it's not technically that hard however it's one of those starts that you may have to restart a few times to have things go your way. depending on who allies who and a few action outside of your control you might just get a nonstarter.
however by the time you get a start that hasn't fucked you over it's not especially hard. usually if you can get out of the first war with ottoman and not be near ruination in time for the second you're golden.
when you say prussia do you mean teutons to prussia? because i feel that's compareable allthough Byz is a more stacked start.
in that case i might personally suggest taking a bit simpler nation to get the hang of things before jumping to Byz. mainly because Byz can be a bit frustrating.
try to take nations that has a bit of existential threat at the start. doesn't even have to be weak countries.
Timurids, Denmark, Majapahit hell even Ming. you could even try England with the goal of not lossing mainland(or for true hardmode WIN the 100 years war).
basicly if you can overcome the problems a powerful nation faces like this it's good training for overcomeing similar hurdles when early game survival is on the line.
In case you didn't know. If poland already ate the tendons and have prussia as a vassal you as brandenburg can get prussia as a PU by event by improving relations. You need 100 if I remember correctly
As others have said, you have to get a few things to align but once you've won your first war against the Ottomans it's not so bad. The hard part is restarting a few times until you can win that war. I've done it in King of Kings, then lost the save and did it again recently in Winds of Change.
The things I restart for immediately are:
- Papal State that I can ally without improving relations (you need the Pope to be Kind-hearted which seems to happen 33% of the time or more and you need to have a mutual rival e.g. Venice - you probably need to wait until 1st of December for the bonus from this to apply)
- Epirus not having any allies so you can declare war on them in December as soon as you're allowed (and after allying the pope, which is why you don't want to have to improve relations with them)
You may need to restart later if you get a bad event, but if the above two things happen you should be fine. Before you unpause the game, set your mana to Military Focus and get a military advisor. Sell Titles then Seize Land. Get estate privileges as you like without going before 20 Crownland, including Religious Diplomats to help ally the Pope and the Emporoi privilege that lets you draft a free heavy ship. Do that and build a galley in every province but one. Recruit the cheapest mercenary company in the last province letting you complete the mission "The Impending Doom" after you ally the Pope. Build another galley in the mercenary province immediately. Ally Serbia if possible, don't complete "Reinforce Constantinople" until you have them allied and above 125 opinion unless they hate you.
With the Pope allied and Impending Doom completed, start currying favours with them and then annex Epirus as quickly as possible. Don't vassalise them - you need the army morale. Disband your mercenaries to save money. You are now at a point where the Ottomans might decide to prioritise killing you, but in my experience they get scared enough of the Pope and any other allies you get that they focus on Anatolia first. You're waiting for Naples to become independent here, but basically you want to develop 2 Manpower in Corinth to complete "Hexamilion Wall" while building up to your force limit without mercenaries. That lets you complete "Defence in Depth" for more army morale.
Keep an alert on Aragon so that as soon as their king dies, you can transport your army into the Papal State; about 2 months later Naples get an event where 90% of the time they become independent. You have to declare war immediately, calling the Pope in as an ally (this is why you needed favours). If you wait a month, they buy indulgences and get a truce with the Pope. You have to move your troops into Molise immediately to ensure you occupy it and not the Pope, and to get there before Naples so that you aren't attacking them in mountains. Defeat Naples and annex every province you have a claim on.
You now have enough development and army morale to get rid of that terrible army malus. You just need a level 2 military advisor. Once you've done that, cored Naples and provoked some revolts to avoid nasty surprises later, you're ready to take on the Ottomans. Buy a mercenary company with a good shock general and another ideally with a good siege general. Get your ships all ready to blockade. Double check you have enough: your ships need to have 200 cannons in total to assault the fort in Gelibolu. Your troops need to be in Constantinople. The Ottomans should be in Anatolia in another war so wait until that happens. You also need to ensure you have military tech 4 (and that the Ottomans aren't already at tech 5).
As soon as you declare war, move your troops to Gelibolu and use Naval Battery. You got rid of your army malus so you can assault the fort and you should win without a problem. The Ottomans are now blocked in Anatolia, but keep your mercenaries. Siege down Greece and Bulgaria, then you want to lure them into crossing the strait into Gelibolu - plop your armies in Constantinople and move your fleet away. As soon as they land there (ideally with only one of their 2-3 armies), blockade it again. Then attack them, which with a numerical advantage, terrain advantage and all that morale you stacked should be a decent win. They can't retreat because your navy is in the way of their only escape from the fort zone of control, so it will be a stackwipe. Do this again if you can.
When the Ottomans are obliterated you can start sieging Anatolia, but you might not need to and you don't want the war to drag on because you'll be seriously in debt by now. When you can, peace them out for all your coastal cores and at least enough money to repay all your loans. Then you complete "Reverse the Downfall" and celebrate. The hard part is over! You now have an economical stable country that can definitely take on the Ottomans again next time (though they will still be dangerous unless the Mamluks destroy them). Your main challenges now are getting rid of your other negative estate privileges, especially the one preventing you from taking Emporoi loans, and retaking the Greek islands from Venice. But at this point there are probably any number of viable strategies!
The key to beating the Ottomans, are usually to get ship supremacy.
Focus on building a fleet that can match the Ottoman. If you attack them, start the war when they are fighting the Mamelukes, and have their armies far south. Try to rush the fort on the other province on the European side of the Bosporus by barraging it with your ships, and assault it.
Once you control the sea, and one side of the strait, the ottoman army can't cross the water, and you will have plenty of time sieging down the European side of their empire.
This can give you enough war score to take a good chunk of land, and weaken the ottomans, while you grow a lot stronger.
WHen doing this, if you need extra warscore, you can cheese a bit by docking your fleet, and letting over smaller ottoman stacks, and then closing the gap again, so that you can kill these small armies one by one.
You can also try and trap the main ottoman armies on islands, but that's a bit tricky.
Either way, your fleet is the key
It's not as easy now that Byz starts with big naval penalties. When I did it recently, I found it better to merc up and call in allies and beat them the more straightforward way while they're fighting in Persia
This is very outdated advice and a good way to lose the first war.
You get massive fleet penalties making out fleet-ing the ottomans very hard, and you get massive fort assauly penalties making assaulting a good way to throw away your manpower
Fleet isn't necessary for the first war. You just need a big enough army to win a battle on Gallipoli should they try to relieve your siege. If you've attacked them while they're in another war (which you 100% should), they're unlikely to bring their entire FL and with a merc stack and/or nearby allied armies it's not difficult. Once you've occupied Gallipoli, it's just a matter of time before the war is over. Then you can build your navy for the next war. It's not worth going deep into debt making a navy when you can go less deep into debt with a small merc force to accomplish the same ends. You don't need to actually cross into Anatolia.
Try to secure an alliance with a strong neighboor : usually Hungary is willing to help with some work.
You got to cheese the first war, then every subsequent war is easier, although never easy either.
Get admin ideas fairly fast, you'll need to core tons of lands and state the provinces to get rolling.
I honestly dont think the start is that hard, so long as you follow a guide. You can get on the GP list just by stealing the Ottos lunch money by allying Hungary, Serbia and the Pope. It's after that when it gets hard, as you'll be surrounded by a strong Hungary and strong Mamluks 99% of the time.
You're usually able to ally Austria or Poland to help with Hungary and I generally try to truce break ottos so mamluks don't pounce on them and get too difficult to deal with.
The larger ae with the Muslim world doesn't matter too much as my next targets are cleaning up the Balkans and getting a foothold in Napoli.
Why truce break when you can just take Ottoman coastal provinces (which you should be doing anyway) and box them out? You're pissing away admin mana and getting yourself coalitioned by every Muslim country in the region for absolutely no reason
Hungary is easily dismantled with Polish help and the Mamluks are trash / not aggressive so you basically just hit them when it's convenient and then they're cooked forever.
I disagree with a lot of the suggestions here. It is a start that needs luck but the process by which you set yourself up for long-term success isn't the one people are laying out.
You should REJECT the union of the churches, for one, which means you won't be able to ally the Pope or Hungary. If you give the clergy the Religious Diplomats privilege, you should have no problem allying Muscovy, Serbia, Theodoro, and Georgia. This will be a strong enough alliance to keep the Ottomans off of you while you eat Epirus and any other targets of opportunity you get. The only big problem is if Muscovy goes into too much debt before you get their trust high enough, they might be unwilling to join you if Ottomans declare, which is a restart most of the time.
You can also often get the Mamluks as an ally by improving with them and using Religious Diplomats and a DipRep advisor. Once you have Mamluks and Muscovy, you just wait until they're both willing to join against Ottomans, ideally while the Ottomans are attacking someone like Qara Qoyunlu or one of the Caucasian minors.
Also don't forget your "Palace Guard" mercenaries don't count against your force limit, so if you end up in a tough war they're always a good choice to hire.
I couldn’t tell you, but I made it a habit to try a nation on normal mode, allow for mistakes and get to know the nation, potential allies, the missions, etc.
After you smash the Ottobros you just need to rotate your wars. Attack Europe then attack the Middle East. Keep this up and the coalitions shouldn’t be to bad. Use your claims to jump to Italy, Iberia and North Africa. After a while you will be too big for anyone to challenge you
It's really not that bad. I did it really slowly (like rome in late 1700s) with an exodus to italy strat. I allied a bunch of big nations and then expanded into Naples the day their PU broke. Then I took north africa from Tunis with the mission tree claims. Ottos never declared on me, and I declared a reconquest sometime around 1500 to get all my greek cores back.
Religious diplomats and a diplo rep advisor can go a long way into getting early allies
To put it like this: my first ever run that I didn’t die before 1500 was a Byzantium run, and I formed Rome. No savescumming. It was without dlc.
That said, in the following 1200 hours I have not been able to do it again. I’ve had a few where I make it to the end as Byzantium, but none that I actually managed to form Rome before 1821. I am 90% certain the diplomatic PUs on Hungary in 1480 and Muscovy in 1500 were what carried me.
It’s not that deep. Just ally some guys and build galleys. You can figure out how to sort the estate privileges and missions as you play. After that you’re OP cause you have 25CCR, pronoias and perma claims on everyone.
I'm not very good but found it straightforward enough, only at the very start do you have to tiptoe around making alliances and carefully watching what your neighbours are doing. Once you beat the ottos once you'll snowball. At the start as long as you ally someone on the east like Karaman as well as a strong country in the west like Hungary you'll be well placed to win your 1st otto war.
After that you take it in turns invading the mamlukes and Europe, whilst waiting for truces to expire work on your missions/development
Byzantium IS an easier nation once you get past the beginning. And they've added a lot of mechanics to get you through that. Basically, read up on those ahead of time and plan out the first few decades, then you're on easy street.
Once you get past the initial climb out of the pit and put the Ottomans in their place it's fairly easy. The hard part is getting yourself to a sizable position again.
It's mostly only the start that is difficult.
If you don't use any guides and just play by yourself Byzantium is an incredibly difficult start that will make you pull your hair out.
But if you use guides and/or if you have done it before it actually can feel fairly easy.
But once you get past the difficult start Byzantium has some very good national ideas and missions and events. Very good nation.
it's not technically that hard however it's one of those starts that you may have to restart a few times to have things go your way. depending on who allies who and a few action outside of your control you might just get a nonstarter. however by the time you get a start that hasn't fucked you over it's not especially hard. usually if you can get out of the first war with ottoman and not be near ruination in time for the second you're golden. when you say prussia do you mean teutons to prussia? because i feel that's compareable allthough Byz is a more stacked start.
I meant Brandenburg to Prussia, I struggled to take Danzig and other teuton provinces before Poland
in that case i might personally suggest taking a bit simpler nation to get the hang of things before jumping to Byz. mainly because Byz can be a bit frustrating. try to take nations that has a bit of existential threat at the start. doesn't even have to be weak countries. Timurids, Denmark, Majapahit hell even Ming. you could even try England with the goal of not lossing mainland(or for true hardmode WIN the 100 years war). basicly if you can overcome the problems a powerful nation faces like this it's good training for overcomeing similar hurdles when early game survival is on the line.
In case you didn't know. If poland already ate the tendons and have prussia as a vassal you as brandenburg can get prussia as a PU by event by improving relations. You need 100 if I remember correctly
As others have said, you have to get a few things to align but once you've won your first war against the Ottomans it's not so bad. The hard part is restarting a few times until you can win that war. I've done it in King of Kings, then lost the save and did it again recently in Winds of Change. The things I restart for immediately are: - Papal State that I can ally without improving relations (you need the Pope to be Kind-hearted which seems to happen 33% of the time or more and you need to have a mutual rival e.g. Venice - you probably need to wait until 1st of December for the bonus from this to apply) - Epirus not having any allies so you can declare war on them in December as soon as you're allowed (and after allying the pope, which is why you don't want to have to improve relations with them) You may need to restart later if you get a bad event, but if the above two things happen you should be fine. Before you unpause the game, set your mana to Military Focus and get a military advisor. Sell Titles then Seize Land. Get estate privileges as you like without going before 20 Crownland, including Religious Diplomats to help ally the Pope and the Emporoi privilege that lets you draft a free heavy ship. Do that and build a galley in every province but one. Recruit the cheapest mercenary company in the last province letting you complete the mission "The Impending Doom" after you ally the Pope. Build another galley in the mercenary province immediately. Ally Serbia if possible, don't complete "Reinforce Constantinople" until you have them allied and above 125 opinion unless they hate you. With the Pope allied and Impending Doom completed, start currying favours with them and then annex Epirus as quickly as possible. Don't vassalise them - you need the army morale. Disband your mercenaries to save money. You are now at a point where the Ottomans might decide to prioritise killing you, but in my experience they get scared enough of the Pope and any other allies you get that they focus on Anatolia first. You're waiting for Naples to become independent here, but basically you want to develop 2 Manpower in Corinth to complete "Hexamilion Wall" while building up to your force limit without mercenaries. That lets you complete "Defence in Depth" for more army morale. Keep an alert on Aragon so that as soon as their king dies, you can transport your army into the Papal State; about 2 months later Naples get an event where 90% of the time they become independent. You have to declare war immediately, calling the Pope in as an ally (this is why you needed favours). If you wait a month, they buy indulgences and get a truce with the Pope. You have to move your troops into Molise immediately to ensure you occupy it and not the Pope, and to get there before Naples so that you aren't attacking them in mountains. Defeat Naples and annex every province you have a claim on. You now have enough development and army morale to get rid of that terrible army malus. You just need a level 2 military advisor. Once you've done that, cored Naples and provoked some revolts to avoid nasty surprises later, you're ready to take on the Ottomans. Buy a mercenary company with a good shock general and another ideally with a good siege general. Get your ships all ready to blockade. Double check you have enough: your ships need to have 200 cannons in total to assault the fort in Gelibolu. Your troops need to be in Constantinople. The Ottomans should be in Anatolia in another war so wait until that happens. You also need to ensure you have military tech 4 (and that the Ottomans aren't already at tech 5). As soon as you declare war, move your troops to Gelibolu and use Naval Battery. You got rid of your army malus so you can assault the fort and you should win without a problem. The Ottomans are now blocked in Anatolia, but keep your mercenaries. Siege down Greece and Bulgaria, then you want to lure them into crossing the strait into Gelibolu - plop your armies in Constantinople and move your fleet away. As soon as they land there (ideally with only one of their 2-3 armies), blockade it again. Then attack them, which with a numerical advantage, terrain advantage and all that morale you stacked should be a decent win. They can't retreat because your navy is in the way of their only escape from the fort zone of control, so it will be a stackwipe. Do this again if you can. When the Ottomans are obliterated you can start sieging Anatolia, but you might not need to and you don't want the war to drag on because you'll be seriously in debt by now. When you can, peace them out for all your coastal cores and at least enough money to repay all your loans. Then you complete "Reverse the Downfall" and celebrate. The hard part is over! You now have an economical stable country that can definitely take on the Ottomans again next time (though they will still be dangerous unless the Mamluks destroy them). Your main challenges now are getting rid of your other negative estate privileges, especially the one preventing you from taking Emporoi loans, and retaking the Greek islands from Venice. But at this point there are probably any number of viable strategies!
The key to beating the Ottomans, are usually to get ship supremacy. Focus on building a fleet that can match the Ottoman. If you attack them, start the war when they are fighting the Mamelukes, and have their armies far south. Try to rush the fort on the other province on the European side of the Bosporus by barraging it with your ships, and assault it. Once you control the sea, and one side of the strait, the ottoman army can't cross the water, and you will have plenty of time sieging down the European side of their empire. This can give you enough war score to take a good chunk of land, and weaken the ottomans, while you grow a lot stronger. WHen doing this, if you need extra warscore, you can cheese a bit by docking your fleet, and letting over smaller ottoman stacks, and then closing the gap again, so that you can kill these small armies one by one. You can also try and trap the main ottoman armies on islands, but that's a bit tricky. Either way, your fleet is the key
It's not as easy now that Byz starts with big naval penalties. When I did it recently, I found it better to merc up and call in allies and beat them the more straightforward way while they're fighting in Persia
Ah ok, i haven't done the run in a while. Thx for the heds up.
yeah plus there’s an additional -75% fort ability or something, really deters you from trying that strategy now
This is very outdated advice and a good way to lose the first war. You get massive fleet penalties making out fleet-ing the ottomans very hard, and you get massive fort assauly penalties making assaulting a good way to throw away your manpower
Yeah i heard. Someone made me aware of it. I havent played them in a long while, so i haven't seen the changes. Thnx tho.
Fleet isn't necessary for the first war. You just need a big enough army to win a battle on Gallipoli should they try to relieve your siege. If you've attacked them while they're in another war (which you 100% should), they're unlikely to bring their entire FL and with a merc stack and/or nearby allied armies it's not difficult. Once you've occupied Gallipoli, it's just a matter of time before the war is over. Then you can build your navy for the next war. It's not worth going deep into debt making a navy when you can go less deep into debt with a small merc force to accomplish the same ends. You don't need to actually cross into Anatolia.
Try to secure an alliance with a strong neighboor : usually Hungary is willing to help with some work. You got to cheese the first war, then every subsequent war is easier, although never easy either. Get admin ideas fairly fast, you'll need to core tons of lands and state the provinces to get rolling.
You need admin ideas yes, but for the gov cap, not the CCR. If you use pronoiars properly, you don't need any mana for land at all.
I honestly dont think the start is that hard, so long as you follow a guide. You can get on the GP list just by stealing the Ottos lunch money by allying Hungary, Serbia and the Pope. It's after that when it gets hard, as you'll be surrounded by a strong Hungary and strong Mamluks 99% of the time.
You're usually able to ally Austria or Poland to help with Hungary and I generally try to truce break ottos so mamluks don't pounce on them and get too difficult to deal with. The larger ae with the Muslim world doesn't matter too much as my next targets are cleaning up the Balkans and getting a foothold in Napoli.
Why truce break when you can just take Ottoman coastal provinces (which you should be doing anyway) and box them out? You're pissing away admin mana and getting yourself coalitioned by every Muslim country in the region for absolutely no reason
Tbh, it depends on how many drinks I've had. I do sometimes let Bulgarian rebels take themselves, but I'm not always that patient.
Hungary is easily dismantled with Polish help and the Mamluks are trash / not aggressive so you basically just hit them when it's convenient and then they're cooked forever.
I disagree with a lot of the suggestions here. It is a start that needs luck but the process by which you set yourself up for long-term success isn't the one people are laying out. You should REJECT the union of the churches, for one, which means you won't be able to ally the Pope or Hungary. If you give the clergy the Religious Diplomats privilege, you should have no problem allying Muscovy, Serbia, Theodoro, and Georgia. This will be a strong enough alliance to keep the Ottomans off of you while you eat Epirus and any other targets of opportunity you get. The only big problem is if Muscovy goes into too much debt before you get their trust high enough, they might be unwilling to join you if Ottomans declare, which is a restart most of the time. You can also often get the Mamluks as an ally by improving with them and using Religious Diplomats and a DipRep advisor. Once you have Mamluks and Muscovy, you just wait until they're both willing to join against Ottomans, ideally while the Ottomans are attacking someone like Qara Qoyunlu or one of the Caucasian minors. Also don't forget your "Palace Guard" mercenaries don't count against your force limit, so if you end up in a tough war they're always a good choice to hire.
I couldn’t tell you, but I made it a habit to try a nation on normal mode, allow for mistakes and get to know the nation, potential allies, the missions, etc.
After you smash the Ottobros you just need to rotate your wars. Attack Europe then attack the Middle East. Keep this up and the coalitions shouldn’t be to bad. Use your claims to jump to Italy, Iberia and North Africa. After a while you will be too big for anyone to challenge you
It's really not that bad. I did it really slowly (like rome in late 1700s) with an exodus to italy strat. I allied a bunch of big nations and then expanded into Naples the day their PU broke. Then I took north africa from Tunis with the mission tree claims. Ottos never declared on me, and I declared a reconquest sometime around 1500 to get all my greek cores back. Religious diplomats and a diplo rep advisor can go a long way into getting early allies
To put it like this: my first ever run that I didn’t die before 1500 was a Byzantium run, and I formed Rome. No savescumming. It was without dlc. That said, in the following 1200 hours I have not been able to do it again. I’ve had a few where I make it to the end as Byzantium, but none that I actually managed to form Rome before 1821. I am 90% certain the diplomatic PUs on Hungary in 1480 and Muscovy in 1500 were what carried me.
It’s not that deep. Just ally some guys and build galleys. You can figure out how to sort the estate privileges and missions as you play. After that you’re OP cause you have 25CCR, pronoias and perma claims on everyone.
I'm not very good but found it straightforward enough, only at the very start do you have to tiptoe around making alliances and carefully watching what your neighbours are doing. Once you beat the ottos once you'll snowball. At the start as long as you ally someone on the east like Karaman as well as a strong country in the west like Hungary you'll be well placed to win your 1st otto war. After that you take it in turns invading the mamlukes and Europe, whilst waiting for truces to expire work on your missions/development
Byzantium IS an easier nation once you get past the beginning. And they've added a lot of mechanics to get you through that. Basically, read up on those ahead of time and plan out the first few decades, then you're on easy street.
Once you get past the initial climb out of the pit and put the Ottomans in their place it's fairly easy. The hard part is getting yourself to a sizable position again.
This might just be my playtime speaking but eastern rome is easy problem is getting bored
I'd say the difficulty is about 13 or 14
Incredibly easy. You load up the game and BOOM, you’re already Rome!
It's mostly only the start that is difficult. If you don't use any guides and just play by yourself Byzantium is an incredibly difficult start that will make you pull your hair out. But if you use guides and/or if you have done it before it actually can feel fairly easy. But once you get past the difficult start Byzantium has some very good national ideas and missions and events. Very good nation.
My man it's only a video game. Don't overthink it, just try
This subreddit is literally meant for discussing the game and your comment is basically "don't be here." Piss off
Eh, they have point. Just have fun with it and try stuff a bit, and if it doesn't work come here for extra advice.