How does anyone play this game?

[Gray Beard]

By changing "prefers naval invasions" from yes to no on desc_factions_sm.txt seems to prevent this and prefer to grab all the rebel settlements around them. They become quite large and even manage to become a bit of a regional superpower.

Doing this can make a huge difference in the way the game develops.

One of the reasons I play the Byzantines is that in order to get any thing close to a historical situation after a 100 years of so you have to. Other wise the Turks are in Denmark or the Hungarians in Cairo.

However, it isn't really fair to say that the Byzantines would have had no interest in Tunis (They'd have called it Carthage) They ruled that area for 100's of years until the Bubonic plague and and the rise of Islam forced them back. Justinian, perhaps one of the three or four greatest emperors was from there. Indeed, after rioting in Constantinople he almost moved the Byzantine capital to Tunis but his wife talked him out of it.