Byzantium

[_Aetius_]

Well i'm going to go out on a limb here and say its entirely your own fault

What you have here is a classic example of imperial overstretch, remember what is important, your heartlands, forget France, its an irrelevance if you want to avoid your empire being ravaged by rebellion and invasion then you have to concentrate on consolidation back home. Retreat is your only viable option, you need your troops back east to crush rebellions and settle the provinces down and dissuade any eager enemies from invading.

If you don't retreat, you'll become bogged down in a meaningless fight over France, which by the time a victor appears will have been ravaged from north to south and make the country worthless. You'll lose thousands of men in the process and your empire will be crippled.

Withdraw from western France and consolidate, destroy everything you can to make some cash and fight your way home. You can still come out of this with territory in Italy, so you can live to fight another day. Of course a loss of territory can encourage civil war, but its risk you will have to take, if your economy is bankrupt, your armies pinned down fighting rebels and your empire spiralling into annihilation how can you win the game? Forget France and get your armies back to where it matters.

In future i'd recommend invading Spain from the south after mopping up all of north africa, atleast that way you can limit the number of enemies you have to fight at once and slowly absord one province at a time. Then you could move into France at a time of your choosing.

[sbroadbent]

At the same time I'm getting slammed by mass rebellions across the Balkans, Asia Minor and the Middle East, and even in Constantinople itself. I've cut the taxes back to very low in most of these provinces, but they still keep rebelling and as they include all my richest provinces I have lost so much tax revenue I am running in to financial trouble.

Apart from a scorched-earth retreat from France (which doesn't appeal - No Retreat!), I don't quite know what to do for the best...???

Here's a few ideas. Keep your king near your important regions. If a province is cut off from the king you'll get huge drops in loyalty (I had a completly muslim province at 200% loyalty (with no troops in the province) drop to 0% just because it was an island province and I had enemy ships blockading my routes), so if the king is playing warlord in France, and if you don't have a way to trace a safe route back to Constantinople, and many of the rebelling provinces, then that will be your biggest problem.

Next is to spam as many high Valor Spies. By upgrading your brothels up to a Bawdy House, this will allow you to train V2 spies. Spies will boost the loyalty in your provinces by 40%+20%*Valor. In this case, your V2 spies will give the province they are in a 80% boost in loyalty.

Something which might help you as well is if you can sneak these into your opponent's provinces (Border Forts basically mean instant death), the bonus that they normally give will instead drop the loyalty of your enemies provinces. What will happen is if they go below 100%, they'll have to drop taxes. They will probably have to anyway as they usually set taxes to as high as they go and maintain loyalty.

These two things just might help you keep your empire together.

For the future, it is best to avoid war more opponents than you can handle ;) I'd focus on the enemy who has the weakest position, and try to get an auto ceasefire against the stronger one's.

[Ripken]

Thanks for the tips folks

I have indeed ended up pulling out of western and northern France, while consolidating the overland link to Constantiople and slapping down the Pope and the Italians. The English re-emerged, which was helpful as it keeps the French weak and stops them coming after me. Once I've got all my armies straightened out I'll probably go after Spain instead.

Good tips about the spies too - I've not dabbled with them too much but I'll certainly give it a go now!

One question though - under what circumstances does one get an auto ceasefire?

[Kenshin the vega bound]

I think we need more guides focusing on the late, and high era. The early era is too easy.

[shovon]

I assume I'll want to have ships churned out on a regular basis, as well, to connect with multiple-commodity provinces.

Any advice? Who to ally with, who to shun, who to backstab? I don't want to conquer the world. I just want to conquer my corner of it. The provinces in the Balkans which start out Orthodox. Along the coast down to Egypt. (Especially Jerusalem and Egypt, though mainly for historical reasons. Any benefit to Jerusalem, aside from the impressive governorship?) I'd like to keep my three islands. I think I'll want to stay away from north of the Black Sea, especially if the Mongols come in. Let them wipe out Novgorod and the Poles

[Geezer57]

I just want to conquer my corner of it.

The perfect setup for just about any faction that starts in this area is the "Golden Triangle" (Constantinople, Georgia, Egypt). Take all the provinces between these points, and you'll end up having to defend only the 3 provinces mentioned by name. Georgia and Constantinople have good defensive terrain, Egypt is a desert province, so (with armies built accordingly) your defense is relatively simple and efficient. With a little tech development, lots of income and powerful armies can be yours.

You'll still need a navy in the eastern Med to cover your coastal/island provinces. A fringe benefit of this is the trade income you can generate. Once the triangle area is yours, turtle for a few decades and develop - the game is probably yours!

[Don Esteban]

The perfect setup for just about any faction that starts in this area is the "Golden Triangle" (Constantinople, Georgia, Egypt). Take all the provinces between these points, and you'll end up having to defend only the 3 provinces mentioned by name. Georgia and Constantinople have good defensive terrain, Egypt is a desert province, so (with armies built accordingly) your defense is relatively simple and efficient. With a little tech development, lots of income and powerful armies can be yours.

You'll still need a navy in the eastern Med to cover your coastal/island provinces. A fringe benefit of this is the trade income you can generate. Once the triangle area is yours, turtle for a few decades and develop - the game is probably yours!

I'm not sure I'd want Constantinople as a frontier - just in case.

I'd push out two more provinces, Greece and Bulgaria and you still only have a 4 province border but have more time to react if any massive attack comes in the direction of Constantinople.

[oz_wwjd]

I've always used Bugaria and Serbia as my intial provinces in that area. It usually works ,although I've had some invasions when the AI got lucky with sinking my ships. As to the Byzantine Inf not being able to stand up to the heavier Catholic infantry I got tired to them being unavaliable so i slightly modded my game so they are avaliable in all eras,although they are slighly more expensive to make up for that,or Latin auxilaries work in a pinch..

[Martok]

Also, keep an eye on the Sicilians and Italians. They're your main potential rivals for naval supremacy in the Mediterranean, and will likely attack your shipping at some point.