XL Guide Byzantines

[Gimli]

Byzantines (Early)

WELCOME EMPEROR! You are the powerhouse of the East! Your empire spreads out in all directions from Constantinople and your coffers are deep!
The provinces that you start with are similar to those that you start with in VI. There are three that you lose to others in the mod: Georgia (Rebels), Anatolia (Turks), & Lesser Armenia (Armenians). Regrettably, you keep Naples! Also sad about that is that with the land bridge to Sicily gone, you have VERY few options with Naples. Your best option is to be an "Orthodox pain" in the hind end of the Pope by holding the province and thus increasing Orthodox religion on the Italian peninsula!

OPENING THE GAME

Despite your rich empire, you start the game without the manpower to start a major campaign on your first turn. The only way you might be able to do so is to lower the taxes to such an extent that your provinces won't revolt under VERY MINIMAL (or no) garrisons. (Note: I "play for money", so I never lower taxes!!!) There are, of course, several different paths you can take [or a combination]. The four or so feasible starting goals (excluding having "taking Italy" as your main objective! *remember... FEASIBLE*) are:

1) "Road to riches!" (my personal favorite) You make early moves against the Turks with your main goal being to take Eygpt (and all the provinces on the way!) You start by building as many troops as you can (which isn't many at the beginning...) Allies you will want: Serbs to help cover your North (from the Cumans/Hungarians) and Armenia (they are always at war with the Turks anyway!) You will want to mass troops in Nicea (or Trebizoid, depending on where you strike first) After about 2-4 turns, you should have a good sized army and be pulling in 1.5K or so florins! The Cumans will probably attack you in Bulgaria pretty early on. I suggest slav javelinmen to deal with their heavy cuman cavalry. You will need units to keep their horsemen in place though and to fight with the inevitable rabble of spearmen and Slav Warriors that they will bring along. Once you can get them out there, Byzantine Lancers will do OK against his units (light enough to be tolarable at chasing horse archers, but strong enough to actually fight!) In fighting the Turks, one must have a lot of cavalry and I sometimes wind up hiring some Merc cavalry units out of Trebizoid to supplement my own. To deal with the Turks' plethera of horse archers, I have found that shooting them to pieces with Trebizoid Archers is not only great fun, but pretty effective! Rum is a good spot to hit first as it is very rich and if you can take and hold it, it helps keep Anatolia from being reinforced. Once the Turks have fallen (and the Cumans put in their place), move into the "promised land." Head South along the coast and take everything in your path. Having control of the Eastern Med. is nice at this point. It can be a little hard as the Eygptians sometimes have quite a fleet! Once you have Palestine and Eygpt and the other provinces around there, your money issues (if you even HAVE any at this point) should clear up without much ado. After all that, I generally head into the Hungarians/Cumans/Poles/Kievians. Despite that, I like to leave the Cumans and Kievians until last as they will be a nice buffer against the Horde! Levidia is a good place to stop the fight against the Cumans as it has river boundaries to the East.
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