It's a suggestion on the beta-patch forum to remove the restriction on the limit of Monarch stats, atm unless you get an event you can only get heirs with 8 max at his stats...
In short, republics can get 9s, Monarchies can only get 8s.
The worst wars for the Byzantines are in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, when you're big enough to border multiple serious rivals, but not big enough to easily kill all of them at the same time. After that, it's more or less smooth sailing, with most wars being micromanagement unless you deliberately let powerful enemies survive long enough to become legitimate threats.
To be entirely honest, I never really noticed the Habsburgs in particular getting all that uppity in the areas in which I tended to hang out before I westernized, and I always figured the lolstria hate was a bit overblown (trollhemia tended to dominate in my games). They'd never manage to consistently hang on to Hungary, and their Italian campaigns would invariably fizzle after getting a lodgement in Lombardy. At most they'd have a firm grip on northern Italy by the mid-sixteenth century.In my HttT Byzantine game, the biggest problem was when I got on the Habsburg s*** list when I was still an Eastern-tech country. I had a couple terrible wars before I was able to Westernize properly.
To be entirely honest, I never really noticed the Habsburgs in particular getting all that uppity in the areas in which I tended to hang out before I westernized, and I always figured the lolstria hate was a bit overblown (trollhemia tended to dominate in my games). They'd never manage to consistently hang on to Hungary, and their Italian campaigns would invariably fizzle after getting a lodgement in Lombardy. At most they'd have a firm grip on northern Italy by the mid-sixteenth century.
But the principle is basically the same, sure: strong opponents in east and west before you're capable of fending them all off simultaneously, whatever route you need to take to fend them off (numerical superiority, teching up, etc.) will make trouble for you.
One of my biggest problems as Byzantium was the numerous declarations of war in the 17th century from a European Holy League of Spain, France, and Britain, who for some reason found it in their best interests to continually harass me, especially with large-scale naval conflicts and amphibious landings in Greece.
It came down to guerrilla tactics with my navy (which was smaller than their unified naval forces, albeit not by much) and a heroic stand by my Bulgarian Border Army in Macedonia against several large-scale amphibious landings. It didn't help that I was simultaneously fighting a massive war against a Mughal super-empire involving hundreds of thousands of men, both sides combined.
New beta patch:
- Ottoman AI should no longer be crippled by the provincial system decision.
- All console commands now take lower case tags
- add_core effect now accepts country tags as argument
- Forming pentarchy now also removes the papal controller.
- National Focus and other local status in your own territory no longer boosts enemy colonization of your precious horde.
- Monarchs can now get to 9.
- AI can no longer stop a navy in the middle of a retreat.
- Reduced the force limits from level 5 and 6 buildings a bit.
- Fleets can now be forced to retreat back to port if low morale before the first 12 days of battle is up.
Duke of Britain should like that bolded one.