Byzantium

[Gingivitis]

One of the things that made my Byzantine campaign run so smooth was the economy. The Holy Lands are great for that, especially since it seems the pope can't call a crusade on the Orthodox. Another benefit to the economy was that I didn't use many castles. The Byz fit into my playstyle perfectly as I pretty much use infantry as cannon fodder and I could get good units (well good for the Byz anyway) out of city militia barracks. Typical battles/sieges saw me losing 50% of my infantry but only 5-10% of my Cavalry and Archers. Therefore I could easily just replenish the infantry at the cities I just took and didn't have to drag piles of other forces back to retrain, or build castles everywhere.

[vonsch]

Gingi,

Do you still get those nice relics as Bizzy? From looking at the files I'm not clear if they are all generic, or if they are tied to religion.

[Gingivitis]

Sadly after talking over all of the Holy Lands the only relic I got was from Jerusalem and eventually I forgot to transfer the thing before the general that got it died.

[vonsch]

Sadly after talking over all of the Holy Lands the only relic I got was from Jerusalem and eventually I forgot to transfer the thing before the general that got it died.

Ah, but it is possible for Orthodox to get them then. Good. I've only seen one to date too, but I tend to start on the Atlantic and usually restart before more than one crusade.

[Gray Beard]

The relics appear to be really hard to get. You should remember that it was the Byzantines who were manufacturing a lot of those relics and then selling them to crusaders.