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[Antiokhos Euergetes]

I've not got that far, without giving anything away how was your trade war in Bulgaria?
Feel free to express yourself in pictorially

[Anubis88]

I've not got that far, without giving anything away how was your trade war in Bulgaria?
Feel free to express yourself in pictorially

For some reason pictures won't post for me on TWC, no matter what format i try to put them in, unless it's an attachment. I might try it later.

Well the AI is a bit weird. I had terrible issues with Serbia and the Langobards, but suddenly they simply stopped being aggressive. The Abassids became the next issue, after conquering Egypt they started a massive invasion, even took some cities, but i managed to retake them, and since i'm in 970 i also took Cilicia and Antioch from them, and now they seem to be afraid of me. Invasion of Crete was fun, Chandax had huge armies and had to fight it out quite hard.

Bulgaria is probably the most dissapointing enemy. The trade war was challenging because of the scripts, but in 400 turns they only tried to take 1 of my settlements on their own, and that's what was there from their offence. I just decided to conquer East Bulgaria, and they don't have much resistance. I've also started to make crazy money, so i can just field as many armies as i want. Need to find a way to dump that money so the game remains at least a bit challenging. I also never had any issues with Magyars or Pechenegs, even Kiev isn't a threat, which makes the game much easier.

[Antiokhos Euergetes]

I hope you catapulted a donkey over the walls of Chandrax
Shame about Bulgars I'm sure it will change for future. Any sign of the Rus in the area?

[Anubis88]

I hope you catapulted a donkey over the walls of Chandrax
Shame about Bulgars I'm sure it will change for future. Any sign of the Rus in the area?

I did not Just starving people out is my MO, i don't know if i fought 5 offensive siege battles in my entire TW playing career, and i've been playing it since Medieval I

No nothing from the Rus apart from the scripted attack. By far my 2 main battlefields were in southern Italy and in Albania. I had insane wars against the Langobards and Serbia, but they became quite boringish because they spam the same 5 units. The rest was pretty easy. But the game is quite unbalanced and the AI re-balances it. For example, the Aghlabids had like 6-7 full stacks in Sicily, they would come near Reggio but never attack it. Same now with the new Emirate of Sicily, they have huge armies but they don't do anything, they just stand around. If they actually attacked there is no way i could hold out vs so many enemies for any serious amount of time.

The Bulgarians should've been the biggest threat to me, but they are really passive. Now i've started to easily conquer them to rep the advance of Tzimiskes, i'm hoping they will do something to prevent me from doing so, but i guess i'm at a point in the campaign where i could start conquering the world if i wanted to because i have enough money. I'll probably just wait around for the Varangians and then see if i'll continue the game or not

[Antiokhos Euergetes]

Thanks good and bad then, Nikephoros apparently catapulted a donkey into Chandax, finding it very funny apparently

[AnthoniusII]

Are we play the same game? I play VH/VH XERYX 4.1 without a general in all my cities (that was a late addition that i do not personaly like).
From turn 1 i have an invasion in Sicily , Bulgarians and Serbians are in a marathon toith me to conquer the buffer zones.
Later despite by naval victories that postponed Cretan armies by sinking their fleets I HAVE ahuge invasion in Naxos and later in Rhodes.
Abbasids are quite (and from my exirience they will be quite for almost 50 turns or more).
Lombards invade my Magna Grecia lands...

[Anubis88]

Hah yes...

Serbians and Croatians were really aggressive early on, but the Serbs for some reason stopped trying to conquer Dyrrachion. I don't know, maybe my garrison is too strong there? The Cretans were neutralized in 960 (I changed Anno Mundi to AD years so it's easier for me to follow, i always like to make the conquests as the historical times).

Lombards kept invading, but then i conquered some of their cities and gave them back, gave 1 to the pope too, and it seems to have froze the action in Magna Graecia.

I will post 2 screenshots; the first you can see the armies of Sicily. Even with the Aghlabids it was the same story; huge armies, never really attacked me. They march a bit in Calabria, take a small fort, and go back, never siege a city.

The 2nd screenshot is more worrisome. It seems like there's a reason Bulgaria is so weak; look at how many rebels they have! It's possible that by starting the campaign on VH and allowing the extra rebels, the AI factions can't destroy them. Or maybe a lot of Bulgarian generals rebelled, and they can't fight back.

[Kavhan Isbul]

Interesting screenshots. I have wondered what happens if the Magyars are allowed to do their conquests without much human player interference, and I thought that they may establish a very strong empire on their own, at the expense of Bulgaria and Great Moravia. Obviously, not the case - Great Moravia appears to be doing quite well, with the Magyars limited to the Banat.

From a late game perspective, the mod has a problem in the absence of a superpower to provide at least some challenge to the human player. In other mods there is usually at least one faction that manages to dominate the part of the map which is away from the human player, but here it just does not happen, for a variety of reasons. The Franks and Abbasids are represented with a small portion of their actual territory and therefore never become a threat. The Bulgarian and Roman AI struggles with all the scripted events and overall the AI does a poor job of growing settlements and improving its overall economy, as spamming stacks of conscript spearmen, archers and javelinmen is prioritized. Many of those stacks tend to go rebel anyway.

The only challenge mid to late game is the lack of generals and dealing with unrest in expanding in regions with different culture away from the capital.

[Anubis88]

Interesting screenshots. I have wondered what happens if the Magyars are allowed to do their conquests without much human player interference, and I thought that they may establish a very strong empire on their own, at the expense of Bulgaria and Great Moravia. Obviously, not the case - Great Moravia appears to be doing quite well, with the Magyars limited to the Banat.

From a late game perspective, the mod has a problem in the absence of a superpower to provide at least some challenge to the human player. In other mods there is usually at least one faction that manages to dominate the part of the map which is away from the human player, but here it just does not happen, for a variety of reasons. The Franks and Abbasids are represented with a small portion of their actual territory and therefore never become a threat. The Bulgarian and Roman AI struggles with all the scripted events and overall the AI does a poor job of growing settlements and improving its overall economy, as spamming stacks of conscript spearmen, archers and javelinmen is prioritized. Many of those stacks tend to go rebel anyway.

The only challenge mid to late game is the lack of generals and dealing with unrest in expanding in regions with different culture away from the capital.

The Magyars have vassalized the Bulgarians now, but that's mostly because Bulgaria is too weakened by the Kometopulloi and the rebels.

Actually the Abasids have become quite the superpower, but because i didn't want to fight 2 battles per turn on that front i devised a cheese tactic. It had never occured to me until i fought a battle on a bridge, and realized how powerful siege weapons were in those situations. So now i simply have an army station on both bridges near Antioch with 4 units of archers, 4 units of spearmen, and 6 units of siege engines. I win every battle basically without losses because when the AI tries to cross the bridge it's such a killing ground even with the innacurate siege weapons. Not too proud of myself, but it did get pretty boring otherwise to have to fight huge battles every turn.

There's just too many armies that they have. The problem is that so do i, now i am indeed getting filthly reach. I'm building in all of my settlements all the time, spend without any thinking and still i'm barely under 1 million in my bank atm.

I really did miss not having any true invasions from the Bulgarians, Pechenegs, Rus and Magyars. Would definitely make the game more dynamic. Bulgaria should also be pushed to become stronger imho, it was a true Empire during our mod's period, the Romans had a really rough time in the Balkans because of them.


A few questions; i've just got the Varangian Druzhina, but again they seem to just spawn and are not recruitable. Now with the same thing happening with the Athanatoi, this seems to be an oversight. I actually figured out the cheats to give myself some of those companies for free. But the Varangians especially should be recruited at quite high numbers. 6.000 being sent is a big % of the Byzantine army in any timeframe.

Also, i saw in the custom battles that there are 2 different Varangian units, but they seem to have the same stats but just a different name? Will both become available? Or have i gone so far the game that it wasn't even planned to be possible and have encountered real recruitment bugs?

[AnthoniusII]

Lets make some things clear.
1st . The final rosters of many factions are not complete.
2nd The units stats are not final.
3rd The game will have multiple misions both for players and AI factions and if nessesary Magyars will apear where they will become Hungarians after a respawn .
Your GOAL is to keep your capital intact , defeat certain enemies , defeat any rebelions and survive untill 1071! No matter if you conquer the entire map if a enemy settlement still exists you lose!
For huge factions the misions will be constant.
Romans -on order to win- will have to:

1. Defeat Paulikians
2. Defeat Crete and libarate the Crete island
3. Keep Constantinople -with bribes if nessesary- intact untill 1071
4. Defeat Lombards
5. Defeat Turkomans
6. Defeat Normans The last two factions apear arround 1000 AD.
7. Defeat Bulgarians
8. Restore the Justinian's Danube limes (line of forts aka reach Danube as frontier).
9. Defeat or make vassals Serbians and Croatians
10. Restore Renovetio Munti (that was each Emperor's oath to restore Estarn Roman Empire plus Italy.
11. Defend Bari untill 1071 after the Schism.

All factions will have a chain of misions based on the real history.
For Example each Emir will have to UNITE the Islamic World under his Banner and become the Caliph in the place of the Caliph.
I have writen to _tartaros_ that the choice to have a geberal in every settlement is destroying every sense of ballance so I play with the traditional way with my limited Generals. That way i must chose carefully witch generals i will sent to campaign risking to desert and become rebels or witch general i will place in a settlement. That way i have 2-3 max armies to hundle multiple war fronts making or buying peace to buy time to regroup.
An other hint. There will be several units that you will be able only to retrain like Athanatoi so keepinhg atleast one survived you can ratrain the unit keeeping the units exp. Pope wilol recieve his famous Swabian guards that lost their last battle agianst HRE.
Even with the stats units have now and Germanicu5's BAI in VH and CAI XERYX 4.1 VH/VH i had very chalenging battles that took an hour (my limitation time for battles) like the famous "Battle of teh Five Armies".

Saved by the bell!

_tartaros_ combined succefully Germanicu5's BAI with XERYX 4.1 one and for an entire hour i saw units (both mine and enemy's)to retreat , regroup and return to battle!
In TATW Germanicu5's BAI has a issue with re-inforcements that does not exist in TGC (rep to _tartaros_).
I have some keyboard problems and kept me from modeling for a while. After hours of fixing my keyboard i will resume with the Islamic factions in order to proceed with the Slavic ones after them.
Slavic unit rosters will have also some common units with different textures but the task is huge.
Finally I will make the Bulgarians that still use our oldest models and their shadow faction for TGC 1.0 BETA.
Your feedback , critisism and sugestions are always wellcomed.

[Anubis88]

Hi,

yes i know a lot of the things are still work in progress, but obviously i don't think many people played to 1000 AD so i assumed my feedback would be valuable for future balance of the mod.

Battle AI is actually really decent. They still make some stupid mistakes, but much less than usually. I've had some pretty tough battles, also multiple armies are waiting to get together in a battlefield before attacking, so it's quite hard to fight which is great.

[AnthoniusII]

Please if you have a friend that can work with IWTE tool . tell him/her to join us. In 1.0 Official release we want some realy simple things in our settlements to be done.

[Anubis88]

Please if you have a friend that can work with IWTE tool . tell him/her to join us. In 1.0 Official release we want some realy simple things in our settlements to be done.

I don't know. I will ask at the dev forum on Tsardoms if anyone knows how to use it.

[The Despondent Mind]

It would be nice if we had to option to play a mission free campaign, more free form.

[AnthoniusII]

It would be nice if we had to option to play a mission free campaign, more free form.

Actually you can. The misions do not have time limit. In fact I found my 1st mision postponed for 200 turns inorder not to fight Bulgarians too early and open another war front.

[Antiokhos Euergetes]

I love the historical script for want of a better phrase of course as in reality there is always the human agency that can change everything. I keep making more historic suggestions periodically to add to the overall feel.
I wish, never too old a modelling expert could be found to build towns and cities for the map. I know Anthonius II has a spectacular Thessaloniki model

[AnthoniusII]

A new Comic Book from Byzantine Tales Company is available in AMAZON and is about the birth and life of Emperor Basil II the Bulgarslayer.

The lady is -I think - the comic artist and her comments in Facebook.

Just imagine how many Emperors passed through the Golden Gate and stepped on the ground I am treading.
Velissarios, Constantine V,
Nikiforos Fokas, Basil II and many others.
One trembles only at the thought.

We hope that when all rosters will be ready we will attract the atention to someone to create the Golden Gate!

[Antiokhos Euergetes]

The golden gate will be spectacular and I think I'm going to look into those comic books.
It's sad to see its demise in bricking it up in the end times.

[Anubis88]

The golden gate will be spectacular and I think I'm going to look into those comic books.
It's sad to see its demise in bricking it up in the end times.

I was in Istanbul a couple of month ago for 10 days, and the gate actually didn't make my itinerary because i didn't really realize it's importance from looking at the pictures Oh well, maybe next time

[Kavhan Isbul]

I managed to get my victory conditions in 238 turns, but I am really enjoying the mod and will keep playing trying to see if I can conquer the entire map. Family Members and generals finally started dying of old age, but only once they are past 100 years old, which is something that should probably be fixed in future versions.