Byzantine Empire

[Azsouth]

what I meant by casual player is someone who just gets around to playing some nations they prefer from time to time, for me that Britain, Spain, Austria, and sometimes Byzantium.

tried the strategy of allying all the small nations around them but they usually hate each other and the only way to get them all in a war together without waiting 100 years for 10 favors is to have the Otto's declare on you and by then they have picked off all the little nations that wouldn't ally you (they still have many cores in 1.22 that they can reconquer) can go around with their two 15 stacks wiping out the 8-10 stacks all the countries give out, including yours (I even had a tech or two on the Otto's and still got insta wiped). I did manage to get Poland-Lithuania in another run as an ally but couldn't get the Mamluks or Hungry and the Ottos declared war while Poland was in it's second war w/ the Teutonic Order, when they got done they seemed to have 0 manpower and didn't even bother moving their troops towards Ottoman lands while Wallachia got separate peaced and my stack got deleted trying to take the province fort next to Constantinople by a 29k stack.

I don't think I'm going to be able to take advantage of the AI stupidity in the recent patch like you guys mention with them putting their whole army on an island as I'm sure the game will be patched to fix that within the next few months, seems pretty gamebreaker so I can't imagine they would let something like that stand until their next DLC.

 

[Five_X]

Building 2 heavies worked for me, plus a decent admiral from the Merchants estate. Having Trebizond/Karaman works wonders as long as the Ottomans try to hit them first; then you can quickly make sure you control the strait at Edirne and they can't cross over. I find that the Ottomans overall are a lot more fragile now; as long as you stop them from being able to accomplish their early blobbing, they'll quickly get picked apart by their neighbours.

Make sure you get the gold mine in Kosovo as well, by the way - keeps it out of the hands of your main rivals (Venice especially) and brings in boat loads of money to fund the reconquest of Anatolia.

 

[FreeSoc]

I've just started a Byz game; I managed to win the first war allied to Hungary, Albania and Wallachia (the Ottomans DOW'd Candar but took a while, so I DOW'd them in 1450), which was in no small part because the Mamluks declared on them shortly after I did.

By 1460 Hungary had been PU'd by Austria, but I've managed to ally the Mamluks and Karaman and have Albania as a PU junior. I've recovered all the starting cores except Kesriye and Edirne, and given that the Ottomans haven't actually gained a single province since game-start (they were forced to white-peace Candar and no longer have any ties with Crimea), the next war should be easier.

I didn't even play particularly well (I didn't build up my navy at all); the key, I think, is to make sure Hungary doesn't rival you, because they're pretty much your only viable big ally from the outset.

 

[makaramus]

start as venice
make sure albenia is dowed by by ottoman so
with his general crush ottoman
take all byzantium cores at seperate peace
conquer byzantium
culture shift to byzantine
accept demands of orthodox zealots
form byzantium
done

 

[Azsouth]

Also I think the AI in 1.22 is bugged a bit, it will say as the quest that the Otto's pick is to safeguard eastern Anatolia and they will go and declare war on everyone in the West, same for conquer the last bastion of the crusaders, everyone but Rhodes gets declared on

 

[Azsouth]

I ended up opting out of 1.22 and updating, how is Hungary a rival of Byzantium? it makes no sense, anyway still don't have the newest dlc (I typically don't update unless I'v got all the dlcs to that point) but figured w/ already playing my other saves may as well try to capitalize on the AI stupidity you guys have mentioned. The recover Greece option wasn't available on either of my two test starts and Hungary was a rival in both as well as the Ottomans but you couldn't pick the Ottomans as a rival in return which didn't make sense to me either. will try some strategies mentioned in this thread later this weekend.

 

[holyvigil]

I ended up opting out of 1.22 and updating, how is Hungary a rival of Byzantium? it makes no sense, anyway still don't have the newest dlc (I typically don't update unless I'v got all the dlcs to that point) but figured w/ already playing my other saves may as well try to capitalize on the AI stupidity you guys have mentioned. The recover Greece option wasn't available on either of my two test starts and Hungary was a rival in both as well as the Ottomans but you couldn't pick the Ottomans as a rival in return which didn't make sense to me either. will try some strategies mentioned in this thread later this weekend.

If you're able to succeed with less than two restarts you're pretty lucky. Byzantium is definitely not a casual nation to play it's just a favorite for newer people due to it being the Roman Empire. I would set aside an hour for setting up the game properly (mainly just getting a game where Otto don't attack you first) and then however many more hours it takes to play it out. This should be around 10 restarts depending upon the power of your computer/skill of the player. I would expect the Negroponte block strategy to work if you can get it set up. They may change it so that the strategy doesn't work but it hasn't been changed yet. Before Negroponte it was the Bosporus block strategy and because byz is one of the few nations that uses that strategy I kind of feel like they made the change to how useful boats are in blockading provinces because it made Byzantium harder.

 

[tinculin]

It shouldn’t take anywhere near 10 restarts.

You only need Venice to not hate you & Ottomans not to attack you while you build a few heavies. I build 4 on day 1 (taking a few loans), so the fleet battle is a done deal

Once that’s in place, get military access into Venice & Naxos. Keep Athens on scutage so they can’t be occupied & lure the 1st stack of Otto troops to Naxos.

He shouldn’t stack wipe you & blockade them with your fleet.

Lure the 2nd stack to negroponte - you need to do some fancy footwork with your fleet so the army on Naxos doesn’t escape) & then you’ve won the war.

 

[holyvigil]

It shouldn’t take anywhere near 10 restarts.

You only need Venice to not hate you & Ottomans not to attack you while you build a few heavies. I build 4 on day 1 (taking a few loans), so the fleet battle is a done deal

Once that’s in place, get military access into Venice & Naxos. Keep Athens on scutage so they can’t be occupied & lure the 1st stack of Otto troops to Naxos.

He shouldn’t stack wipe you & blockade them with your fleet.

Lure the 2nd stack to negroponte - you need to do some fancy footwork with your fleet so the army on Naxos doesn’t escape) & then you’ve won the war.

well either I'm unlucky or you're underestimating how much the ottos hate you. took me 9 tries for the negroponte strat. Then this happened with them as rivals...

 

[Gans]

start as venice
make sure albenia is dowed by by ottoman so
with his general crush ottoman
take all byzantium cores at seperate peace
conquer byzantium
culture shift to byzantine
accept demands of orthodox zealots
form byzantium
done

I noticed you comment sh*it like this in _every_ byz topic since quite a few years. You only changed the 'start with Ottomans' to 'start with Venice'....

 

[ElGranCapitan]

It shouldn’t take anywhere near 10 restarts.

You only need Venice to not hate you & Ottomans not to attack you while you build a few heavies. I build 4 on day 1 (taking a few loans), so the fleet battle is a done deal

Once that’s in place, get military access into Venice & Naxos. Keep Athens on scutage so they can’t be occupied & lure the 1st stack of Otto troops to Naxos.

He shouldn’t stack wipe you & blockade them with your fleet.

Lure the 2nd stack to negroponte - you need to do some fancy footwork with your fleet so the army on Naxos doesn’t escape) & then you’ve won the war.

This

Moving from Athens to Naxos takes longer than from Naxos to Negroponte, so you don't need to fight the first stack at all
When blocking the second stack make sure to move your fleet out so the second stack moves to Negroponte but the first stack does not as the whole army can stackwipe you

Athens on scutage is important not only because he might be occupied but also because his fleet might ruin your timing

 

[Azsouth]

kinda sucks that savescuming is gone in this update, I'm not a very good player obviously, but having to constantly restart because you improve but still make another fatal mistake after and the save is in sync w/ the main one is really annoying and I actually don't feel like wasting the money on the DLC (which I was going to get at some point here because I like having everything for the games I play). Doesn't even make sense to have a backup save now, oh well, seems like EUIV developers sole mission in the last few updates has been to frustrate their playerbase, at least thats how I'v felt w/ the recent DLCs that seem to just add more random nonsense to specific areas (like Russia) than the old DLC's, like they are running out of ideas and just buffing the uber nations to get people to play them until they release EUV, bet one of the next updates will be to France because they can't blob fast enough effectively.

 

[tip001]

kinda sucks that savescuming is gone in this update, I'm not a very good player obviously, but having to constantly restart because you improve but still make another fatal mistake after and the save is in sync w/ the main one is really annoying and I actually don't feel like wasting the money on the DLC (which I was going to get at some point here because I like having everything for the games I play). Doesn't even make sense to have a backup save now, oh well, seems like EUIV developers sole mission in the last few updates has been to frustrate their playerbase, at least thats how I'v felt w/ the recent DLCs that seem to just add more random nonsense to specific areas (like Russia) than the old DLC's, like they are running out of ideas and just buffing the uber nations to get people to play them until they release EUV, bet one of the next updates will be to France because they can't blob fast enough effectively.

The save scum thingy seems a bug somebody told me. I am too lazy to go to the bug thread or test following solution. "If you log in to Paradox thru steam you should be ok on save scumming". Hope this helps

 

[Daniel Halachev]

I've got a problem while playing them and instead of making a new post I will just blob it here:
It's the late 1450s. I have managed to destroy Venice right from the start and took Negroponte, Naxos, Corfu, Crete, Rhodes. The Ottomans still hadn't attacked me by the late 40s so I conquered Theodoro (the tip of Crimea), Trebizond, and vassalised both Candar and Dulkadir but the Ottomans were faster than me for Kandar. But they still haven't attacked me. I have 23 ships(8 cogs, the rest are galleys). I am in desperate need of new provinces as my economy is failing (0.40 ducats/month) and 25 in treasury. I am also worried of the Turks' growing strenght. I wanted to declare war to get my cores on the Balkans back but they are allied to Morocco, Hejaz and Tunis. I have no allies. Nevertheless I tried to execute my original plan but they come at me in small stacks(the Turks are mostly dealing with Dulkadir) and there just aren't enough islands to trap them onto! Moreover, they are smart enough to merge their navies and I got rekt. I could try again but I think I will fail. So I have developed 3 more plans for North Africa (the only place where I can expand)
1. Last time I checked North Africa Fezzan was weak. So: Declare war on Fezzan, whose ally is Tunis in order to kill Tunis and relieve myself in the future war against the Turks.
2. The Mamluks AI is reported to be very dumb. If they have no/weak allies I could crush them to get more strenght against the Turks.
3. Declare a Non-CBwar on Tunis in hopes of them calling the Ottomans to war ONLY.

Which one do you recommend me to do? Do you have another better one? Also, my MPs are just not enough and I'm very laggy on tech. Is it because of bad rulers/bad luck or bad gameplay?

 

[holyvigil]

I've got a problem while playing them and instead of making a new post I will just blob it here:
It's the late 1450s. I have managed to destroy Venice right from the start and took Negroponte, Naxos, Corfu, Crete, Rhodes. The Ottomans still hadn't attacked me by the late 40s so I conquered Theodoro (the tip of Crimea), Trebizond, and vassalised both Candar and Dulkadir but the Ottomans were faster than me for Kandar. But they still haven't attacked me. I have 23 ships(8 cogs, the rest are galleys). I am in desperate need of new provinces as my economy is failing (0.40 ducats/month) and 25 in treasury. I am also worried of the Turks' growing strenght. I wanted to declare war to get my cores on the Balkans back but they are allied to Morocco, Hejaz and Tunis. I have no allies. Nevertheless I tried to execute my original plan but they come at me in small stacks(the Turks are mostly dealing with Dulkadir) and there just aren't enough islands to trap them onto! Moreover, they are smart enough to merge their navies and I got rekt. I could try again but I think I will fail. So I have developed 3 more plans for North Africa (the only place where I can expand)
1. Last time I checked North Africa Fezzan was weak. So: Declare war on Fezzan, whose ally is Tunis in order to kill Tunis and relieve myself in the future war against the Turks.
2. The Mamluks AI is reported to be very dumb. If they have no/weak allies I could crush them to get more strenght against the Turks.
3. Declare a Non-CBwar on Tunis in hopes of them calling the Ottomans to war ONLY.

Which one do you recommend me to do? Do you have another better one? Also, my MPs are just not enough and I'm very laggy on tech. Is it because of bad rulers/bad luck or bad gameplay?

The ottomans start out with a 6 6 5 and you start with a 1 1 2. You can keep up in one tech only one by focusing. Also if you have no allies and didn't take out the ottomans before they conquered the other turks you're in a worse position than having Hungary as an ally and waiting until the truce expires to declare. Get an ally you need that more than land. And the Negroponte strategy is harder to pull off the later you wait since you can only hold 2 stacks in those lands and the ottomans can have 100 units before the 1500s so time is really important in that strategy.