My Byzantine XL campaign

[sbroadbent]

The last time I installed MTW, I decided to download and install the XL mod. It is an interesting mod, but something bothers me about the Byzantine.

Is it just me, or does none of the AI factions like you when you play the Byzantine? It started out all right, with a decent sized territory (and with the boost to agriculture) enabled me to have some presence in the early part of the game. You gain the usual number of early game allies, where everyone wants to be friends until they stab you from behind.

Everything started out fine. I initially started with teching up the castle and farming upgrades, though the lack of military development didn't affect me too much, even when some of the factions started to get agressive. I did sack Trebizond and pull my troops back to Nicaea to fortify my position there. It was too early, and I had too many problems in the west to deal with the Muslims in the east.

The first to strike were the Serbs. They sent a large force over to Naples, and a small force into Greece (which they immediately withdrew). I was lucky with Naples because I did manage to get ships to the Ionian sea, so reinforcements were able to arrive in time. After fortifying Naples, I fortified Greece, and launched an attack into Serbia, which ended with the Serbs being eliminated.

I'm not sure who followed, but shortly after it was Sicily with some pre-emptive ship attacks. At this point I was building a fleet, and I started eliminating the sicilian presence from the oceans. I inevitably decided to simply invade Sicily and get it over with, and then followed up by bribing half the sicilian forces in Malta (the garrison troops) which gave me the province, without destroying a single building, and to follow up, brought in a followup force, and squashed that faction. It was like the Sicilians entered civil war ;)

I believe also with the Sicilians the Pope attacked my ships. I sank their ships, and to ensure no other naval problems with the Papacy, invaded and leveled Rome (thereafter promptly withdrawing), leaving it worthless.

Hungary was the next to strike, though I don't think they actually invaded. They did try to initiate a Crusade against me, which I abruptly brought to a halt by preemptively invading the province (Wallachia) where they trained it in. This caused some rebellions (or a minor civil war), which they beat back all but one of these.

At this point, I had my ships all the way up into the baltic, and deciding to establish a northern outpost, I landed a force (3 stacks) into Sweden. The Swedes didn't have much chance. I continued with Scania, and then followed up with Norway. The Danes apparently decided they didn't like me picking on the Swedes so they had sent in a force to help the Swedes. I lost that battle only because my troops were exhausted after devastating the Swedes (the Danes sat back and waited for their allies to collapse) and my forces practically routed early on in the fight against the Danes. You'd think your troops would get a boost of Morale by routing one enemy, but no, exhaustion triumphed. What was frustrating was that up to the point where the troops gave up, I was doing fairly well against the Danes.

Norway fell easily. Most of their troops were cut off in Saxony. They had ships but no port in Saxony. They did have 7-8 units of Knights though. These ended up not being a match. Once I fortified and built up the provincial loyalties, I was going to launch a strike into Denmark to solidify the hold on Scandinavia. I never got the chance, as the Fatimids decided they just didn't like my ships, and suddenly I was now at war with yet another faction, and with Scandinavia cut off from the rest of the empire, I had no choice but to pull troops back to Sweden and Norway to maintain loyalty levels.

Eventually I devastated the Fatimid fleet, and decided to make some strikes into the east part of the empire. They did seem to have some problems with loyalty as it seemed like a few provinces rebelled or entered civil war. The Turks reappeared as well at this time.

The Fatimids became mostly docile, producing a ship every 4-5 years (but otherwise not really bothering me), but I eliminated each one that appeared. They eventually sought a cease fire.

Finally I thought I might get a brief bit of peace, but it just wasn't in the cards. As though it was nothing, the French now decide they want to launch a crusade to Constantinople. The route to Scandinavia is thus blockaded once again, and I have to battle the French in a large number of sea areas in the Western Mediterranean, and Atlantic. As a result of my fighting with the French, the Almohads decide they don't like me either, and I go to war with yet another faction. My allies included at one point the Lithuanians and the Cumans, but the Lithuanias dropped the alliance when I went to war with the Almohads. What a tangled web.

Knowing I could not re-establish a route to Scandinavia, and an outpost in the north was becoming too expensive to be worthwhile to defend, I decided that it would simply be best to depart. Since I knew I couldn't take my troops the ship route, I sacked Norway, Sweden, and Scania, and I moved all my troops (2 and a half stacks) into the Polish territory of Pomerania. I took the land route from Pomerania through Greater Poland, Volhynia, and the Hungarian controlled Moldavia. When I finally reached Bulgaria, the troops were practically greated with an immediate deployment into Trebizond where the Turks were causing me some problems (mostly 5 stacks in Anatolia).

Currently, my allies are the Genoese (who have extended their territory into previously Hungarian, Venetian, and German holdings as well as Rome) and the to be eliminated Cumans. My naval presence is limited mostly to the Eastern Mediterranean, and it's frustrating only having coastal ships, with such limited range. I'm about 50 years to the appearance of the Horde, and so I'm trying to determine my next step.

My borders are Serbia, Bulgaria and Modavia in the North, Trebizond, Rum, and Lesser Armenia in the East, and Naples in the West. I can't expand north because otherwise I'll be going to war with the Genoese, and I need them for what limited trading (and what peaceful relations I can get). In addition, expanding north through Rome is not an option. I know the Genoese will turn on me, it's just a matter of when. I'm currently at war with the Turks, and I'd definately like to have more territory to support the war efforts before even considering a war with the Genoese. What I may do is expand and fortify Georgia, in addition to pushing quickly into Sinai to minimize my borders to the bare minimum, so that I can be prepared for any Horde forces that try to approach through Georgia, as well as through Moldavia.

With other factions in XL, I've been able to do the trading empire with not alot of problems from other factions, and while not generating the huge profits compared to the non-moded game, it was a sizable amount. I've generated alot of cash and except for some major battles, things have otherwise been mostly peaceful. Establishing trading is just not worthwhile as the Byzantines. You seem to always be at war with someone, and that someone always has ships where you don't want them. Ship combat tends to be annoying as it's a toss of the coin usually to decide whether or not the game wants to acknowledge your attack.

The one thing I do like about the Byzantines are the Katanks. In the Scandinavia campaign I had a Katank general who ended up on his own and became a 6 Star General with a valor of 9.

[_Aetius_]

Hatred of the Byzantines is pretty accurate really, nobody really trusted or liked the Byzantines in reality and the fact your empire is tottering makes it an ideal target for emerging powers like Serbia and Hungary, plus the odd crusade.

So its no suprise that everybody hates you at the beginning, once your Emperor restores stability etc minor factions will respect you enough to stand by you as allies. But since your Orthodox you will struggle to remain allies with major Catholic factions, if they are as powerful as yourself, personally the Muslims factions are preferrable than the backstabbing Catholic factions in the west.

[Ludens]

Nobody likes the big guys, and the Byzantines are pretty big. Also, nobody likes aggressors, though succesfull aggressors usually get some respect. It seems to me that you have waged a pretty aggressive campaign. The Serbs and Sicilians may have been the first to strike but it was you who took out their countries. Oh, and I suspect the Papacy would like to get rid of you as well.

[Ciaran]

It´s much the same with the HRE, those two factions have too many provinces for the others to be comfortable with. Loose some and they´ll love you again.

[sbroadbent]

Well, from where I last left off, my empire has grown in size. I moved east, and then south, fortifying Georgia, and then wiping out both the Turks and Fatimids. The Genoese had popped down into Egypt so it sort of halted my advance through those provinces. After I defeated the muslim factions, peace seemed to come to my empire, which enabled me to build and prepare for the Horde. I prepped for the Horde, accumulating close to 6k troops in Georgia. There was a battle there, but I had lost it, mostly because in the process of reinfocements, the Mongol Heavy Cavalry and Horse Archers had effectively pinned my reinforcements from entering the field without taking heavy losses. After that battle I regrouped, and managed to push into the north. Eventually I claimed territory which was once Novgorodian and oddly enough, just before the Horde appeared, the Lithuanians re-emerged and reduced the Novgorods to a couple provinces, but got overwhelmed by the Horde in the process.

Eventually I swept up and pushed right through to a reasonably large polish empire. Through some diplomatic loopholes I got out of my alliance with the Novgorods by allying with the Polish (who were at war with the Novgorods), and then wiped them out. Same thing with the Genoese, who at the time were at war with the Almohads. It was a quick campaign and pushed my borders tighter.

Eventually, I moved on the Polish, putting the only faction between me and the Almohads in the West being the Burgundians. The Almohads eventually overwhelmed the West and have the British Isles. I pursued the African front, pushing the Almohads right out of that continent, and eliminating what ships they had in the Mediterranean. I did also start pushing into the Iberian peninsula, but the Spanish have re-emerged, and they are currently in the way. I don't plan another war with a new faction, just yet.

I was offered the 60% Victory, and since I'm only less than 200 years into the game, I decided there would be plenty of time for total domination. I haven't received mass rebellions, but I did notice one or two provinces that had enough of a loyalty drop that changed them from Green to Yellow... nothing that a couple reinforcements can't fix. I've ensured that the Emperor has remained in or near Constantinople, as that is the most central position that is close to the ocean in my empire. I've also ensured that I build up a provinces loyalty as much as I can before moving the troops to other provinces.

At this point, I'm pretty much looking at pushing through the Burgundians, and fortifying my position against the Almohads (their forces on their eastern front seem to be much more heavily defended than their western front (and for that reason I was able to get into Iberia), but the Spanish are a problem I don't want to focus on. In fact, the western front had entered civil war once I removed the Almohads from Africa. Once I have some available troops I'll need to sweep through Scandinavia.

Overall, I'm enjoying the XL mod, but it's required a complete change of strategies. Trading just isn't a good long-term strategy anymore, as the profit potential just isn't there to maintain the number of ships required. I've also found that the AI tends to also put alot of ships into the waters as well, increasing the number of resources required to defend your route.

[Ciaran]

Overall, I'm enjoying the XL mod, but it's required a complete change of strategies. Trading just isn't a good long-term strategy anymore, as the profit potential just isn't there to maintain the number of ships required. I've also found that the AI tends to also put alot of ships into the waters as well, increasing the number of resources required to defend your route.

Which in my opinion is a good thing, naval battles are nothing if not unpredictable, and the AI loves to use naval incidents as an excuse to start a war and smash up your alliances, a strategy I profusely hate by now. Being able to ignore that nuisance is nice.