Turks are a bit weak on campaign map - I wiped them out after 5 turns!

[Jiang Wei]

How about simply put all Turkish factions together to have one strong faction? Then "Turks aren't a bit weak anymore".

[bigdaddy1204]

I just lost a campaign because of Turkish rebels!

In my latest Byzantines campaign, I completely screwed up the campaign. Although I wiped out the Turks after 5 turns, I was then immediately sieged in Iconium by a large rebel Turkish stack. Embarrassingly, I tried to attack them but lost the battle and my general and his whole army was killed. I reloaded and tried again, and the game crashed to desktop. I tried again a third time, and I still lost. Finally, on the fourth attempt I managed to defeat them after waiting some turns and bringing up reinforcement horse archers and infantry from Constantinople.

I wasted so much time trying to defeat this rebel stack, and when I'd finally done it my army was almost annihilated. I then decided to move them west, towards Smyrna region, where another rebel stack was devastating the countryside. This took several more turns, as they kept moving. Along the way, I was ambushed by a third rebel stack, which I defeated on autoresolve, but then found my forces too weak to defeat the remaining rebels. I then had to wait several more turns until I could scrape together enough troops to defeat them.

By this time, to make matters even worse the Sicilians promptly laid siege to Dyrrhachium in the far west, so I decided I'd have to transfer my army west instead of going east to resume the conquest of Anatolia. I marched to Thessalonica, at which point the Sicilians bizarrely stopped the siege. I took the opportunity to propose peace, and they accepted. But by the time I finally managed to march my troops all the way back into Anatolia, Sivas and Caesarea had fallen to the Georgians!

At this point I realised how much I had totally screwed up the campaign and decided to give up and start again. What a mess! I've rarely ever had such constant trouble from rebels. While I'm at it, I forgot to mention that every turn for four consecutive turns, a rebel army spawned near Sinop and laid siege to the town. Their repeated attacks wore down the defenders. No sooner would I defeat one rebel attack, only for them to immediately spawn yet another wave of attacks and lay siege again. This continued until eventually the defenders were overwhelmed, in the fourth battle of Sinop and I lost the town. Although I immediately dispatched a large army and retook the town, it delayed my main army getting into central Anatolia even longer and was another factor in my decision to give up.

That's probably the first campaign I've ever lost because of Rebels!

[jurcek1987]

Well I would hardly call that losing the campaign. When I read the first sentence I thought the Turkish rebels captured Constantinople or killed your entire family tree or something . Personally I really like the aggressive rebel behaviour and strong garrisons in SSHIP, they almost feel like a real faction instead of a minor inconvenience like they were in SS. As you said in the OP, Rum Seljuks are too weak, playing as ERE you could wipe them out at the beginning if you wanted to. That's why I left them alone in my campaigns. I let them capture Sivas and Kayseri, just to make things more challenging.

[bigdaddy1204]

Those two names were just off the top of my head and Dorylaion was later rebuilt by Manuel. Currently there's a big gap between western Anatolia and Konya and Ankara so adding one of those two cities would make sense imo.

It just occurred to me that there are no castles anywhere in western and central Anatolia. In fact, the only castles are at Caesarea and Sis, both of which are at the eastern end of Anatolia. I reckon we need a castle in the western part of Anatolia. The Byzzies definitely need a starting castle in Anatolia. I would suggest the northwest area of anatolia - the region known as Neokastra was extensively fortified by John II and Manuel I Komnenos and many castles were built in that area, eventually leading to a theme being created there in the 12th century. If we don't want to add any new regions, might I suggest turning Nicaea into a castle? It's in the right location and the area was a strongpoint of Byzantine military colonies, garrisons, fortresses, castles and training camps. That area resisted Andronikos I in 1182 and it was the basis of the later Empire of Nicaea.

Alternatively if we are looking to create a new region, then I might suggest Adramyttion, the capital of the Neokastra theme? It was located where the modern town of Edremit is located, in the northwest Aegean coast of Anatolia, to the north of Smyrna.

What do you think?

[k/t]

I don't understand that cartoon. The saint or whatever it was changed one of the girls' shirt to red and why did the other one attack her?

[PerXX]

I don't understand that cartoon. The saint or whatever it was changed one of the girls' shirt to red and why did the other one attack her?

Uhm... Think you've posted in the wrong thread?

Still, even worse, I think I know what you're talking about, this one right?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It's from the game Age of Empires. One unit is the Monk, who can convert enemy units to your side. When doing so, he would chant 'Wololo'. Converting a unit within a group of enemies, tend to mean that unit would get attacked by it's former allies.

And really, if you don't know Age of Empires, you might want to look into it. Really cool RTS. There was a HD edition of AoE2 (best game in the series) released not long ago, and there's a new expansion pack being released for that in like a week or so.

[bigdaddy1204]

Really?! A new expansion for AOE2 is being released? Where?!

[j.a.luna]

Yes bigdaddy and the 5 th november will release a new age expansion( i guess is age of african,with berebers,mali empire and new units)

[Danishmend]

Well the only reason Rum wasn't annihilated by the ERE was because the ERE was too busy fighting itself.

And the Turks were too busy fighting Crusaders (and later Mongols)

They were very rarely able to get everything and everyone working together in the manner you do as the player. Rum historically didn't expand for a very long period of time, it took them hundreds of years before they even reached the Black Sea.

They didn't expand for a long time of period because of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol..._and_conquests

[Lifthrasir]

Plus internal conflicts so common to Seljuks princes at that time

But on the other hand, they played quite an important role during the Crusades and reached a high level of culture.