Is it still possible to survive and prosper as Byzantium in EU IV 1.37.5.0 Inca update?

[UN0W3N]

For the past couple of days I tried various (outdated) guides on how to play as Byzantium and try to beat the Ottomans while reclaiming my former imperial borders. None seem to work and not even this detailed stream / guide from a month ago seems to apply any longer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14VtBHQ1OtU

I wish to play in the Ironman Mode for unlocking Steam Achievements (all difficulty settings are set to normal), so no console commands. cheats or mods are allowed. Exploits, sure, if they can still be cheesed in the untampered Ironman playthrough. Any tips or links are welcome.

PS. I should probably mention that I have every single content pack released for EU IV at the time of this writing. So potential features being locked behind certain DLCs, shall not be an impediment for me.

You have my thanks in advance!

[Narrowmind]

Why do you feel they are outdated?

[UN0W3N]

Because the comment section on them pointed out to the fact. And some guides were from 2017 or 2018, so go figure how many updates and patches this game has had since then.

[cayenne_spicy]

The best way to be Byzantium is to not start as Byzantium. If you don't want to go with a cheesy No CB Byzantium start, try a start as Georgia or Theodoro. Ally Poland and Austria, as well as Hungary and Lithuania if they don't end up in a PU with Austria and Poland. Muscovy and Venice are good too, though if you've run out of diplomatic relation slots you can skip them for now.

Your early campaign goals:
1. Secure Byzantium as your vassal and retake all of their cores from whoever owns them.
2. Avoid letting anybody else take land from the Ottomans in the Balkans if you can.
3. Pick up a Bulgaria province so you can release them and reclaim their cores, too.
4. Annex Byzantium and Bulgaria when you've reclaimed all of their cores.
5. When you feel satisfied with how much of your mission tree you've completed, you should own all the provinces needed to form Byzantium already, and you're Orthodox, so the Decision to become Byzantium should be available. Do it whenever you feel like it.

Result: A strong Byzantium that doesn't begin with bad estate privileges and a tough time making allies. Instead, you already have allies and you already have a nice domain to get you started.

You might even have Muscovy as a Junior Partner (both Georgia and Theodoro have this potential in their mission tree). If that's important to you and you aren't in a rush to become Byzantium, waiting until Muscovy becomes Russia before completing the mission and imposing a PU on them is even better because they'll spread across Siberia all the way to the Pacific, so after you've eventually annexed them, if you've also completed Religious Ideas, you can conquer China, switch your primary culture to a Chinese culture, and become Great Byzantium, also known as The Easternest Roman Empire.

[RCMidas]

Still possible, you just need to operate on a few different procedures. As always, alliances are key to overcoming the Ottomans, and rapid early expansion to secure your local area as much as possible before this happens is also important - dealing with Epirus (making them a vassal is probably the better option than annexation so you get more soldiers out of it), as well as Albania.

[Narrowmind]

Yeah I was more meaning the one from a month ago. It's still very possible to do it. It seems there's a new guide every week on how to pull off that start.

[UN0W3N]

Originally posted by Narrowmind:

Yeah I was more meaning the one from a month ago. It's still very possible to do it. It seems there's a new guide every week on how to pull off that start.

Trying to trap the Ottoman doomstacks on Cephalonia no longer works since they are now apparently smart enough to not besiege the island with more than 20K troops out of their total of around 40K. Getting more allies which are willing to contribute with troops in exchange for land concessions, seems like a viable strategy for me, it's just not feasible short term (as in, less than a decade from the Byzantium campaign start).

[UN0W3N]

Originally posted by cayenne_spicy:

The best way to be Byzantium is to not start as Byzantium. If you don't want to go with a cheesy No CB Byzantium start, try a start as Georgia or Theodoro. Ally Poland and Austria, as well as Hungary and Lithuania if they don't end up in a PU with Austria and Poland. Muscovy and Venice are good too, though if you've run out of diplomatic relation slots you can skip them for now.

Your early campaign goals:
1. Secure Byzantium as your vassal and retake all of their cores from whoever owns them.
2. Avoid letting anybody else take land from the Ottomans in the Balkans if you can.
3. Pick up a Bulgaria province so you can release them and reclaim their cores, too.
4. Annex Byzantium and Bulgaria when you've reclaimed all of their cores.
5. When you feel satisfied with how much of your mission tree you've completed, you should own all the provinces needed to form Byzantium already, and you're Orthodox, so the Decision to become Byzantium should be available. Do it whenever you feel like it.

Result: A strong Byzantium that doesn't begin with bad estate privileges and a tough time making allies. Instead, you already have allies and you already have a nice domain to get you started.

You might even have Muscovy as a Junior Partner (both Georgia and Theodoro have this potential in their mission tree). If that's important to you and you aren't in a rush to become Byzantium, waiting until Muscovy becomes Russia before completing the mission and imposing a PU on them is even better because they'll spread across Siberia all the way to the Pacific, so after you've eventually annexed them, if you've also completed Religious Ideas, you can conquer China, switch your primary culture to a Chinese culture, and become Great Byzantium, also known as The Easternest Roman Empire.

I appreciate that you took the time to write in detail and quite eloquently. That is indeed a viable option to start by not playing as the real Byzantium, yet for me that would break apart the entire charm of stemming the Ottoman tide by reshaping history from the perspective of the Roman Empire's true heirs.

No matter how much Russia might cling to the concept (in its various historical contexts and state configurations), it will never be the "Third Rome". Georgia or Bulgaria are even more laughable contenders to a title they might claim from a religious perspective alone. Theological debates cannot stand in the way of geopolitical limitations. Byzantium in its most desperate hour, was very close to mending the Great Schism, for example.

Long story short, I will make this work with Byzantium itself, come hell or high water.

[RCMidas]

Serbia has one of the better claims, at least equal to Montferrat's. The last emperor was half-Serbian. You could tell his Slavic ancestry by his middle name Dragac, Hellenised as Dragatsis.

[UN0W3N]

Originally posted by RCMidas:

Serbia has one of the better claims, at least equal to Montferrat's. The last emperor was half-Serbian. You could tell his Slavic ancestry by his middle name Dragac, Hellenised as Dragatsis.

True, there's no denying that such claims could be made post factum. I just want to avoid the almost railroaded fate of Byzantium in this game. I know it follows precisely in the historical footsteps of the 1453 tragedy, yet it seems that even from a pure gameplay perspective, all cards are stacked against Byzantium to a punishing degree that only compels me to try harder.

[RCMidas]

Ironically, if you know the game well enough, it's probably easier now than it has been in a long time. The original 1444 release was almost impossible, which is partly why it became such a meme challenge. The Ottomans have been nerfed considerably as well - they used to have cores on all Anatolia, for instance, which meant immediate Reconquest wars against all the Turkish minors. Their units were stronger. Their ideas were stronger. The Orthodox religion of their immediate Christian opponents was weaker.

Still, it is what it is. Maybe petition Marquoz to start a GoFundMe or Patreon so that he can afford to devote time and effort to making his "personal revert-bad-changes" EU4 mod and actually release it to the rest of us!

[UN0W3N]

Mods won't cut it, not sure if they disable Achievements or not, haven't played EU IV in a long time. In retrospect, I probably should have just to gain more experience with its main differences from Crusader Kings II (in which I have nearly 1000 hours on Steam alone). I do admit they play slightly different, but I am willing to invest just as many hours in Europa Universalis IV as long as I can gain Steam Achievements along the way.

[RCMidas]

Mods that change the checksum will disable achievements, yes. So basically anything which isn't purely a cosmetic change.

[bri]

Originally posted by UN0W3N:

yet it seems that even from a pure gameplay perspective, all cards are stacked against Byzantium to a punishing degree that only compels me to try harder.

As RCMidas said, they really aren't when compared to the earliest versions of EU IV. The ottomans have been serially nerfed in order to make thriving as Byzantium doable for mediocre players rather than the original state where only the best of the best were able to do so. While the Ottomans are still a force to be reckoned with, especially in player hands, they are a shadow of what they actually should be in terms of threatening the European powers. If Muscovy hadn't suffered a similarly ridiculous level of nerfing to the point they are currently a joke the weakness of the Ottomans would be far more apparent but as they grow against weaksauce Balkan minors and blob out into southern Russia they still give the appearance of being a scary blob when the reality is far different.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

Old strategies won't cut it because the reworks that happened as part of update 1.36 and the "King of Kings" expansion were designed specifically to counter the most popular Byz strategy for the first Ottoman war (spamming out a big navy and barrage-assaulting forts in the Balkans) at the time. Rest assured winning as Byzantium is still entirely possible in the current version of the game, it just requires a steady hand and a reasonably firm grasp of all the game mechanics available to you. Or, you could make a deal with the devil and become the Latin Empire by event in order to call basically every power in central Europe into a defensive war on your side for free.

[BarbaCool]

The trap was explicitly patched out, but there are a ton of videos doing other strategies that work just fine. Once you get rid of those nasty starting debuffs Byzantium is stronger than it ever was (so if you survive the first 20 years or so).