Next full update is going to be delayed until later this week at the earliest.. end of semester stuff piling up, per usual this time of year. To sate you all, I have a short teaser after these replies:
Enewald - Rhys-Meyers is the old pic I've used for Manuel since day one. I thought it looked sufficiently evil to qualify for him. Yes, if he and Basil ever joined forces, they'd be a formidable pair - that's if Manuel would join with him. His one weakness has been his ability to make enemies, even with a genius for plotting and deviousness. And no, Manuel doesn't have any bastards... all of his kids are legitimate (for once).
And why is Sophie worse than Basiliea? She's concerned about her husband - she hasn't moved against Manuel (yet, at least), she's worried that this normally bloodthirsty guy might possibly (with arguably some good dynastic reason) come after her husband...
English Patriot - Yes, Basil is following the Komnenid family tradition of having kids early. But will he follow the other tradition of having a small army of children?
AlexanderPrimus - Oh, if this was about, say, the County of Vexin, I doubt it would be as Byzantine. Not enough courtiers or nobles to play with.
Manuel is
definitely up to something, something very dark and likely bloodthirsty, given his past track record. Its mostly a question of a) who are his targets, and b) how well has his ruse worked...
canonized - I brought in Rodrigo just for you. XD He's got an intrigue rating higher than the Emperor's (14, IIRC), and while he's cruel and devious, he's one of Basil's best friends, so it'd be natural for Sophie to try to turn there in a case like this.
RGB - Exactly! Did you think he was going to take Zeno muddling things up lying down? (pardon the pun)
And yes, those that don't have some exceptional skills at survival at the least tend to not make it into the story - either because a) they're uninteresting, or b) they're dead.
VladAntlerkov - Welcome to the story! I'm glad you enjoy it! Some clarifications on the dynastic stuff - the Arpads didn't inherit the von Frankens, they DWed when the von Frankens were mired in a civil war and stole them, then used their Hungarian forces to gobble up the other princes in Germany that wouldn't join them one by one. As for the Capets and the House of Normandy, I needed some reason why the Pope would receive cash from France to finance a Roman revolt - it seemed the most logical thing I could come up with at the time (truth be told, other than snapping a screenie of Drogo the Mad, I kept little track of what was going on in France and Britain at this point in the game).
Leviathan07 - Welcome to the story! To further continue what I said above, the Seljuks were really screwed by their AI. 1074 (back when I was playing the Principality of Kappadokia), they had a chance to seize all of Anatolia - the Imperial armies were destroyed, mine were busy seizing Aleppo and Edessa (at the time I was planning assuming the Byzantine's fell, I could take the mantle "King of Syria" and rebuild the Empire that way). THe Seljuks made peace for 374 gold. The next time they tried, I was at the helm, not the crappy Byzantine AI, and they got fought to a standstill. The rest, as they say, is history.
Alot of the lands I've shown them holding are lands that are off-map in CK... lands that historically they probably would've held. I really wish CK's map went further east into Central Asia, as many events
there directly cascaded into the Holy Land. Since if one looked at their on-CK holdings it wouldn't make much sense for the Seljuks to try to take on even a weakened Manueline Byzantine Empire, I made a map pretending they had lands further east, justifying their strength.
Estonianzulu - Glad you liked it!
Lordling - Thats perhaps Manuel's greatest tragedy. If Manuel, with his skill, was more of a statesman like Nikolaios, he could have been a formidable and extremely successful Emperor along the lines of Justinian or Augustus. Instead he has all the deviousness in the world, and too much self-confidence, but not the ability to garner the love of his people - only the army.
asd21593 - See, Basil's not a complete prude. :rofl:
Irenicus - Basil has the same intrigue rating as his father, but considering his traits, I'm playing him as someone who can recognize plots, make some ingenious ones of his own, but only does it within certain moral rules. Backstabbing his father (or expecting his father to backstab him) would be one of those things that would be outside his moral boundaries, so it would be beyond consideration. As for Sophie - I'm kind of playing her as a "what if" Anastasia Komnenos, from all the way in the beginning, hadn't died in childbirth...
As for Rodrigo, he's devious, he's a cad, but is he loyal? We shall see...
October 9th, 1163 - 8 AM
Murad Arslan pulled hard on the reins of his horse, trying to calm the beast down. The stallion had been a gift from the city fathers of Palmyra, in thanks for Murad not sacking the city after its surrender. The beast was wild and spirited - and the Arslan prince wondered if it had been a Roman plot of some kind to kill him with kindness. Nonetheless, the noble and powerful looks of the creature persuaded the Turkish prince to ride him everywhere - it let him tower over his other riders, most of whom rode more docile, even skittish mares.
Murad and his people had always used mares in battle - Mares were faster, and tended to flee when provoked, something a lightly armored archer on hroseback would be inclined to do anyways if heavy enemy troops closed. It wasn't until recently for the
ghulams that Murad's father began copying the Europeans and using stallions in battle - they were larger, braver, and inclined to charge come hell or high water - the perfect strong horse for heavy cavalry.
Today, Murad had nearly four thousand of the new
ghulams with him, to compliment the eight thousand horse archers and eighteen thousand infantry he had managed to cull from the sieges all across Syria. It was a mighty host, yet something about all of this mess galled him.
"Highness, there they are," one of his lieutenants pointed. Murad held his hand over his eyes and squinted. Sure enough, in the surf, was a vast sea of men, marching slowly. Beyond them, he could make out the masts and sails of the Roman fleet, following them.
Murad frowned. He'd been gleeful only a month before. Damascus had finally fallen, and it'd seemed that slowly, bit by bit, the eighteen month siege of Antioch was slowly reaching its end. His men had stormed several of the outer bastions, and one enterprising commander even managed to poison one of the great wells that supplied the city with fresh water. Its defenders were slowly dying or deserting, and there was no prospect of reinforcement. Everything seemed to be in Murad's grasp - if Antioch fell, only the minor cities of SYria would be left - and Murad would be free to assign his main field force to help either his father in Anatolia or Murad Bey in the Levant.
By October of 1163, the formerly impregnable defenses of Antioch seemed about ready to fall to the merciless Turkish attacks...
Yet the arrival of all those Romans and Franks changed that.
Murad recieved word of their landing near Alexandretta only two weeks before. and at first he was incredulous. The numbers seemed too small! No Roman would be
stupid enough to land in the heart of Syria with only thirteen thousand troops!
Yet there they were, in all their impudent glory, marching slowly to Antioch, no doubt with relief supplies as well as enough troops to double the garrison of that wretched city.
"They march in a strange formation, Highness. It is like a box, with their infantry on the outside, then their archers, then their cavalry, then closest to the sea, their baggage."
Murad nodded. The scouts had told him that three days before. The formation moved slow as a snail, and even Murad could see that as long as they held formation, it was nigh impenetrable. Yet, he reasoned, if they could get that formation to crack, the Romans would have no where to run - they had the sea at their backs, they were vastly outnumbered.
"Orhan! Mehmet!" Murad barked, and promptly the commanders of his horse archers and
ghulams trotted up beside him.
"Orhan, can your arrows crack that hedge?" Murad pointed.
Orhan settled into his saddle, eyes twice as old as Murad looking at the ungainly enemy formation. "Do they have Franks?"
"Yes," Murad said, "Frankish cavalry."
"The Romans won't budge, Highness, they are far too disciplined in my experience," Orhan said after a moment, "but the Franks, from what I hear, are reckless and foolish, motivated by vanity and not military prudence. If your scouts can tell me where the Franks are in that formation, I'll tell my men to concentrate there. If we can get the Franks to want to charge
out, we might rip their formation wide open."
Murad nodded. "Mehmet, if Orhan can get their ranks to crack, it will be up to you and the
ghulams. I'm not going to send the infantry into a needless bloodbath - the Romans are far better armored and equipped. I need those men for sieges, not battles."
"Yes, Highness," Mehmet bowed his head. "And if the Romans don't crack?"
"Smack them anyways with the
ghulams," Murad growled. "Maybe you can get them to break. They broke at Tell Bashir, when they were clearly better led."
"But Highness," Mehmet bowed, "galloping headlong into rows of spears is a waste of my
ghulams!" the Turk complained.
"So if my horsemen do not convince them to budge, you would let them march on to Antioch?!" Orhan complained as the trio turned their horses around and cantered back to the army waiting behind the hills.
"And letting them march to Antioch is any better?" Murad added. Eighteen months of hard work had been invested in that siege, countless lives had been lost. Murad wasn't about to let a paltry force of Romans destroy all of that work. That formation would break, the Franks would be the key.
"Majesty, we could lay siege to Antioch again. You have other sieges that will soon end, and fresh infantry to besiege those walls once more," Mehmet pleaded, "but we have a limited number of
ghulams. Having them charge headlong into such a formation would waste them, killing many! Wasting them would destroy the fighting power of your army for the rest of the conflict! Your father
needed ghulams at Tell Bashir. What would happen if you lost your
ghulams here, on some nameless beach, instead of saving them for a real battle?"
Murad looked at his lieutenant, and finally nodded after more grumbling. It was galling. The Romans were supposed to come out in their standard formations, ready to fight their old way - that's the way Murad and his men had practiced for - not march slowly down the beach like some immense hedgehog. The Turkish Prince was in a classic bind - he couldn't let the Romans reach Antioch, but he couldn't needlessly waste his army fighting them here.
That's not how it was supposed to be. But Mehmet was right - Murad could lay siege to Antioch again, and other sieges would soon draw to a close. The Turks could always draw the Romans into the interior, where forming such a bristling formation would be more difficult without the sea on one's flank.
Only if the Romans marched into the interior, it wouldn't be with thirteen thousand, it'd also include every single man they could spare, a force that might equal Murad's in size. Murad sighed.
"We harass them today," the Turkish prince said finally. "God willing, we break their formation. If not, we harass them tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after. Perhaps, if we can't break their lines, we can whittle them down."
Murad hoped that was the case. If not, he could be facing a much larger Roman army in the field in only a few months time.
==========*==========
The Turkish horse archers gallop forth to face the Romans...
Basil has finally landed, and Murad is plotting his next move. How will it all turn out? Will the Turks strike hard enough at the Achille's heel of the allied army, the Latin discipline, to get it to break formation? Will the Scots, Danes and Welsh hold ranks in the face of a Turkish hornet's nest? The 'Battle on the Beach' is next on Rome AARisen!
