Secrets of the Byzantine Empire ?!?

[DensterNY]

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?

[edyzmedieval]

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.

[Maeda Toshiie]

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).

[Mujalumbo]

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...

[PittBull260]

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...

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

[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.

[DensterNY]

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)

[dgfred]

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.

Nice story and excellent fighting (playing) .

[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...

[EatYerGreens]

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

[ToranagaSama]

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

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

---

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,

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.

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

[EatYerGreens]

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

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

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

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...

[Roark]

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...

[antisocialmunky]

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

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. 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.