My experience playing the Byzantines

[Zaale]

I played the first BC version. The Turks in there were kind of a joke and a I remember routing entire armies with a couple units of cavalry archers.

This time the turks are a little hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm not overpowered, it's perfectly normal for me to deal with a extreme difficult power playing byzantines but the thing is that certain units on the Turkish armies are virtually unstoppable -janissary heavy infantry en tirpan azaps for example.

First two battles in VH/VH taking Konya and Ankara this guys virtually destroyed half of my armies.

OK, normal spearmen do nothing, elite spearmen -the Imperial guards- are massacrated, cataphracts are beaten too, Varangian guards suffered 60 casualties to kill 44 of these guys (and you need a lot of time to replaced them, instead turks are producing heavy infantry like in a tomato factory). After a little try and error I started to use kontaratoi to hold them locked while my cavalry win the battle on flanks then attack the buddies from behind. Simply, but agains there's a problem.

Turkish cavalry are a lot better than mine

Turkish archers are also a lot better than mine. I confronted two units of my toxotai silver chevrons against two janissary archers virtually rookies get 20 casualties in seconds against 9 inflicted

Although I was taking Sivas with a single combo:

6 units of kontaratoi
2 heavy infantry for the flanks
4 units of spathatoi
2 units of auxilia archers
4 units of mounted archers
a couple of shock cavalry units

Before Sivas the system goes on CTD and cannot restore so my game is lost . For the BC team, it's a great work, a really huge experience. Only thing I think Turks must be more elusive "cavalry based" on the first times.

I have read a little about the CTD and it seems it's a frequent problem, can I do something?

[Iguanaonastick]

Playing as the Romans, the Turks are pretty tough foes to start with as you cannot recruit a lot of heavy cavalry yet and your early infantry does rather suck. And yep, the scripts seem to give them tons of quality infantry and little in the way of cavalry. But if your Kataphractoi are being beaten by Azaps you are doing something wrong.

One good cataphract charge obliterates a unit like that. Hell, one good cataphract charge rips the heart out of any infantry unit in the game. Charge, kill half a unit, withdraw, charge again. Look around the site for some general advice on how to make your cavalry execute formed charges. Basically, you need to make sure they are in an orderly formation before they start their advance on the enemy. Some people claim that you must single-click for a formed charge to work, I have always found that as long as you keep your formation together it's better to start running a bit earlier to increase momentum, particularly if the enemy is advancing on you.

Whatever you do, do not let your cavalry fight in a protracted melee. Get them out, reform, charge again. If you are in a hurry do not even bother to wait to form up, an unformed charge will still do a lot of damage if you're using cataphracts, but always get enough space to build up proper momentum before you turn around and charge again.

When you run out of cataphracts, the Anatolian Nobles you can recruit on Cyprus will do a perfectly good job. Stratiot cavalry is also decent but unfortunately only recruitable fairly late in this version of BC.

Playing this way battles actually become fairly easy even when you are outnumbered. Expect to see your cavalry rack up insane amount of kills and gain lots of experience, which will further improve their charge. The main threat comes from enemy cavalry, against whom charges are far less effective. I prefer to have my horse-archers shoot the shock cavalry, drawing them away by skirmishing and mobbing them from all sides once they're isolated. I.e. classic steppe-tactics. Enemy horse-archers I shoot with foot-archers and mostly I just take the casualties they inflict until they charge in. It's not elegant but I have not really found any fool-proof way of dealing with them.

Your army selection looks pretty good to me. Cavalry is king in Broken Crescent but has a matching price-tag. One of the Romans' strengths is that their levy infantry is incredibly cheap yet quite effective. Even in the early game you can get a line of kontaroi, toxotai and peltasts for tuppence, and they'll hold quite bravely whilst your cavalry wins the battle. Later, Scutaroi, Spatharoi and elite infantry units are much better (and cooler looking to boot) but inordinately more expensive. Still, you'll be rich. And even in the end Roman infantry is nothing to write home about. (Except the Varangians, who kill everything and everyone they face. Or would if not for the animation bug. Do a forum search on that too to find a workaround that some people use to make them use their one-handed axes all the time, and they'll become much, much more powerful.)

Anyway, good luck!

P.S. Sorry, can't help with the crash. They happen occasionally but I've found the mod to be pretty stable on my system.

[Tintin2]

I played the first BC version. The Turks in there were kind of a joke and a I remember routing entire armies with a couple units of cavalry archers.

This time the turks are a little hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm not overpowered, it's perfectly normal for me to deal with a extreme difficult power playing byzantines but the thing is that certain units on the Turkish armies are virtually unstoppable -janissary heavy infantry en tirpan azaps for example.

First two battles in VH/VH taking Konya and Ankara this guys virtually destroyed half of my armies.

OK, normal spearmen do nothing, elite spearmen -the Imperial guards- are massacrated, cataphracts are beaten too, Varangian guards suffered 60 casualties to kill 44 of these guys (and you need a lot of time to replaced them, instead turks are producing heavy infantry like in a tomato factory). After a little try and error I started to use kontaratoi to hold them locked while my cavalry win the battle on flanks then attack the buddies from behind. Simply, but agains there's a problem.

Turkish cavalry are a lot better than mine

Turkish archers are also a lot better than mine. I confronted two units of my toxotai silver chevrons against two janissary archers virtually rookies get 20 casualties in seconds against 9 inflicted

Although I was taking Sivas with a single combo:

6 units of kontaratoi
2 heavy infantry for the flanks
4 units of spathatoi
2 units of auxilia archers
4 units of mounted archers
a couple of shock cavalry units

Before Sivas the system goes on CTD and cannot restore so my game is lost . For the BC team, it's a great work, a really huge experience. Only thing I think Turks must be more elusive "cavalry based" on the first times.

I have read a little about the CTD and it seems it's a frequent problem, can I do something?

Use their javelins units, even those very cheap ones with 3 defence maybe are realy effective.
I always try to have at least 2 javelin units in my border settlements.
The foot ones are perfect to kill streak at the gates of your settlements and the cavalry ones when you fight field battles or attack enemy settlements.

For those turkish heavy inf best to use javelin cavalry so they cannot catch you.
Never engage them with your cavalry, except for the flank maybe, these guys have a spear_bonus.
20 attack, armor piercing attribute and spear_bonus. Probably the best infantry against any class.

And for your next game, do not save your games at the years 1204 and 1220.
Those events crash our saves, save three turns before or after these years and your campaign will live happily ever after.

Cheers

[Intellected]

I love those turkish heavy infantry and janissary.
Were these units going to be upgraded in the 3.0 version ;P?

[Dago Red]

Yeah sounds like a cav charge issue to me too. SOmetimes no matter what I do, my horse will not charge correctly, even after learning the "stop, reform, single click" method.

inside settlements there are always problems they just wont charge, the best i can do is double click to make them at leat smash into the infantry and disorder their ranks, but it's not really a charge - there is no devastating charge bonus applied, you can tell quite easily.

If a charge works right, and the bonus is applied, you will see the worst kind of carnage with 20, 30, even more enemy troops dying within seconds. Of course, heavy foes less so, but still I've charged into groups of Tirpan Azaps with Askari and murdered them. They will however, make quick work of your horse with those pole arms if you don't get out fast.... i don't care what the unit card says (it does not say bonus against cavalry - but don't believe it).

[Outlawstar15a2]

Yeah sounds like a cav charge issue to me too. SOmetimes no matter what I do, my horse will not charge correctly, even after learning the "stop, reform, single click" method.

inside settlements there are always problems they just wont charge, the best i can do is double click to make them at leat smash into the infantry and disorder their ranks, but it's not really a charge - there is no devastating charge bonus applied, you can tell quite easily.

If a charge works right, and the bonus is applied, you will see the worst kind of carnage with 20, 30, even more enemy troops dying within seconds. Of course, heavy foes less so, but still I've charged into groups of Tirpan Azaps with Askari and murdered them. They will however, make quick work of your horse with those pole arms if you don't get out fast.... i don't care what the unit card says (it does not say bonus against cavalry - but don't believe it).

Polearms are a hard coded "bonus against cavalry".

[Intellected]

How does this "stop, reform, single click" method work?

[Iguanaonastick]

Like it says. Order the cavalry to stop. Wait for the lancers to form up in orderly ranks facing the enemy. Single-right-click on the enemy from a fair distance away so your horsemen will canter slowly towards them. At the appropriate distance they will lower their lances and break into a charge by themselves. Such a "formed" charge is far more devastating than a normal one and leads to the destruction of half a unit in two seconds.

Like I said above, I have found that this method does not always yield the best results, as enemy infantry counter-charging your cavalry will be too close too quickly for your cavalry to build up sufficient speed. If you're confident that your troops are formed up properly you can start running a bit earlier for no loss (and sometimes quite a gain) in effectiveness.

And if your cavalry is good enough compared to the enemy there is no need to wait for your guys to form up. An unformed charge done by double-clicking will still cause crippling casualties and save you so much time your cavalry will have more impact on the battle as a whole. (Do make sure to have sufficient distance to the enemy whichever method you use, though. Charging from close range is usually trouble.)

I have also found that some cavalry units charge more reliable than others. My Cataphracts almost never seem to fail a charge when not in a city. My Askari are far more fickle. I wonder if this depends on some of the "hidden" unit attributes in the EDU like training or discipline.

[Dago Red]

I have also found that some cavalry units charge more reliable than others. My Cataphracts almost never seem to fail a charge when not in a city. My Askari are far more fickle. I wonder if this depends on some of the "hidden" unit attributes in the EDU like training or discipline.

Maybe but there are obvious bugs too. You cannot possibly seem to charge a unit that has some men climbing walls - even if there are 100 guys standing the the base of the wall, 1-clicking them will result in your cav walking up to the enemy and offering them hugs. Or sometimes just standing there without even walking up - i think that's when too many are already on the wall.

This charging method needs to be written down somewhere officially since it's such an important part of the game. Night and day to how it's done in other TW games. In RTW mods we always double clicked to charge.

That's the way it works in the ETW mod I play too... not here.

[Bull]

I've learned to delete the can_formed_charge attribute from the units' EDU.
They'll charge without fail.

The only benefit that formed_charge delivers I think is rapid acceleration from a short-distance, but given that it causes so many failed charges it's just not worth it. I tell my cavalry to charge from a long distance to build up momentum so it makes no difference to me.

[buglepong]

In BC 2 the Romans are basically turks. I find my armies are made up half of turkish horse archers because they're the only good units to recruit in conquered anatolian provinces. Couple that with it being dastardly hard to get castles to fortresses on VH difficulty (and thus cannot get any roman cavalry), and what you get is Romans = Turks.

[Iguanaonastick]

This actually is pretty much historically correct, I think. Later Roman emperors hired lots and lots of turcoman horse-archers for their armies as successive civil wars and the loss of Anatolia cost them most of their old recruiting grounds and most of the old standing army.

Still, I mostly used Anatolian Nobles for heavy cavalry and native Hippotoxotai and Trapezitai and mercenary Armenian Cavalry Auxiliaries for the missile cavalry in my good armies. There is no need to stick with the cheap Turks, though they certainly are useful troops.

In my second Roman game I just used a cheat to start with a fortress so I could recruit Stratiotai before the game was over. Much more fun. Pretty armies are one of the big drawing points of BC as far as I'm concerned and Roman cavalry looks great.

[Bull]

I usually wait for a good decade or two before starting a war with the Turks, then capture Ankara which will be a fortress by then.

You can also stick a family member into a small town like Rhodes (I normally turn it into a town), lower the tax rate, then transfer the family member to Nicea once his chivalry gets to four or more. That should also give you a 1% population growth bonus. But this method takes longer.

Also, the native hippotoxotai are still better than the turcoman horses in my opinion. They have longer range which makes up for their slower speed, and can easily become makeshift charger when needed. Non-elite cavalry sent to pursue the hippos will usually get mopped up by these guys as well, since they can also fight quite well in a melee. You can't do that with the turkish horse archers.

[Zaale]

Well, now it's 1226 on my game. I'm starting to build a Citadel on Nicaea, don't know what kind of units I can train there. My armies still get the same combo: kontaratoi, skutatoi, spatatoi and some hippotoxotai, stratatoi and mercenary cavalry.

After a 15 years -some 30 turns with the Ayyubids the Turks decided to make a truce with them and attacked me at Ani. So I attacked Konya and Ankara and nailed Sultan Kayloskau the Mad and his huge army at the gates of Konya -and hell, he was really mad like hell, he charged my latin knights directly when I was another unit of stratatoi just a little behind, so I pulled back a little and smash him between my cavalry.

His armies -there were 3 turkish armies- routed, made 1100+ prisoners

So long the only faction to disappear is the KOJ. Armenians survive as a protectorate of the Turkish Sultanate, Seljuks and Ayubbids have armies that are 4 times bigger in size than mine, Turkish armies are only 3 times bigger.

For the charges.... hmmmmm yesterday I charged a unit of Tirpan Azaps with latin knights with the result of 20 of my cavalry killed and more than half of the enemy unit survived. I still didn't find an effective solution against these guys on early game. Horse archers do well but Turskish enemy horse archers always caught my horsemen and slaughter them.

Another problem is the italian crossbowmen. I am an old MTW I player and I used lots of crossbowmen there. On this game crossbowmen are almost useless with the exception of sieges. I put my crossbowmen on the left flank and they have just the time to launch a volley before being charged. I retreat them and deactivate the fire at will for not getting them killing my all troops. Still trying to find how to use these guys.

All in all, an amazing campaign with all the flavour of Medieval I. I was really mad with vanilla Medieval II, it was unplayable for me so thank you guys for this wonderful mod!!

[The Noble Lord]

Another problem is the italian crossbowmen. I am an old MTW I player and I used lots of crossbowmen there. On this game crossbowmen are almost useless with the exception of sieges. I put my crossbowmen on the left flank and they have just the time to launch a volley before being charged. I retreat them and deactivate the fire at will for not getting them killing my all troops. Still trying to find how to use these guys.

They are bit different in BC for simple reason, in M2TW vanilla the crossbowmen are greatly overpowered and pumped up to unrealistic strength. In this mod they are just portrayed the way they should be, not to be so effective when on open field and when facing the cavalry!

[damnfap]

you have to protect your archers with infantry (which the koj have in plentiful amounts)... though the ai likes to flank with cavalry so be wary. As for the thread question: trample them with your sexy kataphraktoi

>I love those turkish heavy infantry and janissary.

I think the janissary units will be removed in 3.0 or in the least be put back to another century (maybe an emergent ottomon faction) as it is very innacurate to have them running around in the 11th century.

When do factions unlock their end tier units? It always frustrates me to see all these units I cannot build e.g. dismounted monaspa

the malikate of sindh needs their end game troops right at the start as they have a terrible selection

[Intellected]

An emergent Ottman faction and the janissaries as late infantry would be great!

[spartan117]

I had a very good strategy for the first few turns for Byzantium. the campaign is on very hard, very hard and in the first few turns I am able to capture like 6 rebel settlements. From the initial three rebel settlements to the east of the anatolian holdings, Sinope and Amasia (I think this was the settlement), and the wooden castle west of the Armenian Kingdom while making credits (Florins?) after the first turn. I disbanded most of the heavy cavalry and some other units in the first turn and am still able to capture most of the rebel settlements nearby and more importantly before the Rum Sultanate can even make one attempt at them.

I will post an exact list of the initial movements in the first few turns if anyone is interested. It is quite tedious otherwise though especially given I dont have the game installed or even have a working computer. lol. I would have to look at the maps and what units are where.

I had done this after a first campaign of rushing the Rum Sultanate. While the first few battles were quite difficult (the armies that spawn on very hard campaign are filled with some higher quality units) after winning them the campaign progresses quite easily but then again overall the byzantine campaign is near the easiest campaign if not the easiest. Not rushing them in the beginning and claiming many rebel settlements leads to a influx of much money resulting in a fairly easy campaign. Although the campaign is very enjoyable as I attempt to assist the Kingdom of Jerusalem if they are near defeat by launching armies off of cyprus to relieve besieged cities.

So long the only faction to disappear is the KOJ. Armenians survive as a protectorate of the Turkish Sultanate, Seljuks and Ayubbids have armies that are 4 times bigger in size than mine, Turkish armies are only 3 times bigger.

For the charges.... hmmmmm yesterday I charged a unit of Tirpan Azaps with latin knights with the result of 20 of my cavalry killed and more than half of the enemy unit survived. I still didn't find an effective solution against these guys on early game. Horse archers do well but Turskish enemy horse archers always caught my horsemen and slaughter them.

Another problem is the italian crossbowmen. I am an old MTW I player and I used lots of crossbowmen there. On this game crossbowmen are almost useless with the exception of sieges. I put my crossbowmen on the left flank and they have just the time to launch a volley before being charged. I retreat them and deactivate the fire at will for not getting them killing my all troops. Still trying to find how to use these guys

I could be mistaken crossbows penetrate armor and that alone makes them very attractive-many units have high armor values. I have not used them extensively because of the need of an adequate level of ports and the semi low recruitment rate if I remember properly. Although I was planning on using them in Syria and Lebanon lands once I had the available ports. I did, however, use them as missile units against Kypchak armies in my conquest of Crimea to great effect. I am very keen to use any terrain advantage even slight slopes to allow greater freedom to my missile units as they can stay behind my front infantry lines. They performed well causing lots of damage to heavily armored horse archers and lancers. They are probably much less useful actually skirmishing as the long reload time and rather limited armor will lead them getting torn to pieces by much more numerous fast firing archer units. Properly used missile units will greatly ease the economic cost of fighting the many armies that the AI can field. Micromanaging skirmishing and any firing will reap great rewards as simply the player choices are much more effective.

[Iguanaonastick]

In Broken Crescent, militia level crossbowmen are not armour piercing.

This includes the Italian Crossbowmen.

The KoJ, for example, has crossbows that do pierce armour. They're higher-tier troops.

As for disbanding starting heavy cavalry... you could. But since those are some of the best-looking and most spectacular units in the game for me it kind of defeats the point. I'll fight more than enough battles using just militia forces, I'd much rather get some mileage out of my starting troops for variety's sake.

Besides, after a half-dozen battles they'll be depleted anyway and the upkeep will drastically lowered. When there's 5 men per unit left I just park them in Nicaea waiting for the time I can re-train them to gold-chevroned full-strength status. (Retraining in this fashion is neither fair on the AI nor at all realistic. This is offset by the fact that having a few elite-units like that is cool.)

[Zaale]

Playing on holidays now

OK as Byzantines the thing went like this: War with turks, Turks crushed but I stopped after taking Karaman b/c Ayyubids becoming a megasuperpower after destroying Armenians and I needed Turks between us while creating a couple of good armies. Seljuks declared war on me and I destroyed 6 Seljuk armies (with 50% casualties in one battle ) b/c Seljuk infantry is composed mainly by heavy archers that are like terminators, they run, they shoot, they kill my cavalry, they defeat my infantry, they shoot again.... The thing is.... I always kill their generals -Seljuk General cavalry is extremely weak and they fall like flies, even my Hippotoxotai kill them

Ayyubids attacked me, I conquered all Armenian plain from them but Taqlaq infatry are terrible, only thing is they are 75 and not 125 like Tirpan Azats so I can butcher them with horse archers. My armies are composed mainly by 5-6 units of kontaratoi, 3 skutatoi -one for every flank plus a reserve to fill the gapes, 3 spathatoi, 1 archers, 1-2 meneulatoi 4 hippotoxotai, 2 stratatoi/Kataphraktoi and the General. The yaddayadda of the battles is like this:

TURKS Tirpan Azats and other troops attack center and flanks, I outflank them, defeat turkish cavalry attack them from behind, they run, I kill them all

SELJUKS Askaris attack flanks, they massacre my troops, I charge the horde of archers from the flanks, kill them all, eventually kill enemy general, then attack remaining infantry (macemen and other) and fights stupid askaris until the every last of them.

AYYUBIDS Same thing, heavy cavalry attacks me, I outflank them and I destroy them all.

ARMENIANS I hate the azaq cavalry, they seem indestructible, for all the rest is an easy faction to deal with. I easy conquer all their cities and asked Tamar Kaprelian to become my girlfriend

Starting now a campaign as the Abbassids, pics coming soon