Faction Index makes a huge difference

**Darviathar** · April 14, 2008, 09:08 AM

I have played the Byzantines extensively and never had much trouble rolling over my opponents, on VH/VH. That is until this damnable unit index. It is forcing me to fight virtually every battle, since I am not able to churn out 20 unit stacks on a whim, and field large armies everywhere ( I can't afford to autosim anything, as the losses are too heavy). This is easily the toughest game I have ever played, as it is 1230 and I haven't really done much more than trade Sinope with the Turks a few times. I even lost Thessalonica, my 2nd city, to the Venetians! I am really living in fear of my neighbors at the moment. The Turks threaten in the east with a lot of troops, and I basically have to throw every troop I have at them. The problem is that a sneak attack by the Hungarians or Venetians would really just about doom me. For the first time, I really feel like the Byzantine Empire in its final few centuries; surrounded by foes and not near strong enough to take on all at once. Forced on the defensive to desperately hold on to what I have.

Has anyone gotten very far with the Byzantines in 5.6? I think my dream of reconstituting the Roman Emperor of Justinian's day is probably not going to happen

**hekk** · April 14, 2008, 09:17 AM

Try and ally with the Milanese, Armenians and Kievans, as they are the natural enemies of the ones your being attacked from.

**Darviathar** · April 17, 2008, 08:11 AM

Originally Posted by hekk

Try and ally with the Milanese, Armenians and Kievans, as they are the natural enemies of the ones your being attacked from.

I always marry my faction heir to the Armenian or Georgian Princess, depending on whichever one I find out wandering first. I form an alliance with each Orthodox faction in the early stages as well. Milan generally won't accept.

My biggest problem is that I declined the war draft basically every time it came up, because I didn't have any problems with the troop limitation at *that* time. It came back on me later in a big way, and I was forced to start over

In my present game I'm paying for the draft every single time, whether I need the troops at the time or not. Its going much more smoothly.

**ivanhoex** · April 14, 2008, 09:49 AM

^^

looks perfect to me, you have just enough time to play a few 40 years campaings (all lost) and then you can update to latest DLV, when before we had to abandon a campaign in order to keep up to date

lol

**Creslin** · April 14, 2008, 01:32 PM

byzantines is really hard for the first 50-60 years because for the most part your units blow until you can open up the higher levels of city barracks... Ive found that once i get passed the second dark age my citys are making so much money that i just cant lose.. Constantinople turning out almost 30k/turn is awesome.

**RyuNoKami** · April 14, 2008, 01:37 PM

you think thats bad....i had the unfortunate loss on a autocalc with 20 v 1....it MADE NO SENSE.

**gewehr36** · April 14, 2008, 05:44 PM

I'm playing the historical campaign and Byzantium has already horded Armenia and taken all of Anatolia.

**Vangar** · April 15, 2008, 06:55 AM

I don't like build limits by principle. But after playing some 5.5, it seems that it somehow works out, I like a challenge, but the problems with this feature are mainly that the unit index is to a large scale influenced by chance. If you got a "bad harvest" event your index is increased by 10. "Back to normal at your fields" doesn't decrease your index by 10, however. That means, if you got two harsh summers in a row you're basically limited to the use of 10-20 units, from which a large amount has to guard your settlements, at least to provide high loyality. To avoid that, there is the "unit draft" event in case of war. But it's really expensive and the loyality in your settlements drops to a value you effectively can't use your new units, because otherwise your settlements get blue and uber-rebels will spawn everywhere.

The other problem is that the unit limit doesn't exist for AI factions - at least I never noticed a significant impact on their strategy. I like a challenge, but it seems that challenge is just achieved through handycapping the player and it feels a bit... unfair

The unit limit, as I said, works quite well, mostly. But sometimes it just ends your campaign effectively :/