Rules, FAQ, Installation, and Guides

[TinCow]

So You Want To Be An Exarch

NOTE: Due to CA 5.1, large portions of this guide are now obsolete. Until it is updated to deal with the new army rules, use the guide at your own risk.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

You've joined the game, picked out your avatar, and are ready to make your mark on the world; the only problem is that you've got no power, no influence, no friends, and no prospects. You're a lowly Strator and the only thing you own is your own bodyguard, which isn't much good against the AI armies or your fellow players. How in the world are you going to gain rank and achieve all of those wonderous things you are dreaming of? This guide is designed to help you down the path to power and glory, and hopefully avoid getting killed along the way.

Remember, if at any time in the game you have any questions whatsoever, ASK THEM. You can either post them in the OOC thread for general help, or you can send a PM to TinCow for a more official ruling.

The Life of a Strator or The Art of Brown-Nosing

All players enter the game at the rank of Strator. While veteran players who have accumulated land in the past are allowed to pass one province on to their next avatars, this is not the case for new players or for people who have lost it all to the AI or in a Civil War. You are all waking up in brand new bodies and there's not a whole lot you can do. So, let's review the Goals of a Strator:

1. Gain Land.
2. Gain Land.
3. Gain Land.

Why land, you ask? The answer is simple: land is everything in LotR. Owning a province is the most basic requirement to advancing in rank. With land you are a player in the great political game and can wheel and deal with the best of them. Without land, you're nothing more than a whiney moocher who is tryig to syphon off the success of others, at least that's what they'll think! The key thing to remember is that it doesn't really matter how much land you own at this point. One province is enough to last you the entire game and propel you to the highest levels of power, if you play it right... but you still need that one province. So, regardless of your objectives and desires in LotR, you should set out on a mission to gain a province. How do you do this? There are two general options:

1. Conquer a province - This can be a fast method to gain land, but it is difficult to achieve for a Strator. You could try to conquer a province with only your avatar's bodyguard, but that is usually extremely difficult and is more likely to get you killed. If you want to pursue this method, you will probably only be able to do it if you can convince a more powerful player to lend you an army. A House/Alliance is very unlikely to lend you one of their Private Armies without first swearing an Oath of Fealty to them, so your best bet is to look to Megas, the Basileus, and possibly the Caesar.
   
   
   
   • The Megas - The Megas controls all of the miscellaneous armies in the Empire and he can easily grant you command of an army. However, he is likely already a powerful member of an organized House and he will have his own allies to reward with the armies he controls. In most cases, he will probably demand that you join his House/Alliance, in which case you can skip down to the Join a House/Alliance section below. However, it is possible that you may be able to do a service for him or otherwise play on his sympathies in such a manner as to achieve a command without swearing an Oath.
     
     One option is to offer yourself as something of a mercenary for the Megas. As the Megas is likely a highly placed Senator with many political connections and responsibilities, he may be constrained in his actions by the demands of the Senate and his own allies. You could offer to do some 'dirty work' for the Megas, such as violating an inconvenient Edict, attacking an AI city that is within the 'sphere of influence' of another House/Alliance, or even declaring war on another Senator who has irked the Megas. You could suggest that the Megas provide you with an army for completely innocent reasons, and then allow you to do the dirty deed while denouncing you in a hollow manner, thus preventing his own hands from getting dirty and preserving his reputation while still accomplishing his goals. This is just a suggestion, and the Megas could very well be willing to loan you an army for other reasons. The only way to know is to contact him and ask.
     
     
   • The Basileus - The Basileus is in a unique position. He owns a Royal Army of his own, but has no vassals of any kind. This means he cannot require that you swear an Oath to him before he can give you an army. In addition, the position of Basileus is a very powerful one and is extremely difficult to reach. A Senator who reaches this rank is likely going to be more concerned about his personal survival than someone else of lesser rank. Thus, you can use this survival instinct to your advantage. Perhaps suggest that the Basileus loan you his own Royal Army so that you can do his bidding without him needing to risk his own life... on the condition that you are allowed to conquer a province with the Royal Army along the way.
     
     
   • The Caesar - The Caesar will rarely be someone worth contacting to help you conquer a province, but he is an option under the right circumstances. He owns a Royal Army of his own and he is next in line to the throne, which means he is probably just as concerned about his own survival as the Basileus. Usually the Caesar will be part of a House/Alliance and thus you would have to deal with him through that system. However it is theoretically possible for the Caesar to own a Royal Army while still being unaligned. If this is the case, treat him like the Basileus and you may have some success.
   
   
   
2. Join a House/Alliance - This is a relatively easy method of gaining land, but it can take time to achieve. The general objective is to join a House that either has land to spare or has access to armies which can conquer new lands. Joining an already established House is a relatively easy affair. While some Houses will have complex rule systems directing how you behave and what you need to do to become a member, joining is usually pretty easy. Houses usually want more members, because the more members they have, the more power they gain. Choosing the right House to join is a far more difficult affair.
   
   Please note that finding a House that fits your avatar comfortably on an IC level is important, but that is a separate issue which goes beyond the scope of this guide. This discussion is only focused on the decision to join a House based on the desire to gain land exclusively. For all Strators, roleplaying should be weighed and balanced with the desire to gain land at all times. Pursuing one at the expense of the other is not recommended.
   
   In general, there are two kinds of Houses that have the potential to reward a Strator with land:
   
   
   
   • Houses with Extra Land – Some Houses will accumulate land faster than they can gain vassals. Joining one of these is by far the easiest method to gain land for one important reason: the land is already conquered and can be given to you by a simple forum post from the current owner. Determining why the House has extra land is important in figuring out how to get them to give you one.
     
     
     
     1. If the House simply has more land than members, the answer is obvious: they are simply waiting for more vassals. This is perfect, because you are exactly what they are looking for. If you can convince them that you’ll be a good and loyal member, you could easily find yourself accepted and given a province almost immediately.
        
        
     2. If the House has extra land but still has Strators within their ranks, it’s an entirely different situation altogether. This indicates that there are far more complex political issues at work and that you will have to overcome these before they will give you a province. Perhaps there are complex hurdles that the Strators have to go through before they will be trusted with a province. Perhaps the leaders of the House simply want to control the land personally for their own reasons. Regardless, you need to figure out why the extra land has not been given to the currently loyal Strators. If this reason is not something you think you can overcome, then you had best look elsewhere for a province.
     
     
     
   • Houses with Private Armies – Many Houses will accumulate vassals faster than they can gain land. While they will not be able to supply you with land immediately when you join, they do have the potential of helping you acquire it in the future, as long as they have access to a Private Army. Houses that do not have at least one Senator of rank Hypatos or higher do not have access to any Private Armies and thus should be completely avoided if your objective is to gain land. For those with Private Armies, consider the following factors when making your choice:
     
     
     
     1. The Number of Private Armies – The more Private Armies a House has access to, the more likely they will be able to conquer a province for you.
        
        
     2. The Number of Strators – The fewer Strators in the House that are waiting for provinces of their own, the faster you will get one. Most Houses will give provinces to the Strators who have been waiting the longest, so if you are the fifth Strator on the list, you might be waiting long, long time.
        
        
     3. The Location of the House’s Lands – Most Houses keep their Private Armies in their provinces and only campaign into adjacent provinces. This is for defensive reasons and also because the SS 4.1 supply system makes long distance campaigning difficult. As a result a House which has no easy way to access vulnerable lands (be they AI or player owned) will be far less likely to gain a new province for you than a House which borders on several lightly defended provinces owned by an AI with which the Empire is currently at war.

SimSettlement or Constantinople on 5 Florins a Day

Woohoo! You’ve got your grubby little hands on a province! It’s yours, all yours! Now how do you make the most out of it? The first thing to do is to figure out what your settlement is good for. Check out the city in-game and see where it is located, how developed it is, and how much money it earns. Well developed cities can earn lots of money. Well developed castles can supply high quality military units.

Once you know what your settlement is good for, you can use that bargaining power to negotiate with the Megas. If the Empire’s income is low and your city makes lots of money, you can threaten to lower taxes if the Megas does not give you what you want, or offer to raise taxes to help him out. If the Empire badly needs to recruit troops from your settlement, you can demand that the Megas recruit extra units for your garrison or fund one of your buildings, otherwise you’ll seize every unit he creates there. The more you invest in your settlement, the better you’ll be able to use it to negotiate with.

If you settlement doesn’t have much going for it at all, then you’ll have to make do with whatever dribblings manage to trickle their way down to you. Oh well, at least it’s good for keeping your rank up! Try and develop the settlement over time through your political deals with other Senators, and perhaps some day it will be important enough to do something with.

One aspect of your settlement that you should never neglect is the garrison. A decent city garrison is useful in numerous circumstances. Even at the ranks of Comes and Domestikos, it provides you with at least some means of military independence in the case of an attack by the AI or another Senator. While it can be difficult to increase the size of your garrison, you always have the ability to prevent it from decreasing. It is very, very, very important that you keep your SoT post up-to-date and to make sure that it says exactly what you want it to say. The more detail you provide, the better. The Megas is free to exploit loopholes in your SoT post and if you do not pay attention, you could find your carefully assembled garrison evaporating before your eyes. In general, every time something about your city garrison changes, you should check your SoT post to ensure that it covers the new situation.

To Comes, And Beyond! or The Vassal Hassle

Now you’ve finally gained a province and been promoted to Comes, but you’re hungry for more. You’re not going to spend your entire life posting dull build queues which just get ignored, are you? No, of course not! So, how do you go about gaining rank and power? Well, now you’ve got to start playing the great game of Politics.

1. Gaining Rank – In order to advance in rank beyond Comes, you’re going to need vassals. There are nearly infinite ways to gain vassals, but here are a few basic routes to a higher rank:
   
   
   
   • Advance within a House – By this point, most of you will already be part of a House. If you are, you’ve got one option already open to you: work within your House. Support the senior members of your House in whatever way they desire. If you are a loyal vassal and do good work, you will likely be designated as the new Lord to any incoming Strators. As they in turn gain lands, you will be promoted right up the chain. As the senior members of the House die of old age or less ‘natural’ causes, you will slowly work your way towards the top, perhaps becoming the overall Lord of the House yourself some day.
     
     However, in order for this to work, your House needs to survive and prosper. If you House is small, you will never reach a high rank. If you House loses land to the AI or other Senators, then your own power will be reduced. If members defect from your House, you will similarly lose power. Thus, you should devote your efforts towards advancing the overall goals of the House.
     
     All does not have to be sunshine and roses, though. Even at low ranks you can wield great power within the House, simply because if you break your Oath and leave the House, its power will be diminished. You can use a combination of loyal service, and the threat of going elsewhere, to gain greater favor and rank within your House. The exact balance between using the carrot and the stick is difficult to achieve, but both are important tools and should never be discarded.
     
     
   • Freelance – Once you own a province, it is yours until you die or it is taken from you by force. This means that you can shift loyalties freely. How you go about doing this depends on your circumstances.
     
     
     
     1. Unsworn Senators – If you have not sworn an Oath to anyone, your options are nearly limitless, as no one can penalize you for breaking an Oath and you are unlikely to anger anyone by splitting from a House. You are a true free agent and you should start negotiating for a good deal with the existing Houses.
        
        Unlike Strators, Senators with land have a good bargaining tool with which to negotiate. The fact that you own land means that any House you join will instantly experience an increase in rank and power, with all that entails. Depending on the situation, this extra bump in rank could be a massive increase in their power. If you join a Domestikos-led House, they will suddenly gain access to a Private Army. If you join a Dux-led House, they may be able to advance their leader to the ultra-powerful level of Exarch. Since this increase in rank is only achieved if you join the House, you control whether it is obtained or not. Use this as a bargaining chip. You could demand that you enter the House somewhere in the middle, instead of at the bottom. You could demand that a good retinue be given to you. You could demand that the Lord use one of his Prioritized Building powers to upgrade your settlement. You are only constrained in your demands by your own imagination, so figure out what you want and then ask for it, you may be surprised what you’ll get.
        
        The overall situation of a House should be taken into account when making your demands. The more badly the House needs the extra power you can provide, the higher the price you can place on your loyalty.
        
        
     2. Defection – Things get a lot more complicated if you are already a vassal, especially if the people above you in your feudal chain were responsible for helping you obtain your land in the first place. This is known as ‘poaching’ land and most Houses will not look kindly upon it.
        
        If you are going to break your Oath, it is very much in your interests to get the approval of your Lord before you do it. If you do not, serious consequences could result. The most common and likely is that your Lord will not give his permission for you to break your Oath, and you will be banned from re-swearing for 5 turns. This will usually relegate you to the rank of Comes for that entire period, unless you have vassals who are leaving with you.
        
        A more serious consequence is Civil War. If the House that you are leaving has access to a Private Army, they could take advantage of your 5 turns of vulnerability to declare war on you and take your land by force, possibly even killing you. This is an extreme reaction, but it is possible and should be given serious consideration. If you are going to break an Oath with your Lord, you know he will not give his permission, and the House has the power to take your land by force, it would be a very good idea to negotiate your ‘defection’ with another House privately before you split. Get the other House to promise to protect you with their political and military power for the period that you are vulnerable. Once you are free to swear an Oath again, refer to the Unsworn Senators section above.
        
        In general, defection will reduce your bargaining power with other Houses for the entire duration of your 5 turn ban on oath swearing, as you will not be able to provide them with an immediate boost in rank. However, there is an exception to this. Defection not only has the ability to give strength to another House, it also has the ability to take it away from the House you are leaving. Milk this for all it is worth by negotiating with other Houses who are rivals or open enemies of your current House. They will likely be willing to pay a far higher price for your defection, as it will injure their opponents in addition to aiding themselves.
     
     
     
   • Create your own House – Creating a new House is not an easy thing, but it can be very rewarding. If you found a new House, you will likely be a very senior member if not the top-ranked Lord himself. The disadvantage is that you will have to start from scratch and assemble your own group of vassals around you. Vassals can be gained in multiple ways:
     
     
     
     • Unaligned Strators – These are easy to recruit, as they are usually looking for a way to advance themselves. However, as you well know, they are looking to gain land of their own. If you are capable of giving them land or of providing them with an army to conquer land, then they may flock to your side. If you are not, then you had best look elsewhere for support.
       
       
     • Freelancers – These are harder to recruit, because they will demand a higher price from you, but they also bring you more power as they already have land of their own, which will result in an immediate rank increase. Determining whether the price they demand is worth the benefits they will bring is up to you, but you’ll never know what that price is unless you ask!
       
       
     • Defectors – These people are very dangerous to recruit for a brand new House, as they will likely make you an enemy of the House that they left behind. So, the question is whether the benefits they bring will outweigh the risks that come with creating new enemies.
     
     
     In general, it is a good idea to get commitments from other Senators before creating your House. Few things are more embarrassing in LotR than making grand plans for a House, posting a beautiful IC House thread, and then finding that no one wants to join you. Make sure your House will have other members before you create it! If it won’t, then you should probably wait until you have more power to offer other people in order to entice them into following you.
   
   
   
2. Maintaining Rank – Achieving a higher rank is all well and good, but it is largely meaningless unless you can maintain that rank as well. In order to maintain your rank, you need to keep a stable number of vassals. This can be difficult, because most Senators want to climb in rank just as much as you do. They won’t want to be a Comes forever and if they feel like they are being neglected or are not gaining what they want, they may abandon you. As if that problem wasn’t bad enough, the higher your rank, the more people you have to keep happy. It’s a precarious situation. There are two general methods to keeping vassals happy: the carrot and the stick.
   
   
   
   • The Carrot – There’s no better way to encourage loyalty in vassals than by helping them improve their own rank and power. The higher your rank, the more powers you will have that can be used to keep your vassals happy. You can put your Private Army under their command to help them take a province or gain traits. You can Prioritize a building that in one of their settlements. You can give them a desirable retinue from your own avatar.
     
     Most importantly of all, you can help them gain rank. Happily, in almost every circumstances, when your vassals gain rank, you will grow stronger too. So, this is the most perfect way of rewarding a vassal that you can find. It is also very simple. To promote a vassal, you need to have someone of Comes rank or higher swear fealty to them. If you can induce a Freelancer or a Defector to do this, that’s great. If not, recruit a Strator and find a way to get them a province. Just make sure that your hard-earned province isn't poached out from under you!
     
     
   • The Stick – Punishing vassals is a dangerous thing, as it will often provoke further resentment amongst them. However, it is an option that should never be forgotten and when used sparingly and in the right circumstances, it can be effective. The most direct methods of punishment are the high level powers that allow for destruction of buildings and forcible transfer of retinue. A more subtle method is to demand that any vassals below the miscreant re-swear to someone else within the House, essentially demoting the Senator. The most severe method, but also possibly the most effective, is the threat of severe retaliation if the vassal breaks his Oath. You can instantly declare war on any vassal who breaks an Oath without permission and you don’t need to give him one turn’s worth of movement first. Park a Private Army next to the rebellious vassal’s settlement and he’ll likely think twice before defecting. Just be careful that you do not spark a larger rebellion in the process…

Hypatos Kubrickios or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Private Army

Well now, look at you, you’ve achieved the rank of Hypatos (or above) and you’ve been given this interesting thing called a Private Army. This is a major milestone in achieving power in LotR; you now wield military power that answers to you and you alone. The days of relying on other people to supply you with armies are over! Now you just need to keep it that way.

1. The Care and Feeding of a Private Army – Your Private Army is only as good as the units that are in it. As soon as you get your army, you should constantly be trying to improve it in both quality and size. A minimum strength army of Peasants and the like will hardly help you at all, but 10 elite units will make you a fearsome foe! So, don’t squander your men. When you get high quality units, keep them safe! Use the cannon fodder during battles, and preserve your best regiments for only the most critical situations. If you really want to keep a unit safe, march over to your settlement or a fort you own and drop it off in your garrison to keep it completely out of harm’s way. With this method, you might be able to assemble a large group of reinforcements for you to draw from in times of need.
   
   Just as with your settlement, you also need to pay very close attention to your SoT post. The Megas is required to keep your Private Army at minimum strength, but if your SoT post does not say otherwise, he can remove any excess units that he wants and even exchange high quality units for low quality ones. The more specific the language in your SoT post and the more often you update it, the less likely you will be to suffer unexpected losses.
   
   
2. (Don’t) Divide and Conquer – A Private Army usually exists as a single stack, but some people might be tempted to split it into multiple stacks for various reasons. If you have a cooperative Megas, this can be done, but it is dangerous. A new Megas who is hostile to you could be elected, or the current Megas could change his mind. Since the rules do not allow for a multi-stack Private Army, any forces that are divided in this manner are completely subjected to his whims. Dividing your army risks losing part of it. It is far, far better to keep it concentrated in a single stack at all times.
   
   
3. The Selection of a Commander – You are allowed to put another person in charge of your Private Army, but you should carefully consider this decision before you do it. The commander of the army can move it however he wants and will almost always be the person who fights the battles in-game. Thus, a bad commander can wreck your beautiful army. In addition, without your army close by, you are far more vulnerable to enemy attacks, be they from the AI or other Senators. That said, giving someone else command of your Private Army can sometimes be a good thing. If the job you assign them is dangerous, then someone else’s neck will be on the line instead of yours. It can also be a useful bargaining chip to recruit more vassals or reward vassals who are too low of a rank to own their own Private Armies. Command of a Private Army means that a person has the chance to fight battles more often and thus the potential to earn good traits. Remember, if you are the top level Lord in your feudal chain, the provinces conquered by your vassals become yours, not theirs. So you can sit comfortably at home in your fortified castle while your vassals risk their own lives to increase your power.

War and Peace or It’s Good to be the Megas

No matter what rank you are at, the disposition of the Megas will have a major impact on your avatar. A friendly Megas can provide you with large armies, improve your settlements, and enable you to conquer more provinces. He can also greatly injure your enemies and provide you with the perfect opportunity to declare war on that troublesome Senator or House which has been a thorn in your side for so long. At the same time, a hostile Megas can bring all of your progress to a grinding halt and cause you immense damage. Let’s take a look at what to do in both situations.

1. Friendly Megas – A friendly Megas should be seen as a time of ‘good harvest.’ You need to take advantage of these favorable circumstances to profit from them as much as you can. Get the Megas to increase the size and quality of your garrisons and Private Armies. Have him fund your desired constructions. Get him to build forts in your provinces so that you can store garrison units in them as remote resupply depots. Have him build watchtowers on your borders so that you can see hostile AI armies before it is too late. Best of all, you now how an excellent opportunity to declare war and attack your enemies. Just make sure you confirm with the Megas that he will support you, or at least remain neutral, in your little Civil War. You don’t want to wake up one morning to find out that your Friendly Megas is now a Hostile Megas.
   
   
2. Hostile Megas – A hostile Megas should be seen as a time of a ‘bad harvest.’ This is a time to batten down the hatches and prepare for hard times. You should not expect to receive more than the absolute minimum level of help from the Megas. This is why you’ve saved up your good military units and bulked up your garrisons and Private Army. At least I hope you did, because if someone decides to take advantage of your ‘disfavor’ to declare war on you, then those units are going to be all you can rely upon to defend yourself. For this reason, you should be very careful about spending any of your accumulated resources while a hostile Megas is in power. Unless you are an extremely good commander and can win a battle with hardly any losses, fighting battles will only sap your strength. Make sure that every battle you fight with a hostile Megas in power will be worth the potential losses you suffer. In addition, be wary of leaving your settlements undefended while campaigning elsewhere. Even if you have a strong army, an enemy could declare war and seize your settlements before you can return to defend them. A hostile Megas probably won’t lift a finger to reinforce them and will instead reinforce your enemy who is now using your own walls against you!

As you can see, having a Friendly Megas is a very good thing, and having a Hostile Megas is a very bad thing. So, it is very much in your interest to make sure you back the right person at election time. The best way to ensure that the Megas is friendly to you is to gain that position yourself. If you can’t do that, you should put all of your efforts into backing the winning candidate. If your vote is critical to getting the Megas elected, you will likely be able to reap great rewards from him during his term.

Civil War, what is it good for? Absolutely Everything! or Why Can’t We Be Friends?

As you may have noticed, I’ve been talking a lot about Civil War. Now, why would any sane Senator want to do such a thing? Two reasons, my friend: fun and profit! Why march all the way out to some rotten, stinking AI city that is poorly developed, has 0% Orthodoxy, and is 10 turns from your other settlement, when you can grab that beautiful, well-developed castle that is sitting right next door and is almost completely undefended? So, let’s take a look at when you should use Civil Wars and how to fight them.

1. Who to Fight – Generally, you want to attack two kinds of people: political enemies and Senators with weaker militaries. If you’re lucky, they will both be the same people.
   
   Attacking political enemies is useful because it will reduce their power or eliminate them altogether. If you seize their provinces and/or kill their vassals, they will drop in rank. If you kill them outright, they will never bother you again.
   
   Senators with weaker militaries are what is known as ‘ripe for the plucking.’ These could be unaligned Comes, weak Houses, or major Houses that are down on their luck. Regardless, if you have a significant military advantage over them, you stand to gain a great deal by attacking. Any provinces you seize in the war become yours, but more importantly you can impose severe terms on a defeated enemy in exchange for peace. You could force them to disband their House, give up all their retinue, reduce their Private Armies to 1 unit for 20 turns, or give you several military units to bolster your own garrisons. While Peace Treaties will generally be limited to changes to the provinces, settlements, armies, Oaths of Loyalty, and retinue of the parties involved, you can be very creative about the terms you impose within these areas. You can gain even more drastic terms in a Peace Treaty, but anything that goes beyond the areas listed in the previous sentence will have to be ratified by a 2/3 vote of the Senate. Unless you wield immense political power, you probably won't be able to achieve this, so it is best to try and get everything you desire from within the areas that do not require Senate approval. Even so, a well organized Civil War fought against a weak enemy can strengthen your House more in 3 turns than 30 turns of campaigning against the AI.
   
   
2. When to Fight – As we noted above, a friendly Megas can make your life easy and a hostile Megas can make you life very hard. This is even more true when it comes to Civil Wars. Unless you are extremely strong and expect to win a lightning victory, it is highly inadvisable to fight a Civil War with a hostile Megas in power. At the same time, having a friendly Megas in power can make a Civil War a piece of cake, even when your enemy starts out stronger than you.
   
   So, you’ve got your target picked out and you’ve got a friendly (or at least a neutral) Megas in office; now you’ve got to pick the right moment to attack. Remember, if you are the person declaring war, you cannot initiate a battle until your enemies have been given one full turn’s worth of movement. You can move into position in this time, but you must give them one turn to respond to your assault.
   
   A good rule of thumb is to wait to declare war until your armies have moved into position one turn’s worth of movement from your enemy’s settlements. He can run away, but his settlements can’t. Strike hard and fast and seize them quickly. If your enemy is stronger than you are, a good time to attack is when his armies are a long way away from the settlements you are going to attack. They will take time to march back in your direction and you can use that time to capture the settlements and prepare them for the counter-attack.
   
   
3. How to Fight – All’s fair in love and war, especially Civil War. Fight dirty, because a chivalrous dead man is still a dead man. Attack your enemies with vastly superior forces and do not give them a chance to run away or get reinforcements. Take their cities first to prevent them from using the garrisons to supplement their Private Armies. Attack from multiple directions if you can. Attack without warning. Most importantly of all, be quick about it and inflict as much damage as you can in as short a time as possible. Politics is a delicate game, and Civil War will rile up the Senate more than anything else. You can never tell when a friendly Megas will turn into a hostile Megas, or when another House will enter the Civil War against you. End the war as fast as possible to prevent these things from occurring.
   
   If you really must be chivalrous, you can show it when the war is over. Release any captured Senators instead of killing them. Impose reasonable and fair terms in the Peace Treaty. This is how a chivalrous man treats a Civil War. You can afford to be magnanimous when you are victorious, not before. Fighting fair is fighting dumb.

A Self-Perpetuating Autocracy or Well how do you become Basileus then?

Ah, the ultimate ranks of Basileus and Caesar. If you aspire to these ranks, you’re likely to be very disappointed. They are few and far between and they are largely beyond the control of most Senators. The first rule of gaining these ranks is that you must be on the family tree. If your avatar started there, that’s great, but most Senators will start out with a recruited general. The only way to get onto the family tree with a recruited general is to win a Man of the Hour nomination. This means fighting (and winning) battles when the odds are against you. Do that often enough, and you may just get lucky, though there are no guarantees.

Once you’re on the family tree, things don’t get a whole lot easier. The Caesar is only chosen when the old one dies or is promoted to Basileus on the death of the old Basileus. There is also no reliable way to accurately predict who will be given the rank of Caesar by the game. So, if you’re really, really determined to achieve these ranks, there’s only one course of action that can improve your odds: embark on a royal slaughter. Kill the Casear and/or Basileus and keep killing everyone who comes after them until you are chosen. If you manage to accomplish this barbaric feat and actually do achieve the rank, you’ve probably earned it. If you’re not up to bloodshed on a titanic scale, there’s always the ultra-powerful rank with the extra cool title: Exarch.