Court expenses in the Byzantium empire are unbearable

[Commissar Antonios]

Unfortunately after the 10th-20th turn i usually go bankrupt no matter what i do.
I move all my freemen to economic productions, i sell all my metal and manpower to allies but nothing can stop the unfortunate end.

[Oubley]

You get penalties after only 5k unless storing in some kind of bank.

What are you other costs?

apparently a leader with admin of 2 is bad, what your leaders admin?
~ but personally get sort of perturbed when see something like that said in manual. cause even in games like Knights of Honor you can appoint stewards/merchants that influence things more directly.

so not sure if they are a two or less what you're supposed to do to change "bad" leader.... maybe off them and hope for the best?

[PocusFR]

Byzantium is one of the hardest nations to play. You need to keep a ruler with at least admin 3 on the throne (that's the case with the initial ruler, Constantine Monomachos), but the higher, the better. You might be unlucky and have him die rapidly, even if he is young. It's still salvageable, but it will be harder. So, if you don't feel like going the extra mile, reload your previous turn if he dies from an accident.

It's salvageable, but it will require deep attention to the economy, so you need to be prepared for that. The normal situation is that Court Expenses will rise for a few turns, as this is a moving average and your initial treasury will increase it. Then, as your treasury falls, it will stabilize. It's quite possible to run a positive even in the initial turns, but it indeed needs, in addition to moving the population to commerce (you theoretically have a reserve of +1000 gold output if you put the 200-ish freemen you have at the start to commerce), you need to check aggressively for structures that cost gold and decide if you are not better off scrapping them.

So again, don't play Byzantium if you are not willing to engage heavily in the economy. It's for people who are not afraid of administering 150 regions. It's not a giant on autopilot, churning out armies and effortlessly squashing its neighbors. It's a sick person with extra pounds (no offense to them; it's a figure of speech for the Byzantium situation).

[PocusFR]

And play on Balanced for Byzantium. Several testers managed to make them shine, but only on Balanced!

[Commissar Antonios]

Thanx.
I usually don't have a problem controlling huge kingdoms as Seleucid were my all time favourite.
I play on difficult for extra flavour, might give it a try on balanced.

[Heraclius Caesar]

Originally posted by PocusFR:

Byzantium is one of the hardest nations to play...

Does it have to be? Is there any chance you might consider making it less difficult so it's enjoyable to play as Byzantium even if you aren't a FoG expert?

It makes sense for Byzantium to be really difficult in EU4 for example. They're basically dead in the water in 1444, and it does take a good/expert player to have a successful campaign with them.

But if FoG Kingdoms has a start date of 1054, it doesn't really make that much sense for Byzantium to be so hard and overwhelming and in such an apparently difficult spot. Historically, by 1054, Byzantium is at the tail end of 150~ years of glory, conquests, riches, expansion, resurgence. I'm not saying the campaign should be a cake walk but really it shouldn't be that hard that even your expert and long time FoG players struggle with it and nor should it be total anarchy and verge-of-collapse stuff from turn 1 onwards.

[PatRat]

Well by 1071 the Byzantines were in a down hill slide from various factors, losing at Manzikert didn't help. It should be hard, but not impossible to arrest that slide.

[pbkcc]

I have spent over 100 hours playing as the Eastern Romans. NOTHING that I tried worked. I reloaded games, micro managed every province - all 156 of them. Nothing prevented collapse. I also watched a YouTuber try to play as the Byzantines. In his 3 hour video he had to restart several times, and he still crashed and burned miserably in the end. It needs to be fixed. The whole point of playing "historical" games is the ability to change history. Not simply repeat it.

[PatRat]

From what the dev said, several beta testers were successful playing the Byzantines.

I have a little over 40 hours playing Aragon and I don't consider myself very knowledgeable about the game at all. I don't think 100 hours is enough to qualify someone as an expert.

I have almost 200 hours playing mostly Roman in Empires. I don't consider myself an expert at that game either.

Now someone like SuitedQueens who has over 3000 hours in Empires, I consider him an expert.

[Heraclius Caesar]

Originally posted by PatRat:

Well by 1071 the Byzantines were in a down hill slide from various factors, losing at Manzikert didn't help. It should be hard, but not impossible to arrest that slide.

Well actually Manzikert wasn't as cataclysmic as it's been made out to be and since the game starts nearly 20 years before Manzikert, it's not really a factor as far as how the empire was doing in 1054, which was pretty great all things considered, so it really shouldn't be that hard.

[Heraclius Caesar]

Originally posted by PatRat:

From what the dev said, several beta testers were successful playing the Byzantines.

Yea on "Balanced" difficulty. That's not really a good thing if the dev recommends balanced difficulty because even the testers (who are almost always expert players with prior experience with the devs games) struggled with it.

[PatRat]

Yes it was doing pretty good, but, as they say, "Stuff Happens" and "Stuff" happened to the Byzantines.

Now should that "Stuff" be set in stone, of course not, this is a game, not a historical simulator. But you can't just ignore history either. History placed the Byzantines in a tough place shortly after their "150 years of glory". I think should the game should reflect that.

[PatRat]

Originally posted by Heraclius Caesar:

Originally posted by PatRat:

From what the dev said, several beta testers were successful playing the Byzantines.

Yea on "Balanced" difficulty. That's not really a good thing if the dev recommends balanced difficulty because even the testers (who are almost always expert players with prior experience with the devs games) struggled with it.

There were never enough good beta testers in any game I was a beta tester in. And I'm not sure you could of called many of them experts. The devs don't actually want their games balanced around experts.

Having the game play test well in the balanced setting was probably the best they could hope for while beta testing.

I myself am against making changes to how a major country like Byzantium plays, just because a couple of players who are still unfamiliar with the game are having problems with it.

Nothing personal. That's always has been my stance, based on my experiences as a beta tester in other games.

[Heraclius Caesar]

Originally posted by PatRat:

Yes it was doing pretty good, but, as they say, "Stuff Happens" and "Stuff" happened to the Byzantines.

Now should that "Stuff" be set in stone, of course not, this is a game, not a historical simulator. But you can't just ignore history either. History placed the Byzantines in a tough place shortly after their "150 years of glory". I think should the game should reflect that.

I agree with everything you said here except the very last sentence. If the player is doing well enough and is given the proper tools to do well enough and if the game isn't purposely made in such a way that things are more difficult and frustrating for the player as Byzantium then something like Manzikert doesn't necessarily have to happen.

[Heraclius Caesar]

Originally posted by PatRat:

Originally posted by Heraclius Caesar:

Yea on "Balanced" difficulty. That's not really a good thing if the dev recommends balanced difficulty because even the testers (who are almost always expert players with prior experience with the devs games) struggled with it.

There were never enough good beta testers in any game I was a beta tester in. And I'm not sure you could of called many of them experts. The devs don't actually want their games balanced around experts.

Having the game play test well in the balanced setting was probably the best they could hope for while beta testing.

I myself am against making changes to how a major country like Byzantium plays, just because a couple of players who are still unfamiliar with the game are having problems with it.

Nothing personal. That's always has been my stance, based on my experiences as a beta tester in other games.

That's fair and nothing personal taken, we've all paid money for this game and we're all entitled to our own opinions

[pbkcc]

I just tried it on "balanced" to see if it was any better. It was worse. By turn 11 I had already had 7 rebellions, two coups, and a civil war erupted on turn 11. NO way to stop the accumulation of decline points despite managing all 156 regions manually. It's way more than a couple of players btw. Over a hundred hours invested and I am VERY familiar with the game. Just fix it. What's the big deal about that? Or give us the tools to fix OUR games to play the way we want to. That's what Medieval Total War and Paradox games did.