Why\'s everybody always pickin\' on me?

[The Black Ship]

Byz have to be the Charlie Brown of this game!

Scenario: Byzantine/late period/expert. I'm doing quite well with my eastern expansion (Golden horde just went bye bye, allied w/Russia), with a little anti-islamic army just terrorizing the Egyptians in Palestine/Arabia. I've also managed to overtake the Balkans, except Croatia/Hungary.

My problem is everyone's launching these damn Crusades/Jihads against me. the Egyptian Jihad is certainly understandable, I'd be pissed if I'd lost Rum too after 10 years. However, what have I ever done too France, Aragon, Spain, and Germany?

That's right I currently have 4 Crusades and 1 Jihad targeting me. I swear some of these guys were allied with me too...go figure.

I should get a bonus for knocking these things off...like maybe the ability to improve my spear line (afterall, with all the weapons/armour lying about I wouldn't even have to know how the make them).

[Hosakawa Tito]

It can be lonely at the top Black Ship http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif
Sounds like you've reached that point in the game where the AI determines you are too powerful and they all start to gang up on you. I'm currently playing the French on hard GA, and I'm purposely trying not to expand too much. I reduced the English to Mercia and Northumbria. I've just killed the last of the Almohad's, who bumped off the Spanish and Argonese, so all of the Iberian Penninsula and Aragon are rebel. Easy pickings, but I'm only going to take Aragon to get that iron deposit to make better weapons. Other than that I have Burgundy(taken from the Elmos), and Wessex(taken from the English earlier when I kicked them off the continent). I gave up trying to take Tripoli (to build a citidel for the GA condition) by crusade. My crusaders have to fight too many battles with the Turks and Egyptians just to reach Tripoli and then I don't have enough men left to take it. It seems the Christian factions are pretty weak in this particular campaign, very few crusades, the Elmo's beat up on the HRE and Italians in central and southern Europe before I came to their rescue. The Byzantines
seem to be having a hard time with the Egyptians, so it appears to be a Muslim dominated world in the east. Should be different than my other campaigns to date, and hopefully more fun. I don't want to conquer the whole map.

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Diplomacy is the art of telling someone to go to hell so that they look forward to making the trip.

[Tora]

I've currently got Spanish,German and French Crusades all heading for Antioch which seems to be a popular destination. Unfortunately it's held by me, the Byzantines, after I wiped out the Turks and Egyptians. All that matters to the Catholics is that it's in non-Catholic hands although they do have the decency to ask if they may come in, the reply having to be "No".

I can just about put up with being ganged up on like this but the final straw was when what few allies I did have all deserted me because they wanted to stay allied to the Poles.

The trouble was that neither the Poles nor I had raised a hand to each other yet the AI had us marked down as being at war.

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King Richard : St Juniper once said, "By his loins shall ye know him and
by the length of his rod shall he be measured." The length of my rod is a
mystery to all but the Queen, and a thousand Turkish whores, but the
fruits of my loins are here for all to see. I have two sons, Henry and
.... another one.
Step forward, Harry, Prince of Wales.

[insolent1]

Yeah I hate it when it gets to that point in the game. Normally when I do play GA I try & stay small but it still dosen't work. So far all my GA games have turned into conquest becuase of the stupid attacks that the AI makes. I wish the AI would make war for better reasons. The worst is when it attacks your fleets for no reason & only sinks 1 or 2 ships to start with.

[DK]

I scared the Pope into allying with me (Byzantines) *giggles* now I have no crusades whatsoever coming my way, and the only Islamic faction left is the almohads, who are way too busy in the Iberian peninsula to deal with me.

[malkuth]

Actually since your a Non Catholic its reasanable that the pope is threatened by you and calls crusades. He does it to my egyptian empire all the time.

Ai knows better to listen though, most the time.