Welcome to Greater Armenia.
Well, it's not much now but one day it will be. After we take back our lost territories.
According to wikipedia Amerenia reached its height of power just be 100AD, only to have the Romans and Parthians take pieces out of them before Rome finally subjugated the whole country. Our bully neighbors have new names, now the Byzantines and Abbasids, but the role is the same: we have to juggle allegiances skillfully to keep from being eaten.
We start as just 3 counties: Ganja in the county of Aran, Zaqatala in the county Hereti, and Parnes in the county of Khachen. No vassals - well, maybe some mayors and priests for any cities and temples:
Aran is a small county, only 3 holdings but all full: there's Ganja the barony, the city of Barda, and a temple site the Bishopric of Mingachevir.
Hereti is a little larger with 4 holdings: the barony of Zaqatala I own, but there is also the barony of Dedoplitskhara, the city of Ghisi, and the Bisohpirc of Nukhpata.
Khachen is a very large province: 7 holdings! Khachen is the barony, Gardman the city, the Bishopric of Shamkur, and 4 empty holdings. As we grow we'll want to to fill those out with more cities, temples, and baronies.
In general, cities get you more money, baronies more levies, and temples are somewhere between the two.
Something to keep in mind is that there isn't any penalty in the game for seizing the holding of a baron. It's only a problem for a count or higher. So we could take the barony of Dedoplitskhara to earn more money at the start of the game - however we may not want to lose our Steward who is the current Baron there.
One annoying part of this start is that each county is in a separate duchy! Hereti is in the duchy Georgia, Aran in Yazidid, and Khachen lies within Mets Hayk'. We cannot have any real vassals until we are a duke, and we cannot become a Duke until we take one of the duchy titles from someone else. Most likely this means needing to conquer someone, though not necessarily. But we also will not be able to utilize any holdings past our limit of 4 (thanks to our low stewardship).
Religion in the area is very muddled:
We are Apostolic, but the only Apostolic county we own is Khachen. Aran and Hereti are both Orthodox. To our southwest there is a whole swath of Apostolic lands. The purple surrounding is Orthodox, which is the main religion of the Byzantines. Mazdayism and Khurramism are both Zoroastrian faiths, as is Afriduntist farther to the east. None of their rulers are Zoroastrian, so if we want to do something cheeky like convert and reignite the Zoroastrian faith as the Armenians then we'll need to do it before they convert the religion out of existance.
To the north are the Steppe people's Tengri faith. And the land of the Kushite Jews. The 867 start is very unique in that you have the only Jewish horde with Khazaria. However I doubt we will interact with them much unless we go north of the Caucauses.
Rulers largely do not align with their lands' faith. The striped areas of the religion map show which territories do not have the same faith as their top-level ruler.
Culturally our lands are also divided. Armenian culture largely follows the Apostolic faith areas of the map, and Georgian where the Orthodox faith lies. Farther west the Greek culture dominates Anatolia. To our east, Persian and Daylamite. The culture of the Abbasids is Mashriqi, which is found more towards southern Iraq.
We have a little bit of Cultural Acceptance with Georgian and Greek cultures (25% each), but no Acceptance at all with any others. If we conquer we'll have to work to build up our acceptance of those cultures - or wipe them off the map. I don't think we talked much about the changes to culture in past games, so I'll try to touch on them in more depth in a later post.
Actually, if I'm being honest we aren't even the heir apparent to Armenia in this game. To our southwest lies Prince Ashot of the Armenian Principalities (which is the Kingdom level title for Armenia). He controls the duchy-level title, the Principality of Mets Hayk'. His lands are largely Armenian and Apostolic.
He also has sworn fealty to the Abbasids. Clearly unworthy to keep the Armenian mantle.
That is fine, I am not a huge fan of how the Conflict Areas are implemented. But Navarra leading means I would be playing in Iberia...
