i mean, obliterating countries is extremely easy, expecially the Start-Date world powers, since you can sit generally about 3-5 years at 100% occupation, and investing the 5 points per province on Scorch Earth is devastating, so their natural enemies will dogpile them. If you can stackwipe the ottomans, Genoa, Venice, The Knights, both other countries in turkey, and the Mamluks will declare war on them if you employ total war doctrine, and within 5 years the ottomans will be a OPM. this "generally" works for every nation.
@@TurquazCannabiz Wait until reality hits you back in the face. You will never hold the City for 2500 years like the Greeks did. You're just a distortion in a long and glorious history of the City.
1 - Destroy Morea's Fort 2 - Raise development in Achea and give it to the Burghers 3 - Ask Admiralship from the Burghers 4 - Demand Diplomatic Support from the Burghers 5 - In Nobility, Call Diet 6 - Demand Military Support from Nobility (in some cases, also Generalship) 7 - Make the Admiral command your 2 ship fleet 8 - Send the 2 ships to protect trade in Constantinople 9 - Turn down your Army Maintenance 10 - Ally Theodore 11 - Recruit more troops in Greek provinces 12 - Send a diplomat to improve relations with Albania 13 - Send a diplomat to build a Spy Network in Ottoman Empire 14 - Send a diplomat to improve relations with Mamluks 15 - Do not forget to move units from Athens to other provinces, because Athens may delete your troops. You can raise the Army Maintenance, move your troops, and then lower it back before the month ends 16 - Build a regiment in Constantinople in about half January 1445. Take a loan if needed 17 - In April, raise your army maintenance 18 - Call back your 2 light ships to join your other ships 19 - Enact defenses in Constantinople's state Thrace This is basically what you must do before engaging war. I missed the Mamluks alliance and the Ottomans managed to build up an army really strong, so I decided to write down the steps. If I missed something, please tell me.
This still works in 1.28.3, but you need to tweak a bit: Presuming you declare the war on 1 June 1445: - DO NOT train any unit in Constantinopole in January - Raise army maintenance in march so it has full morale by 1 June - Move your whole fleet so it will be in Marmara on 1 June (about 15 days from Morea). There will always be 1 Otto ship there and you need about 3 days to kill it. - On 19 may recruit a merc in Constantinopole (13 days to train, so it will spawn on 1 or 2 june with morale, ready to go) - Have your army with full morale be present in Athens on 1 June (this will convince the Otto 14 stack to go to Constantinopole) - When declaring initiate the movement of the main army to Tirhala AND keep an eye on the ship battle in Marmara - After the ship battle is done, move immediately the merc to Kocaeli to occupy the fort - You will ALWAYS hit an Otto stack on Selanik. Pause the game in the exact day you reach Tirhala and check on tooltip when your army will reach Selanik and when the Otto stack will leave Selanik. Keep in mind that all you need to capture the fort is to have your army be there on 30 June latest, so you should have quite a few days at disposal to simply wait. - Have your main army on attach, just in case an Otto stack would come for you. If you got first in Selanik, even if the Otto stack would come for you before the siege tick is done, garrison will not replenish during battle. - After Selanik is sieged, retreat to Tirhala to replenish your army if is the case Throughout next movements keep an eye on Otto sieging Selanik (they will), so don't risk, pay attention to their sieging tick compared to your sieging tick of their provinces. They get lucky with breaches and that can shorten the war significantly. If they get a breach on Selanik too fast and it has too low garrison, they will assault it. So better guard Selanik a few months to have its garrison replenish a fair bit. Spam a few mercs from Kocaeli and Balkans for carpetting while your main would guard Selanik, just to look more powerful, if is needed. Keep in mind that Biga is in Edirne ZoC. So: if you have an unit "sieging" Edirne and Biga is occupied, Biga will stay with you. If you don't have an unit on Edirne, then you need to keep an unit on Biga, else Edirne fort will reset its occupation. And without Biga you can't fully blockade Marmara. What I experienced is that Otto stayed on high enthusiasm nomatter what. If you reach a decent WS, save, quit and reload (normal, not savescum), so the game would recalculate the enthusiasm, sometimes it "forgets" to update AI's enthusiasm. High enthusiasm: WS needed = demanded WS + 15-20 WS (not entirely sure) Medium enthusiasm: WS needed = demanded WS Low enthusiasm: WS needed = demanded WS - 10 (again not entirely sure) Therefore, if the smaller ally is medium/low enthusiasm, Otto is high enthusiasm and you have a WS of, let's say, 70, DO NOT peace separately the smaller ally, because you will lose whatever WS you have from occupying those provinces. Keep in mind that your fundamental need is Edirne so you can blockade the strait and everything else is a bonus. If you have to choose, Selanik should be the last province taken, because is a fort and in the next war would be an easy pick with better WS.
Standing on Edirne hurts his enthusiasm. I've wiped 14k ottoman army on selanik. That was awesome. Thanks for this. Otto was Aq Qoyunlu. Even that wouldn't stop the last Romans!
The problem with the 5k stack (which never spawns in Anatolia despite of countless restarts) still remains: it arrives in Selanik before the Byz army can get there, so the garrison recovers until 1st july. The 1k army in Yanya doesn't lure it, PLUS the merc can't get through the strait just in time because the 14k stack starting from Selanik arrives in Constantinople right at the time. Any solutions yet?
>Watch this video >Practice the strat in normal game >Time for the real thing >Go Iron man mode >Ottoblob allies Aq and Crimea >Karaman rival me so no access to East Anatolia >Constantinople got disintegrated by 6 siege commander in less than a year
I might have been blessed by RNGgods. First time I've tried this somehow the ottoblob had no allies and daddy mehmed died within a year into the war and ottomans got a shitty 1 2 0 king and low legitimacy.
This guide really helped me with my campaign start. Couple of small additions to help folks: 1) Hire the fort defence advisor right before the war starts for more defence rating in Constantinople 2) Set Army Maintenance close to min, not at min so troops can still move. 3) Guaranteeing small Anatolian Nations will allow you to go to war again with the Ottomans shortly after peace without the need to ally them.
If you actually watch the video he adresses point 2. The trick is to raise army maintanance, move the troop, and lower maintanance back down to zero before the end of the month. That way you don't pay ànd you get to move troops around.
@@Nate-bb7rg but not a single country has any claims on you or are interested in attacking you this early except the ottomans, which you declare war on before they can even consider it. If allying theodoro has anything to do with part 2 of this video I can make sense of it but as it stands now you just have a useless ally that take up a diplo spot. To top it all off they might get attacked by crimea which makes you lose prestige and diplo rep if you decline.
Although the method is genius, you should either talk more slowly and/or write down the strategy. It is hard to follow everything you say, especially with these new updated features of the game
I am sorry. It is very hard to please everyone. Most people don't want a 30min video that can be half that or less. You can try to watch the video in a slower manner, Like pause after each subject. Good luck.
Thank you BudgetMonk, Just achieved my first full core returns as Byzantium playing on v1.29.5 with the Ottomans allied to AQ using this guide as a base. Reading a large majority of the comments here, I wonder if half of these people understand the basic mechanics of playing this game or actually studied this video in any depth. You deserve more appreciation for your insights into the game, keep up the excellent work.
I posted this strategy on the other day on youtube and works almost everytime. I have one game on 1597 with 2045 development as Byzantium. 1.New game and make sure you have a morale advisor 2.Delete all forts 3.Focus on mil tech ( If lucky you can get events that give more mil points ) 4.Ally all nations that you can ( Trezibond, maybe Theodoro, maybe Wallachia ) 5.Improve relations with Hungary, Wallachia, Albania 6.Don't spend admin or dip points 7.Try to get the max points from states and money from merch state 8.Start building troops until 20k 9.Set the same rivals as Hungary if possible and don't rival their allies 10.Buy morale advisor 11.Create general, usually Byzantium gets a very good general early on ( You need at leat 1 pip on siege and the better on shock ) 12.Don't ally Albania yet 13.Unpause 14.Build troops until 20k ( Put them in Constantinople ) 15.Build galleys whenever you have money 16.Because off your relative strenght of your alliance, Ottos will try a easier target on Anotolia 17.Wait until you get mil tech 4 18.At this point Hungary and Albania want an Alliance with you, ally with them both 19.If Otto goes to fight Albania, ally them and go on defensive war with them. 20.If not, wait until they declare on someone else on Anotolia ( Go to war for Edirne and promise land to everyone) 21.Hungary and Albania always want to go to war with you for land 22.You need 20k on Edirne and 1 regiment close to there ( With your allies armies ) just in case they attack you on the siege 23.Usually the combine navy off you, Albania, Hungary and Athens matches the navy off the Ottos and they don't attack you 24.After Edirne fall, it's easy and it's a matter of time to build warscore ( They usually only reach mil tech 4 after the fall off Edirne ) 25.Peace for all your cores, war reparations, 1 or 2 extra provinces to you and money. Don't give anything to your allies, you will break the alliances anyway 26.After this, I focus on conquering the rest of Greece, Kosovo and finishing the Ottos 27.Ally with one or two big players ( Spain, Austria, Polland or the Timurids. You dont need them on offensive wars, but they are usefull on preventing coallitions ) 28.Rotate wars between Ottos/Mamlucks/Timurids and Moscow/Russia 29.By 1597, on my record, I have 2045 development ( Better players can achieve more, but I'm allways on war and have 2 big vassals as Novgorod and Lituania ) 30.I usually go for Jerusalem/Rome/Meca for the max missionary and prestige 31.I'm the defender of faith since always 32.My ideas are Defensive/Administrative/Religious/Diplomacy ( One combo gives -1 unrest ) 33.Army is not too big, because I merch up a lot ( 3 stacks of 10+6+0 and 1 stack of 10+0+0, infatary are all mercs ) 34.Carefull with the too many terroritories thing, it can drain a lot off money P.S. To break countries easier, sometimes I go to war twice with in a row with the same country ( declare war on their allies) and demand more gold and war reparations. It's easy to break Russia, Ottos, Mamluks and Timurids with this strategy. You have morale advantage and 110 discipline. The downside it's the inflation it gives.
@Internet Entity Over-react more, maybe... Use whatever you want. It just feels excessively cheesy to me. Save-scumming is also a viable strategy to get certain results, it's just not something everyone's into. "OH NO, SOMEONE'S USING THEIR TECHNOLOGICAL ABILITIES! REEEEEE." Right? It's also *not* reliable, as it basically requires that Ottoman stack to be in Anatolia. And the alternative strategy of luring the 5-stack doesn't work all the time.
@@d4n4nable Mate, there's nothing cheesy about his strategy, what you should say instead of cheesy, is that it relies heavy on RNG, the location of the 5 stack RNG, the Otto alliance RNG and the fort maintenance RNG.
tried it 5times, the 5k were always on the european side. due to this i was never able to reach selanik in time. How should I deal with this. If i fought them in yanya I lost to much time. If I didn`t move to yanya they moved to constantinople, passing through selanik.
I addressed it in the video. Try to send 1k as food while your main force goes to Selanik. Also roll your rulers as generals or use the estate. If you can get very high maneuver this can also work. The reason is because you begin moving to Selanik before the 5k has locked his movement in and he will retreat.
@@BudgetMonk I've tried this half a dozen times and never seen it work. if you wait long enough for the 5 stack to take the bait, your main army won't make it to selanik before the month tick. One time I rolled a 6 maneuver general and he did manage to make the 5 stack redirect, but that's the only time the stack spawning west side hasn't been an insta loss.
@@bensayre4238 I agree - doesn't work. That 5k stack ignores my little 1k stack every single time and goes straight to Selanik delaying my main stack from getting there till its too late. Restarted 4 times now and played each start from the outbreak of war about 10-15 times each before giving up and starting again. Restart number 5 about to begin!
BudgetMonk I have tried your strat and dealt with the same issue of the five stack causing issues. After four times now, I’m just gonna wait until someone finds a solution lol. That five stack usually goes to selanik, even if a 15 stack is heading there. The ottomans will turn around other 15 stacks to reinforce.
I have some hints for people who struggle to execute this plan: 1) the 5k stack will always be in Greece. You can distract it by setting the war-goal as Yanya/Epirus and putting a weak 3k-stack there. They will go there, rather than to Saloniki/Constantinople. This will allow you to reach Saloniki on time. Just in case, try an get at least 3 shock general so that IF you happen to attack the 5k in Saloniki with your main army, you can win before the end of the month. 2) I have never managed to have AI be as passive as in this video. They will try and siege Saloniki and unsiege Sofia and Nigbolu. They will also try and sneak around to Yanya. This is a perfect trap. You can catch them there at -3 for them (-2 from mountains, -1 from river crossing) and +2/+3 for you from general (if you have Skanderbeg attached). My 12k (6k Albania + 3k Athens + 3k me) would just annihilate 16k Ottos in this scenario. 3) If Ottos ally with Aq rather than Crimea, it's much more difficult to siege out Anatolia (you will have an nasty 10k - 14k stack annoying you there). You have to get Millitary Access through Trebizond, Bithynia and Qara to siege Aq out 100%. 4) don't let Biga be unsieged by the fort in Edrine: flip it between Athens and yourself every month
@@stevenm7600 oh! Sorry man. I'm using the Greek and English names. Under Turkish they're: - Yanya (Epirus) - Selanik (Saloniki/Thessaloniki/Macedonia)
"4) don't let Biga be unsieged by the fort in Edrine: flip it between Athens and yourself every month" -- Does flipping the control between you and the vassal prevent the fort taking the province back?
I do like the comment that it's not about luck. EXCEPT: 1.Ottos don't breach. 2. 5 Stack on Anatolia 3. Selanik actually is sieged down according to the mechanic of 0 garrison. 4. Ottos ally AQ is much more difficult. Everything else is legit.
In case anyone is having troubles with the 5k standing in "Kesriye" (The province highlighted in the video) and said 5k moving into Selanik, send a 1k stack into "Yanya" as demonstrated in the video, but don't call in Albania at the start of the war, this successfully baits the 5k to attack the 1k in "Yanya". When the Ottoman movement is locked on the 5k unit (moving from "Kesriye" to "Yanya"), send in your 1k with the attached Athenians and call in Albania through promises of land and you should stack wipe the 5k army! You will lose the 1k, but i think that it is more than worth it to get the free siege on "Selanik"! Then proceed as the videos shows you! I hope this helps someone, since i was having a lot of troubles with this myself! Best of luck!
I enjoyed how you highlighted provinces instead of just trying to point them out with the mouse. It made it a lot easier to follow. And I appreciate it greatly
But I don't get it, how can you do such a thing if the Ottomans have around 40 ships? They Always attack me, since they can mathematically obliterate me.
@@robwallace2134Probably! Anyway, such strategy might be possible on Hard, but it would not work on VH, the game is completely different on VH. There is no instance in which you, you alone, would acquire naval superiority on VH at the onset of the game. Furthermore, the Ottomans would have +20k troops
Palestra Italy I actually tried it on hard at first (I always play on hard, and thought everyone did lol), and you can’t get Albania to ally you (due to the diplo penalty) which he said is critical. So, it’s normal only. I’d like to watch his manpower recovery, though, and see if it’s easy mode.
Not only a great looking start but a very well made video. You keep impressing me with the jumps in quality of your vids, so keep up the good work. I really look forward to the next one!
Very nice compliment. I had zero experience when I started and as I am a bit of a perfectionist, it has been really hard to do this stuff. I am never happy then end up procrastinating. So I eventually post videos I am not happy with haha.
@@OCinneide I tried it a couple more times and the same thing happened, you can still get a couple of your cores back in the first war if all of his troops are in Europe, but you'll have to start sucking up to Lithuania or Hungary and hope they don't fall into a PU too fast. Mamluks should want to ally you eventually too, and they'll be a very nice asset to have. Done two Byzantium games and both times eventually the Mamluks wanted an alliance once I showed them I could beat down the Ottomans quite handily
Finally a Byz strat which isn't luck based. I could do it with the Albania method but I'd have to not only restart, but savescum if he peaces out. Should you focus admin points or military points?
Always focus mil points as byzantium early game, your leader isn't great, and you can't afford to fall behind on mil techearly game, mil tech 4 is the most important tech in the game, once you've caught up on mil tech and additional techs there would cost more due to ahead of time and you start conquering new land, switch to focus admin.
When playing a small Nation mil is almost always the way to go, you want to at least keep up in tech if not even get an advantage since you will be fighting larger Nations. In byzabtiums case you already have quite a few cores and you then also get a lot of claims meaning you won't be needing as much admin and you can. Focus heavier on mil.
I agree that the strategy is good, but just like any other it's RNG dependent. Just the design of the game. The 5k stack almost never ends up on the Anatolian side and being able to block the straight of bosporus is uncontested is nearly impossible.
I remember playing Byzantium in EU3. I would go into debt buying a navy bigger than the Ottoman's navy. I would then declare war and block their troops from being able to reach the Western half of their empire. It's a bit blurry at this point, but I think I also took a decision to get some free holy troops to aid in the fight. I would fight in the East while Greek rebels would pop up in the West, retaking their former lands. Those rebel occupied lands would then flip to me during the war, making it unnecessary to take it in a peace deal. I would then take some of their coastal regions in the first peace deal. I could then easily finish them off in two more wars.
A few notes after trying to do this myself in 1.28.3, which has again shifted the AI a bit. I always started in July instead of June, because with the 5k stack on the other side, you need your morale full. You can and will lose the required fights in Selanik if you get bad rolls even with full morale. In roughly 10ish attempts, the 5k stack was always in the other location, and always moved to selanik, with variable timings. The timing almost never allows for you to actually get there by the end of the month, because they take so long to lock themselves into the movement. If you time your troops to all arrive in athens on the first, and dive the 5k stack, you can wipe that stack, then usually beat the second stack that will inevitably reinforce them (even if you stack wipe them early the other stack will still attack). The 5k stack tends to make it impossible to take Selanik without a fight as far as I can tell, but with the defensiveness edict and no naval support constantinople takes forever to siege down. The strategy as a whole works, with you using the vassal+ally troops to siege Selanik while you peace out the allies and manage the naval situation. The naval situation requires serious attention, because the Ottomans are going to have an extra 10ish galleys built within a few months of the war starting, and thus have the naval advantage if you let them consolidate. If you don't allow the navy to consolidate they'll be forced to sit in port, despite having more ships than you in total. It took me many attempts to get the nuances of how to deal with the problems that aren't in the video, but I suspect that it wouldn't take more than a couple attempts to get a good war now that I know what I'm doing, and so I think you're right that once you get it down, it really is much less RNG dependent than other strats I've seen, and it has the extremely large advantage that once you're proficient with the minutiae you can get from game start to "fail or success" within a few minutes, rather than sitting around for years waiting on alliances that probably won't pan out. Very useful video, good job. Also, the kocaeli mothballing can be used again in subsequent wars by putting your troops a few provinces away, then taking 1 infantry by boat to byzantium, and walking to kocaeli. The infantry will arrive by the 1st of the next month, thus preventing garrison reinforcements from arriving, and 1 ticking the siege unless enemy troops show up (they didn't for you, ymmv).
So for those without the drilling dlc; It still works for most part, however you will probaly need more tries and will need to defeat one stack. The thing is, without the ottomans drilling, he sends only one army to constantinopel-the other army- if you dont bother it most likely goes to athens- as your army around 17-18k+ albania 3-4k+athens 3k is too much for their stack alone. Just let them pass, while you sit on the just Selnik and then crush them in athens- the army in constantinopel will be too far away. Just make sure to allow "attach units" so albania comes along. The rest- same as in the video.
If you strike early enough with a good admiral they dont even contest the waters, I tried this in the latest patch and it still works. Maybe youre playing on an old patch where they start with 15 galleys
You psych them out with pure numbers, even if the enemy would win, the pure numbers in one place dissuade them. Just like with armies, the AI prefers to siege than fight outnumbered.
Trevor Gomez Yeah it works, But I got attacked by MF venetians after war, Then hungarians, they took all the land from me that i had taken from Turks... fucking assholes
@@tokk0v331 Hungary will not attack you if you don't have a border with them , don't take Ottomans provinces that give you a land border with Hungary or possibly Austria if they conquer south , it is far better to take land in Turkey in the second and subsequent wars since you can just use the greek provinces to generate war score by occupying them early in every war .
Worked for me, 5 stack actually spawned on balkans, but decided to move to anatolia. Declared after that and was very close call on 1 fort race to get enough war score, but managed to do it. After that it was pretty easy with superior navy, they can't even fight you properly. Thank you.
Best guide out so far, no luck, just understanding of the game. I needed until 1450 to achive this in my first war with lots of allys. 2 years is great, especially if you aim for the goal of reforming rome and geht the Mare Nostrum Achievement. I finally got it on 1815 with lots of Blitzkrieg stuff.
So an issue I keep running into that will probably require a restart is that the Ottomans are keeping a 5k stack on the Anatolian side, but in a province closer to Kocaeli. This has happened only three times in a row at the point of this comment, but I've been unable to siege down the province quickly enough. EDIT: I've finally gotten games where they move the 5k stack to to the Anatolian province in the video but I still can't get this strategy to work after many restarts due to some other roadblocks: Albania will not ally until June 1445. Ottoman's 14k stack on top of Macedonia does not move out of the province quickly enough for me to arrive before the month tick.
If you park your troops in Albania then you can comfortably engage the 14k Otto stack as the other Otto stack has low morale and wont engage. Then get a monthly tick or two of morale and reinforcement and engage the other stack sitting on your capital (and sortie your garrison). Bye bye Ottos for a while in Greece. Its just a pain that you also have to deal with AQ.
I'm sorry but it doesn't work at all. Restarted an insane amount of times. Ottomans 5k never on the Anatolian side. As soon as I siege down Selanik they just ignore Constantinople and come to kill all my troops ASAP. Dunno if the hotfix changed some behaviour, but no matter how many times I try it, the whole thing is not working
I have a method which worked extremely well for me in my playthrough that I've dubbed the Vassal Strat. The concept is based around the idea of releasing one or both of the OPMs within your borders at game start to increase your forcelimit, get extra vassal troops, and the Ai seeing you as stronger due to the latter mentioned. It makes early game alliances much easier and makes repelling hungry kebabs much easier due to every province of yours now having a capital fort. I was able to reclaim the Balkans within about 30 or so years. So that's something.
using this strat my game is at 1470 and i've reconquered the balkans, 7th greatest power, and im pushing into anatolia with no difficulty besides a few venetians...
No luck reliance strat my arse. I follow the guide exactly but the Ottoman 14k stack always intercepts my Army instead of heading for Constantinople Edit: Ended up waiting for the first Otto army to pass. then sieged Selanik. Then had to relieve Constantinople which was besieged by the Crimeans. Then sieged Edirne out, then attacked small stacks in Greece until they were all gone (Ottos retreated across the straits which I controlled). In this run I actually forgot to move the 1k in Constantinople, and it got wiped. Although this resulted in more Turks coming into Greece, I was able to take Edirne and take the straits that way. Actually a great guide. First one I've tried that has worked for me. Using this guide even as a base, and improvising, victory is still possible Edit 2: After I beat the Crimean army in Constantinople, the PLC declared war on them, unfortunately the Turks didn't join that war, would've been extremely lucky if they did though. Also the one time the 4k was on the Balkans side for me is the time that I won
Thats hellas* as in greek. Thats strange in all my games he only had his transport fleet and trade fleet out which you can easily beat, he never even sent any galleys, are you playing on 1.28? was he at war?
Hey Budget Monk , great video man. Didn't exactly pull off the strat but it did help ALOT , I'm in the 1500's and I'm almost a world power. Thanks again !!!!
Hi. Nice one again BudgetMonk ! I did your 1.27 version of Byzantium only vs Ottomans in this 1.28 patch. It wasn't easy with Aq Qoyunlu presuring my little stacks on the anatolian side (while Ottomans waited in front of Constantinople doors). I succed to have à 75% warscore + low enthusiasm Ottomans. The war took 3,5 years. Peace deal were : All the core provinces + war reparation + 192 ducats ! :D But I guess this Albania quick alliance helps. ;)
Am I missing something everyone else is not? This is not at all how the Ottomans react in my games. They keep a 15 and 14 stack in their two European provinces with forts. These do run away from my large army, but they easily wipe out my Constantinople army in time before it can take their fort. Furthermore, they keep a single ship in the Straits that my navy needs to kill before my army can cross, which delays it too much to even have a chance. So I can occupy one Ottoman fort, but then their armies join up and defeat me. It seems you still need allies.
@@The_Byzantine_Ottoman I nearly got it to work but then the ottomans jumped my blockade and had a thirty stack on Makedonia. I tried attacking them with skanbro and 25k army but we lost.
Thanks for this man, it took me several attempts and it didn't really work as planned but following this straight probably saved me from destruction because it allowed me to get a white peace with them and bought me a bunch of time to improve relations with Hungary to the point of getting an alliance (and declaring war on the Ottomans gave a high enough opinion bonus to make the difference)
I have a weird problem. The 5k stack you mention isn't anywhere to be seen (which is good I suppose), but trapping the larger armies on the Greco-side seems to cause problems. Only one of their armies ever attacks Constantinople at any time, so I have trouble trying to capture anywhere without having to run from their other army. Also, I don't have the dlc so I can't build troops in Athens, meaning I have significantly less troops than in the video when the war starts.
Try to keep your forces on Attachable to pull the Albanians to your army, so that winning that first battle against their 14k is more doable (preferably on Macedonia). Usually the the other stack will sit on Constantinople for the whole war, and never attempt to fight you. After Macedonia is sieged down, head STRAIGHT for Anatolia (leave a few 1k behind to siege Bulgaria), and hope that both stacks don't take Macedonia and Constantinople before you siege down most of Anatolia. Also, keep your fleet in the sea with the Constantinople and Edirne straits, so that the AI is more inclined to siege your forts instead of going after your armies. You should also be able to safely wait a couple more months for those extra troops to build in Achea and Morea, as what matters is not WHEN they're built, but WHERE they're built, so that the Turk's forts are still mothballed.
What would that do? when there is 0 garrison it only takes one tick and even if it stretches out the siege tick you should have enough time with a little luck
Yo BudgetMonk! Beautiful guide, but i encountered multiple problems. Ottomans always mantains 14k stack with no general at full morale AND the 5k Balkan side. Normally i go for selanik and i managed to kill the 5k, but even with the help of the albanians general i always lose the second battle where 15k full morale troops come into selanik. The fleet is another big problem because at a certain point they finish to build 6-7 more galleys and they effectively start to using them to stop the naval blocking. Last but not least: many many times ottomans allies 2 or 3 countries. Suggestions?
Build more troops, take more loans. The issue is if the 14 + 16 stack stays in Greece. Then the loans amount gets quite big and even after you get more development, you cant debt restructure using Florrynomics.
@@terrencesauve thank you man, but i managed to do it with my strategy! I've done Basileus, ruina iimperi and mare nostrum with my byzantium and i managed to reform Roman Empire too, but thank you anyway for your answer :)
man those tips on the timing your travel and getting the forts in a month were op, the maintenance ones too, game changer i now know i have to beat the ai at their own game, mathematically
no thats wayyyy too difficult dude that's pure rng and pain and suffering maybe 1 in a million times if the starts align but other than that there is no possible way, even with cheats. tbf paradox needs to nerf byz, they are way too op
Few notes: Ignore the concerns for athens disbanding its troops. Never had that happen. Just keep your army maintenance at low until april, then launch. If you dont see the 5k stack on the western shore of anatolia, restart. This will happen ~80% of the time. Using bait wont work, rolling a good general wont work, clearing the stack quickly wont work. Just restart if it is on the Balkan subcontinent. Crimea as an ally is really the best case scenario. AQ is a bitch to deal with and makes your anatolia sieges take way longer than you have time for. Dont give the burghers monopoly charters, that will lower youre prestige too much and make it impossible to ally Albania in April. Other than these points, this is an excellent guide that will work perfectly IF you follow the steps perfectly AND you get lucky with the start. The scenario described in the video is literally a 1 in 10 start. You'll have to reroll for it.
who do you rival, and also could you show when the 5k is on the greek side, as from what .i've seen they always go to selanik. also you should have shown aq since its much harder than crimea, you need to get access with multiple people, like karaman, mamluks, trebizond
Guys in my recent attempt I declared war on 2 july 1445 and when I look at the ottoman navy they deleted all of their galleys, one month before they had those galleys but now they dont. I restarted several times but they kept doing it. I'm just curious is it just happening to me or all the time ?
I made some crappy notes, but please still watch the video because there are a lot of details these notes don't communicate. This is just a quick reference after you've watched the video: docs.google.com/document/d/1H_IqVAEhoAL85UyLCD54FSNPFXGPMtYl_heQ0uHTUpg/edit?usp=sharing
There is one rng thing that completely fucks this start. When the AI rolls a 3 or higher maneuver general and assigns it to the 5-stack in mantesha, it will get to your 1-stack before it can siege down the fort across the strait. Been trying to make this start work for hours now... still no luck. Granted, most of the early failures were to my mistakes, but this is one thing I can't see a way to get around.
If Candar doesn't want your provinces ~50% of the time, you can ask for access. Drop your troop (1 mercenary) in Candar the 2nd of the month, which gives you enough time to conquer ankara as well. You could do the same with the Genovese province, but you can rarely get access and Boglu is usually maintained. As mentioned in 7:41 without the Cradle of civilization this method becomes more difficult. One of the 14k stacks goes to constantinople, the other "roams" to Thessaloniki. If you engage, the other stack will join, this thus actively prevents you from sieging Thessaloniki before the end of the month. You now have to siege T, while two ottoman armies are sieging Constantinople and Athens. You can win the siege race (as you have naval blockade and they don't) and you can consistently win battles for a pricy ~5k manpower with Athens & Albania being of vital importance here. So without the DLC, the result is the same. The greek part is just a bit more messy
I did this so wrong lol, I moved on the forts after the months ticked by and instead of going to constantinople his army charged right at me. Somehow though, I stackwiped him with Albania and won the war.
You can park in Albania your main stack and the 14-15 stack from Ottomans will move away from the mothballed fort. For 2 runs I ended up fighting that 14-15 Otto stack with Albania and literally crushed them, they ran off to Anatolia, so I couldnt seige anything there. It still worked out anyways and I had to deal with AQ on top of that. It also helps to sortie if you want to defend your Capital, the extra 3k is really worth it!
Note that this works only in Normal difficulty (for the timing at least) as from Hard you have a -20 to any alliance request (even Theodoro won’t ally you D1) Good strategy either way
I mean... the actual Greek pronounciation is /axaˈia/, so the "ch" is a voiceless velar fricative (like the "gh" in "ugh"). /əˈkiːə/ is quite the terrible bastardization of that. Not like there's a "correct" English way to say it.
@@d4n4nable It is the standard pronounciation of Greek words. It is not "correct" in a sense that it is not identical to modern demotic Greek pronunciation, but then you don't say "Moskva" and "Műnchen" instead of "Moscow" and "Munich". Not every word is loaned with it's original pronunciation, especially since English lacks sounds like the frichative chi, but there are established conventions.
They moth and unmoth them all the time. Just wait for them both to be unmothballed before declaring war. The two times I tried, first I missed the 3 boats and thus lost the control of the Constantinople strait, making me ragequit. Second time everything went perfectly but my general had too much maneuver and I missed my chance to cancel moving to Selanik while his 15k stack was already there, making me lose 16k instant because of my low morale and ragequitting again. But one day...
Does this strategy work if th ottomans build 43 ships (well beyond the force limit) i even pass my navy limit and still lose any tips to solve this navy problem or do i just have to use a different strategy?
Keep in mind that the Ottomans allying Crimea isn't the hardest version of this start. It's actually them allying AQ, with AQ also allying Karaman. It pretty much ensures you cannot reliably separate peace AQ as Karaman will never give you military access. I've also found that if they get a morale advisor, they will not move both stacks to Constantinople. They'll keep one in Edirne, merge with the 5k and attack your Selanik stack. You can win the battle, but because their entire army is no longer parked in Constantinople and you cannot occupy both Kocaeli and Biga in time to stackwipe the Ottomans, the war is infinitely tougher. I'm also really surprised you didn't capitalize on the opportunity to truce reset the Ottomans by attacking and white peacing Ragusa.
@@_coolman_8941 they dont have 20 galleys they have like just over 20 ships total, and the key is to not let them join up their fleets, they wont have a 20 ship doom stack they have like a few small stacks that you can beat especially if your allies attach to you
Can confirm that this does work on 1.29. AI can get a little screwy, and likes to attack you when you're sieging down Macedonia (or whatever the Ottoman's call it). But if you've built up enough of a military, and Skanderberg makes it to you in time, they practically just suicide into you, and you get some free warscore. All in all though, still effective enough to be a viable strategy.
So I have now tried this about 15 times but the 5 stack will always be on the fort when I arrive so first my army fights and after that the garrison is at 140. Does anyone know a workaround about those 5k?
I feel like Budget hasnt tested this, the 5k stack is always on the greece side and fucks up taking Selanik. My best run was rolling a great general wiping the 5k stack and then his 14k didnt want to reinforce while ottomans garenteed 3 countries instead of getting allies. I feel like there is far too much rng in this method to make it viable. Even putting the 1 stack on Yanya like he suggested to lure the 5k stack into attacking it doesnt work.
Check your timing/maneuvre a bit. Basically you are going too fast and catch the 5k on their way to Edirne. Try to wait a day or two before moving to Selanik and check the tooltip for the actual arrival day.
Wow, over 10 months later, and I can say that this strategy still works, especially if you get a lucky start where the 5 or 6 stack is on the Anatolian side I haven't been able to pull off a Byzantium run in years, but this strat let me 80% the Ottos, with 3 loans, in 1447
I have tried this strategy like 30 fucking times I swear yet it still comes down to luck with the siege of Edirne. I had a game where all I needed to do was siege Edirne but it was just stuck on that fucking 40-75% and wouldn't siege but then the Ottomans got Constantinople at 7%. I mean come the fuck on EUIV what is this shit.
Something I've seen in 1.29, without being sure if the version makes any difference, is that Wallachia is almost a day one alliance. They have a nice 8 stack of troops and a fort plus their capital. The Ottomans split their troops to go siege them out and I was able to eventually wipe both their stacks, which forced them to start merc'ing up. There was a bit of luck involved with the Ottomans not getting a lucky 7% to occupy Constantinople and my economy was half ruined for a few decades, but the Ottomans from that point on collapsed. Every nation around them attacked them after me, I had a very easy second war and from that point on the Ottomans were a lesser danger than the Karamans or Aq'Qunlu.
I imagine this may work for many people but ive tried three times and each time didnt work because of some rng. Maybe I'm just dumb but if the ottomans ally AQ and not Crimea then they reoccupy the fort before you can even reach Anatolia completely ruining the strat. There was another time where the ottomans didnt put both stacks on Constantinople and instead took their fully maintained army and took out my army in the Balkans. The final time the 5k stack never left the occupied fort after destroying the 1k stack that was there. Maybe im just extremely unlucky but this start hasnt worked at all for me and ive followed every step.
for me, one stack went to Constantinople while the other was roaming the Balkans, sieging down selanik and my other holdings. However, using Skanderbeg, as well as only sending about 4-5k troops to Anatolia, meant that I could crush the 1st Turkish stack before the 2nd got to me, meaning they could never break thru constantinople. also declare war on 1st of june and always move troops immediately.
This is literally a ritual for you, and I love that fact. Going to have to try out one of your strategies sometime as Byzantium- I only did well in my Byzantine game because I didn't have the Cossacks and since a legend happened. The Mamluks attacked the Ottomans. Literally couldn't get more lucky than that.
They have 3 lights, 12 cogs and 8 galleys = 23 ships. The problems that they have include the fact that you instantly kill the lights when declaring the war. = 20 And they have the galleys and cogs docked at 2 different locations. They will be intimidated to pull them out unless you actually engage in a significant naval battle that they can reinforce. Keep in mind that you also have Athens navy and in this case Albania.
@@BudgetMonk In my case, the 2nd time I played as Byzantium, I was allied with Austria, Hungary and mamluks. We got raped in the sea. We only won because of our combined land forces. Of course we didn't attack right away and they had the time to build more navy. And I just remembered that ottomans were also in war with Venice. They destroyed their navy too. Kebap naval power. Lol
They must have already put out a patch to change something about the AI behavior because I cannot get this strategy to work. I followed everything you did down to the day, but the Ottomans NEVER have their 5k stack in Anatolia, and they almost always have two 15k stacks in the Balkans. They also almost always have a barque or galley in the Hellespont so that you can't cross, and about 50% of the time they don't sit on Constantinople, they send out one of the 15k stacks to hunt you down and wipe you out usually by the time I'm sieging Edirne. This sucks, I have no idea why Paradox keeps nerfing Byzantium with every patch, or why they think it's an awesome idea to give the Ottomans 30 galleys at game start. I understand it's supposed to be challenging but this kind of one-sided unbalanced shit, especially in a multiplayer game, is completely unacceptable.
I had a similar game start the other day, but in reflection seems like it went a bit easier. I only built my galleys and troops up to the force limit, but managed to get Albania, Wallachia, Karaman, Trebizond and Theodorro as allies. The AI Ottomans were continually shifting their troops from bordering Thrace to bordering Candar, as in they could not make up their mind on who to attack. Luckily for me they went for Candar, which brought Karaman and Crimea in as their defensive allies. The Ottomans moved all their troops to Asia minor, with 30k besieging Sinop and the rest chasing Candar and Karaman's troops around with their allies. Importantly though their fleet was split into a 17 galley stack and a stack of mostly transports. They had the later parked in the Sea of Marmara. Making sure all their troops were in Anatolia I DW'd them, bringing Albania along with a promise of land. I immediately destroyed their transport fleet in the Sea of Marmara, and combined with the Athenian and Crimean fleet I was able to destroy their main galley fleet in the Aegean. As a result I was able to siege their Greek and Balkan provinces without interference. I had to wait a while, but my WE was virtually nothing, and a few quickly timed cavalry incursions to grab a few Anatolian provinces gave me enough WS to take all my cores. Although the Ottomans eventually annexed Candar, they were massively in debt and had very high WE. They had constant rebellions and had to reduce their army to 18k troops, well below their force limit. I on the other hand had no loans, virtually no losses and had recovered all my cores. After this I was able to ally Lithuania (not in PU with Poland) to replace Albania, who were a bit pissed I didn't give them any land. The Ottomans weren't keeping any troops in their remaining European territories, so when the truce expired i DW'd again, with no allies this time. Again I smashed their reconstructed navy and captured all the Balkans, holding out for my demands, which they gave into when the Mamalukes DW'd them. Now I have all their European provinces besides one of the Albanian ones and was also able to get Corcyra and Chios via Greek rebels. My next conquest is about to happen as the Mamalukes have again DW'd them and my truce expires in a year. I intend to grab as much of the western coastline as possible, with an eventual push into Serbia and Bosnia also planned.
After trying this for a full 12 hours I can confirm that this strat is dead in the current patch. It offers a good base for you to form your own or combine with other starting strats, but as it stands the ottos just leave Const. with their 14 stack to attack you in selink as soon as you get there. Also, just some friendly advice speak a little slower and elaborate just a little bit on why/how the mechanics and possible plan b's of what you're doing. It's a tutorial video, not a speed run to explain the strat as fast as possible. Keep up the good work though man!!
@@BudgetMonk Yea, I have all dlc. I watched a good portion of your twitch stream. You were able to go into more detail about the why/how the moves you were taking which really helped put perspective on things. Gonna keep watching some of those and give it a try again. You're a damn madman for declaring on ottos without Albania lol.
“Let me know if you guys want a video on how to completely obliterate the ottomans from this point on”
What, do you expect a no?
i mean, obliterating countries is extremely easy, expecially the Start-Date world powers, since you can sit generally about 3-5 years at 100% occupation, and investing the 5 points per province on Scorch Earth is devastating, so their natural enemies will dogpile them.
If you can stackwipe the ottomans, Genoa, Venice, The Knights, both other countries in turkey, and the Mamluks will declare war on them if you employ total war doctrine, and within 5 years the ottomans will be a OPM.
this "generally" works for every nation.
Honestly, it doesn't take much to wreck the ottomans later on. Especially if you manage to secure an alliance with the Mamluks.
Dreams vs Reality
@@TurquazCannabiz Where are the Ottomans, smartass :D the drerams are on the turks.
@@TurquazCannabiz Wait until reality hits you back in the face. You will never hold the City for 2500 years like the Greeks did. You're just a distortion in a long and glorious history of the City.
Lmao, why didn’t Byzantium do this in real life. Send this video to them and let’s watch the change
ottomans got lucky and got a breach tick early on in the siege.
@@crowsader9943 so sad, me too,
The 4th Crusade had reduced the province development of the entire empire, especially Constantinople so the Ottomans had no trouble taking it.
@@Sandouras They already lost anatolia before the fourth crusade. Fourth crusade changed nothing.
@@jimmynutrin9815 yes it did
1 - Destroy Morea's Fort
2 - Raise development in Achea and give it to the Burghers
3 - Ask Admiralship from the Burghers
4 - Demand Diplomatic Support from the Burghers
5 - In Nobility, Call Diet
6 - Demand Military Support from Nobility (in some cases, also Generalship)
7 - Make the Admiral command your 2 ship fleet
8 - Send the 2 ships to protect trade in Constantinople
9 - Turn down your Army Maintenance
10 - Ally Theodore
11 - Recruit more troops in Greek provinces
12 - Send a diplomat to improve relations with Albania
13 - Send a diplomat to build a Spy Network in Ottoman Empire
14 - Send a diplomat to improve relations with Mamluks
15 - Do not forget to move units from Athens to other provinces, because Athens may delete your troops. You can raise the Army Maintenance, move your troops, and then lower it back before the month ends
16 - Build a regiment in Constantinople in about half January 1445. Take a loan if needed
17 - In April, raise your army maintenance
18 - Call back your 2 light ships to join your other ships
19 - Enact defenses in Constantinople's state Thrace
This is basically what you must do before engaging war. I missed the Mamluks alliance and the Ottomans managed to build up an army really strong, so I decided to write down the steps. If I missed something, please tell me.
intructions unclear.
Formed Russia.
Oscar Chapman is that a bad thing?
@@SpartanX300 well no, i just wanted to own as Byzantium not as Russia
Oscar Chapman it's a joke bro
SpartanX5 lol i know
@@SpartanX300
"is that a bad thing?"
yes
All this talk of Burghers is making me Hungary.
Get out
Orchestra Of Ruin this humor is beyond science for an npc
The habsburghers
I would laugh if u werent npc
With a comment like that, it seems like you are skanderbegging for attention
No matter how many times I try, the 5 stack never shows up in Anatolia. You’re, indeed, very lucky
This still works in 1.28.3, but you need to tweak a bit:
Presuming you declare the war on 1 June 1445:
- DO NOT train any unit in Constantinopole in January
- Raise army maintenance in march so it has full morale by 1 June
- Move your whole fleet so it will be in Marmara on 1 June (about 15 days from Morea). There will always be 1 Otto ship there and you need about 3 days to kill it.
- On 19 may recruit a merc in Constantinopole (13 days to train, so it will spawn on 1 or 2 june with morale, ready to go)
- Have your army with full morale be present in Athens on 1 June (this will convince the Otto 14 stack to go to Constantinopole)
- When declaring initiate the movement of the main army to Tirhala AND keep an eye on the ship battle in Marmara
- After the ship battle is done, move immediately the merc to Kocaeli to occupy the fort
- You will ALWAYS hit an Otto stack on Selanik. Pause the game in the exact day you reach Tirhala and check on tooltip when your army will reach Selanik and when the Otto stack will leave Selanik. Keep in mind that all you need to capture the fort is to have your army be there on 30 June latest, so you should have quite a few days at disposal to simply wait.
- Have your main army on attach, just in case an Otto stack would come for you. If you got first in Selanik, even if the Otto stack would come for you before the siege tick is done, garrison will not replenish during battle.
- After Selanik is sieged, retreat to Tirhala to replenish your army if is the case
Throughout next movements keep an eye on Otto sieging Selanik (they will), so don't risk, pay attention to their sieging tick compared to your sieging tick of their provinces. They get lucky with breaches and that can shorten the war significantly. If they get a breach on Selanik too fast and it has too low garrison, they will assault it. So better guard Selanik a few months to have its garrison replenish a fair bit. Spam a few mercs from Kocaeli and Balkans for carpetting while your main would guard Selanik, just to look more powerful, if is needed.
Keep in mind that Biga is in Edirne ZoC. So: if you have an unit "sieging" Edirne and Biga is occupied, Biga will stay with you. If you don't have an unit on Edirne, then you need to keep an unit on Biga, else Edirne fort will reset its occupation. And without Biga you can't fully blockade Marmara.
What I experienced is that Otto stayed on high enthusiasm nomatter what. If you reach a decent WS, save, quit and reload (normal, not savescum), so the game would recalculate the enthusiasm, sometimes it "forgets" to update AI's enthusiasm.
High enthusiasm: WS needed = demanded WS + 15-20 WS (not entirely sure)
Medium enthusiasm: WS needed = demanded WS
Low enthusiasm: WS needed = demanded WS - 10 (again not entirely sure)
Therefore, if the smaller ally is medium/low enthusiasm, Otto is high enthusiasm and you have a WS of, let's say, 70, DO NOT peace separately the smaller ally, because you will lose whatever WS you have from occupying those provinces.
Keep in mind that your fundamental need is Edirne so you can blockade the strait and everything else is a bonus. If you have to choose, Selanik should be the last province taken, because is a fort and in the next war would be an easy pick with better WS.
Good strat
Thanks for all
5k army always goes to selanik before i can get in there and battle finishes after 1 july so garisson recovers
Standing on Edirne hurts his enthusiasm. I've wiped 14k ottoman army on selanik. That was awesome. Thanks for this. Otto was Aq Qoyunlu. Even that wouldn't stop the last Romans!
The problem with the 5k stack (which never spawns in Anatolia despite of countless restarts) still remains: it arrives in Selanik before the Byz army can get there, so the garrison recovers until 1st july. The 1k army in Yanya doesn't lure it, PLUS the merc can't get through the strait just in time because the 14k stack starting from Selanik arrives in Constantinople right at the time. Any solutions yet?
New year, new Byzantine empire
Another patch, another Byzantium guide. As always, amazing video Monk!
>Watch this video
>Practice the strat in normal game
>Time for the real thing
>Go Iron man mode
>Ottoblob allies Aq and Crimea
>Karaman rival me so no access to East Anatolia
>Constantinople got disintegrated by 6 siege commander in less than a year
SO just like in real life, huh?
I might have been blessed by RNGgods. First time I've tried this somehow the ottoblob had no allies and daddy mehmed died within a year into the war and ottomans got a shitty 1 2 0 king and low legitimacy.
@@angelopueyygarcia43 Ohnomans
This guide really helped me with my campaign start. Couple of small additions to help folks:
1) Hire the fort defence advisor right before the war starts for more defence rating in Constantinople
2) Set Army Maintenance close to min, not at min so troops can still move.
3) Guaranteeing small Anatolian Nations will allow you to go to war again with the Ottomans shortly after peace without the need to ally them.
If you actually watch the video he adresses point 2. The trick is to raise army maintanance, move the troop, and lower maintanance back down to zero before the end of the month. That way you don't pay ànd you get to move troops around.
Make sure to gain access through Karaman to occupy the eastern part of Anatolia or AQ.
Can you write it down? Its kinda hard to follow, thx :)
why did you ally theodoro?
@@DeathColor96 He might have done it to make relative strength appear larger to deter attackers.
@@Nate-bb7rg but not a single country has any claims on you or are interested in attacking you this early except the ottomans, which you declare war on before they can even consider it. If allying theodoro has anything to do with part 2 of this video I can make sense of it but as it stands now you just have a useless ally that take up a diplo spot. To top it all off they might get attacked by crimea which makes you lose prestige and diplo rep if you decline.
@BudgetMonk You can also ask for contribution from the burghers to not worry about the money
Although the method is genius, you should either talk more slowly and/or write down the strategy. It is hard to follow everything you say, especially with these new updated features of the game
I am sorry. It is very hard to please everyone. Most people don't want a 30min video that can be half that or less. You can try to watch the video in a slower manner, Like pause after each subject. Good luck.
Try the speed button, set it to like .75.
i made a word document right away took me about 20 min including watching the video
@@BudgetMonk Don't sweat it dude, youtube has a way to accommodate everyone. Some people watch it in x0.5 others in x2. You just keep focusing on EU4.
@@BudgetMonk no one said make a longer video, just put some bullet points with what you are saying in text so we can pause and read.
Thank you BudgetMonk, Just achieved my first full core returns as Byzantium playing on v1.29.5 with the Ottomans allied to AQ using this guide as a base. Reading a large majority of the comments here, I wonder if half of these people understand the basic mechanics of playing this game or actually studied this video in any depth. You deserve more appreciation for your insights into the game, keep up the excellent work.
A surprise, but a welcome one, thank you for this video, incredibly interesting strategy
I posted this strategy on the other day on youtube and works almost everytime. I have one game on 1597 with 2045 development as Byzantium.
1.New game and make sure you have a morale advisor
2.Delete all forts
3.Focus on mil tech ( If lucky you can get events that give more mil points )
4.Ally all nations that you can ( Trezibond, maybe Theodoro, maybe Wallachia )
5.Improve relations with Hungary, Wallachia, Albania
6.Don't spend admin or dip points
7.Try to get the max points from states and money from merch state
8.Start building troops until 20k
9.Set the same rivals as Hungary if possible and don't rival their allies
10.Buy morale advisor
11.Create general, usually Byzantium gets a very good general early on ( You need at leat 1 pip on siege and the better on shock )
12.Don't ally Albania yet
13.Unpause
14.Build troops until 20k ( Put them in Constantinople )
15.Build galleys whenever you have money
16.Because off your relative strenght of your alliance, Ottos will try a easier target on Anotolia
17.Wait until you get mil tech 4
18.At this point Hungary and Albania want an Alliance with you, ally with them both
19.If Otto goes to fight Albania, ally them and go on defensive war with them.
20.If not, wait until they declare on someone else on Anotolia ( Go to war for Edirne and promise land to everyone)
21.Hungary and Albania always want to go to war with you for land
22.You need 20k on Edirne and 1 regiment close to there ( With your allies armies ) just in case they attack you on the siege
23.Usually the combine navy off you, Albania, Hungary and Athens matches the navy off the Ottos and they don't attack you
24.After Edirne fall, it's easy and it's a matter of time to build warscore ( They usually only reach mil tech 4 after the fall off Edirne )
25.Peace for all your cores, war reparations, 1 or 2 extra provinces to you and money. Don't give anything to your allies, you will break the alliances anyway
26.After this, I focus on conquering the rest of Greece, Kosovo and finishing the Ottos
27.Ally with one or two big players ( Spain, Austria, Polland or the Timurids. You dont need them on offensive wars, but they are usefull on preventing coallitions )
28.Rotate wars between Ottos/Mamlucks/Timurids and Moscow/Russia
29.By 1597, on my record, I have 2045 development ( Better players can achieve more, but I'm allways on war and have 2 big vassals as Novgorod and Lituania )
30.I usually go for Jerusalem/Rome/Meca for the max missionary and prestige
31.I'm the defender of faith since always
32.My ideas are Defensive/Administrative/Religious/Diplomacy ( One combo gives -1 unrest )
33.Army is not too big, because I merch up a lot ( 3 stacks of 10+6+0 and 1 stack of 10+0+0, infatary are all mercs )
34.Carefull with the too many terroritories thing, it can drain a lot off money
P.S. To break countries easier, sometimes I go to war twice with in a row with the same country ( declare war on their allies) and demand more gold and war reparations. It's easy to break Russia, Ottos, Mamluks and Timurids with this strategy. You have morale advantage and 110 discipline. The downside it's the inflation it gives.
César Afonso do you a screen shot of this campaign, I wanna see where you expanded
@Internet Entity Did you completely miss the "if not" part of this one?! Budgetmonk's is way cheesier and relies heavily on gaming certain mechanics.
@Internet Entity Over-react more, maybe... Use whatever you want. It just feels excessively cheesy to me. Save-scumming is also a viable strategy to get certain results, it's just not something everyone's into. "OH NO, SOMEONE'S USING THEIR TECHNOLOGICAL ABILITIES! REEEEEE." Right?
It's also *not* reliable, as it basically requires that Ottoman stack to be in Anatolia. And the alternative strategy of luring the 5-stack doesn't work all the time.
@@d4n4nable Mate, there's nothing cheesy about his strategy, what you should say instead of cheesy, is that it relies heavy on RNG, the location of the 5 stack RNG, the Otto alliance RNG and the fort maintenance RNG.
Hungary wasn't even close to being willing to ally me by mil tech 4 on first try. Trying again.
tried it 5times, the 5k were always on the european side. due to this i was never able to reach selanik in time. How should I deal with this. If i fought them in yanya I lost to much time. If I didn`t move to yanya they moved to constantinople, passing through selanik.
I addressed it in the video. Try to send 1k as food while your main force goes to Selanik. Also roll your rulers as generals or use the estate. If you can get very high maneuver this can also work. The reason is because you begin moving to Selanik before the 5k has locked his movement in and he will retreat.
@@BudgetMonk I've tried this half a dozen times and never seen it work. if you wait long enough for the 5 stack to take the bait, your main army won't make it to selanik before the month tick. One time I rolled a 6 maneuver general and he did manage to make the 5 stack redirect, but that's the only time the stack spawning west side hasn't been an insta loss.
@@bensayre4238 I agree - doesn't work. That 5k stack ignores my little 1k stack every single time and goes straight to Selanik delaying my main stack from getting there till its too late. Restarted 4 times now and played each start from the outbreak of war about 10-15 times each before giving up and starting again.
Restart number 5 about to begin!
@@OldFellaDave take a loan, hire a merc and attack him first.2k should be enough with a general
BudgetMonk I have tried your strat and dealt with the same issue of the five stack causing issues. After four times now, I’m just gonna wait until someone finds a solution lol. That five stack usually goes to selanik, even if a 15 stack is heading there. The ottomans will turn around other 15 stacks to reinforce.
I have some hints for people who struggle to execute this plan:
1) the 5k stack will always be in Greece. You can distract it by setting the war-goal as Yanya/Epirus and putting a weak 3k-stack there. They will go there, rather than to Saloniki/Constantinople. This will allow you to reach Saloniki on time. Just in case, try an get at least 3 shock general so that IF you happen to attack the 5k in Saloniki with your main army, you can win before the end of the month.
2) I have never managed to have AI be as passive as in this video. They will try and siege Saloniki and unsiege Sofia and Nigbolu. They will also try and sneak around to Yanya. This is a perfect trap. You can catch them there at -3 for them (-2 from mountains, -1 from river crossing) and +2/+3 for you from general (if you have Skanderbeg attached). My 12k (6k Albania + 3k Athens + 3k me) would just annihilate 16k Ottos in this scenario.
3) If Ottos ally with Aq rather than Crimea, it's much more difficult to siege out Anatolia (you will have an nasty 10k - 14k stack annoying you there). You have to get Millitary Access through Trebizond, Bithynia and Qara to siege Aq out 100%.
4) don't let Biga be unsieged by the fort in Edrine: flip it between Athens and yourself every month
dude i have no idea where you are from and what language you play in but i cannot figure out about what provinces you are talking Epirus? Saloniki?
@@stevenm7600 oh! Sorry man. I'm using the Greek and English names. Under Turkish they're:
- Yanya (Epirus)
- Selanik (Saloniki/Thessaloniki/Macedonia)
"4) don't let Biga be unsieged by the fort in Edrine: flip it between Athens and yourself every month" -- Does flipping the control between you and the vassal prevent the fort taking the province back?
I do like the comment that it's not about luck.
EXCEPT:
1.Ottos don't breach.
2. 5 Stack on Anatolia
3. Selanik actually is sieged down according to the mechanic of 0 garrison.
4. Ottos ally AQ is much more difficult.
Everything else is legit.
So it's not all luck, except it's all luck
In case anyone is having troubles with the 5k standing in "Kesriye" (The province highlighted in the video) and said 5k moving into Selanik, send a 1k stack into "Yanya" as demonstrated in the video, but don't call in Albania at the start of the war, this successfully baits the 5k to attack the 1k in "Yanya". When the Ottoman movement is locked on the 5k unit (moving from "Kesriye" to "Yanya"), send in your 1k with the attached Athenians and call in Albania through promises of land and you should stack wipe the 5k army! You will lose the 1k, but i think that it is more than worth it to get the free siege on "Selanik"! Then proceed as the videos shows you! I hope this helps someone, since i was having a lot of troubles with this myself! Best of luck!
thank you so much man
@@klod5268 Happy to have helped!
Out of the 5 times I tried it the 5 stack was ALWAYS in Greece.
The vision did fat nothing.
Same here, been about 5-6 tries.
I enjoyed how you highlighted provinces instead of just trying to point them out with the mouse. It made it a lot easier to follow. And I appreciate it greatly
But I don't get it, how can you do such a thing if the Ottomans have around 40 ships? They Always attack me, since they can mathematically obliterate me.
I believe it is on hard difficulty instead of very hard
@@palestraitaly6272 Normal difficulty (or maybe easy). He doesn't have the hard penalty on relations.
@@robwallace2134Probably! Anyway, such strategy might be possible on Hard, but it would not work on VH, the game is completely different on VH. There is no instance in which you, you alone, would acquire naval superiority on VH at the onset of the game. Furthermore, the Ottomans would have +20k troops
Palestra Italy I actually tried it on hard at first (I always play on hard, and thought everyone did lol), and you can’t get Albania to ally you (due to the diplo penalty) which he said is critical. So, it’s normal only. I’d like to watch his manpower recovery, though, and see if it’s easy mode.
Not only a great looking start but a very well made video. You keep impressing me with the jumps in quality of your vids, so keep up the good work. I really look forward to the next one!
Very nice compliment. I had zero experience when I started and as I am a bit of a perfectionist, it has been really hard to do this stuff. I am never happy then end up procrastinating. So I eventually post videos I am not happy with haha.
I have played 10 games now. Not a single time does the 5 stack stay on the Anatolian side.
I had a worse problem: he had a 15 stack and a 12 stack both on the European side. 10/10, really good guide.
@@worcestershirey Same happened to me
@@OCinneide I tried it a couple more times and the same thing happened, you can still get a couple of your cores back in the first war if all of his troops are in Europe, but you'll have to start sucking up to Lithuania or Hungary and hope they don't fall into a PU too fast. Mamluks should want to ally you eventually too, and they'll be a very nice asset to have. Done two Byzantium games and both times eventually the Mamluks wanted an alliance once I showed them I could beat down the Ottomans quite handily
@@worcestershirey I had the same, didn't matter in the end though.
Same happened to me. Try making your trade ships protect trade in Crimea. Got it a few times in a row after that.
Nice! I love how you keep up to date with your Byzantium guides for the important patches.
Finally a Byz strat which isn't luck based. I could do it with the Albania method but I'd have to not only restart, but savescum if he peaces out. Should you focus admin points or military points?
Always focus mil points as byzantium early game, your leader isn't great, and you can't afford to fall behind on mil techearly game, mil tech 4 is the most important tech in the game, once you've caught up on mil tech and additional techs there would cost more due to ahead of time and you start conquering new land, switch to focus admin.
@@Adventurer32 K thanks
When playing a small Nation mil is almost always the way to go, you want to at least keep up in tech if not even get an advantage since you will be fighting larger Nations. In byzabtiums case you already have quite a few cores and you then also get a lot of claims meaning you won't be needing as much admin and you can. Focus heavier on mil.
I agree that the strategy is good, but just like any other it's RNG dependent. Just the design of the game. The 5k stack almost never ends up on the Anatolian side and being able to block the straight of bosporus is uncontested is nearly impossible.
yeah nah this strat is raw rng lmao
I remember playing Byzantium in EU3. I would go into debt buying a navy bigger than the Ottoman's navy. I would then declare war and block their troops from being able to reach the Western half of their empire. It's a bit blurry at this point, but I think I also took a decision to get some free holy troops to aid in the fight. I would fight in the East while Greek rebels would pop up in the West, retaking their former lands. Those rebel occupied lands would then flip to me during the war, making it unnecessary to take it in a peace deal. I would then take some of their coastal regions in the first peace deal. I could then easily finish them off in two more wars.
Inb4 they nerf Byzantium some more xd
AlexanderHL don’t
Byzantium too op, need to buff Ottomans in order to balance out the game
lmao considering DDRJake is in charge he might just remove Byz entirely lmao,,,,
Defualt Name
I still can’t figure out how to play Byzantium. Think I need a teacher to come to my house to teach me
Don't worry. Even if that did happen, BudgetMonk would STILL find a way to beat the Ottomans lol
A few notes after trying to do this myself in 1.28.3, which has again shifted the AI a bit. I always started in July instead of June, because with the 5k stack on the other side, you need your morale full. You can and will lose the required fights in Selanik if you get bad rolls even with full morale.
In roughly 10ish attempts, the 5k stack was always in the other location, and always moved to selanik, with variable timings. The timing almost never allows for you to actually get there by the end of the month, because they take so long to lock themselves into the movement. If you time your troops to all arrive in athens on the first, and dive the 5k stack, you can wipe that stack, then usually beat the second stack that will inevitably reinforce them (even if you stack wipe them early the other stack will still attack). The 5k stack tends to make it impossible to take Selanik without a fight as far as I can tell, but with the defensiveness edict and no naval support constantinople takes forever to siege down.
The strategy as a whole works, with you using the vassal+ally troops to siege Selanik while you peace out the allies and manage the naval situation. The naval situation requires serious attention, because the Ottomans are going to have an extra 10ish galleys built within a few months of the war starting, and thus have the naval advantage if you let them consolidate. If you don't allow the navy to consolidate they'll be forced to sit in port, despite having more ships than you in total.
It took me many attempts to get the nuances of how to deal with the problems that aren't in the video, but I suspect that it wouldn't take more than a couple attempts to get a good war now that I know what I'm doing, and so I think you're right that once you get it down, it really is much less RNG dependent than other strats I've seen, and it has the extremely large advantage that once you're proficient with the minutiae you can get from game start to "fail or success" within a few minutes, rather than sitting around for years waiting on alliances that probably won't pan out.
Very useful video, good job. Also, the kocaeli mothballing can be used again in subsequent wars by putting your troops a few provinces away, then taking 1 infantry by boat to byzantium, and walking to kocaeli. The infantry will arrive by the 1st of the next month, thus preventing garrison reinforcements from arriving, and 1 ticking the siege unless enemy troops show up (they didn't for you, ymmv).
instructions unclear, restored the roman empire
Instructions incredibly clear
isn't that... the goal of the instruction
So for those without the drilling dlc;
It still works for most part, however you will probaly need more tries and will need to defeat one stack. The thing is, without the ottomans drilling, he sends only one army to constantinopel-the other army- if you dont bother it most likely goes to athens- as your army around 17-18k+ albania 3-4k+athens 3k is too much for their stack alone. Just let them pass, while you sit on the just Selnik and then crush them in athens- the army in constantinopel will be too far away. Just make sure to allow "attach units" so albania comes along. The rest- same as in the video.
IMPOSSIBLE... ottomans build huge fleet
If you strike early enough with a good admiral they dont even contest the waters, I tried this in the latest patch and it still works. Maybe youre playing on an old patch where they start with 15 galleys
You psych them out with pure numbers, even if the enemy would win, the pure numbers in one place dissuade them. Just like with armies, the AI prefers to siege than fight outnumbered.
Trevor Gomez Yeah it works, But I got attacked by MF venetians after war, Then hungarians, they took all the land from me that i had taken from Turks... fucking assholes
@@tokk0v331 Hungary will not attack you if you don't have a border with them , don't take Ottomans provinces that give you a land border with Hungary or possibly Austria if they conquer south , it is far better to take land in Turkey in the second and subsequent wars since you can just use the greek provinces to generate war score by occupying them early in every war .
These guides are always awesome, I can't describe the happiness I felt when I got the Basileus achievement. Good vid man!
Enters strategy guide.
Changes filter to newest comments.
Worked for me, 5 stack actually spawned on balkans, but decided to move to anatolia. Declared after that and was very close call on 1 fort race to get enough war score, but managed to do it. After that it was pretty easy with superior navy, they can't even fight you properly. Thank you.
It seems it doesn't work with the latest update anymore since whatever I do the ottoman forts are always fully maintained.
Best guide out so far, no luck, just understanding of the game. I needed until 1450 to achive this in my first war with lots of allys. 2 years is great, especially if you aim for the goal of reforming rome and geht the Mare Nostrum Achievement. I finally got it on 1815 with lots of Blitzkrieg stuff.
So an issue I keep running into that will probably require a restart is that the Ottomans are keeping a 5k stack on the Anatolian side, but in a province closer to Kocaeli. This has happened only three times in a row at the point of this comment, but I've been unable to siege down the province quickly enough.
EDIT: I've finally gotten games where they move the 5k stack to to the Anatolian province in the video but I still can't get this strategy to work after many restarts due to some other roadblocks:
Albania will not ally until June 1445.
Ottoman's 14k stack on top of Macedonia does not move out of the province quickly enough for me to arrive before the month tick.
If you park your troops in Albania then you can comfortably engage the 14k Otto stack as the other Otto stack has low morale and wont engage. Then get a monthly tick or two of morale and reinforcement and engage the other stack sitting on your capital (and sortie your garrison). Bye bye Ottos for a while in Greece. Its just a pain that you also have to deal with AQ.
This works so fucking well my man it saves me so much time and effort
Mr Monk if you are on a budget, how come you can afford all the dlc for EU4.
EU4 is more important than food
@@a.f.nik.4210 You make a fair argument
Pirate the game?
I mean it's possible to do it if you search hard enough, and it's also relatively safe
I'm sorry but it doesn't work at all.
Restarted an insane amount of times.
Ottomans 5k never on the Anatolian side.
As soon as I siege down Selanik they just ignore Constantinople and come to kill all my troops ASAP.
Dunno if the hotfix changed some behaviour, but no matter how many times I try it, the whole thing is not working
I spent an hour rewatching this but when tried it I lost all of my armies in the second month
I have a method which worked extremely well for me in my playthrough that I've dubbed the Vassal Strat. The concept is based around the idea of releasing one or both of the OPMs within your borders at game start to increase your forcelimit, get extra vassal troops, and the Ai seeing you as stronger due to the latter mentioned. It makes early game alliances much easier and makes repelling hungry kebabs much easier due to every province of yours now having a capital fort. I was able to reclaim the Balkans within about 30 or so years. So that's something.
Oh my god how did I never think of that
Also lets you join a trade league to deter ottoman aggression when they mass on your borders
using this strat my game is at 1470 and i've reconquered the balkans, 7th greatest power, and im pushing into anatolia with no difficulty besides a few venetians...
Paradox: hehe they’ll never beat the ottomans with this patch nerf..
Gamers: Ottomans capitulate in 2 years
Paradox: ....
*Paradox has left the chat*
Paradox in the next update: ottoman gets another bonus
No luck reliance strat my arse. I follow the guide exactly but the Ottoman 14k stack always intercepts my Army instead of heading for Constantinople
Edit: Ended up waiting for the first Otto army to pass. then sieged Selanik. Then had to relieve Constantinople which was besieged by the Crimeans. Then sieged Edirne out, then attacked small stacks in Greece until they were all gone (Ottos retreated across the straits which I controlled). In this run I actually forgot to move the 1k in Constantinople, and it got wiped. Although this resulted in more Turks coming into Greece, I was able to take Edirne and take the straits that way.
Actually a great guide. First one I've tried that has worked for me. Using this guide even as a base, and improvising, victory is still possible
Edit 2: After I beat the Crimean army in Constantinople, the PLC declared war on them, unfortunately the Turks didn't join that war, would've been extremely lucky if they did though.
Also the one time the 4k was on the Balkans side for me is the time that I won
ive tried a few times but the ottos just have their navy stationed in the hellus pond even before i declare war
Hellus pond is the best pond.
Thats hellas* as in greek. Thats strange in all my games he only had his transport fleet and trade fleet out which you can easily beat, he never even sent any galleys, are you playing on 1.28? was he at war?
Hey Budget Monk , great video man. Didn't exactly pull off the strat but it did help ALOT , I'm in the 1500's and I'm almost a world power. Thanks again !!!!
Man Im impressed on the skill of some players. Ive got thousands of hours logged and I still suck.
Hi. Nice one again BudgetMonk ! I did your 1.27 version of Byzantium only vs Ottomans in this 1.28 patch. It wasn't easy with Aq Qoyunlu presuring my little stacks on the anatolian side (while Ottomans waited in front of Constantinople doors). I succed to have à 75% warscore + low enthusiasm Ottomans. The war took 3,5 years. Peace deal were : All the core provinces + war reparation + 192 ducats ! :D But I guess this Albania quick alliance helps. ;)
Am I missing something everyone else is not? This is not at all how the Ottomans react in my games. They keep a 15 and 14 stack in their two European provinces with forts. These do run away from my large army, but they easily wipe out my Constantinople army in time before it can take their fort. Furthermore, they keep a single ship in the Straits that my navy needs to kill before my army can cross, which delays it too much to even have a chance.
So I can occupy one Ottoman fort, but then their armies join up and defeat me. It seems you still need allies.
It works like this for me. The only difference is the 5 stack will not nuke your 1 stack in Yanya and instead go into Selanik.
@@TheRealXartaX That 5 stack you're talking about turned into a 13 stack for me.
@@OCinneide @TheRealXartaX That's the same story for me. This video shows far less Ottoman units than actually show up in-game.
@@The_Byzantine_Ottoman I nearly got it to work but then the ottomans jumped my blockade and had a thirty stack on Makedonia. I tried attacking them with skanbro and 25k army but we lost.
And how can he ask for Edirne without controlling the fort?
Thanks for this man, it took me several attempts and it didn't really work as planned but following this straight probably saved me from destruction because it allowed me to get a white peace with them and bought me a bunch of time to improve relations with Hungary to the point of getting an alliance (and declaring war on the Ottomans gave a high enough opinion bonus to make the difference)
looking forward to seeing your streams man
this was an amazing vid, tried it, got it the first time right, took me about 2 and a half hour, but it worked like a charm, ty homie!!
I have a weird problem. The 5k stack you mention isn't anywhere to be seen (which is good I suppose), but trapping the larger armies on the Greco-side seems to cause problems.
Only one of their armies ever attacks Constantinople at any time, so I have trouble trying to capture anywhere without having to run from their other army.
Also, I don't have the dlc so I can't build troops in Athens, meaning I have significantly less troops than in the video when the war starts.
Try to keep your forces on Attachable to pull the Albanians to your army, so that winning that first battle against their 14k is more doable (preferably on Macedonia). Usually the the other stack will sit on Constantinople for the whole war, and never attempt to fight you.
After Macedonia is sieged down, head STRAIGHT for Anatolia (leave a few 1k behind to siege Bulgaria), and hope that both stacks don't take Macedonia and Constantinople before you siege down most of Anatolia.
Also, keep your fleet in the sea with the Constantinople and Edirne straits, so that the AI is more inclined to siege your forts instead of going after your armies.
You should also be able to safely wait a couple more months for those extra troops to build in Achea and Morea, as what matters is not WHEN they're built, but WHERE they're built, so that the Turk's forts are still mothballed.
This format is great Monk, thanks a lot! Very entertaining!
The flaw of this strategy appears when the Ottomans hire a military engineer for that extra 20% defensiveness...
What would that do? when there is 0 garrison it only takes one tick and even if it stretches out the siege tick you should have enough time with a little luck
I was just checking your channel for this video last week. Thanks for the late Christmas Present!
Yo BudgetMonk!
Beautiful guide, but i encountered multiple problems.
Ottomans always mantains 14k stack with no general at full morale AND the 5k Balkan side.
Normally i go for selanik and i managed to kill the 5k, but even with the help of the albanians general i always lose the second battle where 15k full morale troops come into selanik.
The fleet is another big problem because at a certain point they finish to build 6-7 more galleys and they effectively start to using them to stop the naval blocking.
Last but not least: many many times ottomans allies 2 or 3 countries.
Suggestions?
Build more troops, take more loans. The issue is if the 14 + 16 stack stays in Greece. Then the loans amount gets quite big and even after you get more development, you cant debt restructure using Florrynomics.
@@terrencesauve thank you man, but i managed to do it with my strategy! I've done Basileus, ruina iimperi and mare nostrum with my byzantium and i managed to reform Roman Empire too, but thank you anyway for your answer :)
@@enricomalfi8127 Nice, ill add them to my list of achievements that I will work on using the run I decided to keep. Thanks.
man those tips on the timing your travel and getting the forts in a month were op, the maintenance ones too, game changer i now know i have to beat the ai at their own game, mathematically
Sure beating the ottomans as Byzantium is easy. But can you beat Byzantium as the ottomans?
no thats wayyyy too difficult dude that's pure rng and pain and suffering maybe 1 in a million times if the starts align but other than that there is no possible way, even with cheats. tbf paradox needs to nerf byz, they are way too op
.
Yes exactly, Everytime I got amazed by how military genius Mehmet II beat Byzantium with his compared to Byzantium, little army that I start crying.
Few notes:
Ignore the concerns for athens disbanding its troops. Never had that happen. Just keep your army maintenance at low until april, then launch.
If you dont see the 5k stack on the western shore of anatolia, restart. This will happen ~80% of the time. Using bait wont work, rolling a good general wont work, clearing the stack quickly wont work. Just restart if it is on the Balkan subcontinent.
Crimea as an ally is really the best case scenario. AQ is a bitch to deal with and makes your anatolia sieges take way longer than you have time for.
Dont give the burghers monopoly charters, that will lower youre prestige too much and make it impossible to ally Albania in April.
Other than these points, this is an excellent guide that will work perfectly IF you follow the steps perfectly AND you get lucky with the start. The scenario described in the video is literally a 1 in 10 start. You'll have to reroll for it.
who do you rival, and also could you show when the 5k is on the greek side, as from what .i've seen they always go to selanik. also you should have shown aq since its much harder than crimea, you need to get access with multiple people, like karaman, mamluks, trebizond
Monk you absolute legend, I think this is your best one yet
Guys in my recent attempt I declared war on 2 july 1445 and when I look at the ottoman navy they deleted all of their galleys, one month before they had those galleys but now they dont. I restarted several times but they kept doing it. I'm just curious is it just happening to me or all the time ?
Thats an odd occurrence
I made some crappy notes, but please still watch the video because there are a lot of details these notes don't communicate. This is just a quick reference after you've watched the video:
docs.google.com/document/d/1H_IqVAEhoAL85UyLCD54FSNPFXGPMtYl_heQ0uHTUpg/edit?usp=sharing
"Pride and Accomplishment....."
It's confirmed, EA did 1453.
There is one rng thing that completely fucks this start. When the AI rolls a 3 or higher maneuver general and assigns it to the 5-stack in mantesha, it will get to your 1-stack before it can siege down the fort across the strait.
Been trying to make this start work for hours now... still no luck. Granted, most of the early failures were to my mistakes, but this is one thing I can't see a way to get around.
credit to people in facebook:
next video budgetmonk is gonna make a guide to own as byzantium by 1444
If Candar doesn't want your provinces ~50% of the time, you can ask for access. Drop your troop (1 mercenary) in Candar the 2nd of the month, which gives you enough time to conquer ankara as well. You could do the same with the Genovese province, but you can rarely get access and Boglu is usually maintained.
As mentioned in 7:41 without the Cradle of civilization this method becomes more difficult. One of the 14k stacks goes to constantinople, the other "roams" to Thessaloniki. If you engage, the other stack will join, this thus actively prevents you from sieging Thessaloniki before the end of the month. You now have to siege T, while two ottoman armies are sieging Constantinople and Athens. You can win the siege race (as you have naval blockade and they don't) and you can consistently win battles for a pricy ~5k manpower with Athens & Albania being of vital importance here.
So without the DLC, the result is the same. The greek part is just a bit more messy
I did this so wrong lol, I moved on the forts after the months ticked by and instead of going to constantinople his army charged right at me. Somehow though, I stackwiped him with Albania and won the war.
You can park in Albania your main stack and the 14-15 stack from Ottomans will move away from the mothballed fort. For 2 runs I ended up fighting that 14-15 Otto stack with Albania and literally crushed them, they ran off to Anatolia, so I couldnt seige anything there. It still worked out anyways and I had to deal with AQ on top of that. It also helps to sortie if you want to defend your Capital, the extra 3k is really worth it!
Note that this works only in Normal difficulty (for the timing at least) as from Hard you have a -20 to any alliance request (even Theodoro won’t ally you D1)
Good strategy either way
It's pronounced a-ke-a. Every Greek loanword in English has its ch's pronounced as k's.
IKEA?
@@saibam8971 lol
I mean... the actual Greek pronounciation is /axaˈia/, so the "ch" is a voiceless velar fricative (like the "gh" in "ugh"). /əˈkiːə/ is quite the terrible bastardization of that. Not like there's a "correct" English way to say it.
@@d4n4nable It is the standard pronounciation of Greek words. It is not "correct" in a sense that it is not identical to modern demotic Greek pronunciation, but then you don't say "Moskva" and "Műnchen" instead of "Moscow" and "Munich". Not every word is loaned with it's original pronunciation, especially since English lacks sounds like the frichative chi, but there are established conventions.
@@sergey7375 That is why Scots is a beautiful language.
btw thanks for making a second video because i pulled off bizantyum 3 times already but im always wrecked and lose after a while
Tomorrow is my day off. They next day it should be up keep an eye out.
Doesn't work for me, Ottomans don't mothball forts.
They moth and unmoth them all the time. Just wait for them both to be unmothballed before declaring war.
The two times I tried, first I missed the 3 boats and thus lost the control of the Constantinople strait, making me ragequit. Second time everything went perfectly but my general had too much maneuver and I missed my chance to cancel moving to Selanik while his 15k stack was already there, making me lose 16k instant because of my low morale and ragequitting again. But one day...
@@etiennecaron812 hahaha ragequitter kid
@@suluayran121 I succeeded since then so I guess not
@@suluayran121 I mean it is Byzantium, there entire opening strait is basically 1 mistake time to reload
Now I'd like to see a proper campaign with you playing as Biz and restoring Rome. Really man!
Does this strategy work if th ottomans build 43 ships (well beyond the force limit) i even pass my navy limit and still lose any tips to solve this navy problem or do i just have to use a different strategy?
Keep in mind that the Ottomans allying Crimea isn't the hardest version of this start. It's actually them allying AQ, with AQ also allying Karaman. It pretty much ensures you cannot reliably separate peace AQ as Karaman will never give you military access.
I've also found that if they get a morale advisor, they will not move both stacks to Constantinople. They'll keep one in Edirne, merge with the 5k and attack your Selanik stack. You can win the battle, but because their entire army is no longer parked in Constantinople and you cannot occupy both Kocaeli and Biga in time to stackwipe the Ottomans, the war is infinitely tougher.
I'm also really surprised you didn't capitalize on the opportunity to truce reset the Ottomans by attacking and white peacing Ragusa.
How do you get naval supremacy with the help off albania? even with their fleet the ottomans navy at game start is much stronger
dont let the ottomans unite their fleet as you saw in this video he blockaded a stack in ederne and destroyed their trade fleet.
@@explosiongames11 They always have a fleet of 20 galley i dont have a slightly chance to defeat
@@_coolman_8941 they dont have 20 galleys they have like just over 20 ships total, and the key is to not let them join up their fleets, they wont have a 20 ship doom stack they have like a few small stacks that you can beat especially if your allies attach to you
Can confirm that this does work on 1.29. AI can get a little screwy, and likes to attack you when you're sieging down Macedonia (or whatever the Ottoman's call it). But if you've built up enough of a military, and Skanderberg makes it to you in time, they practically just suicide into you, and you get some free warscore. All in all though, still effective enough to be a viable strategy.
I was saying WUT the entire video.
Still do couple hours later
always enjoys your vods mate, keep it up buddy
So I have now tried this about 15 times but the 5 stack will always be on the fort when I arrive so first my army fights and after that the garrison is at 140. Does anyone know a workaround about those 5k?
I feel like Budget hasnt tested this, the 5k stack is always on the greece side and fucks up taking Selanik. My best run was rolling a great general wiping the 5k stack and then his 14k didnt want to reinforce while ottomans garenteed 3 countries instead of getting allies. I feel like there is far too much rng in this method to make it viable. Even putting the 1 stack on Yanya like he suggested to lure the 5k stack into attacking it doesnt work.
Check your timing/maneuvre a bit. Basically you are going too fast and catch the 5k on their way to Edirne. Try to wait a day or two before moving to Selanik and check the tooltip for the actual arrival day.
Dude you are a fucking legend, thank you so much for helping me finally survive as the byz
Doesn't work. They just teleported 30k troops in Greece
0:45 “add it to the burgers” - budgetmonk 2018
Every time I try this a stack of 16k and 14k spawn and stay on the european side…
Wow, over 10 months later, and I can say that this strategy still works, especially if you get a lucky start where the 5 or 6 stack is on the Anatolian side
I haven't been able to pull off a Byzantium run in years, but this strat let me 80% the Ottos, with 3 loans, in 1447
I have tried this strategy like 30 fucking times I swear yet it still comes down to luck with the siege of Edirne. I had a game where all I needed to do was siege Edirne but it was just stuck on that fucking 40-75% and wouldn't siege but then the Ottomans got Constantinople at 7%. I mean come the fuck on EUIV what is this shit.
Something I've seen in 1.29, without being sure if the version makes any difference, is that Wallachia is almost a day one alliance. They have a nice 8 stack of troops and a fort plus their capital. The Ottomans split their troops to go siege them out and I was able to eventually wipe both their stacks, which forced them to start merc'ing up. There was a bit of luck involved with the Ottomans not getting a lucky 7% to occupy Constantinople and my economy was half ruined for a few decades, but the Ottomans from that point on collapsed. Every nation around them attacked them after me, I had a very easy second war and from that point on the Ottomans were a lesser danger than the Karamans or Aq'Qunlu.
I imagine this may work for many people but ive tried three times and each time didnt work because of some rng. Maybe I'm just dumb but if the ottomans ally AQ and not Crimea then they reoccupy the fort before you can even reach Anatolia completely ruining the strat. There was another time where the ottomans didnt put both stacks on Constantinople and instead took their fully maintained army and took out my army in the Balkans. The final time the 5k stack never left the occupied fort after destroying the 1k stack that was there. Maybe im just extremely unlucky but this start hasnt worked at all for me and ive followed every step.
In my last game they even vassal crimea right from start..... Both AQ and crimea tough nut to crack
for me, one stack went to Constantinople while the other was roaming the Balkans, sieging down selanik and my other holdings. However, using Skanderbeg, as well as only sending about 4-5k troops to Anatolia, meant that I could crush the 1st Turkish stack before the 2nd got to me, meaning they could never break thru constantinople. also declare war on 1st of june and always move troops immediately.
This is literally a ritual for you, and I love that fact. Going to have to try out one of your strategies sometime as Byzantium- I only did well in my Byzantine game because I didn't have the Cossacks and since a legend happened. The Mamluks attacked the Ottomans. Literally couldn't get more lucky than that.
Unholy alliance: Byzantium and Mamluks
I started 2 times as Byzantium. Both times Ottomans already had much more navy (~25 ships). Is it random?
They have 3 lights, 12 cogs and 8 galleys = 23 ships. The problems that they have include the fact that you instantly kill the lights when declaring the war. = 20 And they have the galleys and cogs docked at 2 different locations. They will be intimidated to pull them out unless you actually engage in a significant naval battle that they can reinforce. Keep in mind that you also have Athens navy and in this case Albania.
@@BudgetMonk In my case, the 2nd time I played as Byzantium, I was allied with Austria, Hungary and mamluks. We got raped in the sea. We only won because of our combined land forces. Of course we didn't attack right away and they had the time to build more navy. And I just remembered that ottomans were also in war with Venice. They destroyed their navy too. Kebap naval power. Lol
Thanks man, Great strategy! Got it working for me after a few tries.
They must have already put out a patch to change something about the AI behavior because I cannot get this strategy to work. I followed everything you did down to the day, but the Ottomans NEVER have their 5k stack in Anatolia, and they almost always have two 15k stacks in the Balkans. They also almost always have a barque or galley in the Hellespont so that you can't cross, and about 50% of the time they don't sit on Constantinople, they send out one of the 15k stacks to hunt you down and wipe you out usually by the time I'm sieging Edirne. This sucks, I have no idea why Paradox keeps nerfing Byzantium with every patch, or why they think it's an awesome idea to give the Ottomans 30 galleys at game start. I understand it's supposed to be challenging but this kind of one-sided unbalanced shit, especially in a multiplayer game, is completely unacceptable.
if you dont play on scrub difficulty you cannot make any of budgetmonk strat work
It's a Swedish game studio, and we know how the Swedes grovel at the feet of Turks.
I had a similar game start the other day, but in reflection seems like it went a bit easier. I only built my galleys and troops up to the force limit, but managed to get Albania, Wallachia, Karaman, Trebizond and Theodorro as allies. The AI Ottomans were continually shifting their troops from bordering Thrace to bordering Candar, as in they could not make up their mind on who to attack.
Luckily for me they went for Candar, which brought Karaman and Crimea in as their defensive allies. The Ottomans moved all their troops to Asia minor, with 30k besieging Sinop and the rest chasing Candar and Karaman's troops around with their allies. Importantly though their fleet was split into a 17 galley stack and a stack of mostly transports. They had the later parked in the Sea of Marmara.
Making sure all their troops were in Anatolia I DW'd them, bringing Albania along with a promise of land. I immediately destroyed their transport fleet in the Sea of Marmara, and combined with the Athenian and Crimean fleet I was able to destroy their main galley fleet in the Aegean. As a result I was able to siege their Greek and Balkan provinces without interference. I had to wait a while, but my WE was virtually nothing, and a few quickly timed cavalry incursions to grab a few Anatolian provinces gave me enough WS to take all my cores. Although the Ottomans eventually annexed Candar, they were massively in debt and had very high WE. They had constant rebellions and had to reduce their army to 18k troops, well below their force limit. I on the other hand had no loans, virtually no losses and had recovered all my cores.
After this I was able to ally Lithuania (not in PU with Poland) to replace Albania, who were a bit pissed I didn't give them any land. The Ottomans weren't keeping any troops in their remaining European territories, so when the truce expired i DW'd again, with no allies this time. Again I smashed their reconstructed navy and captured all the Balkans, holding out for my demands, which they gave into when the Mamalukes DW'd them. Now I have all their European provinces besides one of the Albanian ones and was also able to get Corcyra and Chios via Greek rebels.
My next conquest is about to happen as the Mamalukes have again DW'd them and my truce expires in a year. I intend to grab as much of the western coastline as possible, with an eventual push into Serbia and Bosnia also planned.
After trying this for a full 12 hours I can confirm that this strat is dead in the current patch. It offers a good base for you to form your own or combine with other starting strats, but as it stands the ottos just leave Const. with their 14 stack to attack you in selink as soon as you get there.
Also, just some friendly advice speak a little slower and elaborate just a little bit on why/how the mechanics and possible plan b's of what you're doing.
It's a tutorial video, not a speed run to explain the strat as fast as possible.
Keep up the good work though man!!
I am streaming on Very hard byz each day right now. I used this strat when he had an extra 14k stack. Go watch my vod of 3 days ago. It took 2 trys.
@@BudgetMonk I'll have to man, been trying it all day to no avail. Thanks for the response and the strat! Keep up the good vids man!!
It is most likely due to dlc. They prob behave differently with dlc. The small things really matter.@@zanewernli9972
@@BudgetMonk Yea, I have all dlc. I watched a good portion of your twitch stream. You were able to go into more detail about the why/how the moves you were taking which really helped put perspective on things. Gonna keep watching some of those and give it a try again. You're a damn madman for declaring on ottos without Albania lol.
Fun drinking game: Drink a shot every time you have to restart byzantium...
When you restart byzantium, you must also re-watch the video XD
see when i do this the ottomans destory my fleet with their 40+ starting fleet and take Constantinople in 3 months :(
Best series on youtube