Question on the Byzantine strategy

[BalkanTourist]

Since you two are the developers of the first year rush in Sicily, would you please tell me if it is possible to storm the castle on the second year, after they have retreated? And is it ok if I kill the Turkish Sultan in Rum first year, or should I let him live for ransom? They desintegrate into minor factions since there is no heir yet.

[BalkanTourist]

A little update on my Byzantine campaign. It is year 1100 now and I hold Prussia and Pomerania, Volhinia, Moldavia, Wallachia, Serbia, all my original land, killed the Turks and the Egyptians, but still need to capture Egypt, which is held by the Rebels. Unfortunatelly, I failed Naples I invaded it the first year and then waited instead of storming, cause I tried that before and it didn't work. Next year was a rebelion that I surpressed. The next another one plus bandits in Naples, so I returned to Naples. Fought several more battles. Finally the Pope invaded and killed all of my men. That was a fine 4 star general with great defensive virtues.
Any sugestions which regions should be used for building what?
1. Spear
2. Sword
3. Missile
4. Militia
5. Artilery
6. Horses
7. Agents
8. Navy

7. I think Spies will be in Syria
8. Navy will be in Med. Islands

[The_Emperor]

Aim for the following,

Ships on med Islands.

Kataphracts in Constantinople (+1 valour), Pronoiai in Nicea (more +1 Val), Archers in Trebizond (+1 val), More archers in Bulgaria (Bulgar brigands valour bonus).

Assassins in Syria (+2 valour bonus when trained there, if you tech up to the max that gives you V5 Assassins rolling out on command).

Swords in Greece, Anatolia and anywhere else you wish. Don't worry about spearmen because they suck, though you will need to tech through spears anyway to get Varangians and Cavalry. (I went overboard on the swordsmiths during my last Byz campaign and had one on almost every province to train up Byz inf and easily replace losses, plus its only 4 years to build one)

Militia you can ignore as well, because the Byz do not have anything above Urban Militia in that part fo their tech tree.

I sugguest you train Agents in the coastal provinces in the Middle East once its yours.

Also advance through Moldavia and into Kiev, this will give you Avar Nobles in Moldavia and Steppe Cavalry/Steppe Heavy cav.

[katank]

for te first year rush into Sicily, abandon it to fight the rebellion in Naples and then invade again.

the difference is that the second time, the spearmen would stand and fight which gives you a nice opportunity to kill all of them and thus not have to worry about castle storming.

[Kristaps]

Well, if rushing with the byzantines, at the beginning, don't worry about training anything else than byz infantry in constantinopole; also, build up to treb archers in trebizond asap, horse archers anywhere else; don't forget about slavs from bulgaria since they come in handy to bulk up the armies.

Of course, do the first year rush on Sicily :) (make sure, you give your gen in naples the title of trebizond or, alternatively, constantinopole - if his acumen permits) In case you do not get to kill all the spearmen in the third year, after you return having crushed a rebellion in Naples: repeat. don't storm the castle in Sicily unless you have a unit of peasants from naples to break down the gate: otherwise your losses might be too great to fend off a loyalist rebellion or somebody's invasion into naples.

as to the turks... i'd attack in the first year: move your emperor's army into rum, reinforce from trebizond. move everything from constantinopole into trebizond. move one archer unit from georgia into armenia (this will pervent the AI reinforcing their army in rum which you really do not want to fight right now since you do not have anything to catch the horse archers with yet). start building an inn in lesser armenia right away (it will fill up as soon as you attack the eggoes a few turns later). the turks will retreat in rum; once the battle screen comes up for armenia - call off the attack.

in the next year, stock up with pickings from the inn in trebizond. chances are: mercs will already be attracted to the new war. spread your forces from rum and trebizond into edessa and armenia. the lone varangian guard can be of big help if the turks put up a fight there. with some luck, if the merc picking allows, you can even move straigt into syria. as to rum: your choice, abandon it for now, storm it or siege it out with the mercs from trebizond.

in this fashion, one can eliminate the turks in 3/4 years playing as byzantines... eggos (who will barely be able to start producing peasants with the occasional camel from egypt at this time) and the steppe rebels are the next on the list then... in the fastest game i have played with byzantines (early, hard) they owned the whole map by 1155 :)

as far as production goes, i hadn't even managed to start producing katas yet... :) my armies had barely a few byzantine lancers supported by a horde of steppe cavalry and horse archers as far as cavalry goes. and..., my generals would just shrug their shoulders if anyone told them there was a +1 valor bonus for bulgarian brigands in bulgaria ;) playing such an early game renders the mongols into a no-threat as well...

a few considerations: i would not neglect building spearmen for your campaign in the desert... (one place to start producing them early is rum, if it falls not destroying the fort) with your high-rank generals they can do wonders against almo militia tired out in the heat... (i think it's up to -6 attack for a totally exhausted unit + a matched loss in defense) the same heat would soon render your byzantine infantry an easy picking even for lowly peasants... as a side note, as byzantines in the early, i also love my horse archers :)

in the campaign in question, my army conquering northern africa consisted entirely of trebizond archers, vanilla spears and horse archers + the lone kata 9 star general :) as soon as i was done with the turks, i sent all my byz infantry and katas back to constantinopole to deal with the pesky hungarians and poles. trebizond archers actually do the bulk of the work dealing with hungarian horse archers and szekely if they ever are foolish enough to put up a resistance.

another point not to be neglected: build up the islands straight to keeps and shipyards... you will need boats (lots of them and fast) to keep your restored roman empire in check :) Otherwise, the colonies around egypt will go up in flames while your prince will be battling the spanish in Castille and your emperor crushing the Novgorodians :)

As a next goal, after having the shipyards up and runing in the islands, I'd build them up to produce spies for the same reason of having to keep my colonies in check (meanwhile, dedicate some of the newly conquered territories to building your fleet reinforcements: lesser armenia, sinai, and possibly palestine being the prime candidates).

what else: whatever you conquer, build inns in the out-most territories asap. the mercs flock to the conflict zone and might ease up your expansion. siege equipment comes in especially handy.

[katank]

so true.

don't neglect the shipyard you gain in Sicily which is invaluable this early and particularly because of the forward location.

you should get byz inf production in Sicily to replenish your general there who should be hardcore by now.

a good infantry general is nice to have as now you can do the barney mill with 16 pumped up byz inf in a single wave.

[Doug-Thompson]

Sorry for the late reply. Looks like katank and Kristaps answered all the questions, though.

[BalkanTourist]

I'm gonna start over with the campaign. I really want to get Sicily, because of that shipyard. Also, I don't use mercs. The three units in Constantinople go to Bulgaria instead of Trebizond. Next turn they attack Moldavia. They went all the way to Pomerania and Prussia. My strategy was to get a ship to Scandinavia so that I can get Norway and Sweden and rom there possibly Scotland. In 1100 I had conquered the whole Middle East except for Egypt. I did that only with my Asia Minor force (the initial force). I did not have a single rebelion. In Europe like I said I reached the Baltic cutting off the Hungarians and the Polish from the steppes that I will conquer after getting Egypt. The only thing that bugs me is that I lost Naples again. My general was 4 stars but I was finally crushed by the pope's Militia Ss (my Byz inf was lowered to 10 men). I could not tech up to get them retrained. I am gonna try getting Sicily this time. Good luck to me
Thanks guys

[katank]

good luck. as I pointed out in the other thread, if you leave a province vacant, the rebellions are actually smaller.

often, I only had to deal with a lone archer.

[The_Emperor]

So how much of the map have you guys conquered before the Horde arrive?

I managed to take out Hungary, the entire ME, North Africa, Spain and Western France before they turne dup in Khazar.

Your blitz sounds a lot quicker than what I did.

[Kristaps]

Quote[/b] (The_Emperor @ July 15 2004,04:10)]So how much of the map have you guys conquered before the Horde arrive?

I managed to take out Hungary, the entire ME, North Africa, Spain and Western France before they turne dup in Khazar.

Your blitz sounds a lot quicker than what I did.

in my game, the horde didn't arrive at all :) the byz can start and finish conquering all in the early, way before 1205. of course, it's a busy campaign: there was no year without at least a few battles taking place... and that's not counting rebellions.

[The_Emperor]

I had a go at your blitz strategy and it failed for me.

A few of the spearmen managed to escape the map.

Unfortunately Byz inf are not very good at chasing down routers.

I was also running on Expert so I had major Loyalist rebellion problems.

[Kristaps]

Quote[/b] (The_Emperor @ July 16 2004,04:23)]I had a go at your blitz strategy and it failed for me.

A few of the spearmen managed to escape the map.

Unfortunately Byz inf are not very good at chasing down routers.

I was also running on Expert so I had major Loyalist rebellion problems.

i usually play on hard: it seems that the local consensus here is that, in this regime, the AI is at its strategic best. anyways, on expert, given the melee bonuses to the AI side, the lone spearmen unit in Sicily might as well defeat your byz infantry in straight melee which kind of feels wrong to me :)

as to the sicily blitz: if the spearmen escape in the first attack (the second, to be more exact since they will run for the keep in the first one anyways), i just keep going back and forth to/from naples until i get them. or until i can train my first peasant unit in naples that i can use to 'open' the keep gate. :)

another benefit from the going back and forth approach: you don't get loyalist rebellions if you are not seiging the keep but rather just abandon the province.

p.s. also, one should watch out for the sicialian spearmen vices... you don't want to see him turn into a 'brave beyond belief' dude who'd get up to 6 extra valor points if serving as a gen...

[katank]

I usually have my naptha move behind the spearmen and have my byz inf feigning charges at it while I naptha the sucker.

it's funny.

I then charge from both sides when it's routing.

I actually don't use double time for when the enemy is routing if I want to catch eveyr last one of em.

[metatron]

Kill the Turks - Never let them live, for they will expand aggresively, and become stronger as you grow weaker.

Logistics; Supply your armies - Your uber generals can hold off the Mamaluk hordes, but they will keep coming.

Secure Europe - The Huns will be on you, secure the Balkans and Southern Italy.

Trading - The Crimea, Egypt, (Syria/Armenia?), and Venice will all bring alot of money. Egyptian lands give you a good base, and are easy to protect, but Venice will no doubt pick a fight with you, so why not go for the gold?

[katank]

yeah, all of that is kinda covered in the guides forum.

[BalkanTourist]

There is no way I can catch all of them spearmen with my byz infantry....

[Kristaps]

All this talk lured me into playing Byzantines again... (Early, Hard) It's AD 1126 and I just rejected the lesser vicotry :)

The Turks, Eggos, Hungarians, Italians, HRE, and Polish are gone. I am trading with the Pope (out of all people) who has been isolated in his fort in the Papal States and the Sicilians, who are enjoying their lonely port in Malta completely fleetless. Novgorodians have been forced into undeveloped steppes (before it happened, they paid a nice ransom for their Prince) and the Almo leader (a hopeless coward who loves to retreat) is holding on to Cordoba (not for long) ;) There is a steam-roller mix of byz. ifantry, trebizond archers, slav warriors and horse archers standing on the Provence-Friesland line ready to flatten English and French peasant/archer armies... I don't think the Danish with their 5 royal bodyguard units in Denmark will be much of a challenge either.

Since my treasury is filling up nicely, I sense a full victory by 1150 is not an unrealistic goal. :)

Emperor, I'm 100% convinced, my byzantines won't see any mongols...

[katank]

@czar, I've done it before. both the naptha and the Byz inf can chase down all the spears.