I'm hooked! I feel like back in high school! In other news, Byzantium rules :)

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Austria and Poland never seemed to want to join my wars early on, and by the time I was able to deal with Ottos myself Poland was non-existant and Austria was in a million wars of its own. It tried Lithuania but but they become broken into three seperate territory zones surrounded by Muskovy, later Russia.
I dont argue your points dont work, they should in most cases but in my play they powers we are talking about were more or less broken early.

@Zodium, I agree that Venice must be dowed at some point, but given how the patches changed things, blockading in the early game is not that much of an option, Venice even when at war with the Mams (99%) of the time, will always send a humongus fleet to chace me down and land troops at Greece. You really dont want an early war on two fronts. I prefer to waste income on the hope of rebels to be honest. A war with Venice is more plausible if you have Austria as an ally I think.

@wanderlust king. Unfortunently there is no such thing as defenseless territory due to the Ottos getting military access from anyone now days.

You can't have a two-front war if you have a truce with the one front. What I posted is current as of 1.3, so it should work. It's obviously better if Venice dows you for Albania, but the principle's the same: get warscore from wargoal and battles, peace out as soon as you can get either Corfu or Naxos if things are even remotely difficult.
 
you suck, you coudnt do a world conquest with opbyz? Lol noob uninstall plox

just kidding, but really try ck 2, if you want more upclose and personal experience ( and if you want to have the posibility of banging your sister, yes thats the only reason i play karen, stop looking at me like that)

lol!
 
That's interesting! For some odd reason I am playing Byzantium as my first country/game, too, although I have it on easy, and I cheat a pinch; I give myself some extra cash from time to time...

Marc
 
Venice will usually declare war for Albania sometime after you vassalize them, especially if you antagonize them a bit. They're easy enough to beat, since they start with only 8 transports and have to land in Albania, which is a hefty -4 malus. You only need either Corfu or Naxos, not both, and the proper islands are tactically irrelevant, so you can often get what you need from battle score alone. If you've been a very good boy/girl and managed to built up a galley fleet, you can beat their fleet and steal some ships, then go loot Venice and make them cede everything Greek.

I understand your point, but here it is how is was almost always turning out for me: 5 years truce with the Ottomans, then I move onto vassalizing Serbia, Bosnia and Wallachia. If all goes as planned, I'm done in 3 years (depending on siege rolls, it may take up to 4 years). Later, if Venice does declare war upon me I fight them, usually win, but I'm not able to achieve victory before the end of truce with the Ottomans, after which they attack me. I'd rather concede defeat to them early on and focus on the Ottomans.

I'm not saying that your strategy doesn't work, you have arguments to prove that it might be effective, though due to reasons mentioned above I couldn't get it working.

Austria and Poland never seemed to want to join my wars early on, and by the time I was able to deal with Ottos myself Poland was non-existant and Austria was in a million wars of its own. It tried Lithuania but but they become broken into three seperate territory zones surrounded by Muskovy, later Russia.
I dont argue your points dont work, they should in most cases but in my play they powers we are talking about were more or less broken early.

@Zodium, I agree that Venice must be dowed at some point, but given how the patches changed things, blockading in the early game is not that much of an option, Venice even when at war with the Mams (99%) of the time, will always send a humongus fleet to chace me down and land troops at Greece. You really dont want an early war on two fronts. I prefer to waste income on the hope of rebels to be honest. A war with Venice is more plausible if you have Austria as an ally I think.

@wanderlust king. Unfortunently there is no such thing as defenseless territory due to the Ottos getting military access from anyone now days.

I concur that sometimes they might get dismantled pretty early, but I had enough attemps on Ironman to distinguish strategies with higher rate of success. Alas, nothing is to be taken for granted, many different factors may have a huge impact on your current game.

Regarding defenceless territory: The only other way the Ottomans can get to you is through Crimea, then Moldavia; however, if you have Poland on your side, in 99% of situation they've got Moldavia as a vassal and they shouldn't allow Ottomans military access, thus stripping them of their alternative route. The worst part of playing Byzantium is fact that you NEED to have some things one way not the other or you won't be able to pull it off in a long run.
 
I understand your point, but here it is how is was almost always turning out for me: 5 years truce with the Ottomans, then I move onto vassalizing Serbia, Bosnia and Wallachia. If all goes as planned, I'm done in 3 years (depending on siege rolls, it may take up to 4 years). Later, if Venice does declare war upon me I fight them, usually win, but I'm not able to achieve victory before the end of truce with the Ottomans, after which they attack me. I'd rather concede defeat to them early on and focus on the Ottomans.

I'm not saying that your strategy doesn't work, you have arguments to prove that it might be effective, though due to reasons mentioned above I couldn't get it working.

Going off your post here, I'd say the main reason is you're not being aggressive enough. Rival them and send them an insult (+25 MIL is always handy, anyway), and if they still won't bite, just declare war yourself while you're still sieging the second Balkan country. The nice thing about declaring war yourself is that you get a guaranteed chance to defeat their fleet in detail, simply position your galleys in the same zone as their trade ships before declaring war. The bad thing is you'll need to commit 2k troops to either Corfu or Naxos to get ticking warscore.
 
So I am not the only nutcrack who tried Byzantium as their first game without knowing what to do eh?
Mine is on easy mode though, here are the results by 1705:

anwh.png


I dont know what to do now...I am thinking for three days. Continue on my Way west (and start WW1 200 years earlier) or go east again?

Aragorn and Italy and Morroco are my vassals.

I did the same with the PUs and Alliances, allmost the entire game I had pitifull diplo relations but somehow I gave it all to the military research and I on the same level as france (though still eastern group).

Give conquest a rest so you can lower your AE (aggressive expansion) and colonize the Far East! beat the British there and suckle on that sweet sweet spice trade.
 
You were not the only one to try Byzantium as your first game. I did it too. I couldn't help it. I knew Byzantium would be almost impossible, even more so because I had no idea how to play the game, but I'm just so fascinated by the Byzantine Empire... probably because it has been all but airbrushed from history by the west. I don't think I lasted more than a few months.

I too have always been a fan of strategy games, going back to when I was around 12 and first played Age of Empires and Cossacks on my friend's PC. I got one myself soon after and ever since, for the last 13-years or so, there has never been a point in time where I haven't had at least one strategy game installed. I've played all the greats, but I never even knew about Paradox' titles until January this year. It took me a while to get used to it but I think it's safe to say all other strategy games have been spoiled for me now.
 
It took me a while to get used to it but I think it's safe to say all other strategy games have been spoiled for me now.

I can sympathize with that. I started with CK2 last year and EUIV this year. I was a Total War-Series fan, but I can't play them anymore, they just seem shallow (especially diplomacy).
 
You were not the only one to try Byzantium as your first game. I did it too. I couldn't help it. I knew Byzantium would be almost impossible, even more so because I had no idea how to play the game, but I'm just so fascinated by the Byzantine Empire... probably because it has been all but airbrushed from history by the west. I don't think I lasted more than a few months.

I too have always been a fan of strategy games, going back to when I was around 12 and first played Age of Empires and Cossacks on my friend's PC. I got one myself soon after and ever since, for the last 13-years or so, there has never been a point in time where I haven't had at least one strategy game installed. I've played all the greats, but I never even knew about Paradox' titles until January this year. It took me a while to get used to it but I think it's safe to say all other strategy games have been spoiled for me now.
Yeah, same feeling here. I think I'll probably only play economy games and tactical games from now on, I doubt any kind of other strategy game can fill EU IV's shoes. Except for EU V maybe :p
Or, apparently, other Paradox games, which are in the same vein.



About Byzantium strats, vassalize Albania + concede defeat immediately against Otto + somehow vassalize the orthodox countries to your north will give you a fighting chance. You will need a lot of galleys (I needed 20+) and a lot of troops (as many as you can get + mercenaries just short of bankruptcy). In my game I allied Hungary and they did come and help me. With my relatively large army (probably 70% mercenaries) I was able to narrowly win against the Ottos and I released 3-4 Greek provinces. After that the game got a lot easier. I still had to be careful with Otto during the next fight, but after that only my inexperience prevented me from making the Mediterranean Mare Nostrum :(
 
The old Byzantium strategy doesn't work any more as the Ottomans just send troops the long way around Crimea.
I didn't use the "old Byzantium strategy" (aka galley cheese). I beat them straight up, on land with the help of Hungary, my vassals and my ton of troops, including a ton of mercenaries. Nearly bankrupted myself in the first war.

The galleys are still needed because if you lose the naval battles Otto will reinforce much faster and he will blockade you. You can still lose the war even if you win the land battles, because of blockades increasing your war exhaustion.

Maybe someone won without having a big fleet, but it seems a much bigger gamble. For me it was fairly straightforward, I think I didn't even have to load a save. It was close, but I won.
 
The old Byzantium strategy doesn't work any more as the Ottomans just send troops the long way around Crimea.

True, but as I wrote above: they still need to pass through Moldavia to reach you, and Moldavia is a vassal of Poland; hence if you have Poland as your ally, they shouldn't provide them military access. Naturally, it may happen, but very rarely.
 
I used a variation of the vassal strategy. I beat up bosnia and fed it to serbia. After that serbia from a useless status it was capable of feelding a reasonable army. Combined with Hungary it was enough to protect me till the mainland flipped. Then on the first war I release and vassalised Bulgaria.
 
The old Byzantium strategy doesn't work any more as the Ottomans just send troops the long way around Crimea.

They can just go the long way round, but they really, really do prefer to cross at Constantinople. I was able to bait their Anatolian forces by jumping in and out of port. When blockaded they'd turn to go the long way round, once I was back in port they turned around and came back. I cant say this would work in all cases but they did have access at the time (of a sort - they were kind of at war with POL/LIT/MOL) and still preferred to come back to cross at the strait when they though it was clear. I'd agree, the key thing you need is a *lot* of galleys as you will likely have to fight the navy of Algiers, Ottos, Crimea and who knows who else. You either go big or go home when it comes to the fleet. Given my experiences with trying to beat the Ottos on land with the help of the AI...anything that means you are not relying on the AI to fight your war for you is good for your sanity.

The Albania-Bosnia-Serbia + Hungary or Poland strategy is pretty brilliant in that it gives you a fighting chance so kudos to whoever came up with it. All Id note based on my own attempt to apply the strategy is not to worry too much about beating Venice straight after Serbia. You're operating to a schedule and the first war with the Ottos is the most important deadline on it. Your diplomats are getting cycled a lot and neither Hungary or Poland are predisposed to liking you so it takes time to get them on board (rivalling their rivals, etc). If you manage to finish Serbia, Bosnia, Albania and ally Hungary/Poland and Venice haven't allied some superpower, and you still have 2-3 years before the Otto truce expires, great, go for it. Otherwise see if you can snap up a weak OPM like Cyprus or Trezibond. Once you have fought and survived the the first Otto war, then go back to Venice. You do not want to be waist deep in a Venetian war and then have the Ottos knocking down your door. The AI can be amazingly obtuse about not accepting peace. Never risk it.
 
The thing with Cyprus is that it is too contested when NOT in your hands. As soon as they can the Venetians will enter into a war with Mams for Cyprus. And although they most often than not loose the war, they are still no match for Byzantium in the current phase. Also the old rebel supporting is working just fine, just not against the Ottos. The Islands will flipp sooner or later, the Ottos now though as soon as a stak rises up they will recall forces to wipe them out. The only way to prevent that is to be able to win their stacks yourself or prevent them from coming somehow.A single Greek rebel stack can give you all mainland Greece if you keep it alive. Also it solves your Edirne problem. BTW has anybody noticed at what an alarming rate the Ottos move their capital back and forth after the latest patch?