Wow. Newbie lost.

[Akka]

Well, I'm trying ^^

I'm already with Bailiff in all my provinces. I've to wait to get to infra 4 and 5 for the rest, it seems.

I've built one art manuf and three refineries. But I've stopped due to a dilemma : if I was directing my money full-scale to treasury in order to be able to pay for the manuf, my research was stagnant. If I was directing my money on research, I didn't get the funds to build the manuf. And if I was saving slowly to buy factories in the long term, the inflation was killing any progress I could make...
The problem is that I had to bankrupt right from the start to be able to beat the Otto, and so I've practically begun the game with something like 40 % infla. It's rather stable now, but it's at 67 %, so...

I'm a bit desperate to see England and France hovering at level 12 in land tech, while I'm still at lvl 2 (I managed to made peace with England during my last war against Venice, before they could send units on my land. I see know that I was luckier than I thought with the peace !).

[Velociryx]

Yep, Inflation is a KILLER! Avoid bankruptcies at all costs! The main reason that inflation will kill you is that it impacts ALL your costs (stability, troop costs, tech costs, manufactory costs, the works!)

The only two ways to bring inflation down are "Deflation Events" and Mayoral promotions at Inf 5.

When you have mayors in all provinces you control, you will see a 0.025% annual decrease in inflation (which unfortunately, in your case, means that the game will be over before you can bring inflation fully under control).

I always try to rack up no more than 5% inflation before gaining Inf. 5 and mayors (even this small amount will take my mayors 25 years to undo, so if possible, I avoid ALL inflation, but sometimes you have no choice).

Bankruptcies will increase inflation by +20% (as you are no doubt, now aware! ), and some event choices will increase your inflation. Unless the benefits are HUGE, I always opt for the non-inflationary options. The rest simply are not worth it, IMO.

Given all of this, you might find it easier to begin a new Byzantium game with these ideas in mind, and see how you fare now that you've gained a deeper understanding of stuff.

-=Vel=-

PS: With small nations, loans are like cocaine! Very addicting, but also quite dangerous (because your income level makes these loans difficult to repay). There are some nations with whom I make regular use of loans (England, France, Aragon) because their economies makes repayment without inflation quite easy, but the smaller you are, the more likely you are to have to endure inflation to repay the loan.

[Velociryx]

With Byzantium, the best opener (and I cannot take credit for this...someone else pointed it out to me) is to attack the Dutchy of Athens immediately and bleed them for all their money. They are filthy rich, and success here will give you enough money (~700d) to finance an early war against the Ottomans.

-=Vel=-

[ravagon]

Originally posted by Velociryx

Given all of this, you might find it easier to begin a new Byzantium game with these ideas in mind, and see how you fare now that you've gained a deeper understanding of stuff.

I heartily agree with this - It sounds pretty much like my first attempt at Byzantium.

With your inflation so high your tech costs will skyrocket proportionally. They're already higher than the Catholic countries because of your tech group (Orthodox) and this doesn't change with the [event that gives you Italian culture and changes your religion to catholic - don't remember what its called atm] AFAIK.

[Even with governers it'll take a long while to bring that down to a manageable level. You could try and save as much money as you can - a large treasury is supposed to increase the chance of an 'exceptional year' event triggering ...]

Not to mention the narrowmindedness which will hurt you further.
It sounds as though you have far too many conquered Turkish/Muslim provinces too - more damage to your tech costs (as well as your stability) due to off-cultures which you can't fix with missionaries.
You could possibly try releasing some as vassals if it would divest you of some of the more undesirable provinces?
Concentrating more on the Balkans would have served you better I think - before Austria inherits Hungary in particular.

You probably won't have too many problems for the next century or so as you can counteract an opponents superior tech with high morale and good force deployments to an extent, but once you're into the 17th-18th Century with Catholic nations ( Venice/Austria in particular) around Land 30-40+ while you're still below 10 you'll get very seriously hammered.

[Akka]

Yes, the events kept some really nasty surprises (but at least, it WAS surprising, there's the pleasure of discovering ^^).

Never had the Italian culture event, but got the "becomes catholic". Refused it, of course (how Byzanitum could do that ? Never !), which of course didn't helped the narrowmindedness.
And a shock when seeing suddendly the huge white blob when Austria merged with Hungary. Especially as both of them has fared quite well. They know own most of central Europe (and Poland seems to have absorbed Lithuania as well, which give a huge country as well).

I've finally reached 5 infra, and it's been quite some time I haven't been at war. Most of other are lvl 15-16 in tech, but I'm starting to get a good economy, and the inflation is more or less under control, so I think I will be able to hang not too far away. I'll probably have to use extensive diplomacy to absorb some wealthy provinces, or to reduce the power of the biggest badasses around.
I'm firmly allied with France, anyway, so it makes a good big buddy in Western Europe. I could even use the wars it started again rebellious province to get Naple, and had a huge stroke of luck with a "converting heretics" event that fall on it only few years after that ^^

Funny how the price of some tech level is three times higher than the very next one, though.
But it's annoying how you can't spare money to build factories without the infla kicking in. If I start to put about half my income in treasury, I'm sure to get a 0,1 % infla each month. Damn.
Though, it's now reduced to 57 %, through mayors and two "exceptionnal years".

I'll have to see what it will become ^^

[Micha]

Well, that´s why you should build factories off your annual taxation (which should be quite decent by now )

I am usually writing alternate history events for those countries that offer the possibility of converting turkish provinces (or others) to whatever national culture you have in exchange for much money, stability hits and base tax value decreases...

[Akka]

Yup, I've a sizeable annula taxation, but clearly not enough to afford 2000-like ducats factory (except one each five or six years, but well... ^^).

You've caught my attention with the events... Do you mean there is some kind of scripting in the game ?
*eyes glimmers*
Does that means I could build scripts that would give a percentage chances each years for a province to switch to the state's religion, or culture ?

[Micha]

lol, of course. Every Paradox game is almost completely modable, even without programming skills.

Just open the /DB/eventmanual.txt to see what triggers and actions are possible, and then include them into the /DB/Events folder. Either open major_byz.txt and add the events you desire, or create a new text file (if doing this, you must include it in the events list located under /DB/events.txt)

I have learned event-scripting by looking at the existing events and trying to understand them. In order to create a new one, just copy a similar event of some other nation and change the parts you want to change (don´t forget to change country = ... to the respective country tag).

Always remember to use a unique ID for each event, or the game will crash. Try numbers higher than 11,000 (that´s what I use)

[Micha]

Just as an exaple, this is the event that fires when Constantinople is annexed by Ottomans, making it their capital and changing all province cultures/religions to turkish/sunni. It is to be found under /DB/Events/major_tur.txt and reads:

#The City of Men's Desire#		#Capital moved#
event = {
	id = 3353
	trigger = {
		owned = {
			province = 357
			data = -1
		}
		NOT = {
			exists = BYZ
		}
	}
	random = no
	country = TUR
	name = "EVENTNAME3353"
	desc = "EVENTHIST3353"
	style = 1

	date = { day = 1 month = january year = 1419 }
	offset = 30
	deathdate = { day = 1 month = january year = 1491 }
	
	action_a ={			#Constantinople is new capital#
		name = "ACTIONNAME3353A"
		command = { type = capital which = 357 }
		command = { type = domestic which = CENTRALIZATION  value = 1 }
		command = { type = provinceculture which = 357 value = turkish }
		command = { type = provinceculture which = 477 value = turkish }
		command = { type = provinceculture which = 478 value = turkish }
		command = { type = provincereligion which = 477 value = sunni }
		command = { type = provincereligion which = 478 value = sunni }
		command = { type = provincereligion which = 357 value = sunni }
		command = { type = stability value = 2 }
	}
	action_b ={			#Let us keep the Old one instead#
		name = "ACTIONNAME3353B"
		command = { type = provinceculture which = 358 value = turkish }
		command = { type = provinceculture which = 477 value = turkish }
		command = { type = provinceculture which = 478 value = turkish }
		command = { type = provincereligion which = 477 value = sunni }
		command = { type = provincereligion which = 478 value = sunni }
		command = { type = domestic which = CENTRALIZATION  value = -3 }
		command = { type = stability value = -1 }
	}
}

In order to make a similar event for Byzantium (without capital move), you need to change the following:

id = 3352

This is the event-ID. Change it to any number > 10,000 to be safe. lets say "id = 10001"

trigger = { owned = { province = 357 data = -1}}

This is the trigger of your event. In this case, it´s triggered when the country that this event belongs to ("-1" means owner, could also be the specific tag like "TUR" for ottomans or "BYZ" for byzantium) has got ownership (not just control) over the province #357 (= Constantinople).

In order to find out what province has which ID, open the excelsheet "/DB/province.csv". There you can also adjust city and province names (not the ones printed on the map, but those displayed in menues).

The second part of the trigger only says that Byzantium mustn´t exist for this event to fire, but you don´t need that for your own event.

country = TUR

This one is important. Change it to "country = BYZ" if you want the event to fire for Byzantium. If you ever wondered about which country has which tag, just look at the eventfiles in /DB/Events; there you´ll find a file for (almost?) each country.

name = "EVENTNAME3353" desc = "EVENTHIST3353"

These two are links to /Config/text.csv to make it easier to translate texts into other languages. For your purpose, it´s much better to simply insert the text you want into the quotation marks.
name = "Byzantine colonization of Arabia"
desc = "When the first Byzantine armies reached the Arabian cities, they were greeted by force of arms. But now .... [etc]"

You see that "name" determines the event name that will be displayed in the log, while "desc" is the description only displayed to the player that has this event.

date = { day = 1 month = january year = 1419 }
	offset = 30
	deathdate = { day = 1 month = january year = 1491 }

Well, I think this is self-explanatory. Offset says how many days the interval has, in which the trigger conditions are checked. Bigger offsets make the game faster (well, this only applies for quite old systems or tenthousands of events) and you need to fulfil the conditions longer in order to fire the event, while "offset = 1" will make the event fire as you first fulfil the trigger conditions.

The rest of the event should explain itself. Change the names of the different options you should be able to chose from in the game (action_a = {..}, action_b = {..}) by altering the "name = ..." and play with the different effect. You will find descriptions on what the effects can be in /DB/eventmanual.txt

Hope this helps, have fun

[Micha]

PS: Also see /eu 2 event scripting.doc in your EU2 directory

[Akka]

Thanks for the help, I'll be sure to use such thing to make a regular events that help to convert population once it has been inside any country for a while ^^

In the meantime, WOW 0_o
I thought I was hopelessly backward, and was planning for a full-diplo end of game, but in fact, military techs are really CHEAP. Most of the gap is now closed, and I've rosen to tech lvl 15. Except for Austria, leading away at 27, I'm practically on par with my neighbours.

I think it'll be soon time to get back my core provinces from Persia ^^

[Micha]

May I ask what your badboy count is?

(Go to Diplomacy, your own nation, and hover the mouse over the phrase that tells you whether you´ve got a respectable reputation or you´re hated all over the world and so on...)

[Akka]

Respectable.
I've always went for my core province (except for Dalmatia), only started wars when I had Casus Belli (which is easy, as Byzantium, considering you've a Casus Belli on pretty much half of the world), only disrespected alliance once, and had several "good diplomacy" events

Never went above "slightly tarnished".

[Micha]

Allright. (Though I rather meant the actual number which you see when you hover the mouse over "respectable" and wait a few seconds )

Good diplo events, IMO, don´t change your badboy count... However, I have tried a game on hard/furious as Byzantium and got pretty lucky in the start by getting drawn into a war versus Genoa. I ended up having both Crimean provinces (Kaffa and Kerch) by 1421, which gave me a good start.
However, the Ottomans kept DOWing me every five years, while Golden Horde, Athens, Ragusa, Albania and Georgia seemed to do "shifts" in being at war with me.
When my war exhaustion reached a sizeable 14% I had to give up all my conquered provinces...

[Akka]

Oh, ok ^^ Actual number : 0,0. I'm a very good boy

For the events, well, it depends. I've had at least, and probably three time, an event where it was specifically written "-1 to BadBoy count". Most others only included increase in relations and stability.

I'll certainly not do the same thing you did. I've had already enough trouble in surviving the first few years in "easy" ^^