A very gamey Byzantine guide

[Ianchen99]

Difficulty: Monarch, Normal Speed
UHV 1: Get 5000 GOLD by 1000 AD
UHV 2: Constantinople highest Pop + highest culture
UHV 3: Control 3 Balkan cities, 3 North Africa cities, 3 Near East cities


When i load the game i see that there's NO Rome, no Greece no any civs BESIDES Persia.
Get the tech that enables Vassalage for your first tech, then turn slider to 0%, Constantinople build all buildings that give culture (Hagia Sophia, UB, monuement, Theodosian Walls etc) all other cities build market then build wealth.

Change civics to Monarchy (optional), Slavery (optional), Vassalage (very important), redistribution (important) and the one that gives +50% great person rate..... (very important)

Move all ur combat units to North Western Greece as tons of barb will try to attack ur cities from that direction
Later on move ur combat units north of ur capital to kill off horseman barbs.
Abandon Jerusalem when Arabia spawns.
Build a lot of UUs and station in ur capital, move all ur archers to Constantinople and wait for Ottomans to spawn.
Also buy techs from all nations possible with ur 5k gold. I got like 7-8 techs there, one of them lets me upgrade my archers to longbowman.
Wait for Ottomans to attack ur capital and weaken their stack, once their jannisaries are weakened, use ur UU to attack their stack.

UHV1: GET $$

Get 1 or 2 Great merchant from other cities (not Constantinople) and conduct trade missions. I realized that by sending it to Jerusalem I get 1800 gold (whereas Cairo only give me 900 gold). I still don't get how the amount is calculated

With only 1 Great Merchant and 0% slider, wealth in all cities (remember to build 1 fishing boat for capital) i was able to get 5100ish around 1000AD.

UHV 2: Highest Pop, Highest Culture in Capital
So the biggest rival for highest pop is Korea apparently with 20 pop, so aim for 20 pop in the capital and u should be fine. Turn on FOOD focus.
Aim for around 4k culture in capital. I got 1 Great Artist which gives me 1600 culture.
I moved my slider to 100% culture right after 1000AD. And i got like 4.5k culture by 1200AD.

UHV 3: THE gamey part (very situational/depends on luck)
So in my game Arabia collapsed because of the seljuks, so i used my UU to capture 2 North Africa cities (Cairo + Sirt). I build a settler and found "Alexandria" next to the dye. North Africa check!
For "Near East", I realized that you can get 1 city in Crete, 1 city on the copper and both of them counts.
For the last city, i just waited around 1440 and settle Smyrna 2 tiles next to my capital, and DONE.

I avoid fighting the Mongols. (Note: I realized that if i take over Jerusalem/Iraq, the Mongols will spawn and attack my cities, so i did not take Jerusalem or any other cities in near east) XD

 

[Orbii]

Some additional points that I have stated at various points but which are relevant.

1. The 600 AD start is easier than the 3000 BC scenario. You start in a better tech position, with a controlled amount of units, usually better city placements, and the Theodosian Walls and Hagia Sophia pre-built in Constantinople (and Mount Athos/The Parthenon in Athens). These are hammers and beakers that are simply impossible to produce in the 20-ish turn head-start which 3000 BC gives you. With the new tech tree obsoleting classical wonders much sooner than before, the benefits of classical wonders from Rome/Greece also diminishes quickly. There are also less barbarians running around.
2. Three Great Merchants is the easiest way to beat UHV 1. Running the gold slider at 100% is usually unnecessary for any longer than a few turns to round things out. As for why Jerusalem gave more gold than Cairo in your game, holy cities always give more gold on trade missions. For 600AD, the Indian holy cities are the best targets for GM's.
3. UHV 2 is essentially auto-completed in 600 AD. No other city on the map has sufficient in-built culture to rebuff Constantinople. In the event that China procs a Great Artist, you have enough turns between 1000 AD and 1200 AD to push a Great Artist out of Athens.
4. Monarchy isn't necessary. Take advantage of the Hippodrome and the culture slider - 20% or so is enough to grow all your cities to their health/food caps, while also assisting in UHV 2.
5. I have never required Redistribution to complete the population half of UHV 2, but again, I play from the 600 AD start.
6. Likewise, Despotism is crucial to early infrastructure development and pushing out armies. Manoralism is better than Slavery both in the types of improvements it boosts (you have more farms/pastures than mines/quarries) and for its bonus worker production.
7. Monasticism is useful but optional. I have generated 4 - 5 Great People before 1000 AD without it (using the +25% hammers to building civic instead). You can usually get 2 out of Alexandria, 3 out of Constantinople, and 1 out of Athens.
8. For army composition, generally speaking the UU is useful when looking west, and Horse Archers when looking east. Playing for the UHV, it is strictly better to build mainly Horse Archers (3:1 Horse Archers:Cataphracts) as everything that spawns from the East wrecks Cataphracts (all heavy cavalry actually). Trained Horse Archers get better results in the field than Cataphracts regardless of what you are fighting and cost less hammers.
9. UHV 3 can be gamed in several ways:
   1. If you are even in the running for the victory, the Balkans is auto-completed.
   2. North Africa should be the easiest to secure, as the Arabs almost uniformly collapse to either the Seljuqs or the Ottomans.
   3. Anatolia/Levant can be gamed around the Ottomans by simply settling the Levant with 3 cities, or by beating the Ottomans in the field, or never letting the Ottomans spawn. This is the approach you noted.

The best way to clear the UHV is to neuter the Arabs on spawn, but that requires game-y strats, while everything I have written above is generally straightforward.

Just to be clear, I don't particular disagree with anything that has been written; it will work because the Byzantine UHV is easy, but the above approaches secures Paragon victories with few complications.

 

[Ianchen99]

Oh i see. It's basically my first try on the Byzantines and i don't know that the 600 AD start gives both the Theodosian Walls + Hagia Sophia which is obviously better than the 3000 BC start. Yeah, i just didn't experiement too much and went for slavery/monarchy (cuz i think that's what the Byzantines do irl). In my 3000 BC start, Korea is the one that has 20 pop so i use redistribution and got my capital to barely 20 pop around 1050 AD. Actually, Shush was the one with the highest culture around 1000 AD even after i put 1 GA in Constantinople. So that's why i still put my slider to culture. (Not mix maxing here so i just put 100% on culture).

Regarding the Great Merchants, is the "conduct trade mission" based on population and distance? Oh and thanks for telling me that holy cities give double coins (never knew that)

Also did you ever encounter the Mongols? Is it by random chance? One time, the Ottomans capitualted to me and immediately after that the Mongols spawned with 3 doom stacks (1 in Egypt, 1 in Anatolia and 1 in Middle East).
So that's why i just decided to screw it and settle the crappy cities in Crete and Cyprus.

 

[Orbii]

I'll respond to your points in order:

1. Despotism/Manoralism is probably the closest to the Byzantine set-up, with Despotism in particular being the closer model to the Byzantine conceptions of their Emperor. These are also the default civics for the 600AD start (3000 BC is Despotism/Slavery instead).
2. The concerns you raised about Seoul and Shush are exactly why 600AD is easier, and all my comments assumed a 600AD start. You will obviously have some difficulties with 3000 BC due to the variance inherent in the 200ish turns.
3. For Great Merchants, distance and population do play a role, to an extent. 1800/2000 gold is probably the best you can hope for; the Indian holy city is the easiest for this. Rome and Mecca are also options, but the moral is go for a holy city.
4. Mongols spawn stacks when they make contact with you. I'm not sure if you need to have cities in Anatolia as a minimum check, and I almost always have cities up to Iran so I cannot verify. The stacks spawning are exactly as you noted, but Horse Archers are a good enough counter (especially with the exp they get after Seljuqs). Your example is likely due to the Ottomans having already made contact with the Mongols, and you getting contact by proxy.

 

[troubleshooting]

Has any of this changed in the past two years? I keep getting beat in population by Luoyang and getting stomped by the Seljuks but it’s possible I just haven’t found an optimal approach yet.

 

[black213]

Has any of this changed in the past two years? I keep getting beat in population by Luoyang and getting stomped by the Seljuks but it’s possible I just haven’t found an optimal approach yet.

If you're playing from the 3000BC start, you probably will need to use Redistribution to meet the pop goal and perhaps also use artists in Constantinople, while using merchants in another city to get the gold goal. Military-wise, Cataphracts are key!

 

[troubleshooting]

Thanks! I cracked it a few weeks back, been banging my head against the concrete wall that is the Japan UHV lately

 

[black213]

Thanks! I cracked it a few weeks back, been banging my head against the concrete wall that is the Japan UHV lately

Japan's UHV is something I've never even dared to attempt, par for the two first goals. Did recently hear somewhere on this forum that it's possible though!

 

[brett0007]

If you want to go into pure cheese, you can reconquer the Levant and Egypt, move the Levantine garrisons to the wine resource 1SW of Ikonium, and the Egyptian to the independent controlled tile 1NE of Hesperides. Load the Athenian garrison onto your boats, when the flip comes let them go, and assuming you stated off at war you move the garrison to retake Alexandria, Cairo,and Damascus. Use the garrison from athens to retake Jerusalem. By this point the ai will usually make peace, optionally for overcheese you can with a correctly positioned Cataphract raze Baghdad, denying the arabs a large army that spawns with it. After this you basically have domination of the middle east and can start prepping for the seljuks. Last extra special tip the ottomans dont spawn if the seljuks don't have a city west of the zagros mountains.