Eastern Roman Empire-comprehensive guide

[YuriVII]

So you succumbed to your Byzantine fanboyism left over from MW2 and chose the Eastern Roman Empire? Great lets not pussy-foot around and get started.

Challenges vs Western Empire:
As the Western Empire you will face many enemies but as the Eastern Empire you will face stronger enemies. The game will more or less be defined by your war with the Sassanids, because it will come, they are financially more well off than you, and you are their only front.

Intro:
Basically there are a few fronts you have to manage in this game. The Balkan front, the Egyption Front, the Caucasian Front, and the Mesopotamian Front. You have guys coming at you from radically different directions. The most active fronts will be the Mesopotamian (Sassanids) and the Balkan front (Barbarian hordes). On turn one you should combine your armies. In the Balkans you should combine your Constantinople Army and your Balkan Army to guard the Danube and take care of the Visigoths. Gather one of your Palestinian Armies and combine it with the Egyptian one, and try your hardest to leave two armies in Edessa and Cappodocia to guard against incursions. Spend all your starting money on farms, ports, infrastructure, and bribes to the Sassanids. Depending on the Sassanid leader traits you can bribe the Sassanids to chill out on you for quite a while, even get a very lucrative trade route going with them. Another good target to bribe is Armenia. Armenia is the most powerful Sassanid vassal state and it shares your religion. When (not if) the Sassanid's declare war on you, the Armenians may refuse to join them in their war and effectively launch a separate war of independence against their former overlords. Try to secure them by small gifts and marriage. If they break off, this will nullify the entire Caucasian front and you can shift an army there to Mesopotamia or wherever you see fit. The Sassanids will appreciate you making treaties with their vassals as well. Making it easier (not easy) to get relations high enough to where they dont launch the inevitable Zoroastrian jihad against you.

This is crucial so you can deal with your first threat, the Visigoths already screwing around in Macedonia causing all sorts of assorted jackassitry. The Visigoths are going to raid you. You don't have an army that can handle two stacks at once. So let them raid and sack your villages, making sure to fight these battles personally. Autoresolve isn't helpful. The trick in these village battles is to cause as many casualties as possible so they can be weared down. Hopefully these Visigoths idiots will run around and split their two stacks. When one is isolated and healing, strike with your Constantinople Army. This may force the Visigoths to accept peace with half of their forces decimated. If they dont accept, please feel from to cleanse their dirty race off from the face of the earth. Kill the men, enslave their women or vice versa if that isn't your thing. If they do accept peace let them ride off into the sunset and screw the Western Romans, because that's what the Western Empire does.

The Egyptian Front is trickier The Alexandria Army has three mini fronts it needs to handle. It needs to handle the Arabian axis from Sassanid allies (this responsibility can be shared with the Mesopotamian Armies), it needs to handle the Ethiopian direction because Axum has no choice but to expand into you and your vassal, and it needs to handle the Libyan direction because the Gargamentians probably don't like you (no one likes you). You can attempt to check the Gargamentians by honoring your alliance with the Western Romans. This will divide their attention to taking Western Roman lands around Carthage and Tripolitania. Them going to Egypt will be a lower priority, allowing your Alexandrian Army to respond to Arabia and Ethiopia as you see fit. The Western Roman alliance is useless for you except in having them divert attention.

Dealing with the Sassanids
Inevitably you will get attacked by the Sassanids. This will be a huge war. The Sassanids start out in place number 3 and you start out in number 2 as far as the strength rankings go, but they may as well be number 1 with all the income they get from their vassals in addition to the armies they will throw at you. The Sassanids are more of an alliance block than they are a faction. They will always have vast numerical superiority because they can they only have one front to be concerned about. So how will you defeat them? You are going to have to play the long game and play defensively. They are not so good in city battles because they go cav heavy but out on the field they can be very intimidating. If you ever see an opening in a town in Mespotamia, take it. Once you have taken Mesopotamia they will still be very hard to advance against. Some of their vassals may start to get annoyed and break-off. If you are lucky enough for this to happen to you than great, if not keep doing what you are doing. Most of their forces will be concentrated around Susa. Make a fleet in the Red Sea, preferably fire ships and go raiding easy targets with them. They have an ally in South Yemen that will cause you head aches. Dont bother capturing it as its too distant to defend. Raze it to the ground. In fact, raze everything to the ground. Kill every single woman and child as a standing policy. Make the fall of Carthage look like a date with the girls at a nail salon. Take your fleet and raid persia proper and burn those coastal cities to the ground. The Sassanids should start suffering.
After you are able to sustain 3 full armies in Mesopotamia while still keeping your Balkan and Egyptian Armies, advance from Mesopotamia into Persia proper. This is where the opportunity for some epic battles can happen. Never ever leave a stack alone without the support of the other two. If you leave them separated before you have defeated the bulk of their army in the field they will send four stacks after your isolated stack. Burn Susa too the ground, and continue exterminating their culutre and race off the face of the earth. Once the Sassanids have no cities left (but maybe still some armies), their remaining vassals will no longer be tied to them. Peace with their vassals and bribe them to fight against eachother and turn that whole area into something resembling Somalia. The objective of the vassals is to get them to fight eachother and leaving that vast area without a challenger to you frontiers. Now you can take your veteran armies and continue on with the game by pushing in the Balkans or recreate Belisarius's reconquests in Africa or Italy. Hell go sail to Scandinavia and raid the norseman for irony sake. IDK. You choose your destiny.

[PumpkinBread]

Great write up. The Carthage nail salon comment about made me spit my coffee. An alternate starting suggestion to add: Combine the starting army in Brostantinople with the one in the field into the gold producing town. The Visi's nearly always pounce on that town first thing. Pile your entire army in the town square, testudo up and fight 100% defensively for the win. At that point, the Visi's will be crippled and easy to finish off.

[WelshDragon]

Great write up. The Carthage nail salon comment about made me spit my coffee. An alternate starting suggestion to add: Combine the starting army in Brostantinople with the one in the field into the gold producing town. The Visi's nearly always pounce on that town first thing. Pile your entire army in the town square, testudo up and fight 100% defensively for the win. At that point, the Visi's will be crippled and easy to finish off.

This happened to me quite by accident! It left my army more than decimated, but the Visigoths were shattered beyond repair. This tactical retreat to the golden city to wait for the assault on turn 1 would be aided a bit if there were any mercs to buy to help with the defense but sadly there are none. It's a tricky battle and one that if lost, will induce a re-start.

[Slaists]

Great write up. The Carthage nail salon comment about made me spit my coffee. An alternate starting suggestion to add: Combine the starting army in Brostantinople with the one in the field into the gold producing town. The Visi's nearly always pounce on that town first thing. Pile your entire army in the town square, testudo up and fight 100% defensively for the win. At that point, the Visi's will be crippled and easy to finish off.

What difficulty are we talking about here? I've tried that defensive battle and the town square defense thing does not seem to work because of attrition. You can defeat one Goth army (easily), but then the second one sends in fresh troops and overwhelms the remaining Romans. My problem is: the Goth armies have cavalry, missile and melee superiority over the Roman garrison. On top of that, once a couple towers have been destroyed by Goths, the garrison starts taking morale hits as well.

Would be curious to see a vid showing what tricks you guys use there.

p.s. And there are no mercs in Thrace, Macedonia or Anatolia at the campaign start.

[Ecthelion]

The greatest tip of all for playing as the ERE:
Burn down all the churches and go pagan.

Oh and break the alliance with the WRE on the first turn.

[YuriVII]

Yes I agree on the paganism thing but not breaking thr alliance. WRE is a convinient distraction

[s2now]

well my first ERE campaign is a disaster. you have enemies coming at you from every direction with full stacks. not to mention the huns infinite spawn. seems impossible on higher difficulty

[Caligula's_Horse]

From my experience with the ERE, there are several things you can do to give yourself a much easier time.

-The Visigoths need to be put down, and fast. So fast in fact, that there is no time to bring in forces from the rest of the empire; fighting the battles manually and hiring mercenaries to shore up your numbers helps a great deal.

-The formal alliance with the WRE is comparable to being strapped to a corpse. Much better to ditch them, and only join their wars once they start shelling out cash for services rendered.

-Keeping some 3-4 armies on your eastern front can do wonders to keep the Sassanians from declaring war on you, or cushion the blow should they declare anyway. Try to postpone fighting the Sassanians through diplomatic means for as long as possible, whether through gift giving, or joining any war they end up embroiled in. Same goes from the north African faction you share a border with whose name escapes me at the moment, though in their case it might be possible to avoid war entirely through some lucky diplomacy--otherwise, keep a stack handy in Lybia.

-As has been advised on several other threads, tear down your churches on turn 1, offer praise to Jupiter the moment you hit the 35% Roman Pagan mark, and never look back. It'll save you a ton of maintenance gold, and the sanitation bonus from Roman paganism is quite helpful when it eventually kicks in.

-Bid your time. Once you're done putting out fires, and all your provinces are more or less safe from invaders and stabilized in terms of public order and sanitation, start hoarding up cash, keeping expenditure to a minimum. The interest rate will eventually turn you richer then god, which makes the mid-late game a breeze.

[Viva Espana!]

I just put a huge army in Antioch and the Sassanids have still not declared war on me by 414.

[YuriVII]

Leader traits are random at start up. It's possible you were lucky enough to get a reasonable Sassanid ruler.

[Sacerdos]

You can beat both Visigoth armies on the first turn.

Just move both Balkan stacks to the settlement with gold in Thrace (forgot the name). The Visigoths will almost always attack this settlement (probably because of its high income due to the gold) with both stacks turn 1, and you can beat them in a settlement battle.

Then its just clean up at that point.

What difficulty are we talking about here? I've tried that defensive battle and the town square defense thing does not seem to work because of attrition. You can defeat one Goth army (easily), but then the second one sends in fresh troops and overwhelms the remaining Romans. My problem is: the Goth armies have cavalry, missile and melee superiority over the Roman garrison. On top of that, once a couple towers have been destroyed by Goths, the garrison starts taking morale hits as well.

Would be curious to see a vid showing what tricks you guys use there.

p.s. And there are no mercs in Thrace, Macedonia or Anatolia at the campaign start.

The Goths split their first army to come from different sides at the start of the battle. Start all your forces on the side with their general and immediately charge out and kill him, then retreat back into the town. You'll hold the town easily as the Goths will rout quickly with their general dead. The second stack routs almost instantly when hit with flaming arrows due to the accumulated casualties you've inflicted at that point.

Try to make sure at least one of your Scout Equites survives the battle to the end for cleanup.

I did this on legendary and it was pretty simple.

[WelshDragon]

Good tips here, thanks. Also, I found it fairly easy to get an alliance with the Huns, that will usually hep you on your Balkan front for a while. Getting the Armenians on my side was critical, they sided with me when I went to war with the Sassinids, and that really took the pressure off. They even offered to become my puppet state after helping them in several battles. I agree that the key is to defeat the Sassinid first major offensive (3 stacks against my 2). I won but the battle was epic and not much left on either side... but I brought in a fresh stack and took the nearest town and then sacked the rest quickly before they could rebuild their armies. That bought me time to deal with other problems... and I didn't wipe them off the face of the earth because that would be no fun in the long term... an Empire needs enemies to fight

Other than the obvious, it take a while but building your provinces up and specializing (food, industrial, commerce, military) will give you a solid base to survive.

I am actually going to try again and convert to Paganism and break my alliance with the decadent West and see how different it feels. Cheers.

[Slaists]

You can beat both Visigoth armies on the first turn.

Just move both Balkan stacks to the settlement with gold in Thrace (forgot the name). The Visigoths will almost always attack this settlement (probably because of its high income due to the gold) with both stacks turn 1, and you can beat them in a settlement battle.

Then its just clean up at that point.



The Goths split their first army to come from different sides at the start of the battle. Start all your forces on the side with their general and immediately charge out and kill him, then retreat back into the town. You'll hold the town easily as the Goths will rout quickly with their general dead. The second stack routs almost instantly when hit with flaming arrows due to the accumulated casualties you've inflicted at that point.

Try to make sure at least one of your Scout Equites survives the battle to the end for cleanup.

I did this on legendary and it was pretty simple.

Actually, in my case, Goths started in one group attacking from one side (their reinforcements came in on the same side too). On a replay, they started split however. So that behavior (splitting or staying in one group) is probably random.

I tried defending the town square; will give charging out at Goth general next. Thanks for the tip.

[Sion879]

There is one big problem. More than half your income comes from trading with Western Romans, once they get sieged and broken up, there goes your income. Also your funds require you to actually build up units to fend of the Sassinids if they eventually come. Plus i see now why the African tribes are so op. the Garamatians or whoever invaded me, i razed the settlement closest to them forcing them to attack my walled settlement. Completely destroyed their first army. They went from rank 5 to rank 20. However after one turn, they are back up in the top 5. I just don't see how you have the funds to hire troops for east, hire troops and repair buildings in the Balkans, and hire troops in Africa to defend against instant 20 stacks. Not to mention the roman troops take 2 turns to build for some reason. Sorry for the rant, just frustrated and need assistance.

[Aeratus]

One way to deal with the Sassanids and their puppets is to subjugate them early on.

I went for that strategy on my first ERE campaign (VH). Made several mistakes, but got the Sassanids down at turn 14. After you subjugate the Sassanids, all of their puppets become your puppets, which essentially neutralizes the entire eastern side of the map. Of course, keeping the puppets from rebelling is a frustrating thing in the long run, which is the drawback.

The Sassanids have a lot of provinces and a lot of stacks. They also have agents that slow you down. It took me a while to get all the way to Persia and Spahan to raze their last provinces.

At turn 14 (VH):

[Aeratus]

My Sassanid-style ERE campaign shown above is going really well. It's turn 30 now, and I have 340k gold, with 57k revenue (for 40k profit per turn). My money is snowballing due to the interest from the faction bonus, and my economy is far stronger than what I had playing as the Sassanids in an earlier campaign. I did burn all the churches at the start, but I did not convert to paganism. With so much money, I don't see building churches as a problem in the long run.

I also managed to get the WRE to become my puppet a few turns after I subjugated the Sassanids.

The only puppet that rebelled was the Sassanid Empire, who managed to field 3 full stacks even from a single province. However, killing the new Sassanid armies brought me very high relations with my other puppets, for some reason.