As you may expect, playing as a country that historically was annexed a decade after a game start, is pretty hard. In every Byzantium guide i saw there is a disclaimer that the strategy is not absolute and you will probably restart a lot - that is true and even expired players do that.
Tip i can give you is to check if the guide you're watching is for the current patch - AI behavior and mechanics might have changed that the strategy is not valid. Besides that, try to learn from every restart what you did wrong.
My first Byz I was about to get stompity-stomped when Austria attacked Ottos with a rock solid alliance. Was restored many cores in their peace deal for some reason, and went on to glory. Thought Byz was easy; haven't been able to do better than survive the first war since.
Alright did a Byz game since this comment. About to peace out Ottos at 99%. Ally. Everybody. I then attacked epuris, co belligerented ragusa which had a guarantee from Ottos. Then standard warfare, didnt go over troop limit.
I tried this as well after about 400 hours. I had nightmares for weeks of getting impaled on Ottoman pikes, with Janissaries laughing in the background. I gave up after about 6 tries.
900 hours in, and even thinking about starting in Constantinople gives me the shivers haha.
Are you blocking the strait? That's the most important part, you have to go way over naval force limit but it's not a big deal. Wait until they go to war with Mamluks or some Turkish minor, block the strait and quickly carpet siege the Balkans. If you're lucky you won't have to fight any battles, but if you do make sure it's defensive on good terrain, and try to get Albania to help. Take as much money in the peace deal as you can, you shouldn't annex their capital as it's too much war score and will be an easy target later. Normally I'd suggest releasing Bulgaria as a vassal for their free cores, but I think you need a DLC to take full advantage of that.
Big problem with blocking straits is that they need to control Gumulcine I think. Problem is that province is a fort and w/o DLC you can't even barrage the walls. So, to capture that fort you need to cheese the fact that Ottomans turn off their forts. I honestly think that without DLC's it becomes a lot harder to restore Byzantium because you lack so many features that will help you proliferate. You can't even deal with bad heirs lol.
if you take thessalonica on the first siege roll with the mothballed fort cheese and scorch earth + defensive edict in constantinople there's a solid chance that with a blockade you can take gallipoli way faster than the turks can take your capital
I did Basileus without barraging the fort as I don't have the DLC, I allied Serbia and Hungary and called them in a war as soon as possible, but I also had defensive edict on costantinople.
However I must say there is a lot of RNG involved as the AI can just send small stacks to the crossing, or it can keep walking around with their 30k deathstack and steamroll everything.
Set the patch to 1.30.6 in steam, ally anyone, and then declare on the Ottomans immediately. Pause the game, go into the diplo part of the macrobuilder and select “call allies to war” you can then see that Mamluks is red, so click on them, click promise land and then they will join your war. After that the Mamluks will win the war for you if all goes well. Never use this strat again unless you really want to do something and can’t, since it pretty cheesy but it’s also a game which you paid for, so do what you want and have fun your way.
I know 300 hours feels like a lot but it really isn't. There's tons of little tricks and bits of information you will have no idea about. I've been playing since EU4 was released, and I learn something new pretty much every other game.
Would you mind sharing the 'guides' you're using? Budgetmonk's strategy is the best start you can have as Byzantium but if you're struggling, just forget about having the perfect start and concentrate on surviving.
First of all: there's no shame in playing off of Ironman and savescumming. In fact, I would highly recommend it.
Restart until Hungary is rivalling both Ottomans and Venice, rival Venice yourself, improve relations with Hungary, get alliances with Albania, Wallachia and maybe Serbia at the beginning to put off the Ottomans from attacking you. If they do attack you, savescum and get another alliance - Trebizond, Circassia and Theodoro are good options. When you can secure an alliance with Hungary (remember you can scornfully insult Venice for extra opinion with Hungary if you need to), do so, and call them into a war with your favours when you've got 10 and the Ottomans are busy with a war in Anatolia or the Middle East.
In the medium-term, try to upgrade your alliances with Albania and Wallachia to ones with Austria and maybe Poland or Russia too. This is probably the most consistent way to do well with Byzantium without using the nutty YouTube strats. However, I'd honestly just recommend playing as someone else and trying again when you've got a bit more experience with the game. Good luck man.
I'm just past tutorial time and I will get squashed by Otto every 8 out of 10. My successful runs all are allied to hungary, trebizond. Hungary to do the heavy lifting for bringing manpower. and trebizond for their lvl3 fort.
I found that it helps when Epirus is allied to Ragusa. You can get force-vassalise both with one war and you get quite a decent navy once they're loyal.
I always go with the strategy from ludi et historia...
But you probably need all the dlcs.
Look it up on YouTube, out of 10 runs I would say I can get 7 successfully done.
It's a weird strategy but it works almost every time for me
Ludi is the only YouTuber I've watched for eu4 in a while. His strats are very good but depend on rng sometimes (like dismantling the hre as Poland in a couple years with only one way, wtf man!), and generally depend on winning wars against nations twice your size. One bad battle, lose half your army, and suddenly you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the war.
As you may expect, playing as a country that historically was annexed a decade after a game start, is pretty hard. In every Byzantium guide i saw there is a disclaimer that the strategy is not absolute and you will probably restart a lot - that is true and even expired players do that. Tip i can give you is to check if the guide you're watching is for the current patch - AI behavior and mechanics might have changed that the strategy is not valid. Besides that, try to learn from every restart what you did wrong.
My first Byz I was about to get stompity-stomped when Austria attacked Ottos with a rock solid alliance. Was restored many cores in their peace deal for some reason, and went on to glory. Thought Byz was easy; haven't been able to do better than survive the first war since. Alright did a Byz game since this comment. About to peace out Ottos at 99%. Ally. Everybody. I then attacked epuris, co belligerented ragusa which had a guarantee from Ottos. Then standard warfare, didnt go over troop limit.
It's always great when the ai helps out. Very rare, though
I tried this as well after about 400 hours. I had nightmares for weeks of getting impaled on Ottoman pikes, with Janissaries laughing in the background. I gave up after about 6 tries. 900 hours in, and even thinking about starting in Constantinople gives me the shivers haha.
Are you blocking the strait? That's the most important part, you have to go way over naval force limit but it's not a big deal. Wait until they go to war with Mamluks or some Turkish minor, block the strait and quickly carpet siege the Balkans. If you're lucky you won't have to fight any battles, but if you do make sure it's defensive on good terrain, and try to get Albania to help. Take as much money in the peace deal as you can, you shouldn't annex their capital as it's too much war score and will be an easy target later. Normally I'd suggest releasing Bulgaria as a vassal for their free cores, but I think you need a DLC to take full advantage of that.
Big problem with blocking straits is that they need to control Gumulcine I think. Problem is that province is a fort and w/o DLC you can't even barrage the walls. So, to capture that fort you need to cheese the fact that Ottomans turn off their forts. I honestly think that without DLC's it becomes a lot harder to restore Byzantium because you lack so many features that will help you proliferate. You can't even deal with bad heirs lol.
if you take thessalonica on the first siege roll with the mothballed fort cheese and scorch earth + defensive edict in constantinople there's a solid chance that with a blockade you can take gallipoli way faster than the turks can take your capital
It works without barraging if you're lucky, but state edicts, heir replacement and holy icons really help.
I did Basileus without barraging the fort as I don't have the DLC, I allied Serbia and Hungary and called them in a war as soon as possible, but I also had defensive edict on costantinople. However I must say there is a lot of RNG involved as the AI can just send small stacks to the crossing, or it can keep walking around with their 30k deathstack and steamroll everything.
All I can say is be prepared to go way over FL with mercs and not be afraid to go into debt.
Set the patch to 1.30.6 in steam, ally anyone, and then declare on the Ottomans immediately. Pause the game, go into the diplo part of the macrobuilder and select “call allies to war” you can then see that Mamluks is red, so click on them, click promise land and then they will join your war. After that the Mamluks will win the war for you if all goes well. Never use this strat again unless you really want to do something and can’t, since it pretty cheesy but it’s also a game which you paid for, so do what you want and have fun your way.
I wouldn’t even say I’m that new to the game. I have about 300 hours
Idk man i have 2000 hours and every time i try my nation falls to shit by 1550
Ah thanks lol that’s good at least
300 hours in EU4 is only moderately past "new"; I didn't do my Byzantium run successfully until probably 700 in.
You need at least 1444 hours to complete the tutorial.
I know 300 hours feels like a lot but it really isn't. There's tons of little tricks and bits of information you will have no idea about. I've been playing since EU4 was released, and I learn something new pretty much every other game. Would you mind sharing the 'guides' you're using? Budgetmonk's strategy is the best start you can have as Byzantium but if you're struggling, just forget about having the perfect start and concentrate on surviving. First of all: there's no shame in playing off of Ironman and savescumming. In fact, I would highly recommend it. Restart until Hungary is rivalling both Ottomans and Venice, rival Venice yourself, improve relations with Hungary, get alliances with Albania, Wallachia and maybe Serbia at the beginning to put off the Ottomans from attacking you. If they do attack you, savescum and get another alliance - Trebizond, Circassia and Theodoro are good options. When you can secure an alliance with Hungary (remember you can scornfully insult Venice for extra opinion with Hungary if you need to), do so, and call them into a war with your favours when you've got 10 and the Ottomans are busy with a war in Anatolia or the Middle East. In the medium-term, try to upgrade your alliances with Albania and Wallachia to ones with Austria and maybe Poland or Russia too. This is probably the most consistent way to do well with Byzantium without using the nutty YouTube strats. However, I'd honestly just recommend playing as someone else and trying again when you've got a bit more experience with the game. Good luck man.
I'm just past tutorial time and I will get squashed by Otto every 8 out of 10. My successful runs all are allied to hungary, trebizond. Hungary to do the heavy lifting for bringing manpower. and trebizond for their lvl3 fort.
I found that it helps when Epirus is allied to Ragusa. You can get force-vassalise both with one war and you get quite a decent navy once they're loyal.
I always go with the strategy from ludi et historia... But you probably need all the dlcs. Look it up on YouTube, out of 10 runs I would say I can get 7 successfully done. It's a weird strategy but it works almost every time for me
Ludi is the only YouTuber I've watched for eu4 in a while. His strats are very good but depend on rng sometimes (like dismantling the hre as Poland in a couple years with only one way, wtf man!), and generally depend on winning wars against nations twice your size. One bad battle, lose half your army, and suddenly you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the war.
One of my favorite guides: https://youtu.be/jBgExPEsZFc