Ok, well I did it once for all the greek minors and got more than 1k each time.
I was however playing as Byzant, not Turkey.
I was however playing as Byzant, not Turkey.
How to get started as Byzantium?
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Topic Hijack! 
Tried to follow this advice in my own Byzantine game. I was lucky to quickly conquer the Turkish minor to the north of the Osmans & Trebizond after it had been ravished by north.
Naples didn't go to war with Epirus, but was occupied elsewhere, so I took them to. Then Achaea became independent, so they were easy pray. Athens rebelled and joined me.
But now I'm stuck. I can't attack any other core, since it either belongs to the Ottomans, or is guaranteed by or allied to Venice, Castille, France, Algier, etc. And they all can beat the crap out of me.
I can afford a fleet of 10 ships, nowhere near the 20 the Ottomans have, so no way to challenge then, even in Greece. Besides, they are beating the crap out of Timur.
So, any advice?
Tried to follow this advice in my own Byzantine game. I was lucky to quickly conquer the Turkish minor to the north of the Osmans & Trebizond after it had been ravished by north.
Naples didn't go to war with Epirus, but was occupied elsewhere, so I took them to. Then Achaea became independent, so they were easy pray. Athens rebelled and joined me.
But now I'm stuck. I can't attack any other core, since it either belongs to the Ottomans, or is guaranteed by or allied to Venice, Castille, France, Algier, etc. And they all can beat the crap out of me.
I can afford a fleet of 10 ships, nowhere near the 20 the Ottomans have, so no way to challenge then, even in Greece. Besides, they are beating the crap out of Timur.
So, any advice?
Use spies to incite revolts in greek lands.
You'll notice that the people are greek but the overlords are lombards.
You'll notice that the people are greek but the overlords are lombards.
Getting Cyprus to revolt is highly ipratical as you need several stacks and they cost about 160 each ...
How's it cheesy? Extending a phony war several years beyond the length it needs to be to achieve a state's policy goals is bread and butter statecraft. See any US war ever for the past several decades. I also strongly disagree with targeting the Turkish minors on day one; your only reliable strategy against the Ottomans is blockading the Sea of Marmara and taking Europe, and you're just going to throw away warscore by letting the Ottomans roll over unprotected Asian lands. Better to work with the smaller base from Epirus + starting lands until you get Greece (minus Edirne) back, then perhaps attack the Turkish minors in the interim to give yourself a legitimate staging ground for the decisive campaign into Ottoman Turkey.
So spawn more. Cyprus should spawn enough troops to get the siege going anyway; the main problem is that Cyprus's high base tax (which allows for the higher rebel numbers) also gives Cyprus the force limits to build an army to resist rebellion. For dealing with Cyprus you basically just have to bite the bullet and get attacked by France and rely on a superior fleet (since the French don't start with a Castillean or English caliber fleet) to handle them. But the Knights' fortress in Rhodes will fall to 2-3 rebel spawns. It gets expensive, but that's why you wait.
Good catch, forgot to mention this. If you're in 5.2 just ready thy body 'cause it's gonna get bad.
Funding Patriots is the most fun way IMO, but it's not always doable and it's subject to odd mischances at times. If you succeed twice in Athens you get an army of 12,000 which is big enough to defeat the entire army of Venice that comes to try and lift the siege. This outcome can be very good for your future prospects, since you'll eventually have to deal with Venice yourself. Doesn't work so well with Albania though.
Playing 5.2 at the moment. Still doable, but dicey, very dicey; as Turkey never gets steamrolled by the Timurids, which also means that the North African states will tend to honour their alliances more.
In mine, Algiers allied with the Turks, a combined navy of 40, and a fighting force of about 80, 20 Turks, 20 vassals, 20 Algiers, 20 Jellies.
End result: Empire restored, but at 15% inflation for a century, and only slightly better tech than the horde.
Time to be nice to the west, Castille's hit land tech 11, and Holland's reached land tech 16.
How is it that if Byzant gets conquered the west gets a tech bonus, emulating the renaissance; the rebirth, but if it comes back to life itself, it has to... westernize????
In mine, Algiers allied with the Turks, a combined navy of 40, and a fighting force of about 80, 20 Turks, 20 vassals, 20 Algiers, 20 Jellies.
End result: Empire restored, but at 15% inflation for a century, and only slightly better tech than the horde.
Time to be nice to the west, Castille's hit land tech 11, and Holland's reached land tech 16.
How is it that if Byzant gets conquered the west gets a tech bonus, emulating the renaissance; the rebirth, but if it comes back to life itself, it has to... westernize????
My attempt was 5.1 and I bumped up the difficulty to hard. Managed to reform the Byzant and get most of my Greek core and all but 1 Turkish core. Then I entered a cycle of GH declares war, Timurid declares war, Morocco declares war. GH is bored peaces out. Timurids are bored peace out. Venice declares war. Morocco peaces out. Venice accepts white peace. Rest time to recover my epic WE. 2 months later GH declares. I don't know why but I think I expanded a little quickly or something.
After you've secured all your cores, you're really quite weak, as they're not rich provinces, and your economy's shot to pieces.
If you claim all your cores you get a decision that is like half the manpower national idea.
If you claim all your cores you get a decision that is like half the manpower national idea.
If you have managed to take all your cores id bunker down and make sure your country is relativly secure and calm, then start more conquests or work on Trade and economy.
Or you start entertaining the Steppe Nomads (Timurids and Golden Horde) over and over and over and over and over and over again. Until you either ragequit or they've been beaten, which ever comes first (usually the former)
Well, I own most of the Greek cores, except for the ones controlled bij the Ottomans. And if I manage to let them revolt, their 6 infantry army gets quickly subdued by an Ottoman stack.
Same here. It's quite impossible to Attack any of the Moslim states.
So, how did you beat them?
I find they are only a real threat half the time unless they destroy there neighbours, if you can win one war you can easily make them collapse with the right pressure
or hold them at the border until they give up.
Topic Hijack!
Tried to follow this advice in my own Byzantine game. I was lucky to quickly conquer the Turkish minor to the north of the Osmans & Trebizond after it had been ravished by north.
I can afford a fleet of 10 ships, nowhere near the 20 the Ottomans have, so no way to challenge then, even in Greece. Besides, they are beating the crap out of Timur.
So, any advice?
What about the turkish minors in the south ? Are they still independant ? Can you attack them or are they allied to the ottomans ?
What's your force limit, i.e how many land troops can you support / compared with Ottomans ? You conquered some turkish minors so you should replace your army with ottomans troops, then overbuild your army a bit.
If you can conquer some of the southern turkish minors go for it.
Consider attacking the Ottomans even if they have more troops. Use the mountains and focus on their armies one by one.
I usually attack the ottomans when I have half their numbers.
I always use the "attack the turkish minors on day one" strategy and it works perfectly, it gives you access to better troops, much higher force limits etc. And then it's possible to take the ottos.
One is Morocco, the other one is Guaranteed/Allied to Algiers, which is allied to the Ottomans..
Force limit is about 12 or 13. When I "overbuild", I can't afford them: I pay 25 maintenance instead of 3.
Daring. Might try, though.
I did with the northern, in hindsight should I have taken them both?
... really? In my games they send 30-40 regiments to my borders and when I'm half way through fighting one horde faction the truce with other horde faction ends. This happens every five years, it's just tiring and not fun. And there's little I can do inbetween because of the high war exhaustion.I find they are only a real threat half the time unless they destroy there neighbours, if you can win one war you can easily make them collapse with the right pressure
Don't forget there's also an Turkish OPM next to the southern one that you can easily take in day 1.
My first move was Candar, Karaman.
Day 2 Morroco declared war on me and occupied my territories so I started a new game...
First move again...
Candar, Karaman. Then saw that the Timurids were doing nothing, so went for Trebizond and Adana. Adana had Azab infantry which was good.
Full minting, built loads of those plus musselem cavalry, as my king had a couple of fire pips, built 20% more ships than the Ottomans, whilst slowly inciting revolts, not patriots because they were too expensive, just revolts, in all the Greek minors. They all flipped over to me surprisingly quickly, except Janina, which went to Naples, then Hungary.
Then I had a decision. Did I want my Turk lands occupied or my Greek lands? Chose Turk, as I wanted to be able to fight to the capital if need be. I couldn't afford any more troops, and the Turks are foreigners anyway.
Declared war. I busied myself fighting the Vassals' troops, and laying siege to that side while my proud new navy was beaten by the Algierian and Turk fleet.
Algiers and Jellies laid siege to Kastamon and Sinope respectively, whilst the Turks busied themselves in Southern Anatolia, their doom stacks slowed down hugely by my 4 star fort guy.
Slowly Serbia and Bosnia ran out of manpower, and I racked up war score on the Greek side, as I lost it in Anatolia.
Having Edirne, the Ottomans were willing to give up a couple of provinces.
Then the break I'd been waiting for: the Timmies declared war on the Jellies. Yes. Yes. Yes. But the Jellies conceded defeat with the Timmies and moved on to sieging Trebizond.
A year later, Algiers got dragged in to a war with Castille or Portugal, and thankfullypeaced out, and after a few abortive attempts to crush the Turk navy, I took the three Greek provinces.
Five years later, I attacked again, collecting most of the rest of the empire in the peace deal. And the next day, just to be on the safe side, I broke truce incurring a -5 stability hit and annexed.
With the Byzants you're always going to lose to someone. It's really important to increase your sphere of influence as much as possible, but also with the crap prestige, sustainable, to be able to hand out in peace deals.
Really helps to check the diplomacy each month, just to see if someone, anyone will peace out.
Also, what you buy with fort guys, is time.
Results: Empire is mine, but at 15% inflation for a century, and the worst tech of the region.
You need the Turkish minors to win, just for their military. 2 Turk infantry equals 3 Greek.
DOW day one, and with luck (see above) you can take them.
The two Turkish minors tend to protect one and other. You should DOW both at the same time.
With Candar, I moved my guys back on to the boat after a frail victory, to get to the next province before the enemy. There's a 3 or 4 day margin of error.
Although taking Adana secured Azab infantry, it might also have secured the Algierian entrance in to the next war. It was however not guaranteed or protected when I took it.
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You could always pay tribute to one of them
There are tricks to handle there stacks and they cant keep that many men aimed at you all the time.
I like taking Trebizon after the timmies vassalize and then pay tribute to them. With only 3-4 provinces it is around 0.8
Hm... seems like I need to restart my game. Or at least go back to my "day 1 save".
Now, for some reason I can't pay tribute. I can concede defeat, but the "+" is greyed out, so I can't offer any. Might be because I play 5.2.
Now, for some reason I can't pay tribute. I can concede defeat, but the "+" is greyed out, so I can't offer any. Might be because I play 5.2.