Starting a Byzantium campain - anything I need to know

[Heathen Hammer]

So I decided to start a  new campaign as Eastern Roman Empire. I use Stainless Steel 6.2 with Real Recruitment1.3/Real Combat1.8/CBUR/BFTB/BGR IV Compilation. So what I plan to do is make an alliance with Hungary and expand into Middle East and take all the eastern coast of Mediterranean sea. After that I plan to push into Italy, southern France and Spain. Basically, what I want to do is reestablish good old Roman Empire)) I never played a Byzantium campaign in Stainless Steel, so tips from people who have done that before would be very helpful.

[Deadly Rabbit]

Hungary, Venice, Turkey, and Sicily will all be looking to expand into your sphere of influence. Hungary will be heading for Sofia/Skopje, Turks will be heading for Sinop/Smyrna/Isparta, Venice and Sicily will be trying for Durazzo/Arta/Skopje/Thessalonica. You need to get your armies moving quickly. I tend to get my garrisons from Rhodes and Cyprus to attack Smyrna and Isparta. Your Garrison in Thessalonica has a go at Skopje and I either send Alexios with the Constantinople garrison to Sinop or Kutaisi. Sending your priest and spy to Nicaea may get you a rebellion against the turks, as it is majority christian at the start. You can then snap it up for yourself. I usually only take Sofia if Hungary hasn't got to it first. I am mainly focussed on grabbing rebel cities, not castles, for the extra income. I build roads, markets, ports. A diplomat will usually get you trade rights from the turks, peace and trade rights from the sicilians (they will soon get tangled up in north africa and you should be able to establish good relations with them) and trade rights from the venetians, but they can't be trusted and eventually will attack you, no matter what. Hungary, if you can get an alliance with them can prove a reliable and strong ally. They will often butt heads with venice in the balkans, which can only work to your advantage. If you are halfway successful with these plans you should have set yourself up with peaceful borders, buffers between your main provinces and a decent trade income. I tend to head east and reclaim anatolia until I get to Trebizond/Caesarea/Adana. The Crusader States are usually desperate for an alliance as they will be under a lot of pressure from the Fatimids in particular.

Good luck!

[jpf51684]

In my experience you just have to go with the flow in that compiliation. Expand when you can, try and make friends [if you're on vh/vh its not gonna work too well], and focus on developing your infrastructure. An alliance with hungary is a pretty good strat but all of the italians [pope included] will be very hostile to you and attack mainly because they're allied to each other so any negative rep with one will spill over. For the middle east I wouldn't count on the CS lasting very long and you will definately end up going toe to toe with either the fatamids or turks... or both if you're unlucky.

Its definately a challenge and probably one of the funnest campaigns you can do.

[meese]

And obviously be prepared for that inevitable jihad on Constantinople.

[Gnostiko]

Be aware that nobody wants to be your friend or ally, everyone will try to take a stab at you. Never think the AI will not declare war on you; even when an enemy is reduced to a handful of provinces the AI loves to make alliance blocs against the Romans.

[Kazuhiro]

Avoid jihads. Avoid crusades. I usually expand into europe rather than anatolia because the turks are more fun to take on once they've built their gigantic empire(which they usually do).

Assassins are you're second best friends-(after the pope)

[Warmaster Tibs]

Another idea I find fun is to march about 1 stack or less to Rome and start again, from the beggening. I gave all my citys to the papacy after taking rome for a ceasfire. From there I built up Rome and expanded to consume all of Italy and beyond. I soon launched a army to re-conquer the holy land as was done in the old golden age(my campaign being the new golden age). There I found a 3 units of the papacy wondering around Jerusalem...strange...I got map info from them to discover that the papacy had taken over all of Greace, Hungary (I always wondered where they went), All of Turky and some of Russia.

So bottom line is re-building the Roman Empire from scratch can be fun.

[Gnostiko]

Avoid jihads. Avoid crusades. I usually expand into europe rather than anatolia because the turks are more fun to take on once they've built their gigantic empire(which they usually do).

I've never seen the Turks do much. I retake about 3/4ths of Anatolia back from them, pry an advantageous peace offer from them, and then they die from either marauding egyptians or rampaging Mongols. Shame, since I'd like to try and recreate a little bit of the old Roman vs Turk magic

[Wadey]

I'd say one of the most important things to do is have a good alliance with Hungary. Protects the northern flank and benefits trading greatly!

I'n my campaign I also allied with KOJ, and when they were on the verge of destruction at the hands of Egypt I swept in and took Jerusalem and Acre (from Egypt). After the Egyptians turned their attention to me KOJ almost wiped out the Turks, conquering right up to my lands! Defending Jerusalem every turn got a bit repetative after the millionth time but hell, I cant half defend a city with a bunch of beat up spear militia!

[Their Law]

It's a real juggling act to play as the Romans in the Real Combat add-on. You'll have to shift you're expansion from west to east and back in a heartbeat, depending on the situation. I find that a quick thrust east into the Turks with the ultimate goal of taking Ceaserea does wonders to stabilise the eastern border.

For me the trouble Is always the western border. Venice in particular can be a complete bastard if you don't watch them carefully. i find it best to limit your expansion in the west to Skopje and Adana. Then watch as the Hungarians and Venetians fight it out over Belgrade and Sofia. I wouldn't declare war on Venice UNTIL after the 4th crusade event. The other big pain is Hungary. If they do take Sofia and hold it you could be in for a problem. The minor bug in the west is Sicily. but i tend to view them as a backdoor entrance into Italy (which you will be going into if you want to get vengeance on Venice after the 4th crusade.

Oh and watch Cyprus, the Fatamids tend to land stacks on it.

[Sir Walter]

Try to get friendly with the Khwarezmians and Almoravids so they can attack the Seljuks and Fatimids (who you'll never be friendly with). And wipe out Venice and Sicily early, Italy's a great region to make money in. Oh, and assassinate all good imams so they can't Jihad you

[smitty]

I would suggest a simple decision between two options: focus on either Greece or Anatolia. Splitting armies to defend both can be costly and puts you on the defensive. It's better imo to consolidate forces in Anatolia and push towards Iconium and Caesarea, giving you a very solid economic ground base as well as a some good military outposts (Trebizond/Caesarea). This is, after all, if you're playing the Late Era Campaign, although probably works well for the Early Era too. Venice/Hungary/Sicily get very aggressive in Greece, might be worth it to just sell your extra provinces to them at the start in exchange for $$$ and/or temporary Alliances.

[Heathen Hammer]

Thanks for the tips everybody! I'm know in 1150s. So far I have an alliance with Hungary, HRE and Genoa. I have conquered most of Balkans and right now taking rebel territories in Anatolia. However, I have a small problem. After the faction leader died, and prince became the king, one of the adopted nobles became the heir instead of prince's son (who wasn't adult yet). So I killed him off by sending him on a heroic suicide mission, but than another noble became the heir. Do I have to kill off all the adopted nobles in order for prince's son to become the heir? Is there any way to appoint heirs? I want to keep my royal bloodline.

[Gnostiko]

Thanks for the tips everybody! I'm know in 1150s. So far I have an alliance with Hungary, HRE and Genoa. I have conquered most of Balkans and right now taking rebel territories in Anatolia. However, I have a small problem. After the faction leader died, and prince became the king, one of the adopted nobles became the heir instead of prince's son (who wasn't adult yet). So I killed him off by sending him on a heroic suicide mission, but than another noble became the heir. Do I have to kill off all the adopted nobles in order for prince's son to become the heir? Is there any way to appoint heirs? I want to keep my royal bloodline.

Good good, so long as you stay away from Italy, Genoa can be your friend against Venice. As for your heir problem, it depends which version of the game you're using - if you went from 6.1 to installing the rr/rc compilation (which does include 6.2) then you'll just have to be patient. If you went from 6.2 to installing rr/rc, I'm pretty sure it's a bug whereby 'real' princes are always passed over. In the former case, don't worry, you can keep the bloodline alive - when these adopted heirs start having children their daughters become agent princesses i.e. the ones you can move around and choose who to marry them to. Simply have them marry your 'real' royals, and eventually they should outnumber the non-royals. Calm down on the adoptions too!

[czeresniak]

Some advices from my Byzies campaign:
- Ally with Hungary and Kievan Rus in the very first turns. Alliance with Hungary will secure whole Balkans cause they are not keen to break alliance. In my campaign they've did it after 250 turns. Alliance with Kievan Rus will secure Kaffa province, which otherwise will be rushed by them and you don't have funds to keep armies there or transport them from Constaninople regions
- In first 20 turns recruit every poor militia that appear in the pool and rush rebeled Scopia and Sofia otherwise Hungary will do that and in this game best ally is weak ally
- don't wait for venetians starting a war, hit them first and conquer ragusa. After losing their only castle they are as well as finished and you can even make them your vassal (in my campaign they agree without any conditions) If they take rebeled Zagreb or Belgrade try to retake it and give Zagreb to Hungary (region bordering with HRE is not what you want)
- Sicilians gonna land on the west coast of Pelopones so keep strong fleet there and intercept any ships. You can build fire ships from the beggining of the game.

After these steps western front is secured and you can start to push inti Minor Asia:
- Turkey has very weak early roster so you not gonna have any problems with beating them. Only their massive HA spam is preety annoying so build as much Mourtatoi as you can (Build advanced shooting range in Corinth and put some high chivalry general to Andrianopole to upgrade it to castle). After conquering some turkish provinces you would have a possibility to recruit decent Turkish Archers.
- Fatimits are much tougher with their Arab Cavalry and masses of spear infantry but they're no match for Scoutatois (recruit as many as you can, probably the best early unit in this whole mod)

And beware of Jihads and some scripted suprises like venetian stacks appearing from complete nowhere near Constantinople

[Sir Walter]

Some advices from my Byzies campaign:
- Ally with Hungary and Kievan Rus in the very first turns. Alliance with Hungary will secure whole Balkans cause they are not keen to break alliance. In my campaign they've did it after 250 turns. Alliance with Kievan Rus will secure Kaffa province, which otherwise will be rushed by them and you don't have funds to keep armies there or transport them from Constaninople regions
- In first 20 turns recruit every poor militia that appear in the pool and rush rebeled Scopia and Sofia otherwise Hungary will do that and in this game best ally is weak ally
- don't wait for venetians starting a war, hit them first and conquer ragusa. After losing their only castle they are as well as finished and you can even make them your vassal (in my campaign they agree without any conditions) If they take rebeled Zagreb or Belgrade try to retake it and give Zagreb to Hungary (region bordering with HRE is not what you want)
- Sicilians gonna land on the west coast of Pelopones so keep strong fleet there and intercept any ships. You can build fire ships from the beggining of the game.

After these steps western front is secured and you can start to push inti Minor Asia:
- Turkey has very weak early roster so you not gonna have any problems with beating them. Only their massive HA spam is preety annoying so build as much Mourtatoi as you can (Build advanced shooting range in Corinth and put some high chivalry general to Andrianopole to upgrade it to castle). After conquering some turkish provinces you would have a possibility to recruit decent Turkish Archers.
- Fatimits are much tougher with their Arab Cavalry and masses of spear infantry but they're no match for Scoutatois (recruit as many as you can, probably the best early unit in this whole mod)

And beware of Jihads and some scripted suprises like venetian stacks appearing from complete nowhere near Constantinople

That'd be the Fourth Crusade?

[Deadly Rabbit]

best tip I could give you is never adopt with your heir... the adopted "adult" will become the new heir in front of the natural sons. Make sure your heir is married and has produced at least one male heir before accepting any adoptions. And yes, you'd have to kill a lot of your adopted or married into the family generals before it came back around to the royal line. It goes on the basis of authority or something.

[Heathen Hammer]

best tip I could give you is never adopt with your heir... the adopted "adult" will become the new heir in front of the natural sons. Make sure your heir is married and has produced at least one male heir before accepting any adoptions. And yes, you'd have to kill a lot of your adopted or married into the family generals before it came back around to the royal line. It goes on the basis of authority or something.

Is there any way that I could alter the game files to switch the title of heir? Majority of my generals come from the adopted ones and I'd have to kill at least 70% of my court.

[Deadly Rabbit]

don't know, you may want to search the forums for a tip on that. I'd start again, and make sure your heir is married and producing heirs before adopting... and don't get either the Basileus or Diadohos killed until one of them is an adult.

[TheBromgrev]

For me, taking advantage of the Roman's advanced technology early does wonders for my game. In particular, upgrading roads and taking advantage of the merchant ports you can build in Constantinople will allow that city's income to support an entire army by itself. I typically secure the Balkans, forge temporary alliances with my western/northern neighbors to be sufficient to allow me to retake Asia Minor from the Turks, then turning on Hungary after surviving the 4th crusade event.