read the entire post for clarification you wouldn't appear so retarded.

If you think I'm using logical fallacies then stop arguing with me. It's that easy.

What if people just take your means away from you? Power is only power when people think it is power. Having the only water supply in the neighborhood doesn't give you power. Having the only water supply in the neighborhood, while people are afraid of you gives you power. The power is in the fear/respect/cooperativeness of people not in the supplies you control.

Four tankers and a dog. Tankers as in military tank drivers.