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My first real try as Byzantines, took me 5-6 retries (starting in 1399) before not getting nerfed during the initial expansion.

Feel free to disregard fonts and my attempts at modding country names. I play with inflation turned off. :) (never could balance a budget)

byz1654.jpg

Early on I got very lucky, the Ottomans was fighting the Timurids, had no allies besides Serbia and Bosnia and had been split up severly on the asian side in earlier fights. They had been in a recent fight with Castille, and had only 1 galley and 1 transport ship left.

I waited for the european Ottoman army to pass ... the Serbian army ... the Bosnian army ... and then brought out my 4 ships, blockaded the strait and annexed most of the european parts of the Ottomans using 4000 men. (2000 sieging and 2000 guys running around to where he was building armies)

After that it was just a question of picking the fights carefully not to cascade into fights with any major power. No reloads. No wars without CB.

I play as an extremely religious nation, taken all the NIs and descisions towards stricter religion, max narrowminded. No tolerence for heretics of heathens here, we burn our witches. Every time i manage to get a bunch of german minors against me, I try to smack as many as I can be bothered with firmly on the head and force-convert them. Hungary and Switzerland embraced the true faith completely after such conversions. (Since I have restored the Pentarchy, there is just one church anyway, people just need to be reminded.)

Recently (the current BB) I also conquered Mecca (took it from the french). I'm slowly working my way north through Italy, the aim is to take all of Italy and connect though Croatia. Also I plan to push Georgia (Sakartvelo) away from the Black Sea, making it my 'Mare Nostrum'. I still want to have them as a screen from the hordes though. Only alliance I have is with my orthodox brethren in Ethiopia, who I protect fiercly.

The four major powers in the world are me, France, Spain and Norway. England got very split up early on, every minor that can be formed on the island was there at one point or other. Denmark had holdings there, Scotland tried to take it over, but France has been the major power since forever.
 
Holy Perfectly Reasonable Borders! :shock:

Is Ethiopia your doing, or did they survive on their own?
 
Just wanted to share this unique picture of Europe. England going all muslim-style! The great British muslim empire about to come ^^
Ottomans very powerful, although they lost wars to Norway, Aquileia(!!!), Austria, Bohemia alliance.

I love Aquileia, Muslim England and I loved the chubby chubby Switzerland, until it vassalized Bar, making the screen less pretty with ugly overlapping.
Austria seems to get powerful often lately with by far biggest manpower (150K early game).

Spain was formed ^^ does not happen that often for me. Hasn't happened in over 10 games, despite Castille often attacking their historical friends Portugal and Aragorn.
In my last game Muscovy empire fell and it was renamed to Pskov. This time it is renamed to Ryazan.

Aquileia is the extreme in this image. Normally it is vassalized (by me :p) or conquered pretty quickly and somehow Aquileia cores are always lost early in the game. Maybe it's due "Promote Cultural Unity", but I see it happen for Golden Horde cores in Southern Muscovy too, despite not national focus.

Go Aquileia!! Venezia and Zeta are both 800 ducats centers of trades in their hands. Pisa, Ferrara, Tuscany are their vassals, their culture group is Lombard.
First time ever I would see Italy possibly formed. Have never seen Italy, Germany, HRE (not me :(), Mughals, Hindustan, Romania, Westphalia, Scandinavia formed by AI.

Both France and England fell in my last game. Fortunately this time Ottomans stayed whole ^^, although they did not help me much at all.


(click for full screen. Watch mighty Aquileia, chubby Switzerland, islamic England. )
 
Holy Perfectly Reasonable Borders! :shock:

Is Ethiopia your doing, or did they survive on their own?

lol, the borders are part choice, part that I've never westernized before, so I did not make all the slider moves, and when I had the sliders the lousy line of emperors failed to provide a surviving heir with enough admin for generations. I had to wait for noble republic to do it, and then I needed more slider moves to westernize military, and playing whack-a-rebel from the stab hits. In all there was a century(!) where I did not dare picking a fight with any western country. After westernization it took at least 6-7 tech levels before the 'Neighbour bonus' went below 100. I could have gone east before the whack-a-rebel part, but the roman empire in India - naah. Also the hordes felt so annoying when I touched the Timurs early in the game.

Ethiopia, I think they formed at some point, I found them sitting there, landlocked, when I stole Cairo about 50-odd years ago and thought my brethren in the faith might need some help (against Yemen at the time, then I taught Yemen that I'm serious about my allies. They haven't tried anything since). Flandern has taken the parts bordering Ethiopia now, but I don't expect them to dare move against me.
 
Just wanted to share this unique picture of Europe. England going all muslim-style! The great British muslim empire about to come ^^
Ottomans very powerful, although they lost wars to Norway, Aquileia(!!!), Austria, Bohemia alliance.

I love Aquileia, Muslim England and I loved the chubby chubby Switzerland, until it vassalized Bar, making the screen less pretty with ugly overlapping.
Austria seems to get powerful often lately with by far biggest manpower (150K early game).

Spain was formed ^^ does not happen that often for me. Hasn't happened in over 10 games, despite Castille often attacking their historical friends Portugal and Aragorn.
In my last game Muscovy empire fell and it was renamed to Pskov. This time it is renamed to Ryazan.

Aquileia is the extreme in this image. Normally it is vassalized (by me :p) or conquered pretty quickly and somehow Aquileia cores are always lost early in the game. Maybe it's due "Promote Cultural Unity", but I see it happen for Golden Horde cores in Southern Muscovy too, despite not national focus.

Go Aquileia!! Venezia and Zeta are both 800 ducats centers of trades in their hands. Pisa, Ferrara, Tuscany are their vassals, their culture group is Lombard.
First time ever I would see Italy possibly formed. Have never seen Italy, Germany, HRE (not me :(), Mughals, Hindustan, Romania, Westphalia, Scandinavia formed by AI.

Both France and England fell in my last game. Fortunately this time Ottomans stayed whole ^^, although they did not help me much at all.


(click for full screen. Watch mighty Aquileia, chubby Switzerland, islamic England. )

Jesus wept look at Bohemia
 
Baluchistan pulled a Persia on the Middle East.
 
Just wanted to share this unique picture of Europe. England going all muslim-style! The great British muslim empire about to come ^^
Ottomans very powerful, although they lost wars to Norway, Aquileia(!!!), Austria, Bohemia alliance.

I love Aquileia, Muslim England and I loved the chubby chubby Switzerland, until it vassalized Bar, making the screen less pretty with ugly overlapping.
Austria seems to get powerful often lately with by far biggest manpower (150K early game).

Spain was formed ^^ does not happen that often for me. Hasn't happened in over 10 games, despite Castille often attacking their historical friends Portugal and Aragorn.
In my last game Muscovy empire fell and it was renamed to Pskov. This time it is renamed to Ryazan.

Aquileia is the extreme in this image. Normally it is vassalized (by me :p) or conquered pretty quickly and somehow Aquileia cores are always lost early in the game. Maybe it's due "Promote Cultural Unity", but I see it happen for Golden Horde cores in Southern Muscovy too, despite not national focus.

Go Aquileia!! Venezia and Zeta are both 800 ducats centers of trades in their hands. Pisa, Ferrara, Tuscany are their vassals, their culture group is Lombard.
First time ever I would see Italy possibly formed. Have never seen Italy, Germany, HRE (not me :(), Mughals, Hindustan, Romania, Westphalia, Scandinavia formed by AI.

Both France and England fell in my last game. Fortunately this time Ottomans stayed whole ^^, although they did not help me much at all.


(click for full screen. Watch mighty Aquileia, chubby Switzerland, islamic England. )

Bohemia expands exactly like this every game of mine.
 
Hehe, Yes. Bohemia has a tendency to expand eastwards in my last few games! Could be due to re-balancing of the beta patch. In each version of EU3 seems countries seem to have their own distinct tendencies.

e.g. England in Scandinavia is pretty mandatory in Divine Wind ^^
Bohemia expanding eastwards.
Empires growing big and collapsing by wicked stupid AI moves, seem to be always same empires. (Not often France though)
Muscovy has fallen in my last 2 games, maybe typical Beta behaviour, and Lithuania falls often.
England has fallen many times. Ottomans so-so. Ming falls always.
 
Hehe, Yes. Bohemia has a tendency to expand eastwards in my last few games! Could be due to re-balancing of the beta patch. In each version of EU3 seems countries seem to have their own distinct tendencies.

e.g. England in Scandinavia is pretty mandatory in Divine Wind ^^
Bohemia expanding eastwards.
Empires growing big and collapsing by wicked stupid AI moves, seem to be always same empires. (Not often France though)
Muscovy has fallen in my last 2 games, maybe typical Beta behaviour, and Lithuania falls often.
England has fallen many times. Ottomans so-so. Ming falls always.

I think that the golden hord is expanding more than can handle since the change on latest beta patch.
 
Look at "tiny" Avignon! :)

Someone have a soft spot for Avignon? :D But that map has a pretty Spain AI formed, Jalayirids in Georgia, the Crimea in the Steppes instead of Crimea, RYAZAN, Aquelia (wonder if they are still a Theocracy?) and the wonderful AI Switzerland. Also, nice Algiers empire:) I thought it was AI for a second.
 
I take it the Ottomans/Ottoman State/Ottoman Empire/Turkey is your fav country? :p
 
You would think that coming from Trabzon, he might play Trebizond, or are they completely unrelated?
 
Here's my fledgling empire. Don't know if it's the beta patch or the fact that I chose the hard difficulty (with low aggression), but blobbing became really hard. We'll see what will come out of this:


Just how many wars are you in? :D at least Burgundy , Liege , Savoy , Lorraine , Avignon and Brittany .. at least