In general, I used to find that any Mediterranean power was normally easy bait if I could just outgrow the until I could afford enough galley spam to decimate their navy. This has the advantage of shutting down their 20-year morale boost. You need not actually take any land or make vassals, you just have to wait for the Mamluks to peace out sans land. You might be able to do a no-CB on Ramazan, Karaman, or Dulkadir right as the Mamluks go to war and poach the sieges. Keeping them out entirely is just rather hard. This works quite well if you can ally Venice or Aragon/Spain.ДЄ final option is to get an annoying vassal in the Caucuses like Imereti, fund some large annoying forts in their mountains and let the Mamluk army get baited there and win the siege wars. Force the Mamluks to release and get a buffer going. Get ticking warscore from sieging down Cyprus and then punch out a quick siege on the mainland before their army can arrive (helps to have artillery barrages). This triggers a defensive call which brings the allies in against the Mamluks when you have strong allies.ДЄnother option go for early naval supremacy and get a claim on Cyprus and then bottle up/crush the Mamluk navy. Then we they war the OE, you pounce and beat them to the capital siege and vassalize the OE. One option is to just let them beat up the OE until the OE is small enough to vassalize in a single war. I know there are some quirky things you can do, such as a Byzantine horde, a Catholic Byzantium into Emperor, or culture flipping to Turkish to conquer Levantine culture more easily and effectively, but I am not so interested in that, I'm interested in a standard Byzantium one-tag, one-faith run.ДЄny suggestions on Byzantium specific strategies, or experience from those who have played Byzantium a lot would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Ideas: Religious, Quantity (this is essential early, even if you can't go max forcelimit, because of the Mamluks imo), Admin, Diplomatic, Offensive, Humanist, Influence, Whatever. My idea past then is probably to ignore Europe and push east, creating trade companies on everything east of Aleppo (i'll accept Turkish and Egyptian as cultures) to accumulate power to attack Europe 1700's after. Having a 90k men strong Mamluks in Anatolia is brutal and whilst I usually win the war, it involves a lot of debt and mercs as no one will help fight the Mamluks. On the other hand, whilst I try to keep the Ottomans strong enough that the Mamluks don't wreck them, it's kind of inevitable they will.

If Hungary falls under an Austrian PU that's another route of expansion closed off. This for me is the ultimate Byzantium opener.ДЄfter that things get tricky.I usually went for Naples, but I've found since Spain set southern Italy as an area of vital interest, they will 100% DoW you (they did to me even when I had very strong allies. I then attack Serbia ASAP to fully annex and vassalies Bosnia if they don't have any good allies. Either way I get my cores back with at most 2 loans and sometimes no debt after being done with the Ottomans as well as a bridge to Serbia. I'm just wondering what you think the most efficient strategy for Byzantium is in the long-term? I always attack the Ottomans off the bat, and either fight them directly in 1 war or do my own variation of the trucebreak strategy. I'd like to give this another go, as around 1700 I stopped playing wide and just played tall to do a Greek/Orthodox one culture, one faith within the borders of my Empire and instead this time go for a WC or mass blobability at least this time. In my last Byzantium run, I had the borders of the Roman Empire + Persia, although I admittedly got a bit lucky with a Palaiologos on the thrones of France, Spain and GB who I all PU'd. I would really love some feedback on this thread.

How to play byzantium eu4