Secrets of the Byzantine Empire ?!?

Since there are many fans here of the Byzantine perhaps you could give me a little insight into their modus operandi... here is the scenario:

I've been playing a campaign starting in the early period with the English and have fought tooth and nail to build my empire and in the process have been excommunicated and been at war with the French, Germans, Spanish, Aragonese, Danish, Almohads, Italians and Sicilians. This is the price for Empire, okay, fine I can accept that.

However, I've been watching the Byzantine Empire and they've been growing almost effortlessly and involved in very little wars except with Rebels and just Turkey. (I have the view the entire map cheat on so I see all that they do)
They have gained almost all of the lands from the middle of the map to the eastern edge and have not had to make war with anyone really... in fact they have the most alliances in the game. Somehow there are all manners of rebellions in the lands bordering them which they quickly capitalize on... and they've been doing this from the start.

So are they just incredibly fortunate or do they have some trick up their sleeve? I know spies come quite late in the game so do they start out with a bunch of them or something? Or is it just a great deal of unrest in the eastern lands?

As I am a Byzantophile,

I can say it's the random AI. It never occured to me, though.
When I play the Byzantines, the Turks never survived the Early period. They are too weak.

1. Their units are very strong in High, as compared to other factions' (especially the Catholics).

2. As you may notice, the first Emperor has high command and other stats. In addition, high influence as well. These combine to perpetuate strong royal princes. Add high command and valour princes to 40 men kata units.

3. I have seen the Byzantines being weak, even destroyed. That is when I play one of their neighbours ~;) (even if I dont war against them, just hem them in as the Hungarians or Ppl of Novgorod and let the Turks or Egyptians destroy them).

And nice, wealthy lands. The piece on the boot (forget the name) isn't bad. But then there's modern-day Greece, Constantinople, Nicea, and Anatolia. While not RICH RICH RICH, they do go a long way to financing early Byzantine expansion.

Off-topic, has ANYone seen the Turks survive? (Not even in XL or BKB's mod have I seen the Turks make it to High alive.)

Unless I'm playing AS the Turks, of course. Muwahahaa...

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Originally Posted by Mujalumbo

Off-topic, has ANYone seen the Turks survive? (Not even in XL or BKB's mod have I seen the Turks make it to High alive.)

Unless I'm playing AS the Turks, of course. Muwahahaa...

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I've seen them be the bigest and strongest empire on the map many times....BKB super mod

In my game as England, there was a succession of three empires in the East from Poland to Armenia.

The first were the Byzantines. They conquered everything to Poland. I crusaded through them to get my GA goals. They didn't allow me to get through, but my 6 star hero Hobiliar force retreated every Byzantine Army. Then I got to Constantinople... which was unguarded... so I sold 10K in developments and crusaded on until the Eggy's defeated the Crusade and then the Spanish conquered Palestine... Grrr.

After the loss of Constantinople plus the Italians and German crusaders, the Turks took over in High. They conquered all the Byzantine territories and reoccupied it's borders. They didn't kill anyone else since within 15 years, the Horde showed up and killed them.

So now the horde is big and the Spanish are too. They attack Aragon. Thus, I kill their hordes of Javelin men and invade Leon. All hell breaks loose in the form of civil war, rebellions, religious insurrections, and the Almohads reappearing with 2 full stacks in North africa. But the Spanish, beind presistant, won back North Africa. The turks being dead, the Mongols take over everything from Prussia to the Sinai. So thus, I invade Russia as the English and in 6 bridge battles in a row, kill 6 Khans. They fall apart and I take over Russia.

That's my little story.

I wish you guys could have seen how the Byzantine empire developed in my game it was baffling to me how they hardly had to fight a real army but instead plenty of rebel ones. The only good thing for me in this is that I have a core of hardy veterans whereas they have mostly green soldiers. I've pretty much fought to a stalemate and standstill with them as we're faced off with full stack border armies but Antisocialmunky got me thinking about the coming Horde. Since I know they're gonna have to deal with this humongous steamroller army coming through I'm just gonna build up my provinces, upgrade my army and smash them after the Mongols hit...

Muahahahahahaha (in Evil, Deviant and Diabolical laugh)

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Originally Posted by antisocialmunky

In my game as England, there was a succession of three empires in the East from Poland to Armenia.

The first were the Byzantines. They conquered everything to Poland. I crusaded through them to get my GA goals. They didn't allow me to get through, but my 6 star hero Hobiliar force retreated every Byzantine Army. Then I got to Constantinople... which was unguarded... so I sold 10K in developments and crusaded on until the Eggy's defeated the Crusade and then the Spanish conquered Palestine... Grrr.

After the loss of Constantinople plus the Italians and German crusaders, the Turks took over in High. They conquered all the Byzantine territories and reoccupied it's borders. They didn't kill anyone else since within 15 years, the Horde showed up and killed them.

So now the horde is big and the Spanish are too. They attack Aragon. Thus, I kill their hordes of Javelin men and invade Leon. All hell breaks loose in the form of civil war, rebellions, religious insurrections, and the Almohads reappearing with 2 full stacks in North africa. But the Spanish, beind presistant, won back North Africa. The turks being dead, the Mongols take over everything from Prussia to the Sinai. So thus, I invade Russia as the English and in 6 bridge battles in a row, kill 6 Khans. They fall apart and I take over Russia.

That's my little story.

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Nice story ~;) and excellent fighting (playing) ~:cheers: .

Twice, when playing as the English, Early (incompleted games, played before installing VI expansion), I've witnessed the Byz be crushed down until there's nothing left of them except 6 katank units, stuck on Rhodes. All severe alcoholics...

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Originally Posted by EatYerGreens

Twice, when playing as the English, Early (incompleted games, played before installing VI expansion), I've witnessed the Byz be crushed down until there's nothing left of them except 6 katank units, stuck on Rhodes. All severe alcoholics...

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That is hilarious! :laugh4: I guess there wasn't anything else to do.

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Originally Posted by Mujalumbo

And nice, wealthy lands. The piece on the boot (forget the name) isn't bad.

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If you mean the boot-shape of Italy, then it's Naples you are thinking of.

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Originally Posted by Mujalumbo

But then there's modern-day Greece, Constantinople, Nicea, and Anatolia. While not RICH RICH RICH, they do go a long way to financing early Byzantine expansion.

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Very true. The first thing I do when beginning a campaign, especially so if it's a faction I've not tried, is get a jotting pad and note down the base-level Agriculture production figures for each province I hold, with auto taxes temporarily switched off and taxes set at normal. This has to be done before you issue titles as each acumen feather boosts tax generated by about 8.5%, as far as I can make out.

Anyway, I then rank the base-level outputs in order of magnitude and that determines the sequence in which I'll apply each level of farm improvements later in the game. Once done, I issue governor titles and start making moves.
The only time I'll deviate from the rankings is where one province's production is better than one which initially ranked better, as a result of it's gov picking up acumen boosting V&V's. Common sense says to strip titles and reassign the best to the best but often my margins are tight and I can't afford to lose one year's worth of acumen booster on two good provinces simultaneously.

I'm unable to determine whether title stripping occurs before annual income is assessed or the other way around. Being a pessimist, I assume the former and thus that some loss of income occurs whenever a title has been stripped. To switch titles between two govenors requires two in one go unless you have a third gov candidate handy as an intermediate.

Turn 1: Order Title-Strip of Gov A (best acumen, 2nd best province)
Turn 2: Title can be allocated to intermediate Gov, C (say Ac-4 minimum).
Order Title-Strip of Gov B (not-best acumen, best province)
Turn 3: Re-issue best prov title to Gov A
Order Title-Strip of intermediate Gov, C.
Turn 4: Re-issue 2nd best province title to Gov B
Gov C's loyalty will be as good as it started with. Choose well.

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Originally Posted by Mujalumbo

Off-topic, has ANYone seen the Turks survive? (Not even in XL or BKB's mod have I seen the Turks make it to High alive.

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I think their biggest mistake is, all the same, quite a logical one. That is they ally themselves to the Eggies, giving them no direction in which to expand, except against the Byz and the early Byz troops are good enough quality to defeat them.

The second mistake they make is racking up expensive mounted units and not investing in tech developments which deliver the kind of units capable of taking on the Byz.

The third mistake is one of pure geography. Without a coast, their scope for increasing income is limited, so they need to succeed against either Byz or Eggies to stand a hope for the rest of the Early period. Meanwhile, both the Eggies and the Byz have juicy coastal provinces and can whollop the Turks even with low quality troops, simply because they can deploy hordes of them.

I'd swear that when the AI fights against other AI factions, the attacked faction sometimes decides to retreat without fighting, purely on the basis of superior numbers in the invasion force. This is stupid because the Eggies seem to like striding in with just 60 ghulams, maybe 240 camels but about 3000 damn peasants. The Turks have matching numbers of Ghulams plus enough HA's and decent cav to shoot/charge them to smithereens but meekly retreat then fall into that negative cashflow death-spiral, having lost a territory.

The typical human player wants to fight the battles in full and will win against this kind of force. Okay, so the captured pez will only rate about 1 florin per man in ransom but capture a thousand or two and you've a nice tonic to your economy - like a 40% farm boost practically for free.

The AI has been programmed to apply the teachings of Sun-Tzu but one of those is that "sometimes it is better to retreat than to fight" (subtext - against hopeless odds). This is all well and dandy when you've plenty of holdings to retreat to and strength elsewhere with which to strike back and retake what was lost. However, if retreating without a fight stands to cripple your remaining economy with troop maintainance (AI's seeming inability to demobilise redundant/ineffectual early units and replace with teched-up ones is a major programming flaw, IMHO, not to mention potentially economy-saving disbandments under exactly these circumstances) then it makes sense to stand and fight, knowing that even if you should lose, then at least the casualties you suffered will reduce your costs, possibly permitting fresh training of your best unit types as replacements for what may follow, plus you will have inflicted at least some casualties on the numerical superiority of the invaders and dulled the impact of their next attempted attack.

Fair enough, I have no idea how you translate what I just said into programming code but if they managed to code Sun-Tzu in the first place, I doubt CA would have too hard a time with it. As it stands, it's quite an achievement. It's only the circumstances in which certain principles are applied which needs tweaking a bit.

EDIT: correct typos only

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Originally Posted by dgfred

That is hilarious! :laugh4: I guess there wasn't anything else to do.

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Yup. I'm re-doing Byz at the moment and already I have a handful of drinkers. Start of the slippery slope, I'm afraid to say. Luckily these were mostly unit leaders within a stack, not stack leaders in their own right.

It seems to happen when the stack is left sitting guarding a border province or is a side-stack, left in the fort and remains inactive for a long while (no actual battles). I know the AI likes to do that thing where units shuttle back and forth between provinces all the time (to keep you guessing about force-mixes) but I rarely bother copying that trick, so maybe this inactivity is why I fall foul of this a lot.

One of my static princes developed gluttony, which cost him some valour points. I paid little attention but now he's become emperor! Worse yet, the royal-blood generals are now all dying of old age, whilst he is in his mid-forties and married but has no heir. Just as the economy is getting healthy, things are looking a bit terminal for me at the moment. See one of the two Civil War threads ongoing at the moment.


By the way, this Byz stuck on Rhodes thing only happened whilst I was playing as the English. Another incomplete campaign as Almos saw the Byz doing very well for themselves, thank you, heading north and taking over much of the steppes areas.

EDIT: embarassing typos again!!

I don't really bother pruning family trees. This is especially true of me playing as the Byzantines. I mean, you're getting 4-6 star princes every couple turns, I don't want my generals turning emperor and dying. Generals always carry over. If they become king, they die and that nice 8 star general is gone. Good generals are forever, especially in inquisition free territory.

Hell, as the Byz, let your crappy heirs get the throne and then slap on all the command star titles to the disinheritted. That way, you can be running around with a 9 star Jedi ninja man a few decades in while everyone else has 4 stars.


And I haven't seen any effect that unit shuffling has... When I was playing that English game, all 6 of the Mongol Khans were inbred drunkards. Their only good general(9 star) was the son of an elephant and had enough vices on him to counter act all the morale his stars gave.

Yes, the Byzantines always seem to get stuck on Rhodes. I had a Italian game where they got stranded on Rhodes rather quickly and they kept popping out 6 star Katanks. Alcohalism seems to be rather pervasive if you keep guys sitting still.

It was the most powerful army of 90 proof Katanks I had ever seen. I never did manage to take Rhodes...

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Originally Posted by antisocialmunky

It was the most powerful army of 90 proof Katanks I had ever seen. I never did manage to take Rhodes...

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You mean you lost the odd army from failed sea-borne invasions? (gulp!)
Well done for trying though.

The trouble is that, once stuck there, they are totally crippled from doing anything. No fleet to get them off the island and insufficient strength - in spite of katankness - to guarantee invasion success in the first place. Furthermore, no prospect of developing their way out of the financial hole caused by the maintainance costs of half a dozen kat units being bout 4 times what the island can produce, even at +40% farms, or better.

A mod giving Rhodes a tradable might help some but what's it to be - holiday timeshares are not exactly of the period. ~;)

Anything historically accurate they could sell? Saltfish? Wine maybe?

It was alot of Katanks, and I don't like playing Italy so I quit...

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Originally Posted by EatYerGreens

Anything historically accurate they could sell? Saltfish? Wine maybe?

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You'd never guess.... Salt

Venezia and the Byzantines fought for Rhodes and Cyprus, which produced large quantities of salt.

That's alot of salt trade you would need to assault the mainland.

When I see they Byzantines expand, it is usually because they have enough money to bribe rebels/enemies.
In one campaign they expanded early, took out the turks and started buying their way through the steppes to the Baltic. However they didn't count on the Horde which came in and crushed their overextended armies. Civil war, looting, pillaging, all for my little Danish army to come in and clean up the mess that was Constantinople.

mfberg

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Originally Posted by mfberg

However they didn't count on the Horde which came in and crushed their overextended armies.

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I'm tempted to start another thread about this but here's as good a place as any.

When they are playing as the Byz, I wonder how many players make preparations, to be good and ready for the arrival of the Horde and how many are capable of being strict enough with themselves to role-play it and just go about with normal sized armies, conquering this and bribing that and let themselves get slammed in exactly this way, THEN respond to it and see how well they do?

The only way for a player to experience the GH as a genuine surprise is for them to be on their first ever campaign (as any faction, since you get a report of their emergence even if not directly affected by them) and to have bought the game with only the sketchiest knowledge of European history.

In my current Byz run, Serbia has been my only move on the European front. The rest of the action has been finishing the Turks and Egypt are down to their last territory (battling for this now but three attempts have all ended with the PC rebooting itself just when the action got intense). Preoccupation with the Turks meant I was too slow to grab Khazar before they'd accumulated a stack and a half there. I don't know the odds on successfully bribing split stacks yet and probably can't afford to anyway. The Khazars (rebels) are holding the Poles at bay, have several provinces and have even built keeps! I don't have enough cav yet to threaten them but foreknowledge of the coming Horde tells me to leave them alone in the hope they'll absorb some of the blow (though, more than likely, they'll just meekly auto-retreat instead, when faced with multi-stacks).

My move to the south, with the rich Egyptian lands is, in part, a response to knowing that the Horde will come and ensures a big chunk of my lands is going to be out of harm's way. This is thanks to an incompleted previous campaign (lost after HDD failure) which means I know roughly where they arrive. I could say to myself that I couldn't realistically hope to take on the cav-heavy armies in Bulgarian lands and Khazar using infantry/archer based armies, so Turks then south, into the desert, was my only option while I wait for decent Cav to become buildable. It's 1163 and I will have Katanks from the capital in about 4 years (church + monastery for +2 morale) and V1 'Porno' Cav (w. lev 1 armour and church for +1 morale) from Nicea in 6 years.

I usually don't bother taking Russia in Early since I rather bash through the Muslims to get at iron-rich Iberia. I personally like to play and pretend that I don't know about the Mongols then.

Usually I end up in Trebizond in High after the Mongols invade so I can let them rampage through the Eggies. If I can't make peace with them, they usually give up after 4800 casualties or 3-4 assaults. Hiding in the woods or having massive stacks of archers rotating in and out are my strategies.

I definitely hear you guys about on one hand wanting to pretend like you don't know history or what the game is programmed to do (eg. civil war near the end).

For instance in my war against the Byz I am kinda anticipating the Mongol Horde coming so I'm fighting them from the Northeast and the Southeast mostly so that I can smash down into them when they're hurt. I guess for realism sake I could attack them as I would any faction but its hard to un-know a coming historical event.

As for civil war I'm stacking plenty of garrison peasants since they're cheap and trying to keep my presences in my provinces so strong that I can autotax at very high.

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Originally Posted by EatYerGreens

If you mean the boot-shape of Italy, then it's Naples you are thinking of.

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No, he's talking about the Byzantines and their main province of Constantinople.

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The main thing to realize about the Byzantines is that they are the easist faction to play for a reason. They are even easy for the AI.

The Byz with Constantinople, particularly in the early- to mid- game are easily the richest and most powerful faction, directly from the outset.

Constantinople is literally the richest province of them all. It has three very good tradebales and is perfectly positioned as a Port province. It has GREAT trading partners IMMEDIATELY available--right next door--in the Black Sea. It takes what? just a single ship to access all the Black Sea provinces!! Very cost effective!!!

The Med is just a hop away. South into the Med, to the left is Egpyt and the VERY rich trading of MULTIPLE (3/2 tradeable) provinces; and/or right toward Sciliy and Venice, both with 3 tradeables. The Byzantines are positioned EXTREMELY well!

In addition, they are hard-coded to produce UBER generals!!! I do mean UBER! The Byz normally have the highest *starred* generals in the game, particularly early on.

It's virtually impossible for the Byz not to succeed in the early- to mid- game, unless the human player takes some Pre-emptive action (with an eye toward the mid- and late- game).

One way is to get a strong fleet into the Med ASAP! Then, control the Bospherous by simply taking out any Byzantine ships as soon as they hit the water. Never allow the Byz to establish a *Sea Trading* network of ships.

Another way is to use your Alliances wisely, use your Princesses, Spies and religious Agents. Use the Princesses to spy; Spies to incite rebellions; and Priets, etc. to increase the percentage of Catholics, again inciting rebellion. Oh, I forget, use these in Constantinople!!!

[BTW, Alliances *do* work. They just take a bit of finesse.]

Try very hard to avoid *direct* war with the Byz; but, do use your alliances and all efforts to promote the Byz' neighboring factions to war with them. What you want is for Constantinople to be attacked!! and to keep the Byz busy, and on the defense; too busy to manage their economy and expand their empire.

The key, again, is Constantinople. If by use of all the above tactics, you can manage to, generally, keep it under-developed, this will significantly dis-advantage the Byz.

The aim is to have the Turks, Egytians, Greeks either singly in turn or in concert, to be constantly fighting over Constantinople.

Each turn, one or the other takes Constantinople, and the next turn, the Byz take it back; and so on, and so on, and so on....

Under the above circumstance, Constantinople will NEVER develop into an economic powerhouse.

This is a good Strategic aim, which manages to keep BOTH the Byz and the Turks from growing too powerful by the time a Northern or Western faction gets down south.

Remember, its a *Strategy* game! ;)

Also, w/o checking the stats, I'd say the Byz are set to be *Expanionist*. This fact, in addition, to whatever *hard-coding* CA put upon the Byz, creates hard balancing act for the AI, when the Byz are under an *Agent* Attack, as outlined above; and, neighboring factions begin a buildup in the border lands. The AI, has a hard time dealing these priorities, while simultaneously attempting to expand. As a consequence you'll see a LOT of Stack dancing.

[BTW, while I'm advocating an Agent attack, I'm not advocating exploiting the game. Flooding the province with 10 spies is ridiculous! No more than 4, along with 2 or 3 priests s/b more than enough. It's ok, to have a reserve ready and waiting for replenishment as the Agents are killed off and/or die of old age.]

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@DensterNY,

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They have gained almost all of the lands from the middle of the map to the eastern edge and have not had to make war with anyone really... in fact they have the most alliances in the game. Somehow there are all manners of rebellions in the lands bordering them which they quickly capitalize on... and they've been doing this from the start.

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This is typically how the Byz faction develops. They are so rich and powerful and have such high *Influence* from the very outset of the the game that ALL the factions in the vacinity want to ally. I think the Turks are the exception, being the main adversary for the Byz. This is all quite historical!

Allying with the Turks, and discovering ways to help make them strong(er) is one aim in *pre-emptively* countering the Byz.

~ToranagaSama

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Originally Posted by ToranagaSama

No, he's talking about the Byzantines and their main province of Constantinople.

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Errr, okay, if you insist. I don't see it as boot-shaped somehow...

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Originally Posted by Mujalumbo

The piece on the boot (forget the name) isn't bad. But then there's modern-day Greece, Constantinople, Nicea, and Anatolia.

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Since he put Connie in the list which follwed, I assumed he meant Naples.

I could still be wrong and he meant something within modern-day Turkey.

In my current campaign my trade routes don't extend that far and, even with its trade output, I don't see Naples' income as being that great at the moment. Due to what is now a two-stack Sicilian army threatening invasion (one attempt inexplicably aborted so far - weather perhaps?), I've curtailed investment in Naples due to the risk of total loss of the province (even with owning a port both there and in Serbia and no active Adriatic blockade I'm unsure whether a retreat path over water is valid, should I need it, so I expect to lose my army stack in toto, short of the 'rematerialisation' type of return, via ransoming, if I did lose) which means only a TP and 20% farms so far. By contrast, Nicaea and Anatolia have handsome farm outputs and Rum is even better still, once you've secured it - 1100+ per year, even with nothing to trade or mine. (Acumen 5-6 govs with Steward virtue plus a Steward ruler help even more!)

Okay, this is peanuts compared to what I can expect later in the game, when I link to even more ports. The AI is kind of sluggish about constructing its own and some naval clashes have stopped me extending much beyond the coasts of my own land holdings. My ports are only getting local trade plus Moldavia, Croatia, Papal States and Venice but Antioch still clocks up about 750 a year from that, when I'm not blockaded. Trade is as good, or better than gaining whole extra provinces, without casualties or overstretching your borders beyond what your current troop numbers can defend.

The Black sea is indeed an earner but it's actually two ships you need to trade out of Connie to there. Sea Marmara is tiny but is a sea zone in its own right. The capital's port opens into Marmara, not Black sea. A port in Bulgaria will allow you to trade just wheat, using a single ship but other Black Sea provinces also export wheat, so nothing registers from them.

In my case, Crimea and Kiev are the only ports up so far, are rebel held and, in spite of never having attacked the Khazars, I can't trade with them because my attack on rebels in Serbia, earlier on, means that I'm now regarded as being at war with ALL rebel factions. Not that I need the additional income at the moment... ~:pimp:

I usually roleplay the Mongol invasion, but by that time I usually have an excellent trade network, so my ships are capable of taking my 4-5 standing army groups straight to the front.

As the Turks, I also roleplay the taking of Constantinople, only 350 years earlier... ~;)

I am playing Byzantine right now and I am enjoying their high level generals! :charge:

I think it makes sense that they could produce high level generals since they are the heirs of the Roman tradition. I imagine that Constantinople would have vast libraries of military history and excellent military acadamies. They have a head start on the frankish kingdoms who are maybe half a millenium old. Charlamange ( I always spell that guys name wrong) did a good job though. ~:cheers:

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Since he put Connie in the list which follwed, I assumed he meant Naples.

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Hmmm.... rereading, I must have missed the context. Perhaps, maybe Sicily??

Anyway....

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Originally Posted by ToranagaSama

The main thing to realize about the Byzantines is that they are the easist faction to play for a reason. They are even easy for the AI.
~ToranagaSama

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I don't think the Byzantines are the easiest factions, you have to kick out the Turks before they start spamming HA like nuts. You have crusaders running through your lands. It's not a major problem unless they are angry Englishmen trying to get Constantinople. For some reason they try it alot, but, again it's not a problem since most crusades are Germans or French and filled with crappy units that don't usually bother you.

I think the easiest faction is the Spanish. They have, IMHO, the bestest starting lands because of the rich farms and iron. They have a natural choke at Aragon and Navarre. They can bribe El Cid~D. They have an early crusading ability. They have Jinettes. If they attack Cordoba early, then the Almohads are dead. They have easy access to lots of goldmines in North Africa. They can effectively control everything to the Sinai with only three defending armies.

:dizzy2:

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Originally Posted by NodachiSam

I am playing Byzantine right now and I am enjoying their high level generals! :charge:

I think it makes sense that they could produce high level generals since they are the heirs of the Roman tradition. I imagine that Constantinople would have vast libraries of military history and excellent military acadamies. They have a head start on the frankish kingdoms who are maybe half a millenium old.

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I agree that it's almost an unfair advantage to the player when having these great generals. Two HDD failures mean I've had two previous unfinished Byz campaigns (similarly two unfinished English campaigns) and the contrast when using a 0* or 1* general in a fight is quite stark. The ByzInf unit description says 'poor morale' and to see a unit scarper when there's still 80 or 90 of them left is really quite depressing, since they tend to make the accompanying spears and UM type units lose heart and flee too.

I have one general now who started at 8* and has since acquired Skilled Defender (+1) and Skilled Attacker (+2 for 10 stars!!!). His V&V's say he's a pervert but I'm keeping him anyway. ~D The valour and/or morale boost they give really makes all the difference in battle.

In a recent combat over the last Eggy province, 2 of his BI units were boosted to valour 5 and another was valour 7 due to a V&V of it's leader. I think that was something like 'Secret Pride'. An archer unit, already +1V from Trebizond, had a +3 valour V&V ('Pride' again?), so it went into battle at valour 8!! Poor old 2-star Egyptian Caliph and his two stacks didn't have a hope against this lot. Oh yeah, church AND monastery back at Connie gave the BI's something like +2 morale bonus, so they won't break until down to maybe 30 men. In the meantime, they'll stand their ground and chop things to bits.

I don't know if the Byzantine libraries contributed anything which the Frankish armies wouldn't also have had access to. I think, for game purposes, it may be meant to represent the fact that, historically, they were continually gaining combat experience in dealing with raids and bordering empires, so up-to-date expertise could be passed father to son, even amongst the illiterate. The Europeans, by contrast, only went to war sporadically, so there was room for knowledge to be lost between generations and for 'greengenerals' to be the norm.

ISTR there is a cheat of this name, which makes all generals spawn at 0* and all ratings have to be earnt in actual battles from then on. This is the only cheat I can think of which actually increases the level of challenge to the human player. Brittle morale means that you can have superior numbers but still see your army routed because your expecting them to attack uphill, reducing their combat power and with a morale penalty on top. No doubt some AI factions will suffer badly in this scenario because their unit roster isn't too great, relative to others on thier borders.

Speaking of which, I am now beginning appreciate that Byz have some roster restrictions of their own. There is no motivation to buy militia buildings higher than Town Watch since Militia Sergeants are unavailable to them (not that they really need them, I suppose). I found the tech tree misleading, in that it printed the unit name in black text, suggesting that all factions can build it. The markings for Catholic-only weren't used, for some reason.
I also note that advancing the spear and archery buildings doesn't add a valour bonus at all and wonder why I bothered. However, at the Master end of the spearmaker tree, I see a +1 valour can eventually be gained. A lot of money required to get that far though, so is it worth the bother?

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Originally Posted by NodachiSam

Charlamange ( I always spell that guys name wrong) did a good job though. ~:cheers:

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As a memory-jogger, I always think, phonetically, of sham-pag-knee to spell 'champagne' correctly and it's the same for the ending on his name.

Mange is an unsightly disease which our cute, furry, pets can cach... ~;)

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Originally Posted by EatYerGreens

In a recent combat over the last Eggy province, 2 of his BI units were boosted to valour 5 and another was valour 7 due to a V&V of it's leader. I think that was something like 'Secret Pride'. An archer unit, already +1V from Trebizond, had a +3 valour V&V ('Pride' again?), so it went into battle at valour 8!!

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Valour-related V&V's don't reflect on the rest of the army, merely on the generals unit. Only morale V&V's are army wide. Just because the general is too fat to get on his horse doesn't mean the rest of the army would be simularly handicapped ~D .

BTW I think Byzantine tactical skill had more to do with the nature of their armies than with any superior knowledge on their side. As far as I know, the Byzantines never had a military academy.

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Originally Posted by Ludens

Valour-related V&V's don't reflect on the rest of the army, merely on the generals unit. Only morale V&V's are army wide. Just because the general is too fat to get on his horse doesn't mean the rest of the army would be simularly handicapped ~D .

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I don't think I phrased that bit particularly well, in my previous post. The general's V&V's were 'Perversion; Silver Tongued; Skilled Defender (+1 Cmd defending); Expert Attacker (+2 Cmd Attacking)'. (Lord Phocas, Count of Tripoli), with a base star rating of 8.

Two of the unit leaders within his stack had Secret Pride/Pride which boosted their unit's valour rating by +2 and +3, respectively.

When the general is 10-star for the attack, with his bonus, every unit gets a valour boost, in this case it looks like it was +5 for all units.

2 BI's, trained at V0, showed as V5
1 BI, trained at V0, with Secret Pride (+2V), showed as V7
2 TA's, trained in Trebizond at 1V, showed as V6
1 TA, trained at V0, with Pride (+3V), showed as V8

EDIT: Correction, it was a +4 valour boost. Having checked the screenshots, I see that some merc Faris were V4, as were other green units. The V5 BIs must have had base valour of 1, following mergers of veteran units. Because they were full 100s, I initially assumed they were still fresh.

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Originally Posted by EatYerGreens

I don't think I phrased that bit particularly well

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Neither did I ~D . I mentioned the glutton vice as an example of a vice that should not affect the entire army. I thought you had said your entire army gained +3V because of the pride vice.

I forgot to put in in last mail, but there is something wrong with the pride vices: the effects of pride and secret pride are reversed. Not just on valour, but also on acumen. Thus if a general goes from secret pride to pride he actually loses valour but gains acumen. However, since the pride vice tends to crop up amongst my governors I don't think it that bad.

You do know that valour derived from the general's stars does not give a morale bonus? Units close to the general do get +1 morale for every star he has, but those far off won't benefit from this. If your general leaves the BI too far behind they will go back to their ordinary, flimsy morale level, which nothing something you want if the battle is not going your way. But then, V5 BI will probably carry most opponents before them, so as long as they are supported they should do fine.

Skilled attacker + Skilled Defender really, really kills the AI's ability against the player. The AI almost never gets them because they autocalc and suck.

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Originally Posted by Ludens

I forgot to put in in last mail, but there is something wrong with the pride vices: the effects of pride and secret pride are reversed. Not just on valour, but also on acumen. Thus if a general goes from secret pride to pride he actually loses valour but gains acumen. However, since the pride vice tends to crop up amongst my governors I don't think it that bad.

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I double-checked and that archer unit did have Secret Pride: +3 valour. Every unit was getting +4 valour from the general, so it seems to be +1 for every 2 stars which the general has. For instance, I see that 1* generals don't seem to give a valour boost at all.

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Originally Posted by Ludens

You do know that valour derived from the general's stars does not give a morale bonus?

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I didn't but I do now! ~;)

Morale I'm not overly worried about when the valour levels are so high. I have this feeling that the phenomenon whereby the AI army retreats off the battle map entirely, as soon as your troops approach close to them is that there is some kind of visibility range for the valou flags on the units. They will stand firm as you approach but when you are close enough for them to see what they are up against, particularly when they are not of high valour themselves, the AI general will decide to withdraw rather than indulge in a fight which he will lose badly.

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Originally Posted by Ludens

Units close to the general do get +1 morale for every star he has, but those far off won't benefit from this. If your general leaves the BI too far behind they will go back to their ordinary, flimsy morale level, which nothing something you want if the battle is not going your way. But then, V5 BI will probably carry most opponents before them, so as long as they are supported they should do fine.

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After the waiting and the HA teasing, the general's Katanks were down to 3 energy bars. I think he spent most of the battle watching, rather than taking part! The AI should have been able to put 2-3 Nubian Spears onto each of the BI's I'd brought with me but they held their own very well.

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Originally Posted by antisocialmunky

Skilled attacker + Skilled Defender really, really kills the AI's ability against the player. The AI almost never gets them because they autocalc and suck.

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Possibly unfair in my case, since the general got his initial stars from starting life as a prince; he got skilled defender from defeating a force which only outnumbered his thanks to involvement of large numbers of peasants; skilled and Expert Attacker from inflicting defeats on larger forces which were equally stuffed with pez. Some kind of {numbers x quality} formula ought to be used before these attributes get awarded although, for the time being, I'd be happy to take the credit for player skill... :pleased:

EatYerGreens is right. Naples is the province I was thinking of.

It's a bit of a pain in the @$$ to hold onto at first, but if you can stave off the Sicillians long enough to tech up to a Swordsmith, you can spam out Byzntine Infantrymen and boot them off Scily.

I wonder if an Inn is the best way to replicate the late Byzantine's reliance on mercenaries. I'm thinking maybe it'd be better to create, say, units equivilent to the Cathlic's Chivalric or Feudal lines, but jack the recruitment and upkeep costs through the roof.

You really could if you wanted to, there's some really good Mercs in the East. I saw an all-merc walkthrough of Aragon, I think it's in the guides forum, you should look through it if you're interesting in a merc-only game.