[RFC:E] . The Roman Emperors

[Optical]

Idea: overwhelm Rome with culture!

 

[Tigranes]

Rome ALWAYS has its BFC. No way to do anything with Rome. I consider OB and my troops in Rome as the proof that I am controlling it.

Did you trade Monorealism from Pope? Saves you 3 turns of research

Re: Aleppo Road and 2nd Thraki Tourma pic: the first order for my Worker is to connect perpetually attacked Caesaria to Antiochia. I am surprised you still holding the city, your free wins are long over.

Also your economy does much better at this time than usually does mine. Probably because I build Workers as my first building order in EVERY city (so much land to improve). Looking at you deficit (I was running -40 maybe) I am not even sure which strategy is better though... Perhaps you will be in disadvantage in a long run?

 

[Danger Bird]

Rome ALWAYS has its BFC. No way to do anything with Rome. I consider OB and my troops in Rome as the proof that I am controlling it.

Sounds good to me.

Did you trade Monorealism from Pope? Saves you 3 turns of research

No, unfortunately research Manorialism myself. And I don't think I've really used it yet, so that was a mistake. I thought I would want to build cottages soon, but it's been mostly farms, mines, quarries, plantations so far.

QUESTION for seasoned RFC:Eers: At what point does it become worth it to switch civics to Manorialism? I have a few farms now, so it might be a good choice, but I really don't like the -1 trade routes. By my quick calculation, I would lose 40 commerce if I switched, so, without Manor Houses (which sort of make up for the lost trade route), I would need 40 farms to make it worthwhile. I guess it depends how long I think I might stay using Manorialism: if a long time, it is worth building those Manor Houses, but if not so long, then maybe I shouldn't switch. sigh: playing RFC is such a mental strain. )

Re: Aleppo Road and 2nd Thraki Tourma pic: the first order for my Worker is to connect perpetually attacked Caesaria to Antiochia. I am surprised you still holding the city, your free wins are long over.

Actually, the way it worked out for me was that Aleppo was attacked first, so that got my attention on defending that. But more recently its been Caesarea, and now (612) Sinope. I am also surprised I've survived. I won't stay so lucky, so I am building a road now (early 600s).

Also your economy does much better at this time than usually does mine. Probably because I build Workers as my first building order in EVERY city (so much land to improve). Looking at you deficit (I was running -40 maybe) I am not even sure which strategy is better though... Perhaps you will be in disadvantage in a long run?

I have 5 workers, probably too few, but OTOH, there is a lot of land I can't improve - potential mines and quarries covered by forests I can't chop yet. And I am almost keeping pace with the cities' growth, that is, most tiles worked are improved in some way. I will be building more though. And I'm also wondering whether I should build settlers... No, probably not, as I'll be in a fight for my survival in a few turns.

 

[Tigranes]

By my quick calculation, I would lose 40 commerce if I switched, so, without Manor Houses (which sort of make up for the lost trade route), I would need 40 farms to make it worthwhile. I guess it depends how long I think I might stay using Manorialism: if a long time, it is worth building those Manor Houses, but if not so long, then maybe I shouldn't switch. sigh: playing RFC is such a mental strain. )

You end up building Manor Houses for Stability (+1) anyway, but please remember that =\=. Your research rate will drop considerably when you switch to Manorialism. If you can work those 40 Farms you better switch to Manorialism and Serfdom (+1 from the Farm) at the same time. Civs with few cities can switch to Manorialism easy, when you have that many cities you will loose too many trade roads, I personally don't even switch. Teching toward forest choping tech is my priority after few initial techs.

Barbs been effectively nerfed after Horse Archer --> Lancer replacement. In Beta 12 I always used to loose some city before Arabs spawn. I am very curious how will you greet them

 

[Danger Bird]

In Beta 12 I always used to loose some city before Arabs spawn. I am very curious how will you greet them

As for the Arabs, of course I will defeat them. Or I won't.

 

[christos200]

Are you going to continue and after 1453?

 

[Gruekiller]

Ooh, you should go all the way to 1800.

 

[Civ'ed]

Ooh, you should go all the way to 1800.

Wait until 1453, then switch to the next non-otto country and protect Byzantium so that it may survive.

 

[christos200]

with Gruekiller.

 

[Alexius08]

Wait until 1453, then switch to the next non-otto country and protect Byzantium so that it may survive.

Do it with Muscovy.

 

[Tigranes]

Even AI controlled Byzantium survives Turkish onslaught (more often than designers want to), and here we have such an intelligent human as Danger Bird Greek-Romans will prevail!

 

[hoplitejoe]

KILL BYZANTIUM

 

[christos200]

Rename byzantium << Greek orthodox empire>> and kill the turks.

 

[Tigranes]

Keeping Turks as your vassals is smarter. If you collapse them they might re-appear. It's hard to stay solid with Byzantium.

 

[Danger Bird]

From an anonymous author's tribute to Emperor Phocas, entitled A Soldier's Emperor , of which only a few pages remain. It is widely rumoured that the author was Phocas' illegitimate son, writing from exile after his father's execution.

Phocas, an unassuming leader in the 3rd Thraki Tourma defending the northern border, in 602 led a simple but perfect revolt of the army against the landed classes that had, for centuries, treated the men-at-arms as if they were baggage carriers, hired murderers, latrine diggers, and extortionists' goons. Phocas and his men had served faithfully on the bleak nothern borders of the empire, without proper clothing or weapons, and had been given assurances by each emissary sent by Maurice's court that their suffering and service would be rewarded. But when, in the midst of a mid-winter blizzard, the latest emissary arrived to tell them that, due to mounting expenses against the treasury, their supplies would have to be cut, and that, moreover, their services were urgently required on the eastern frontiers, Phocas politely asked whether the elite Excubitors, whose training camp at the same outpost was within earshot of their own, might possibly be called upon to reduce their weekly orders of wine, or of wood to heat their warmly-lit stone buidlings.

For this he was called in to the capital under the pretense of a briefing, and was imprisoned for four days while roughly questioned - on his affliliation with a certain team of chariot-riders, on his relationships with common people of Avar stock, and on his views on the republican Roman 'populists' - at one point meeting, and being slapped hard across the face, by the comes excubitorum himself.

He was released - they must have imagined he was suitable chastened - and sent back to his camp with orders to return to the campus martial with his tourma two weeks later to receive his redeployment orders. He did return, on the day that they appointed, and walked with his thousand and four hundred men up to the gates, waved to the archers on the walls, and then proceeded through, casually marching up the Mese and straight into the Great Palace. To the few guards who remained at their posts amid the rising alarm in the city he said, "We have come to see the Emperor, but I suppose he has gone."

The first order of business for Phocas was to hunt down the pompous Maurice, who had apparently crossed the Bosporus in a tub, and could not have been far from Chalcedon. The commander of the Nicaea tourma, an aristocrat, was not helpful. Phocas had many friends in the navy, however, and he thus ensured that the deposed Maurice would have to travel by land in Anatolia, where, except in Nicaea, his friends were few, or be spotted trying to cross to meet his allies in the capital or in Athens.

Next, he called a halt to the military adventures in the west, declaring that the 'restoration of empire' was a hobby of the rich and landed, and had no benefit for the soldier beyond the chance to shiver or boil in a hostile foreign land, guarding the estates of the patricians. He proposed renaming the empire 'Byzantium', settling the borders with neighbours on all sides once and for all, making concessions where necessary, and appropriating the land of the richest so that every soldier would retire to his own plot.

The Athenian and Thessalonican tourmai were in Sicily at the time, in the environs of the predominantly Greek city of Syracuse, which had been diminished by that time to a small fishing port, and their commanders were involved in lengthly negotiations with the local magistrates to secure provisions for their continuing campaign. The Sicilian Greeks, incorrigibly imperialistic in their mindset, had been overjoyed when the tourmai had arrived the year before, and the promise this held that their city would once again be a talked-about place of traders and money-lenders, prospering off the toil of of honest farmers and craftsmen in the western Mare Nostrum. Considering that the whole 'noble venture' for their benefit, they had been very stingy in providing supplies, but a deal had just been struck. Now, at the news that the tourmai were to be recalled, there was great consternation among the Sicilians, who saw their hopes being dashed, and a great many of the Athenian soldiers too, from patrician homes, denounced the 'treasonous' plans of the usurper Phocas, while the Thessalonicans and navy supported him. The soldiers divided into two camps, and the threat of battle hung over Syracuse that winter and well into the next year, with the locals refusing food to the soldiers loyal to the new emperor, and the oarsmen boarding their galleys and blockading the harbour until the locals relented. It was the oarsmen, too, who eventually resolved the situation by threatening to leave without the protesting Athenians, and to carry word of their disobedience to the emperor.


The impasse at Syracuse over the winter of 604-5.

In the late 610s reports came of a revolt in the Troad region, nominally governed from Smyrna. The revolters, as suspected, turned out to be rather wealthy landowners, sympathising with the deposed Maurice. Having crucified the prefect that Phocas had installed in the region, they began inciting the poor in other towns in the region, and were growing into a significant military presence, hundreds if not thousands of men, who, except for their well-adorned leaders, were armed mainly with crude axes. The Nicaea Garrison was called to Smyrna to help defend if necessary, and word was sent that the 1st Nicaea Tourma, patrolling the northern borders of Thraki, should make preparations to return home. In the end it was the Smyrna garrison that held out on its own, the archers from Nicaea having just arrived and barely learned the lay of the land when the attack came.


The Troad rebellion by supporters of Maurice.

Phocas was ambitious in his reforms of the army. While many before him had spoken wishfully of establishing a mounted guard, Phocas was the first to bring to fullness these plans, and he presided proudly over the dedication of the 1st Meros of horse archers in the campus martial just outside the city walls. He also put out orders to the rich Athenians to raise another tourma for the defence of the empire.

He did not neglect the development of the regions either. Tarsus, a focus of the new Emperor's work projects, was now self-sufficient in grain production, was directed to develop a system of courts modeled on that of the major cities. The development of the rich farming areas of Anatolikon continued apace, and roads crucial to the defence of the east were given high priority. Everywhere a spirit of the practical, the soldier's outloook, had taken hold. Only the Nicaeans, firmly in the grip of the church, were out of harmony in their efforts - the city was gaining a reputation for its rich, and pointless, monastic life.

Alas, one can only dream of the commoners' happiness that would have been if Phocas had been allowed to secure his legacy. His reign was cruelly cut short in 610 by the envious cabal of aristocrats led by the avaricious Heraclius and his son.

Spoiler Overview - full screenshot :

The Empire at 610:
Unstable. State religion: Christianity.
Treasury: 455 million solidi. Total commerce: 219.
Tax income: 65, Research: 136, Espionage: 18.
Expenses: 87 (Military maintenance: 14, Military supply: 1, City maintenance: 9, Civic maintenance: 63).

 

[hoplitejoe]

It makes me so sad you can't get all the resources on Scilly with one city

 

[ajsciri4]

I know I'm a tad late but with regards to the first posts: all strategy games offering Byzantium will cause the gamers to flock to it ;P
I play another game called Medieval 2: Total War, and you can control Byzantium, and most of the community favors Byzantium including me
So, cool!I'll start reading!

 

[momo1000]

None of the pics work for me

 

[Danger Bird]

I know I'm a tad late but with regards to the first posts: all strategy games offering Byzantium will cause the gamers to flock to it ;P
I play another game called Medieval 2: Total War, and you can control Byzantium, and most of the community favors Byzantium including me
So, cool!I'll start reading!

It's in one of the most interesting positions you could ask for - a vast, strung-out empire, poorly defended, with enemies about to pop up on all sides. And it has begun. As soon as I get the next couple updates up, you'll see what that looks like.

None of the pics work for me

Hmmm, Does anyone else have this problem?

What do you see exactly? (nothing? or some markup instead of the pic?)

 

[momo1000]

Nvm, they work now