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Thread: [TW Guide] MTW: The Byzantines (High)

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    Default [TW Guide] MTW: The Byzantines (High)



    Author: Morble
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    MTW: The Byzantines (High)High Period

    In the Early and High Periods, the Byzantines could be fairly aggressive from the very start. In the Late Period, however, your position is too weak to throw your puny armies into the hurly-burly of world conquest. Instead, you must focus on strategy and trade until the wheel of fortune turns once again and you can proceed to your rightful title of Emperor of the World.

    On your first turn, build a Byz infantry in Nicaea, a peasant in Rhodes, and an emissary in Constantinople. Yep, that’s right, build an emissary in Constantinople. You start out with only the remnants of the former empire, and you must use diplomacy to bring the rebels in the outlying provinces back into the fold. Even if you could afford it, military conquests of those rebels would trash the castles, and it would take you decades to recover. It is so much simpler to take advantage of the fact that a besieged rebel garrison will accept a cheap bribe and leave the castle intact.

    So, use your king and his stack to invade Trebizond. Use the stack on Nicaea to invade Anatolia. Send your princess to the Turks, the sultan usually shows up in Anatolia; send your emissary to the Mongols, the khan usually shows in Georgia. Plan to build to border forts immediately in every newly-conquered province, because the world is a dangerous place now and assassins abound. Start building toward a master merchant in Constantinople. Improve Rhodes to build ships. I like to build a church and then an inn in Nicaea—just in case I need mercs for an emergency, now or later.

    The rebels will retreat without a fight in Trebizond, but the Turks will usually invade Anatolia on the same first turn you do. Don’t fight the Turks, even though this particular action would not cause a war. You don’t want to expend a single military life if you can avoid it. Just call off the attack and let the Turks have the province. Most likely it will rebel soon and the Turks will be weakened having to fight off the rebels. This makes them vulnerable to a Mongol attack.

    Once you have the Trebizond rebels holed up in the castle, send your emissary to bribe them. They will often accept on the first try for around 1500 florins. You should also get alliances from the Turks and Mongols, and other alliance offers will be coming in. Accept all offers. When a conflict arises, stay allied with the nearest neighbor. Meanwhile, send your princess to Egypt, and recall your emissary in Georgia to do more bribing work.

    Build to border forts in Trebizond, and train a couple of crossbows there. Build Byz inf in Nicaea and Constantinople, and another emissary or priests in Rhodes. Leave enough men in Trebizond to secure it (2 Byz infantry should allow you to set the taxes to normal), and ship everyone else back to Constantinople. Note that the governor of Trebizond gets 2 stars, so adding a Captain’s title to that governor will give him a total of 4 stars, and this will give +2 valor to any army he commands. As for the other extra titles, I give the 2 quill titles to Constantinople and Greece. The other 2 star titles go on generals with an even number of stars to increase their command valor ratings by +1. I usually give the Chancellor title (1 star and 1 quill) to the governor of Nicaea.

    You can now leave your peasant to hold Constantinople while you send your main army, including reinforcements from Nicaea and Rhodes, to invade Bulgaria. You may have to fight here, but it should be an easy battle. Send your emissary to bribe the rebels once they are besieged. It’s important to get this bribe done, so try over and over until you get it. Bulgaria comes with a citadel already built, and you can start building pavised arbalesters right away. You should build each of your border armies to 5 or 6 Byz inf, a couple of kats, and 2 missile troops. This is enough to stave off all but the most serious attacker.

    Start building galleys out of Rhodes as soon as you can, and continue to upgrade shipbuilding in Rhodes throughout the game. You probably also need to build a couple of kats in Nicaea to round out your forces. If you haven’t already lost a general or emissary to assassins, you will soon, so build a spy for each province out of Constantinople. Build border forts and churches in all your provinces. Finally, invade Greece, which is likely the last remaining rebel province that you can see. Even though Greece only has a castle, bribe the besieged rebels here, too.

    Now you have 6 provinces, which range in quality from pretty good to excellent. This is enough for you to start putting together an economy that will eventually allow you to compete on the world stage. You don’t have enough land to become an agricultural powerhouse, although you do have enough to sustain you. Your big income will be derived from maximizing trade, especially out of Constantinople.

    You must have naval power to provide trade income. Constantinople is the only place you can build wargalleys for many years to come. Most other factions are putting out caravels at this time, which are statistically the equal to wargalleys. You have also been improving shipbuilding on Rhodes, and should be able to build firegalleys there by the time you secure Greece. Dedicate these two provinces to building ships, with an eye to creating a trade route that stretches at least from the Black Sea to the Nile Coast to the Ligurian and Adriatic Seas. (You will have to interrupt the Constantinople schedule now and then to build spies.) Greece should come with a trading post and port, and you should connect it to your trade route as soon as you can. However, Greece also has excellent farmland, so you should dedicate that province to improving agriculture first. You also want to be able to build Byz infantry there. Nicaea and Bulgaria can build kats and PAs, respectively, and you should look to increase armor and valor for these unit types when you can. Otherwise, alternate between building up trade and agriculture.

    You would really prefer to have another province to build spies. The only province that can build spies is Constantinople, and you really need the wargalleys coming out of there. Every other province is already dedicated, so you would have to build them in Trebizond, but Trebizond is far from ideal for the task, since it only comes with a keep. I generally put up with the lack of spy training facilities and build buffed Byz infantry there. Even though the province provides a valor add to Treb archers, there is no need for them, since you can build PAs in Bulgaria.

    While you are bringing all your trade and development online, and especially after your armies are balanced, build priests out of all your provinces (except where you are building ships). Priests will serve as your eyes and ears in foreign provinces, and are much more secure than a network of spies or emissaries. Usually only the Mongols will assassinate priests, and they do that only occasionally. By 1350, you should have the entire western half of the map covered by your skein of priests.

    Priests can tell when a province is in rebellion, although you won’t have much interest in any province that you can’t reach by ship. More importantly, priests can tell you which factions are doing well and which are losing their wars. You cannot allow the Mongols to get too big, for instance, so you need to keep an eye on them. Typically, they burn themselves out by attacking too many factions at a time. But if they win a few crucial battles, you may be suddenly faced with a Mongol juggernaut, and you will want to join the war against them before they succeed in devouring the rest of the world. You also want to know if you should retain your alliance with the Germans or the Poles, as another example, if those two are at war. Normally, the Poles are closer geographically, and you would prefer to stay allied with them. But if the only province they have is Silesia and enemies have conquered all the rest, then you want to be aware of that fact before making your decision.

    You want to stay out of conflict as long as possible, but around 1350, your trade route should reach the Ligurian Sea, and simultaneously all hell will break loose. Most likely the Italians will attack you out of a pique of jealousy for your fine naval vessels. They will also likely send a Crusade to Constantinople. This is another reason you seeded the entire map with priests. Any overland Crusade will almost always come through Hungary and Bulgaria. Having priests with a longtime presence in each province of the Crusade path converts some of the population to Orthodox, and greatly reduces Christian zeal there. Crusades forced to pass through low zeal provinces will lose men to attrition very quickly—and Crusades cannot attack you directly as long as you have a ship guarding your coast.

    Another possibility is that the Mongols will attack you. You can forestall the Mongols by remaining allied to them. However, the Mongols are a rogue faction, and staying allied with them typically means you cannot ally with any of your neighbors—because the Mongols are at war with them. A third possibility is that the Hungarians and/or Poles will attack you. This usually does not happen unless you have captured Moldavia and/or Kiev from rebels.

    In any event, as soon as one faction attacks you, everyone—absolutely everyone, always—that has an alliance with both you and the attacking faction will immediately drop their alliance with you. A number of these factions will then attack you a couple of turns later.

    Naval battles with the Italians are likely to be touch and go for the first few turns. The AI gets a large advantage in v.2.01, and there is not much you can do other than to try and outproduce and outnumber them. Pay close attention to who is captaining your flotillas, and try to use the highest starred captain in each attack until he is killed. Once you win a couple of battles, the naval war becomes much easier. Your 3 star wargalley is nothing to be trifled with, even when the AI gets such a large, undocumented advantage at sea. Keep in mind that firegalleys, both yours and the Italians’, are good at attack, but poor on defense. Try to move firegalleys into a new square only when that square is already secure or empty. When you move a ship into an enemy square, the enemy gets to attack you first. So, use wargalleys to enter the “hot” zones, then bring in firegalleys on the next turn.

    By 1350, you should have the largest income, and could probably outbuild the Italian navy over the long haul—at the expense of everything else. Even if the war ends, the Italians will just build up a new bunch of ships and attack you again. You need to punish them a bit so that they are no longer a threat. To do this, buy up a merc army and send it after their king. You have at least one inn in Nicaea that you built early in the game. You may have decided to build another one, too. Buy up all the mercs and plunk them down where the Italian king is. Hopefully, this is Venice or an island, but follow the king regardless. If the AI isn’t sure it can win the battle, it will totally abandon the province and you will not have to besiege it. Of course, if the Italians king is stuck on an island, you will be able to capture him for a ransom, which will also slow down those pesky Italians a lot.

    If you can put together an invasion of northern Italy, and chase the king through a couple of provinces, the Italians will likely fragment into civil war. If this happens, it is often best to offer a ceasefire. The Italian lands that go rebel are unlikely to be easily accessible to you at this point, and if you try to exterminate the Italian faction, it or another faction will respawn in one of the rebel provinces. Thus, it is preferable to get a ceasefire, then send an army and an emissary around to the various rebel lands to invade/bribe the provinces into your domain.

    For me, the most annoying thing about playing the Byzantines is that the AI constantly gangs up on you. So, it is probable that, about the time the Italians sink some of your ships, the Turks will invade you. If you come in contact with the Egyptians during this time—if you capture Rum, for example—then they will also go to war with you. This will put a crimp in the “styling” you planned to do in northern Italy. Still, Byzantine arms are up to the challenge.

    You don’t get any more special builds as the Byzantines in Late Period than you did in Early Period. Like it says in the game intro, Byz troops are “quaint”, but not necessarily “obsolete”. In fact, many of your builds are pretty close to obsolete, and they will not stand up to one-on-one melee against the best European units. Byz infantry gets beat by CMAAs, kats get beat by Late RKs, and so on. This means you have to put more emphasis on terrain advantages, high command generals, and large troop numbers when your regular army faces a foe. Even the best enemy units will die if surrounded and hacked to bits by a mob.

    One unit type that you are able to build that is state of the art is PAs. So, you want to try to use strategy that put your army in defensive positions that allow you to line up your PAs and pick the enemy apart before they can contact you. This often means you use an initial attack with a large supplement of mercs that greatly outnumbers the targeted garrison. When the enemy tries to lift the siege, it must fight as the attacker, and you can put your PAs to their most efficient use.

    One unit that would be as good as anything anyone else can put on the field is Varangian Guards. You start the game with a unit of VGs. However, VGs have apparently been reduced to ceremonial status in Late Period, and I have not found a way to build them.

    Don’t forget about artillery, which is also state of the art. Since you had to build the cannon foundries to get advanced ships, you can switch off to building artillery when you are ahead on ships. Use demi-culverins and culverins for long distance shooting; put these guns on a hill near the back of the battlefield. Culverins have especially long range and can reach nearly 2/3 of the battlefield. Of course, these guns are excellent siege weapons, also. The serpentine gun is excellent short range artillery; use it similar to the way you would use a catapult on the battlefield. Since these crews are costly to replace, try to support them with foot troops. I am not a fan of the organ gun—its range is too short, and it’s too slow.

    The core of your regular army must be buffed Byzantine infantry. This unit will have a hard time with the elite European troops, but can be depended on to whip the Muslim and Russian forces. To beat the Europeans, you need to buff your Byz inf as high as you can with triple armor, morale, valor, and attack adds. To this end, build armorers and any religious buildings before building the next castle level. Both churches and monasteries provide morale adds, and I believe, although it is not specifically documented, that upgraded swordsmiths increase fighting ability. So, build these improvements whenever you can.

    The Turks will probably be the first faction you eliminate. Once you have finished them off, bring your provincial loyalties up to 120% to prevent their resurgence. You will also almost certainly be at war with the Egyptians at this time. The geography of the region means that there may be some back and forth conquests between you and Egypt. I find that if I can push into Syria, then cut the Egyptians in half by taking Tripoli, the faction usually goes into civil war and I can gain the upper hand then. In addition, Tripoli is often the source for Jihads, which can prevent you from ever conquering Antioch by invading the province each turn, losing the battle, but restoring the supplies for the besieged castle. Like Crusades, Jihads are disbanded once you conquer the province they sprang from.

    In Italy, if you can take Venice, Milan, and Tuscany, the Italians will usually splinter and allow you to finish the conquest of Italian northern territories. During this period you must retain at least 1000 men in Bulgaria to defend against Crusades from the Western Europeans. Once you have your foothold in northern Italy, it is logical to conquer the Pope and put a stop to these obnoxious Crusades. Being Orthodox, you have no fear of excommunication, so you can conquer the Pope at your leisure. Still, it is worthwhile to act quickly before even more Crusades get started. Once you have replaced the Pope with your puppet, no more Crusades can begin, but all the Crusades currently in existence will continue to march.

    Naturally, as soon as you conquer Naples, the Aragonese will attack you. Show no mercy to these upstarts. They probably only own Sicily at this point, and Sicily is a potentially rich province. Take Sicily and exterminate the faction.

    This leaves you with borders shared with nearly every other faction except the Poles and the Danes. The French and Almohads are probably out of it at this point. The French typically resurge on Cyprus, where they have minimal influence for the rest of the game. The Almohads, however, may resurge in the middle of Spanish North Africa. This is a good thing for you, because it distracts the Spanish from attacking you. Nevertheless, you should still maintain a full stack on your border in North Africa, and seek an alliance with the resurged Almohads.

    The Russians have probably gained most from the destruction of the Mongols, and typically own most or all of Asia. Thankfully, your contact with them is minimal, with usually a single border between Georgia and Khazar. Try to maintain the same number of men in your Georgian garrison as the Russians keep in Khazar, and usually you can keep the peace, even if you can’t ally with them. Eventually, though, you must destroy the Russians to win the game. If you do not, you will not have enough territory to claim the 2/3 victory, and the Russians will win on GA points.

    The huge stack you keep on Bulgaria is enough to keep the Hungarians quiet for quite a while, even though they will not ally with you and they share a long border through several provinces. You can even strip down the garrison in Greece for emergency reinforcements without getting attacked by the Hungarians, as long as you leave at least 1000 fighting men (preferably more) in Bulgaria. I have never trusted the depleted garrison in Greece to hold for long, so I try to bring that garrison’s numbers back up to 800-1000 within a couple of turns.

    The Spanish will stay pretty quiet as long as the Almos have a province in their midst. However, Spain will start building a navy, and will attack your ships as soon as they think they have a chance. This is too bad, since Spain and Russia are your only trading partners, but it can’t really be prevented. It definitely helps, though, to outnumber the Spanish ships in each sea square. Since I have to maintain a large stack on Venice and Milan to defend against English Crusades, the HRE typically maintains an uneasy peace at this point. Of course, you can’t trust an AI faction, and they will not ally with you, but they will usually stay quiet in face of the threat you maintain in northern Italy.

    If you can obtain a degree of stability in the rest of the world, you must plan to attack the Russians with alacrity. Form up your armies in Trebizond and Constantinople, then attack with overwhelming force into Crimea and Khazar. Be aware that, as soon as you take Moldavia and Kiev, the Hungarians and Poles will attack you. Thus, it is often best to attack the Russians along the eastern edge of the map, up Khazar, through Volga-Bulgaria, then into Muscovy and Novogorod. These last two provinces are the heart and soul of the Russian holdings. Once you take them, the Russians will have a very difficult time holding on, and you can push west and south to steal away the entire Steppes, ending in Lithuania and Kiev. The Russians will often fracture into rebellion, so take some emissaries along to help out with bribes.

    It’s important to take sufficient troops into Russia. Novogorod, especially, can be attacked from a large number of directions, and the Danes will attack you there also if your army is depleted. You really need at least a couple of thousand troops to begin this campaign, as well as the ability to muster and train large numbers of reinforcements. The Steppe provinces will all be rather unruly at the start, so you want to have extra spies ready to move into each province on the turn after you invade and either force a retreat or win the battle.

    The Poles and Hungarians will both attack you once you move into Lithuania, Kiev, and Moldavia—assuming they haven’t already. These factions provide your first trials of the difficulties elite European troops will cause your Byz infantry-based armies. In general, you will not have too much trouble as long as you are not fielding mere ordinaries, but have buffed up your troops some. Your Byz cav, Pronoiai, and kats match up pretty well against their cav, and triple armored, +1 morale (from churches), Byz infantry can handle their foot troops when backed by PAs.

    Both factions tend to have fairly high leadership loyalty, so you cannot expect them to fracture. The two prize provinces are Poland and Hungary. I generally take Volhynia, then invade Poland from there. I invade Hungary directly from Bulgaria. Once you push the Poles back to Silesia, they cease to be a problem. To invade Poland, they will have to fight a river battle with you, and you can hold them off fairly easily with PAs and spears. There’s no need to attack Silesia and eliminate the Poles until after you have gone to war with the HRE and taken Bohemia and Pomerania. Invading Silesia from these provinces does not cause a river battle.

    Against the Hungarians, the capture of Hungary splits the faction in half. Attack the half with the king in it to garner a ransom. High leader loyalty means you will have to finish the Hungarians off province by province, without the aid of a civil war.

    Before you can finish with the Poles and Hungarians, you are virtually certain to be attacked by the HRE. In fact, the HRE has loyalty problems, which have typically slowed their development. In addition, they have likely been warring with the Swiss, who can sometimes be convinced to ally with you—especially if they resurge and are at war with the HRE. Your armies should be able to easily defeat the HRE, and these battle defeats will cause the HRE to fracture. Assault the HRE castles instead of starving them out to further lower morale and hasten the faction’s end.

    The English are the main threat at this point. English arms are superior to yours. You will have to field superior numbers of highly buffed troops to have a chance at defeating them. The English will likely already be at war with you due to their nasty habit of sending Crusades to Constantinople. While conquering the Pope will stop the organizing of these Crusades, you will still probably share a border with England in northern Italy, so the war will not stop. To make matters worse, you probably cannot reach their homelands by sea yet, so you cannot outflank their stacks of defenses and raid their homelands.

    If you have been warehousing a collection of spies, this is a good opportunity to use them. Using your priests, scout out which of their provinces has the lowest loyalty, then drop 15-20 spies on that province in a single turn. It’s a good idea to drop some untrained (cheap) assassins and emissaries on the same turn—this seems to lower the number of spies that get caught and killed when entering the province, although not by as much as you would like.

    Wales is usually an excellent spot to try for destabilization. It’s a somewhat unruly province, and if it goes rebel, you can move your spies to Wessex or Mercia, and then head north, throwing all of Britain into an uproar. Often, though, Wales won’t have a port built. Scotland is another option for spy-based dirty tricks. It is not a valuable province, but it is naturally unruly and can be pushed into rebellion fairly easily. One rebellion makes it more likely for its neighbors to also rebel, so your spies have a better chance to follow up the Scottish rebellion with a revolt in Northumbria. Also, every spy present in an enemy province gets a valor star when the province goes rebel. Creating a rebellion in a couple of provinces can give you a whole gang of experienced spies. The problem with Scotland, though, is that the English often have not built a port there yet.

    It is questionable whether you should bribe the rebels you created by spying and take the province for yourself. Until you can reach the English coast by sea, you will be unable to reinforce the troops there, and you will likely not survive a counterattack if the province is surrounded by other English provinces. It is generally preferable to let the province remain rebel and force the English to lose men while putting down the rebellion. Depending on the world situation, a faction may even resurge there, which will greatly hinder English progress. You might even want to invade Cyprus for the express purpose of extinguishing the French and making such a resurgence possible.

    Once you have contacted the English—it practically goes without saying that you are at war with them by this point—you should step up your shipbuilding to try to stretch your line of ships into the North Sea as soon as possible. Switch Constantinople over to building wargalleys or gungalleys. Tripoli and Egypt can often be captured with shipbuilding improvements. Begin building even low-level ships out of these provinces. Crete is another province that often has a shipbuilder. Even though the province is otherwise virtually worthless, if Crete has a shipbuilder, you should invade with a stack of troops, then bribe the besieged rebels to capture the shipbuilding improvements.

    Once you can reach at least the English Channel, you can send several stacks of troops to invade Mercia. From Mercia, you can reinforce and then invade Wales and Wessex, and then possibly proceed to Flanders. This will gut the English production and income, and will signal the beginning of the end for the faction. Do not underestimate the English counterattack capability, though. Remember, English armies can beat your armies one on one. You must send enough troops to not only secure the province, but to beat back the inevitable counterattacks, and to still hold the province when an English barque with AI-godly powers sinks your 3 star wargalley guarding the English Channel. You really need about 4000 troops to successfully invade Mercia.

    Once you are able to secure Mercia, however, you have nearly won the game. If you can at all spare the troops, organize a raiding army to invade Rome and the Papal States, since you are almost certainly at war with the Pope by this time. The raiding army has no intent of holding any Papal territories. You just want them to capture each province and castle, then sell everything off. This greatly reduces the Papal ability to fight you. Rome should be your main target, since it is always highly developed, but you should choose to invade the province where the Pope is located first, so that he can lead you on a merry chase throughout southern Italy. As long as the Pope has an escape route and thinks He will lose the battle, He will abandon the province, and you can sell everything there down to the bare dirt.

    Continue to reinforce Mercia and expand your hold over Britain’s provinces. Press forward against the HRE, invading and bribing, and chasing the HRE king. Cripple the Pope by stripping His development away from Him, and very soon you will be able to claim your Byzantine victory.
    Last edited by Sir Adrian; December 07, 2013 at 06:07 AM. Reason: fixed author hyperlink

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