How the bloody hell do you survive as Byzantines

[GolfballDM]

Hmmm. I haven't had any problems surviving as the Byzantines (at least for the first 40 years), and I usually don't do the Exarchates / Viceroyalty Kingdoms until I'm close to my vassal limit.

Now, I do have quite a few playthroughs that I trashed early because something didn't go the way I wanted ("No vassal, *I* want Cilicia, and I don't want to have to revoke it from you"), although I've learned my lessons from them.
1) Don't have your Emperor command troops unless your succession is rock-solid. Or you want to kill your Emperor. Try not to risk your heir, either. It's not foolproof, (your heirs can still be stupid, my next-to-most-recent Emperor on my current playthrough buried all 4 of his children before himself dying at 71, passing the succession to one of his grandsons), but you want to minimize the risks.
2) I haven't really had to go into seclusion at all, although I haven't had a game go long enough for bubonic plague to make an appearance. (I keep restarting for various reasons, like "Oooooh, new expansion, I want to play through the whole game with this expansion!". Or "Dammit, I fscked up my succession.")
3) If you have word of an assassination plot against you, if you don't succeed in imprisoning the plotter and they run off, don't ignore the plot. They might get lucky. RIP Empress Anthousa.
4) Be conservative with war declarations, and don't be afraid to declare a white peace. It's cheaper than surrendering when you didn't commit enough troops initially, and it'll take too long to bring more in. Or a more urgent situation arose.
5) When declaring war, if at all possible, get in the first shot quickly. Retinues (although they're expensive to replace) and mercenaries (who are expensive to hire) are great for this. But expensive. But it can be much, much faster (and not pissing off your vassals) to park 6-10k mercs+retinue across the border, declare war, and then go to town.
6) Getting rid of Konstantine V's Zealous can be difficult. Scholarship Focus (if you have Way of Life) so you can Build An Observatory can be a big help, but it's not a guarantee. That being said, Iconoclasm isn't bad (it will become mainstream if you give it enough time), although you can't mend the Great Schism as an Iconoclast.
7) Get as many matrilineal marriages as you can. More dynasts that way.

 

[Kurblius]

That being said, Iconoclasm isn't bad (it will become mainstream if you give it enough time), although you can't mend the Great Schism as an Iconoclast.

This isn't true. I just mended the schism as Iconoclasm in my current game. It's the mainstream orthodox religion though.

 

[GolfballDM]

This isn't true. I just mended the schism as Iconoclasm in my current game. It's the mainstream orthodox religion though.

Oh, that's right. It's the Pentarch achievement you can't get if you're Iconoclast.

 

[Dragatus]

Why are you giving out King viceroys? The negative modifiers are horrendous and you don't get the ability to excommunicate them if relations go sour due to autocephaly. Plus they become way to powerful. You should be giving out duchy viceroys only, 2 at a time if need be but never a kingdom title.

What I like doing is giving all the kingdoms except the one of my capital to one guy and then placing my chancellor in his capital on permanent "Improve Diplomatic Relations" duty. With 100 opinion I've never had the guy faction against me or declare an independence war. Quite often I'll hand the kingdoms out as hereditary titles just to avoid the tedium of handing the viceroyalties out when the mega vassal dies. I may keep handing one or two out as a viceroyalty for a quick opinion boost from the new vassal. And when I go through succession the mega vassal will have increased opinion due to "opinion of predecessor". The autocephaly issue shouldn't really come up. And if you go Hellenic then you can avoid it entirely by choosing a different leadership style.

 

[knppel]

In the game that eventually worked out, I started as count, 867, in Greece, Thebes. Picked warfare focus. Took the single muslim county in Southern Italy and expanded there with claims. Spent 868-884 campaigning with 500 men in Burgundy to support my in-law Charles against Lothaire.

Came back from Francia with five healthy children, three boys, two girls, no wife, leaving my char for a fresh marriage, and as Strategos as my father died.
Used my kids, little infant brother and own widowed character to smith a mighty alliance of Strategoi, also allying with the Makedon family.
Pulled all triggers possible to get an Arpad-descendant and a son of Basil for my daughters (the later was easy, admittedly, once I had risen in rank).

Spent 885-912 campaigning ahead the Imperial Army and caught slow fever as well as typhoid fever in Anatolia and Galilee.
My char was a siege leader, and Basil used him until he was old and infirm and I let him decide to retire.
Died age 72 of suspicious circumstances, outliving most of his kids but having a healthy number of nephews and grandson at hand already.

I'm not sure if this still counts with Reaper's Due on too, but we used to say, raise some levy away of your capital and lead an army if there's disease, always helped me.

To survive leading armies: Train Martial. It's no guarantee, but it certainly helps.

 

[Aaron_S]

Byz player here to offer some advice.

Constantinople is your capital, treat it as such. Hospital in it maxed, around it at a level you can afford without crippling your empire. Dont ignore raiders. Keep around 2k minimum, 5k if preparing for a bigger war.

If you play with defensive pacts, start off by saving money for mercs then holy warring the Caliph or the Bolgars. After that you can reclaim greek lands, because your threat will be high for a while and you dont want your only 0 threat war to be against a small realm. Small nations might summon the entire pact, but you can easily occupy them to 100% warscore before their allies arrive, if you just choose them wisely. Holy war where you can, its a strong CB and you dont need to prep anything for it. Mercs are your friends.
If you play without defensive pacts, reclaim dejure, restoration duchies and holy sites in whatever order you like the most.
For both playstyles theres one thing you need to keep in mind though: Italy except sicily is a race against time, get claims ASAP unless you are willing to fight Charlie's doomstacks.

WHILE doing this, either have a non zealous son succeed you to get rid of Iconoclasm, get rid of zealous and do it yourself (multiple WOL focus chances, bad pilgrimage or trait overload are easiest i believe) or make Iconoclasm the main orthodox religion. Having your realm divided will not work out long term. Orthodox is slightly preferable over Iconoclasm for having a king tier yet powerless vassal giving constantinople a bit more tech and you more prestige.

After you can form the guard, keep it in Constantinople during downtime. Keeps raiders away and costs you less than what you save by not having that first raid damage tick(or more if unnoticed) + further damage during the chase.

Auto commander is good enough, i dont like microing it. On average this hurts your voting power by maybe 1-2 per year(in increments of 10s). Your steward WILL collect extra taxes in the best county in the game, which also has your big hospital protect him from the diseases that kill your vassals. Tax collection gives a few hundred middle age bucks each time the steward has any success. Other councillors should work on converting and ocassionally hunting apostates, claims in Italy, retinue/levy training and tech study/scheming.

If you're as afraid of epidemics as you said, go and join monastic orders which are easily as strong as the hermetics or even more so if you get lucky on artifact events. The holy ascetics' ascesis includes failure. If hes your physician, expect him to find multiple cures to rabies. It's based on his opinion of you(he gets +50 base from the invite and +10 from the title), his learning (tends to be 20+), traits (he also shines here). Only downside is, he will usually not outlive you.

Since you are one of the three big players on the map and the HRE is unlikely to start any wars with a strong CB, you can neglect alliance marriages allowing you to go for eugenics. Synergizes well with elections as vassals like strong and/or genius heirs more already and you can choose to succeed as those best fit ontop of easier elections.
EDIT: You can also bypass defensive pacts through inheritance focussed marriages. A very nice way to expand quickly and a key mechanic you should know or work to understand ASAP.

For realm management, get those viceroyalties rolled out as you please. You can postpone smaller kingdoms like trebizond until you need the vassal limit. The few silkroad counties you can get, try to either hold yourself(make the city county capital and give out the castle) or make them into theocratic duchies with theocratic tax focus AND NO KING LIEGE ABOVE THEM.

 

[AlexArgos]

Why are you giving out King viceroys? The negative modifiers are horrendous....

There are no negative modifiers when all your vassals are viceroys.

 

[Hound Archon]

A good way to have your physician like you is to go hermetic society and make him your apprentice

Alternatively, join a monastic society and invite a holy ascetic to your court. Not only do they have a +100 (or was it +50?) "loyal servant" modifier, they also usually come with 20+ learning.

 

[Castios]

Some curious decisions you're making there.

Why are you giving out King viceroys? The negative modifiers are horrendous and you don't get the ability to excommunicate them if relations go sour due to autocephaly. Plus they become way to powerful. You should be giving out duchy viceroys only, 2 at a time if need be but never a kingdom title.

I'd suggest waiting it out until you form the roman empire before you convert to hellenic - simply because it gives you a bunch of decisions that allow you to convert all your empire's vassals en-mass without the need of secret religion.

I did not understand much of this first part of your post. How does excommunicating has anything to do with all this? What is autocephaly? And what negative modifiers? I gave out plenty kingdom viceroyalties which made my empire so much better for me, since I could finally choose decent martial characters, and I only had like -13 opinion with vassals for handed out viceroyalties. In my entire byz run I did not have a single revolt.

And they are not powerful at all. They are usually really happy with you after being granted viceroyalty so that's a big modifier boost, plus you can choose people which means you can get content commanders for vassals instead of ambitious and deceitful ones. They also lose all of their power upon death, so if any of them is problematic you can just murder him, althrough I never even had to do this.

Also I converted to hellenic after forming roman empire, but I don't remember getting any decisions for mass conversion? I only got option a.) convert now and hope your vassals won't hate you (so I had to demand conversion from most of them) and option b.) practice hellenism in secrecy. How can you mass convert to hellenism?

Since you are one of the three big players on the map and the HRE is unlikely to start any wars with a strong CB, you can neglect alliance marriages allowing you to go for eugenics. Synergizes well with elections as vassals like strong and/or genius heirs more already and you can choose to succeed as those best fit ontop of easier elections.

While I agree with most of your post, I don't quite understand this part. I think playing marriage game as Byzantines is really important since you can avoid increasing your threat and inherit large kingdoms via marriages. I included both Italy and Germany into my Empire through marriages. It's really powerful being in the biggest and most important religious group and being able to marry majority of rich european countries, I think ignoring this for sake of eugenics is downright stupid. Yes having genius heir is great for elections, but since you are rich you can just bribe your vassals into voting for whoever you want, that's not really a big issue.

Playing w/o Defensive Pacts is pretty much an easy mode in ck2 since you can just roll over anything no problem. With them on you actually gotta mix your playstyle and play the marriage game, not just move troops to province and take it.

 

[Aaron_S]

Also I converted to hellenic after forming roman empire, but I don't remember getting any decisions for mass conversion? I only got option a.) convert now and hope your vassals won't hate you (so I had to demand conversion from most of them) and option b.) practice hellenism in secrecy. How can you mass convert to hellenism?

The restoration by event after restoring rome is probably what he meant. It WILL cause a civil war with quite a few vassals actually converting, but after winning this thanks to mercs and retinue doomstacks, you can just revoke as you please and collect thousends in ransoms first too.

While I agree with most of your post, I don't quite understand this part. I think playing marriage game as Byzantines is really important since you can avoid increasing your threat and inherit large kingdoms via marriages. I included both Italy and Germany into my Empire through marriages. It's really powerful being in the biggest and most important religious group and being able to marry majority of rich european countries, I think ignoring this for sake of eugenics is downright stupid. Yes having genius heir is great for elections, but since you are rich you can just bribe your vassals into voting for whoever you want, that's not really a big issue.

I guess my motivation for this should've been mentioned. I strongly prefer to restore rome by sword, that is all. Sure most players will probably find inheritance based marriages to be quite the boon. Especially with defensive pacts, allowing you to bypass starting a world war every time you get a single county conquest started. I'll edit my post. Thank you.