Byzantium

Byzantium needs to be unlocked before you can play as them. To do this you can either complete a campaign (on any difficutly, long or short setting) with one of the five starting factions, or you can edit the preferences file. To do this open your Sega/M2TW folder/data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign, find the file called "descr_strat" and open it with wordpad. Now find the section which says

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campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
  england
  france
  hre
  spain
  venice
end
unlockable
  sicily
  milan
  scotland
  byzantium
  russia
  moors
  turks
  egypt
  denmark
  portugal
  poland
  hungary
end
nonplayable
  papal_states
  aztecs
  mongols
  timurids
  slave
end

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Change it so it reads

Code:

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campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
  england
  france
  hre
  spain
  venice
  sicily
  milan
  scotland
  byzantium
  russia
  moors
  turks
  egypt
  denmark
  portugal
  poland
  hungary
end
nonplayable
  papal_states
  aztecs
  mongols
  timurids
  slave
end

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Faction Information
Byzantium begins play with 5 provinces. Constantinople is a large city, and the capitol. Thessalonica and Nicaea are towns. Corinth is a castle and Nicosia on Cyprus is a wooden castle.

Potential Problems
While mostly surrounded by rebel provinces, Hungary lies north of you, the Venetians lie to the west, and the Turks are to the east. Byzantium is of the Orthodox Christian faith, which means 1) you aren't subject to the Pope and 2) it's quite possible for both crusades and jihads to be called against you. Unless you remain at peace with all catholic factions, your relations with the Papal States will likely nose dive.

I think that if you want to play as byzantines you must be ready to take chanses.What i mean is that you must be ready for war on 2 fronts and if necessary to retreat and concede 1-2 provinces without sacrificing many of your valuable troops.You must advance to all directions and take out the rebel provinces.Go for Smirna,trebizond,rhodes AND i think most importantly go and invade akra from cyprus.Even jerusalem and adana might be easy targets before the egyptians come to the north.

I have been a ByzFan since first running across that Time-Life book on them around two decades ago. Ever since they have been my favorite faction to play in any game that includes them.

Played them for three hours last night on Medium/Medium, my learning curve settings.:embarassed:

With the Turks on your eastern frontier and the Hungarians and Venetians not far from your western frontier you have to keep a strong defense in two directions against enemies that do not have any particular reason or even inclination to not attack you.

You should focus on having two mobile field armies to respond to any incursions and secure any rebel towns/castles nearby.

The easiest for you to reach quickly are Sofia (nw of Constantinople) and Smyrna (s of Nicaea).

Sofia
Sofia is a Wooden Castle with a large missile-type garrison so an assault would be costly. Maintaining a siege is the better option. With so many troops inside they will sally forth on the last turn and at least then your mostly spear troops will have a better chance to force hand to hand.

Also Hungary is next door so you need to move quickly against Sofia. Even then you may just barely beat the Hungarians to Sofia. If you manage to get an alliance with them don't expect their stack nearby to go anywhere. They seem to like to hang around, rather blatantly waiting for an opportunity to take Sofia away from you.

Smyrna
Smyrna is also a Wooden Castle but it has a much weaker garrison than Sofia. You begin with Prince John (Faction Heir) and a small stack south of Nicaea and usually get a mission to take Smyrna from the Council of Nobles pretty quickly.

While an assault is feasible waiting out a siege with a slightly reinforced army for Prince John will usually give you a casualty-free victory. The Turks don't seem particularly inclined to go after Smyrna right away even though Iconium, their capitol, is next door to the east.

I usually sack both cities but an extermination might be a better option to clear out those of other faiths in these cities.

Pirates!
You start with four dromons, two by Thessalonica and two by Nicosia. Pirates start popping up pretty quickly but are one ship each affairs. I suggest combining your two fleets as quickly as possible to guarantee victories and remember to patrol your waters frequently to take care of those piratical scum.

Landbridges
There are three land bridges in your territories so don't count on water and your ships to protect Constantinople from the Turks. There are two linking Niceae and Constantinople. One to your capitol's east and one to its southwest. There is also a landbridge linking the Corinth and Durazzo territories so don't count on Thessalonica to protect Corinth.

Mo' Florins
You begin with only one merchant and must build more economic buildings to be able to build more. There are four silk resources around Constantinople itself. This is an excellent place to begin your economic empire and as soon as possible you should have at least one merchant on each. While merchants cost 550 to produce they have 0 upkeep and the longer they are on a trade resource the more their skill, and the money you get, improves.

Dude, where's my emmisary?
You do not begin the game with a diplomat. However you can build one right away and you should in order to start contacting other factions. The Turks, Hungarians, even the Polish were very willing to share map information, trade rights and sign alliances. However the Venetians stubbornly refused to sign an alliance and generally seemed the most hostile of my neighbors.

Hot Babes and Pointy Hats
You begin with one Princess and soon start getting proposal offers especially if you use her to negotiate some. Her charm starts climbing quickly making her a more attractive potential bride. However all the proposal offers seem to be from local nobles and so I sent her further a field to see about an alliance with the Polish.

Oops

Found a Polish family member far to the north in one of their cities. Thinking that this would strengthen our alliance I sent her in and got a new general instead!?! Relations quickly began plummeting as the understandably upset Poles did not like me having an army, one general, wandering around their territories.

So I am now beginning to think Princesses may be best used to get more generals from local nobles or being used as diplomats.

Preacher
You begin with one priest and without having to worry about the inquisition he is probably best used helping to convert the Catholics in Sofia. While they will probably be a lot more helpful mid-game, early-game they don't seem to be that important.

Rhodes
Rhodes begins as a rebel territory and there is no land bridge to it. So depending on how successful you are an invasion of Rhodes is another opportunity to use your initial ships and troops D-Day style.

Nicosia
Nicosia, Cyprus, gives you an excellent launch pad for invasions of the Holy Land or backdoor campaigns into Turkish err... Turkey. However it is pretty isolated from your home turf so it doesn't seem to give much benefits in the early game. I converted the Castle to a Town and focused on maximizing profits from it instead.

Durazzo
Durazzo is a rebel territory west of Thessalonica. While it may be hard to manage, I had to pull Prince John's stack over since the Hungarians were waiting to strike Sofia and Venice had already attacked Sofia, it is an easy capture. With a small garrison and no walls the Venetians may have already taken it by the time you get there but by then you may be at war with them anyway.

Taking Durazzo helps protect Corinth but don't get too comfy. I've heard that naval invasions are more common in M2TW.

Venice
For some reason, even on Medium, the Venetians seem quite hostile and will probably quickly be attacking your territories. The Passive AI bug gives you an edge if you have significant missile units but they keep coming and you should soon expect to have large battles with them.

Iraklion, Crete, belongs to Venice from the start so ambitious Emperors could use the four Dromon fleet to launch an invasion pretty early.

Relations
Do not expect to become real pals with anyone except possibly the Rus. While I can manage to keep Hungary so-so the Turks stay terrible but seem to be preoccupied in the early-game so you should get some breathing room before they start rolling across your borders.

Will add more as it occurs to me. All in all though I am having a lot of fun.:2thumbsup:

Additional:

Troops
One surprising thing is the lack of melee cavalry, at least in the early game. You basically get three types of cavalry produceable in the early game and they are all horse archers. so any sort of light melee cavalry, like Alan, have to be picked up as mercenaries. While this will be useful against Turkish forces it can be an early disadvantage against the more attack cavalry based western factions.

Also, unlike MTW, you do not have a solid foundation of Byzantine Infantry to build on. Instead your best early melee infantry are the Byzantine Spearmen. While I didn't look to closely they seemed to have the same stats as militia spearmen only higher unit numbers.

Trebizond
I had originally planned to take Trebizond almost immdediately. However, I ran into a problem. The town/castle is on the far eastern side of the territory. This would make it difficult to support or reinforce it if the Turks invaded. Because of this and Venetian/Hungarian hostility you may want to wait until your western frontier is secure before attampting to tackle it and the Turks.

By then the Crusades should begin coming through and provide and adequate distraction for the Turks.

Byzantium is a nation of horsemen, and the strength of its military lies in its cavalry. The infantry is mostly cheap trash. Note, I said mostly. Basically, you have three types of infantry:

Spears
In ascending order of competence, you have town militia, spear militia, and Byzantine spearmen. All are unarmored. The difference between the first two is basically the size of the carried shield. Byzantine spearmen can form schiltron. They are all trash troops, and take lots of casualties, but they're cheap. The first two are trained in cities, but the last one must be trained at a castle with a barracks.

Swordsmen
Your basic swordsman is the Byzantine infantry, followed by dismounted Byzantine lancers and dismounted latinkon. Byzantine infantry wear light lamellar armor and fight with sword and shield. They're decent heavy infantry. Dismounted Byzantine lancers are the same thing, but more so. Stats and cost are a bit higher. Latinkon are basically feudal european knights in the Byzantine military, so those are basically like dismounted mailed knights. They fight with sword and shield instead of spears. Byzantine infantry are recruited in cities, but the other two are from castles.

Archers
Byzantium has good archers. There are 4 types: peasant archers, militia archers, Trebizond archers, and Byzantine guard archers. The latter two have long range missles, and the guard archers wear armor and have good melee stats. All of these must be recruited at castles with archery ranges, save the militia archers, which come from cities with higher level barracks.

There is one other infantry, the Varangian Guard. These are heavy infantry with decent armor, shield, and an AP axe. They are recruited only in a huge city with the highest level barracks.

With the cavalry, you have two broad categories, melee and missile cav. As Sir Robin mentioned, at the beginning, all you have access to is the missile cav, but that's ok. These are all good.

Missile Cav
You have Skythikons, Byzantine cavalry, and Vardariatoi. Skythikons are your basic steppe horse archers: no armor, little melee attack rating, fast moving, decent missle. Byzantine cavalry are the toxic hippos from BI: medium cavalry wearing armor, good melee and missile, but slower than the others. Vardariatoi are the elite steppe archers: high missile and melee stats, armor, fast moving and good stamina, but they cost a lot more. All three of these are recruit at a castle, but no other buildings are necessary. They are all enabled by the castle itself.

Melee Cav
In the melee cavalry category, you have Byzantine lancers, Latinkon, and Kataphractoi. Byzantine lancers are medium cavalry with lances. Latinkon are mailed knights, and kataphractoi are heavily armored cavalry with lances and maces. They don't hit quite as hard in the charge but the maces are armor piercing. All require stables in a castle to recruit, and not the low level buildings either.

There is one other possibility for melee cavalry. If you can establish a merchants guild in a city, it will let you recruit militia cavalry there. They are spear armed light cavalry. Not the greatest as far as stats go, but they will probably be available first if you go that route.

My MP clan has decided to do a PBeM, no write ups just playing :yes: 10 turns each, hard battles and normal campaign. We chose Byzantium because nobody really faniced going as Muslims, except Egypt but their too far from the action and most of us played England first, so didn't really want another catholic faction.

First player has already been and I'm going second, half way through my reign.

We've decided to try and focus on Turkey, well garrisoning but not expanding on the western front. We've got Durazzo and Rhodes and I've got an army on its way to attack Venice's Island, to try and remove its naval presence from the area.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

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Originally Posted by Slaists

To Quillan, didn't see Varangian guards in your Byzantine infantry list. Are those not available for Byzantines in the game?

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The Varangian Guard is indeed available to the ERE. They arent cheap trash infantry though, probably why he didn't put them in there. They are a strange bunch, only available in the final barracks in a city, not a castle. There some nasty lil guys to stumble across with 20 attack 15 defense and a 2 handed armor piercing axe, they have I believe a 5-6 charge rating. Also they do carry a shield so they are not easily put down by archers.

My campaign with the ERE was going good till the a nasty little bug accord. After defeating a jihad that was driectly across a land bridge they defeated and ransomed army got stuck in the middle of the ocean. Prevented ship's from passing through, and put a zone of control over the, land bridge. That was fine and dandy, except my army couldn't attack them and my great fleet was stranded in the black sea.

I would say the ERE is just under the HRE in difficulty, maybe even a little harder later on. Whatever you do put the turks down first, I learned this the hard way. Capture the rebel town in greece and build up to at least a fortress. Once its a fortress it only takes 3-5 archers and spearment to hold it against fullstacks. Leave venice to waste itself on that, then go after the Turks all out. Vardariatio and byantine cav are your friends early on, the turks are very lightly armored and make beautiful pin cushions. Make sure to build your castles up to a level to be able to recruit dismounted lantikon, they are the same as dismounted fuedal knights and can form the core of your line.

Naval

Your navy is important as Byzantium. You start with two fleets, each of which contains two dromons, and can build more. The dromon, statistically speaking, is a mediocre warship (attack of 8), but it has one very important advantage: it has a crew of 56 (on large unit size). All the neighbors can only build galleys or dhows as their initial ships, which have a crew of 37. This gives you an advantage over the pirates and hostile neighbors. The upgraded warship is the Fire Ship, which has the same crew level (it's a dromon, after all) but has an attack of 16 due to the greek fire projectors mounted on it. The war gallies built by your neighbors have the same 56 man crew, but an attack rating of 13. Establish naval superiority early, earn command stars for your admirals, and you should be able to maintain naval superiority well on into the campaign.

Among other things you can do with it, you can use your fleets to block both the land bridges across the Hellespont. Sea trade will be your primary money maker as Byzantium, and a strong navy will help protect that. Also, your starting settlement of Nicosia, the rebel settlement of Rhodes, and the Venetian settlement of Iraklion are all on islands. You'll need fleets to get troops to and from these islands.

Rather than writing an in depth study of the byzantines, i figured i'd just share a few pointers from my game.

1) Don't trust the Catholics. I had an alliance with Hungary from about turn 3, which they broke 2 turns later, starting a long war in the west.
2) Try not to get into a multi-faction war on one front. I've only just overcome the hungarians (they refused peace so i fought an hour long battle for their capital and thus their destruction) and they managed to decimate an early army with the help of the venetians, who attacked me from behind and prompted a sally from budapest
3) You can ignore the turks for a while, but don't trust them. They came from behind as my war with hungary concluded, almost taking nicea :(
4) Having a navy isn't that important, imo. I've survived so far without anything approaching naval superiority, but this is more a result of having to churn out troops to face the catholic factions than conscious choice.
5) You dont' have to win every battle. The main strength of byzantium is their economic superiority. You can run close to borderline every turn in the knowledge that when you do take that city you'll be reimbursed and then some

That's all for now...

EDIT: Oh, and the cavalry aren't really that bad. For fun, i formed a horde led by the faction heir (around 10 units on huge sizes + his bodyguard) and went around clearing up stacks of enemy units lacking cavalry themselves. I usually got a 5:1 kills:death ratio, although this plummeted every time i had to face a general's bodyguard :P

The cavalry are most definitely not that bad. In fact, they are the opposite, exceedingly good. Now, admittedly this is a unit that's been around since the beginning of my campaign, seeing constant combat, but this guy can whip anything the mongols throw at him.
http://216.77.188.54/coDataImages/p/...43/Vardars.jpg

Post Gunpowder

After the development of gunpowder, Byzantium has a few new options, though not many. The campaign selection screen says they are lacking in late gunpowder units, and it's not lying. The only land gunpowder units the Byzantines can build, as far as I can tell, are bombards. They get no better cannons that these, and those aren't that great. They are very slow firing. As far as I can tell, Byzantium gets no handgunners/arquebusiers/musketmen at all, nor any firearm equipped cavalry.

On the naval standpoint, the development of gunpowder enables the building of the dockyards, which in turn enables the building of the Laternas, a cannon-equipped war galley. It has a crew of 75 (on large unit sizes) and an attack of 18. However, this ship type is buildable by other factions as well. I've seen Laternas in the hands of the European Mediterranean factions like the Papal States and the Milanese, so now naval parity has been achieved. Byzantium no longer has a naval advantage in either crew size or shipboard weaponry.

Religion
The Byzantine Empire is of the Orthodox Christian faith. The head of the church is the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the equivalent of the Pope, but he is not modeled in the game. There are some fundamental differences in game as to how the Orthodox and Catholic churches function, and those are crucial. As Byzantium, you are not subject to the Pope. This means that you will not have the Pope giving you missions, you will not have the Pope interfering by telling you to stop conquering your catholic neighbors, you cannot be excommunicated (and thus don't have to worry about that penalty to public order), and you cannot go on crusade. Crusades CAN be called against you, though, so it's best to stay on the good side of the Papal States, at least in the early going.

You have the same line of church buildings as the catholic faith does: small church, church, abbey, cathedral and huge cathedral. However, probably in compensation for the things you lose, the conversion effect of those churches is double that of catholic churches: 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10% for the huge cathedral. Also, the Byzantine unique building is the Ikonic Art line of buildings: the Ikoner's Studio, and the Master Ikoner's Studio. These buildings have the game effect of increasing the conversion value of the orthodox church in the region by 50% and 100% respectively. In a huge city, with a huge orthodox cathedral and a master ikoner's studio (the Hagia Sophia basically), it will convert 20% of the population without any help from priests.

At the beginning of the game you have one bishop, but no priests I have created since come out with that title, even in Constantinople where I have built the Hagia Sophia in effect.

While you have no Pope-o-meter like a catholic faction does, and thus no standing directly with the Pope to worry about, fighting with catholic factions does hurt your relations with the Papal States alongside hurting relations with your target faction. This can be a small problem, as Hungary and Venice, your two western neighbors, are both catholic and both seem prone to attacking you. Depending upon circumstances, you can either blow off the Papal States if you are militarily strong enough, or appease them through gifts. I recommend cash, if you can spare it, as territory is too precious to give away.

Byzantium Melee Infantry
*Byzantine Spearmen begin with 1 XP for each level of barracks above 2, so at barracks 5 (armoury) they'll come out with 3 xp.

Byzantium Ranged Infantry

Byzantium Horse Archers

Byzantium Shock Cavalry
All of these shock cavalry are treated as "knights" by the game for purposes of the Swordsmith's Guild, so having a Master or HQ building will add 1 and 2 XP respectively to these units when created.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sapi

^^ QFT - i was shocked when i saw how effective they were - i charged down crossbowmen and catapults with no problems at all :D

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I just finished some tests with Byzantine cavalry units on medium. I pitted Kataphracts, Vardariotai, Byzantine Lancers and Byzantine Cavalry against Dismounted Gothic Knights. The Kats and Vard took down about 2/3 of the DGK at first charge and finished the rest with maces and swords. By the time the DGK routs or dies Vardariotai are down by 30% and Kats by 20%. I used normal sizes so on average Vardariotai were down to 28-29 and Kats to 31-32. Lancers had to charge, withdraw and charge again and they were down to 23- 24. Byzantine Cavalry lost everytime but they did kill 1/3 of the DGK on first charge.

Talk about powerful charges. I had no idea that charges could be so powerful until i read Hashashiyyin's post on how to make a good charge.

I'll have to edit this later on when I have all the details, but one possible difference between the Byzantine Infantry and the Dismounted Lancers is the number of armor upgrades they can have. There are some differences between units. For example, Byzantine Cavalry can have 2 upgrades while Vardariotai only take one. Dismounted Lancers get 3, while Dismounted Latinkon only get 1.

Edit - The list isn't complete, but the Byzantine Infantry and Dismounted Lancers do not have the same number of armor upgrades. Here's what I have so far:

the varangian guard are too difficult to get. it semd to me that i was going to win my h/h campaign without ever getting to use them. As they are one of the byzantines most famous units- and were available at the start date of the game irl- it is annoying that they are so difficult to get.

i ended up giving up before i finished as i got bored as it was getting failry easy. i think catholic factions are more fun because of the dynamic with the pope + crusades.

i allied with the turks earlly on which game me some breathing space to sort out other areas of expansion.i took durazzo, sofia, rhodes early on. One army then continued up and annexed the slavic steppes territories. russia seems to a little slow off the boat as i had no opposition here.
ignoring the turks initially i sent another army to the holy land. this started off taking the rebel territories like Adana and antioch. i clashed with the egyptians a few times near damascus, and following that they were too weak to prevent me continueing into egypt and crushing them.
by this time turkey declared war on my, but did so only by blockading one of my ports. i had accumulated a reasonably big army in constanople by that point mostly from mission rewards and i moved this eastwards to take on the turks. i fought few pitched battles with the turks and instead just went for their cities. the a.i is a bit dissapointingly slow to react as i was able to eliminate the turk civilization by taking all their cities when they had a full stack army in range to do something about it on several occasions.

in europe i was besieged in sofia several times by both the huns and the venecians. i just made sure the town had a lage garrison and the invaders either gave up or wer shot to pieces when they invaded.

i ended up sending my faction leader with an army over to florence which was still a rebel city. i bided my time there for a very long time waiting until until venice was left un garrisoned.

tip- try and expand fairly swiftly i think it is usefu lto be able to take on the muslims before they have managed to get their act together.
try and do the council of noble missions as much as possible, this is particularly important on harder ai settings. the council will often give you the mission to take a rebel city- often one you have just discoverd. however the council wont tell you to take a city if you already have it under seige. therfore it is woth lhaning around near rebel cities until you are actually asked to take it.

I have started using all cav armies with Byzantium and boy, they are amazing! I use 1 general, 3-4 HC, 1-2 LC and the rest are Vardariotai or Byzantine cavalry. For HC I use Frankish mercenary cav in the West and Armenian cav on the east. In RTW I never used all cav armies, but now that I 've seen how effective they are it is hard to do without them. I just finished a battle against 2 Egyptian 1000 strong armies (normal size, mine was about 750) and they had about 7-8 archer units each. The result was a heroic victory though I lost 2 ByzLancers and 2 Vardariotai units. Now I am going to try my new field army: 3 Kats, 3 Latinikon and 14 Vardariotai. I am invincible! :laugh4:

Edit: The Kats do not seem worth building. They have 2 less armor than Vardariotai (I think the Vardariotai defence skill is typo) and 2 more charge, but the Vardariotai have a 9 missile attack.

In the earlier going, a typical army for me was 1 general, 4 Vardariotai, 8 Byzantine Cavalry and 2 Skythikons. No mercs at all, no infantry, no shock cavalry other than the general's bodyguard. I only used infantry armies at the very beginning, when it was all I had, and lately, when I started assaulting the Italian cities.

This Vardariotai seems to be a MTW Boyar on speeddrugs :dizzy2:

You basically almost get the perfect cavalry. Fast and deadly with both bow and sword, good armor and hiiiigh defense. Plus a relative low upkeep to maintain a lot of these demigods....

Fast and light to medium HA taking down Dismounted GK in a melee, no something doesn't sound right there :no:

Cheers
OA

I have had a nasty surprise in my current Byz campaign. I have got almost all Asia Minor from the Turks and the Mongols came up. While they kept losing stack after stack trying to get my uber-fortified Adana, I pitched a full stack (vardariots mostly, few guard archers, one kata and the general) of mine against a typical stack of theirs.

They bloody decimated me! How all-powerful are the bloody mongols? The highlight piece: 4 (FOUR) units of Vardariots encircle their general - in order to shoot the MF to oblivion. Well, guess what: I turned the other way around to deal with the rest of their army and next thing I saw, two of the vardars at 1/2 strength and one routing... The Mongol still standing. What is this, Jedi Mongol general or something?

By the way, the strategy guide says Vardariots should be available in the high and late periods only, whereas in the game, they are available right away and from the most basic castle level. Could it be a bug? Their availability makes Byzantine cavalry obsolete, IMHO.

It's not the most basic level, it's the 3rd. You have to go from a Motte & Bailey to a Wooden Castle to a Castle. Corinth starts as a Castle, while Nicosia is a Wooden Castle.

I should preface this by stating that I have played another Byzantine game previously which like most others here focussed on a Venetian war early on when my initial plan was to hit the turks.

I play VH battle /H campaign and really wanted to fight to regain control of Asia Minor from the start but found that you simply cannot ignore the catholic west at the beginning of the game when the Turks are ready to fall. What I have found though is that although you cannot ignore the west you can in fact avoid fighting there by adoption of an early warning system plus diplomacy. I started out by creating an army in the west out of the garrisons available at the beginning in Constantinople, Thessalonika and Corinth. I moved the princess to establish early contact with Hungary, who i left to take Sofia but sold trade rights and maps to and made a diplomat to send to Venice. The western army moved initially against any rebels and began constructing a perimiter of watch towers, my diplomat reached Venitian territory and was actually able to establish an alliance that has so far held ( about 30 turns now ), even with me taking Durazzo on a council mission. To keep the peace I simply maneuver my western army to shadow any likely Venetian or Hungarian incursions. In the meantime I have teched up like mad in the west and can now field both Byzantine Infantry and Byzantine Guard along with the Vardariots who served as the initial backbone of my forces in the west. Any Venetian or Hungarian attack can now be dealt with using the western half of my forces. Meanwhile in the East i have taken Smyrna, Rhodes and Adana, Smyrna and Adana remain castles with everything else converted to cities.

In short i am now in the position of having a strong economy with access to decent units and am preparing a strike at a weakly defended Iconium as my first step in restoration of Byzantine authority in Asia minor whilst enjoying military strength and peace in the west.

Good luck and act fast - when the horde comes, once they got Antioch they'll come after Asia Minor, wave after wave after wave... and when you think you're done with the Mongols, the Timurids and their uber-elefants will give you a run for your money... damn crappy byzantine units, they can't stand against anything...

While playing my second game as the byzantines i thought i`d share my opinion about how to get started.
Your initial position gives a great start financialy and military
Your initial targets must be 2
1.take smyrna (this way u get a reward from your nobles)
2.take sofia(it is a race against the hungarians which u must win so that u can then expand to the north in bucarest and possibly iasi).
After u take smyrna take your general and his army,board him on a ship and head to the middle east.U can then take acra or antiochia before the egyptians.
From there on it is on to damascus(race against the egyptians-it also has a large guard) or to adana
U can make corinth into a city-more cash and also take rhodes and turn it in to a city.
Dont go for durazzo in the west early on(it takes a lot of time to develop and u get into a confrontation with venice early on which u dont want)
I think from then on your goal is to take as many of the rich cities in the east as possible(edessa,aleppo,adana,damascus).
Key military units 1.vardariotai of course
2.byzantine infantry(good,reliable,not expensive)
3.trebizont and byzantine guard archers
Mercenaries:Bulgarian brigands(good meele and archers).
Hope I helped u somewhat:beam:

If you are playing Byzantines, does it make sense to put your merchants on resources right next to your capital? I have not played the faction yet, but, from the description of merchants, their yields are at minimum if placed near their faction's capital (Constantinopole). For Byzantines, it would make more sense to send their merchants to take over amber in the north or gold in Timbuktu.

Merchants are a bit of an issue with Byzantium. The 4 silk resources near Constantinople are a wonderful training ground for new merchants, but they don't generate a lot of money per turn from trading. The most I ever got was perhaps 70 florins a turn, and that was with a merchant with a very high finance skill.

One key point with merchants is that you want them to pick up the Monopolist trait, which is good for +3 finance at the highest level. It only seems to come when the merchant is trading a resource which occurs twice in that province. I left one merchant standing on the wine in Rhodes for his entire life span and he never got the first point, but 5-10 turns on the silk near the capitol would at least get the first rank and perhaps the second of the trait. Once that's done, however, there aren't a whole lot of good resources to use for trading. Silk is largely worthless since it's right there, wine and grain aren't worth a lot. There is a gold down just by Ragusa which is probably the best bet to sit on, also the amber near Krakow is quite valuable. The problem is, if they go too far away from the capitol, then the Loyal to Coin line of traits pops up, each one worth -1 finance.

Use the silk near Constantinople to train new merchants until they hit Monopolist, then move them elsewhere. Trade what you can, but you'll probably do better taking over other merchants than strictly trading.

I think you get the Monopolist trait by being the only faction trading a paticular recource in a given province, I also think you need more than 1 of that recource in the province for it to apply.

Ok, Byzantium.

Where to start?

I always start at Smyrna, since later it will be a council mission. Then I attack Durrazo (I think that's the name), then build defences and train troops to defend against future war with Venice (trust me, they will attack sooner or later). Run to Sophia before Hungary gets it. If they do, it's a base of possible invasion of Greece and Constantinople. Attack Trebizond, as it will give you a second front against Turkey (along with Smyrna).

Enemies

Don't just focus on Turkey. When I did that, Greece fell to Hungary and Venice. So, stock up troops on the Western Coast of Greece. This should be good for defense against Venice. If you capture Sophia, you have a base to launch attacks on Hungary, if you didn't capture it. Capture it. When you secure your Northern and Western parts of your Roman Empire, attack Turkey. By this time, you should have Trebizond, Ibisil and Smyrna. Launch a 3 way attack on Turkey to knock it out quickly. Once that is done, mop up Hungary and Venice.

From what little experience I have with Byzantium, I found that your best bet is to take those elite horse archers and storm Europe. The AI's handling of infantry-heavy armies is poor at best, so you can really rip them apart with relatively few losses. Why fight cavalry with cavalry in the east when your cavalry can pretty much run about unopposed in the west? Control the black sea and the eastern mediterranean and you can effectively seal yourself off from the east.

The cities on the eastern mediterranean coast are very lucrative, but you run into a lot of trouble with egypt, turkey, the mongols and timurids. In the west, your toughest fights might be polish nobles and, to a lesser extent, some european horse archers. Other than that, it's pretty much down to wiping out their archers and playing around with their infantry. Crossbowmen are particularly vulnerable when you charge them just as they start their long reload animation (the only downside being you sometimes eat a volley at point blank range just before reaching them in melee).