Byzantium

**Population**                                 varying, 8-25

**Byzantium(2.0)**, was a faction located in Balkan Peninsula(southeast Europe). It's one of the oldest, most prevailing and historically one of the most influential and populous factions in the edition

## History

### Pre-Foundation

Originally, later founders of Byzantium agreed to realize so called Flower City Project.

 File:Flowercity.png  Project was adressing the issue of betrayal also hindering the conquest of the city while preserving substantial power count of federalized city-state. Participants of the project chose Constantinople as "flower city" due to it's historical influence and partially cosmopolitan population as the capital of Byzantine Empire. However , the concept had some major flaws and due to organisational difficutlies on the very beggining of new map founders unanimously agreed to initially create Byzantium as unitary state.

### Foundation

Byzantium was found in 550 AD by coolghoul, infamau5 and JitCamBRA. As coolghoul became formal leader of the faction, Byzantium Council which consisted of all three national founders, was chosen to be factual ruling body.

### Early History

Starting at the very foundation Byzantium established itself as most populous faction on the server. This and unclear leadership caused disciplinary issue and Byzantium Council was struggling to control all of the faction's members. Some of Byzantines groundlessly attacked travelers at the time of initial settlement, also started to raid multiple factions shortly after. Alamannia was raided and pillaged by Byzantines which after tried to break into Mediolanum. Sack of the city was failed due to guerrilla tactics of Avars which came to help Mediolanum. After this, Byzantine army marched on Eranshahr, demanding them to break the alliance with Avars. Eranshahr refused to do so and in exchange paid invaders stacks of gold blocks to leave the city.

Agressive and expansive policy of Byzantium quickly caused multiple diplomatical issues and conflicts with many factions. Although at the same time Byzantium established also friendly and closely relations with it's neighboring faction - Ghassanids.

One of mine objectives of early Byzantium was to build massive walls surrounding populous city. While it was obtained relatively quickly, interior for a long time stayed empty and unorganized.

### Anti-Byzantine Coalition

As result of agressive Byzantine raids and general hostility towards most of factions on the server, many of them started to cooperate immensely in order to bring down the common threat of Byzantium. Alamannia, Mediolanum and Eranshahr - all raided by Byzantium created Anti-Byzantine Coalition which main goal was to destroy and pillage Constantinople and wipe out Byzantium from the server. Also Yamato, faction located in Japan, joined the coalition, claiming that their livestock was ravaged by Byzantine raiders. Yamato troops managed to break into the city twice, dealing a lot of damage to citizens of Constantinople until Byzantine army eventually repelled them.

Quickly after coalition started to massively gather their forces around Constantinople. Under the big threat, formal leader of Byzantine - coolghoul decided to participate in peace talks. He managed to sign a truce with Alamannia, but didn't make an agreement with the rest of Coalition leaders. In result of that, Anti-Byzantine Coalition decided to siege the city, and Sack of Constantinople began.

Invaders managed to broke inside the walls and paralyzed the city until allied with Byzantium Ghassanids came in assistance. Their advance trapped coalition troops in the city what allowed allied Byzantine-Ghassanid forces to kill all of invaders. Due to devastating lose, Anti-Byzantine Coalition broke apart and Byzantium emerged as one of most dominant powers on the server.