Best ideas for Byzantium?

[Recce]

Hey what is the best idea group to go with first as Byzantium? I have managed to regain my cores and take the majority of the Western coastline of Anatolia. My income is pretty average aprox. 1.85 with full troop maintenance. I just don't know which idea group I should go with first. Also please suggest future idea groups. Thanks!

[mentrial]

It depends on your play style, objectives and your current MP balance. But in general:

Administrative up to Adaptability is a must if you do most of your own expansion.

Influence is awesome if you Vassal feed.

Diplomacy is great either way for the war score reduction, but specially good for Vassal feeding. Finishing Diplomacy is also pretty handy if you intend to get personal unions.

Defensive and Quality are both great.

Offensive is ok early game but gets a lot better latter on.

Quantity is awesome if you have drowning in money. Not worth it otherwise.

[Ares]

Religious idea's, and specially since you have taken sunny lands already, so you need that first. Trade ideas perhaps second, to boost your income, altough you have constantinople, so you won't be poor, but more money is always good, and since you have crappy ruler at the start, going for military second might be risky, unless you get a good ruler, definetly don't wanna fall behind on military tech, third idea you might need is defensive, to get that moral boost, unless your alliance power is just to strong for Otto's, Offensive is nice, the ability to siege down forts faster, better generals, more discipline, larger army, and the prestige you get from land battles will help you in disinherting heir's. And with religious idea's you can take "the Anti Heresy act" policy, which gives +20% religious unity and +3 missionary streangth, which is nice but might be overkill once you have your last national idea.
If you take Offensive, you will be lacking in morale tho, but that can be fixed with going into a golden age.
Otherwise quantity is always good, and you can get +10 morale pared with religious ideas from policy.
Fourth idea probably admin, for reduced coreing and even cheaper merc's, cheaper admin tech and more states, and if you took offensive or defensive, the mercs might be really handy, and it synergize's with Byzantium's national idea so mercenarys will become pretty cheap.

[ShrOomz]

Originally posted by Ares:

Religious idea's, and specially since you have taken sunny lands already, so you need that first. Trade ideas perhaps second, to boost your income, altough you have constantinople, so you won't be poor, but more money is always good, and since you have crappy ruler at the start, going for military second might be risky, unless you get a good ruler, definetly don't wanna fall behind on military tech, third idea you might need is defensive, to get that moral boost, unless your alliance power is just to strong for Otto's, Offensive is nice, the ability to siege down forts faster, better generals, more discipline, larger army, and the prestige you get from land battles will help you in disinherting heir's. And with religious idea's you can take "the Anti Heresy act" policy, which gives +20% religious unity and +3 missionary streangth, which is nice but might be overkill once you have your last national idea.
If you take Offensive, you will be lacking in morale tho, but that can be fixed with going into a golden age.
Otherwise quantity is always good, and you can get +10 morale pared with religious ideas from policy.
Fourth idea probably admin, for reduced coreing and even cheaper merc's, cheaper admin tech and more states, and if you took offensive or defensive, the mercs might be really handy, and it synergize's with Byzantium's national idea so mercenarys will become pretty cheap.

After recently doing this run with religious ideas chosen first, I don't recommend it. Administrative should have been first. Without the reduced coring cost, Anatolia was expensive to take. I couldn't even get all the religious ideas. While the conversion of anatolia went easy, I can't see it being that difficult without religious ideas as you can get an advisor and accept turkish culture.

[Ares]

Originally posted by ShrOomz:

Originally posted by Ares:

Religious idea's, and specially since you have taken sunny lands already, so you need that first. Trade ideas perhaps second, to boost your income, altough you have constantinople, so you won't be poor, but more money is always good, and since you have crappy ruler at the start, going for military second might be risky, unless you get a good ruler, definetly don't wanna fall behind on military tech, third idea you might need is defensive, to get that moral boost, unless your alliance power is just to strong for Otto's, Offensive is nice, the ability to siege down forts faster, better generals, more discipline, larger army, and the prestige you get from land battles will help you in disinherting heir's. And with religious idea's you can take "the Anti Heresy act" policy, which gives +20% religious unity and +3 missionary streangth, which is nice but might be overkill once you have your last national idea.
If you take Offensive, you will be lacking in morale tho, but that can be fixed with going into a golden age.
Otherwise quantity is always good, and you can get +10 morale pared with religious ideas from policy.
Fourth idea probably admin, for reduced coreing and even cheaper merc's, cheaper admin tech and more states, and if you took offensive or defensive, the mercs might be really handy, and it synergize's with Byzantium's national idea so mercenarys will become pretty cheap.

After recently doing this run with religious ideas chosen first, I don't recommend it. Administrative should have been first. Without the reduced coring cost, Anatolia was expensive to take. I couldn't even get all the religious ideas. While the conversion of anatolia went easy, I can't see it being that difficult without religious ideas as you can get an advisor and accept turkish culture.

Yeah i agree, but he has already expanded into Anatolia, but he can probably do without religious first, it's even easier now i belive, with the russian dlc added, i havent played Byzantium in a long while, but with the bonus you can pick from the russian dlc, and also if he get's cash for defender of the faith it dosent have to slow the expansion.

[mentrial]

Religious used to be great when you could get Deus Vult early. As it is now, you have to spend a ton of admin points, and the advanced CBs probably won't be far off when you get it. Also, most of that group is based on helping with conversion, which is kind of wasted on an Orthodox Byzantium past early game.

[bydlaq]

Religious is trash, dont take it. You will already have few missionaries from nearby holly lands and it is hilariously easy to convert everything with all free bonuses you can get.
Go Administrative and human only from paper mana group and forget what rebels are (orthodox stronk).
For the first pick i recomend quantity, you should focus mill tech first anyway to get 5 asap and AI only cares about your manpower and force limit so with it no one ever will attack you, including coaltions so after tech 5 you will have plenty of this mana to spend.
Paper mana is to important early and bird one will be always short because you WANT to have tons of vasals (influence+diplo).