The Byzantines are Idiots

[PoochieMoo]

Ok, so I started a game as Venice, and everything started off pretty well. Then they Byzantines declared war on me, for really no apparent reason. Then they seemed really interested in Iraklion, that tiny city on Crete. They keep sending ships to scout it out and troops as well. Now I'm thinking, "Well, bye bye Iraklion! Have fun with the Byzantines!" And guess what? They send an entire force of MISSILE CAVALRY to siege the city. Middle cavalry + Italian Spear Militia = death to the Byzantines.
Now in laughing in the Byzantines' face, having taken 1/3 of the casualties they did.
Here comes the really funny part: they did this 3 more times. In a row.

I don't know why they keep doing it, but let's just say Iraklion probably isn't going anywhere. At least not to the Byzantines.

[PoochieMoo]

Missile, not middle cavalry

[Sir Adrian]

That's just the AI. Every faction does this. England besieging you with a full stack of chivalric knights and one town militia or milan trying to scale your walls with peasant archers is pretty common.

[PoochieMoo]

That's just the AI. Every faction does this. England besieging you with a full stack of chivalric knights and one town militia or milan trying to scale your walls with peasant archers is pretty common.

Lol, it’s still hilarious

[Matthewcthf]

Ok, so I started a game as Venice, and everything started off pretty well. Then they Byzantines declared war on me, for really no apparent reason. Then they seemed really interested in Iraklion, that tiny city on Crete. They keep sending ships to scout it out and troops as well. Now I'm thinking, "Well, bye bye Iraklion! Have fun with the Byzantines!" And guess what? They send an entire force of MISSILE CAVALRY to siege the city. Middle cavalry + Italian Spear Militia = death to the Byzantines.
Now in laughing in the Byzantines' face, having taken 1/3 of the casualties they did.
Here comes the really funny part: they did this 3 more times. In a row.

I don't know why they keep doing it, but let's just say Iraklion probably isn't going anywhere. At least not to the Byzantines.

Try Jack Lusted's "better AI" mod. All it does is make the AI in vanilla play smarter on the campaign map and in battles. You won't have this issue with the mod. At Least I never did in my last game with Venice. Infact the AI seem to leave me alone for the most part, builds forts and defends key passes and areas, has full stacked armies with better quality troops, keeps better relations with you and in campaign battles they have better formations and cavalry on the flank. It improves the gameplay considerably and is easy to install.

[PoochieMoo]

Try Jack Lusted's "better AI" mod. All it does is make the AI in vanilla play smarter on the campaign map and in battles. You won't have this issue with the mod. At Least I never did in my last game with Venice. Infact the AI seem to leave me alone for the most part, builds forts and defends key passes and areas, has full stacked armies with better quality troops, keeps better relations with you and in campaign battles they have better formations and cavalry on the flank. It improves the gameplay considerably and is easy to install.

Ill have to give that mod a try, thanks!

[Matthewcthf]

Ill have to give that mod a try, thanks!

I posted a link to it a while back. The diplomacy is much better to. Having said that the Byzantines have the hardest position in the game in my opinion and the AI will still lose every time.

[bigdaddy1204]

I'm actually surprised in a good way. Strictly speaking, Iraklion should be under Byzantine control at the start of the campaign as it was a Byzantine territory in 1080, the year the game starts, and did not come under Venetian rule until 1204. Having it start under Venetian rule was one of the more irritating historical inaccuracies of the game.

So learning that the Byzantines try to take it back makes sense. That said, i agree with the person who recommended mods. The best Byzantines are to be found in Broken Crescent mod or Stainless Steel Historical Improvement Project.

As for armies of horse archers, that's because this is the only unit that Byzantines can recruit in a totally unupgraded castle. Again, arguably a poor gameplay design issue. Their armies should be a mix of infantry, archers, heavy cavalry and horse archers. One way you could experiment would be going into the descr_strat file in the M2TW folder and adding better buildings to their castles, then see what they do.

[Yesugatai Khan]

Did someone tried the "better ai" mod? Is it worth a try? Because it's pretty interesting.

[JonBlaze]

Try the Stainless Steel mod, Byzantines are quite a challenge