The Turks

[_Aetius_]

I was really suprised by the Turks, I expected to be poverty-stricken and struggling to make ends meet, however I became extremely wealthy early on.

The first thing I did was construct a series of roads due to the vastness of the empire, also I massed available forces from Iconium, Caeserea and Mosul to advance on Antioch, my first target. I starved Antioch and forced the garrison to sally easily defeating it and sacking the city, which I think gave me about 7000 florins it memory serves. Which sure helped.

I then decided to try and absorb as many rebel provinces as possible, namely Rhodes, Tbilisi, Aleppo and Baghdad, Rhodes fell easily and Aleppo followed the same pattern as Antioch and I launched a successful Jihad against Baghdad. My armies are made up primarily of Saracen militia, Turkomans and various archer units along with whatever mercenaries are of value.

However I am still unable to take Tbilisi due to a shortage of troops at this time.

All of these conquests relatively early on raised my coffers to around 35,000 with a decent profit of around 3000 thanks to trade with Egypts provinces.

Byzantium decided to attack me and briefly besieged Iconium with a single stack, 3 defeats in a row (destruction of 3 stacks) hasnt slowed them down though and they keep hiring hundreds of HA mercenaries which are often a match for my own HA and foot archers.

The result is stalemate, I win the battles but struggle to push onto Nicaea because of constant Byzantine armies swarming around, also the Byzantine navy is hurting trade, which effectively died out when the Egyptians declared war on me.

My position now is financially precarious (around 60 turns in) i'm not making much money, but cities need to be expanded and armies need to be trained, I also need to establish somekind of fleet at some point to. My allies have both betrayed me so I have no sea trade and large military commitments.

All in all it's been suprisingly fun so far, but it is getting tough, I feel I can hold the Byzantine back for quite some time, so I can campaign in the holyland against Egypt. If I can seize Jerusalem and the surrounding territories it should repair the damage done to my economy and force Egypt to sue for peace.

If I can do that I can develop a fleet to challenge Byzantium and reestablish trade atleast among my own provinces and finally remove Cyprus, the persistant thorn in my side that it is.

[The_Emperor]

Well my first goal as the Turks was to head West immediately...

I moved my Sultan at the head of what forces I could muster (backed up with a lot of Mercs) towards Smyrna. It was a high risk because I knew the Byzantines had their eyes on it and I knew from early attempts at a Byz campaign it was rebel.

Turned out I was right and I was able to quickly sack the place while the Byz army approached. From then on I quickly dispatched him over the sea and nabbed Rhodes converting it to a city.

After that moment the Byz attacked and declared war on me and after a few turns I was able to bring a second army to bear on them. My faction leader led an assault on Nicaea while his son led a Jihad on Constantinople which pretty much crippled the Byz very early on.

Right now things have developed strangely, I took Adana, Antioch, Edessa and Aleppo with a new Jihad on Bagdad and Egypt declaring war. Trebizond is amusingly enough still rebel and I am travelling south towards Jerusalem now. My hope is to be able to drill south enough to take Egypt and have time to fortify to prepare for the Mongol invasion when it comes.

Money is starting to improve and sacking of settlements during my conquests seems to produce enough money to keep me going.