so i'm on my 3rd Byzantium game.
1st game crushed.
2nd game got some advice in here, made it much longer, but due to some tactical errors, ended up in a horrible position, and quit.
3rd game, going well so far. Some advice on playing byzantium, because i think its rather tough.
As has been pointed out in the thread, blocking the straight off Constantinople is key to every single battle against the ottomans. They would have an army of 20, i'd have 5, and i'd take 2-3 provinces because they couldn't get to my armies. So force of Galleys is key. Now, Ottomans get the mission to take constantinople pretty fast, so your opening moves need to be a beeline to 20 galleys. In my experience, this means no advisors, no buildings, I will often delete my starting cogs and trade ships, supporting 20 galleys on 3 provinces is pretty hard.
In wars against the ottomans, always know where their armies are. You dont want to go to war when they are on your side of the straight. Also, dont be afraid of the ottomans, its often in your interest to go to war with them so that it is on your terms. You dont want them to move onto your side of the straight, then declare war, its always better to move your ships into position, then declare war yourself.
Once you have taken athens and a couple other ottoman provinces. you're getting in better shape. you should be starting to stabilize finances and have a nice 25ish galley fleet. This lets you take naxos, rhodes, corfu and crete fairly easily. Your flee should be more than enough to take on venice at this point. At some point you should make an alliance with the mamluks, who can help on the naval front against venice/ottoman/crimea(generally an ottoman ally), and on land opening an eastern front against the ottomans.
Teching and leader points are kind of tough through this period. As I said, in the opening stages, you are going to be dumping so much cash into a navy, you won't be hiring advisors, so points are pretty sparse.
Obviously you cannot fall behind in military tech, so all your military points will be going here. The other place you can spend them is on harsh treatment of rebels. You are never going to have a huge military, so preventing rebels is pretty valuable.
That leaves admin and diplo. while you are building your 20 galley navy, save admin to get to admin tech 4, which gives you an idea group. after that, use admin to continue research, core provinces, increase stability, etc.
Now for diplo. I spent almost nothing on diplo tech. Once I had a free idea group, i dumped all my diplo points into the navy group. The navy idea group does some awesome things for Byzantium. First, naval moral +1, makes naval battles that much easier. +100% naval force limits. for the early stages, this helps big time as i was at times 25/16 my navy supply limit. getting this Bump really helps your tight budget by cutting navy support cost. latter on, once your established, you can still maintain a huge 40 galley fleet, and still have supply left over to start building trade ships to start recovering economically. +100% prestige from naval battles. You're going to be fighting a lot of them, and prestige helps just about everything. -20% ship costs. This comes too late to help with building your galleys, but when you are ready to switch to building a trade fleet, this helps a lot in reducing that cost.
At this point in my game, I think the Ottomans have 3 provinces left in the balkans. Not sure where i'll head after I take them. I could then continue east and finish them, head north into hungry, attempt a naval invasion of naples, or something else.
So I think for ~20 galley rush for byzantium is not an option, but i'm curious on peoples thoughts on completely disregarding one tech for maxing out an idea (navy in this case) as fast as possible.
Couple random notes: 4 artillery units makes sieges go much, much faster.
this game has given me some interesting ideas on the balance of points between tech and ideas. before i thought one strategy was to just use ideas as a dump for points once you hit the tech limit. Now I'm thinking another strat could be rushing thru ideas as fast as possible then catching up in tech. For instance, get economic/trade ideas, rush thru asap, use extra money to hire advisors and catch up in tech. Similar to this, get tech ideas, rush thru it, then use the reduced tech cost to catch up.
I think the improvement from EU3 to EU4 on a strategic level is huge. Much more strategy in balancing decision making