Which faction for the first game

[bretwalda]

Byz is not that hard at all management wise if you are a die-hard civ player like me And tactics wise it is easy because of the good generals and crash-thru-everything troops. I'd say Byz just keep in mind two things: money will run out so trade and build ships and always use good generals because they make your troops fight harder, better and longer.

[Dub]

I'd recommend Byz, despite the numerous provinces and being in the middle of various ambitious powers. You'll have lots of money to spend, and that's the name of the campaign game (i.e., learning how to spend money), you'll have high loyalty so won't need to deal with the complications of disloyalty right from the start, you'll have VERY strong troops, so you'll have success on the battlefield without too much trouble, and the troop variety will teach you about how to utilize different forces for different tasks. By all means get Viking Invasion: great additions, and the smaller scale strategy of conquering the British Isles is a relief after you've tackled the whole medieval world... I, for one, am a believer in MTW over RTW: I played RTW when it first came out, and enjoyed it, and still have it in fact, but have found that its battles aren't half as fun (except for sieges) and its campaign mode can't sustain my interest after thirty or so years of play... got repetitive for me. Anyway, the TW series is great, and MTW has been the thing for me.

[Dub]

And just to add to Bretwalda's thought: as the Byz, you MUST BUILD SHIPS...along with trading posts (and their upgrades). And do the farm upgrades. THEN the money will roll in (via trade from the ships especially). Good luck!

[EatYerGreens]

And just to add to Bretwalda's thought: as the Byz, you MUST BUILD SHIPS...along with trading posts (and their upgrades). And do the farm upgrades. THEN the money will roll in (via trade from the ships especially). Good luck!

I got part way into a Normal level Byz campaign (plain MTW) a while ago before eventually losing the hard drive but, now I've put VI in place I've just restarted as Byz.

You say 'MUST BUILD SHIPS' but, even with a dockyard on hand, I'm expecting to have to churn out armoured Byz Inf and the odd Spearman for the first 15 years or so before I'm content with my border defences. Three years' pause to build each ship requires careful planning, short of peace breaking out. I thought 2 years per VG was bad enough...


I'm struck by the way you are totally hamstrung at the start by only having Constantinople to train decent troops for your first 4 turns. On Expert, you only have 4000 florins, with maybe 1000-1500 profits. You have 11 provinces needing a fort to kick things off but no way can you afford it all at once. Careful money management is the name of the game here.

It is certainly good practice for province management and developing specialisms. Whilst you are gifted a shipbuilding facility in your capital, you'll not get much chance to use it while you raise troops in the first decade or two, so you'll need to build up another province towards keep + port, for shipbuilder, which always looks pricey when you'd rather be spending that on improving crop yeilds, say. Just remember that you can build the crop improvements while simultaneously churning out ships but if you go for crops first, you'll be 2, 6, or 12 years late with your trade routes from going for the 20,40, 60% levels first.

+1 Pronoai Allagion from Nicaea looks like a good idea but when you go into detail about the developments required, you realise (sometimes *after* spending the initial outlay) that it's going to be 20-odd years before you finally get your hands on them. To top it all, they won't be armoured if you stick to the minimum requiements, which is what you'd have got if you'd only built the necessaries in the capital.... but that just means more units fight for a place in the training queue.

Don't forget that the capital also has a ready-built church, giving a morale bonus to troops trained there. Most of the Catholic factions are many years away from affording the keep-level castles, required to match this. Notice that ByzInf are described on the info parchment as having 'poor morale', so your early built, armoured ones are having that cancelled out. If you decide to build swordmiths in other provinces, so as to be able to recover battle casualties rapidly, remember that these will be just as described. Mismatched troop quality could prove troublesome in a pitched battle, when 3 out of 4 decide to rout and the one decent one then gets mobbed....

Constantinople may find itself permanently occupied - when not producing VGs, it will likely be retraining the lower quality BIs and other types, moving in rotation around your lands - and almost never have time in hand to produce any ship.

The secondary province (or two, even) which you've dedicated to shipbuilding will similarly be preoccipied, as will Trebizond for your archers, so others will need to be developed for the other types you will want. Okay, you get horse archers and maybe ByzCav on the route to PAs, so Nicaea for those and maybe another province again for Napthas and catapults.

On normal, I lost Naples early but I took a gamble this time and managed to get to peasants, UMs and now spears before rebellion set in or the Sicilians came to say hello. The money for that fort and bits could have been spent better elsewhere but if I keep it long enough for a port and a TP, I only need one ship to start trade to Italy and Hungary.

Lastly, beware who you war with. With ships and trade, your income can be vast but it will all collapse overnight if you pick an opponent whose ships are side by side with all of yours.

I also find the AI seems to respond to the trickle of income it gets from import ing your stuff and too many incoming trade sources connected to you sometimes triggers it to launch a naval attack. Recently as the Almos, I was doing okay with trade until I put one ship into the Black Sea. About 4 extra ports came online but the following turn, the Byz sunk a ship somewhere else and I was blockaded just about everywhere.

This advice goes for the English as well - don't increase your army size to match your trade income unless you're fully prepared to demobilise huge sections of it when war with another naval power breaks out and your income is suddenly cut off. Enjoy it while it lasts but bank it and use it for your war chest in years to come.

It's a pity the economy summary doesn't give subtotals for the contribution from sea trade, so that you can see how close to the line you're getting in terms of army maintainance budget, should trade be cut off. I can do this manually but it's pretty tedious when the list is long.

[antisocialmunky]

As the Byz, I take out the turns in 5 turns and then run through Egypt before they can horde peasants.

[EatYerGreens]

Hee hee, and there was me fussing over tax rates and putting down rebellions on Cyprus (40 Horse Archers), then Rhodes (60 Archers) who fire off their arrows while I lurk in the forest, then run away without a decent fight.

Do you take all the units you can gather with you and leave empty provinces behind? (potential for rebellions, no?)

Are you also attacking 2 provinces per turn?



I've heard of 'kill them off early' but I never realised it meant THAT early!

If I can get direct to the Sultan with just spears from the front and Kat's from behind, then I think I could cope with that. The inf can be free to chase after the pez/UMs but never seem to run fast enough to catch them...

[littlebktruck]

Spanish are definitely a good faction to start with. You can expand through all of North Africa and still only require 3 defensive armies: One in the last North African province you have and one each in Navarre and Aragon (assuming you took those). I was spoiled by the lack of defense needed; I'm having trouble in my new Italian campaign because I need a defensive army in almost every province.

[VikingHorde]

I also recommend byzantines in early era because they are easy in to play, have lots of money, cool powerful units and they can't get excom by the pope. Later you can try out the English/early era who is one of the easyer catholic factions.