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It truly is unacceptable how poorly the Seljuks are currently represented in the game. Ignoring the broader category of Persian Turks who themselves seem wholly underpowered in regent patches, the Anatolian Turks in particular are weak and almost unplayable. Not only do they fail to attack Anatolia in the 1066 start date, but by 1178, when they should be a major force in the region, they are completely ineffective. They fall apart in civil wars or splinter just a few years into the game. They are militarily weak to the point where even Byzantine vassals can push them around. They struggle to suppress Greek rebellions, and the Byzantines already overpowered can take Anatolia with a single de jure war.
I'm not calling for a major buff, but it's absurd how nonviable the Turks are right now. They barely survive a few decades after the game begins. I understand balance isn't the devs’ strongest area, but the Turks seem to have gotten the worst of it compared to everyone else.
Here’s how I’d fix the issue:
First, the Byzantines should be nerfed. Their de jure claim to Anatolia should be removed. Instead, they should only be able to restore their dejure claim to the region by seizing it on their own, and only then through a special decision.
Second, the Sultanate of Rum needs a general buff, whether that’s economic or military. In 1178, they are inexplicably one of the weakest powers on the map, despite being quite formidable in real history during this time.
Third, a major reason for Turkish success in Anatolia was the role of the nomadic "wild" Turks who, though only nominally loyal to the Sultan, constantly raided and pillaged Byzantine lands. These groups were a serious fighting force and played a huge part in the failure of the Second Crusade and nearly brought down the First. It's baffling that they’re not represented in the game, especially after the nomadic DLC was released.
The Sultan should start with nomadic, count-tier vassals positioned along the frontiers of his realm. These vassals should be slightly overpowered and treated as tributaries to the Sultan of Rum, reflecting their historic role as nominal Vassals and their military importance.
I don’t think having the Byzantines lose their historic claims to Anatolia is a good idea. It’s unhistoric. A better way would be to nerf Administrative governments while while making Anatolia under the Seljuks nomadic.
It's 2025, the nomad dlc released months ago and the byzantine dlc released a year ago and the Persian dlc 2 years ago, yet somehow the seljuks of rum are still pathetic.
Yes, that's 3 specific opportunities to give the Seljuks (both as a whole and Rum specifically) some content, or at least some balancing consideration.
I don’t think having the Byzantines lose their historic claims to Anatolia is a good idea. It’s unhistoric. A better way would be to nerf Administrative governments while while making Anatolia under the Seljuks nomadic.
I don't think it's historic to declsre one single war for anatolia and take it either, I also don't think it's fun for byzantine or seljuk players because part of the reason why post manzikert Byzantium is so interesting to me is the slow grind between both powers to dominate anatolia. Circumventing that by declaring one war to neutralize the turks is dumb.
I don't think it's historic to declsre one single war for anatolia and take it either, I also don't think it's fun for byzantine or seljuk players because part of the reason why post manzikert Byzantium is so interesting to me is the slow grind between both powers to dominate anatolia. Circumventing that by declaring one war to neutralize the turks is dumb.
It truly is unacceptable how poorly the Seljuks are currently represented in the game. Ignoring the broader category of Persian Turks who themselves seem wholly underpowered in regent patches, the Anatolian Turks in particular are weak and almost unplayable. Not only do they fail to attack Anatolia in the 1066 start date, but by 1178, when they should be a major force in the region, they are completely ineffective. They fall apart in civil wars or splinter just a few years into the game. They are militarily weak to the point where even Byzantine vassals can push them around. They struggle to suppress Greek rebellions, and the Byzantines already overpowered can take Anatolia with a single de jure war.
I'm not calling for a major buff, but it's absurd how nonviable the Turks are right now. They barely survive a few decades after the game begins. I understand balance isn't the devs’ strongest area, but the Turks seem to have gotten the worst of it compared to everyone else.
Here’s how I’d fix the issue:
First, the Byzantines should be nerfed. Their de jure claim to Anatolia should be removed. Instead, they should only be able to restore their dejure claim to the region by seizing it on their own, and only then through a special decision.
Second, the Sultanate of Rum needs a general buff, whether that’s economic or military. In 1178, they are inexplicably one of the weakest powers on the map, despite being quite formidable in real history during this time.
Third, a major reason for Turkish success in Anatolia was the role of the nomadic "wild" Turks who, though only nominally loyal to the Sultan, constantly raided and pillaged Byzantine lands. These groups were a serious fighting force and played a huge part in the failure of the Second Crusade and nearly brought down the First. It's baffling that they’re not represented in the game, especially after the nomadic DLC was released.
The Sultan should start with nomadic, count-tier vassals positioned along the frontiers of his realm. These vassals should be slightly overpowered and treated as tributaries to the Sultan of Rum, reflecting their historic role as nominal Vassals and their military importance.
The ai will lose them in three consecutive tyranny wars it personally sparked for fun and a Greek revolt because it doesn't understand the basics of the already overly simplistic warfare system.
by 1178, when they should be a major force in the region, they are completely ineffective. They fall apart in civil wars or splinter just a few years into the game. They are militarily weak to the point where even Byzantine vassals can push them around. They struggle to suppress Greek rebellions, and the Byzantines already overpowered can take Anatolia with a single de jure war.
The way all his absolutely garbage tier sons control all Rum and the ruler has like 3 garbage counties it's pretty obvious they would be weak.
As a player it's easy to just start an "ottoman succession" aka imprison, revoke titles and execute all but one of them and you can steamroll the Byzantines. AI would never do that so knowing how internal alliances are the most useless thing in the game, the ruler should start with more and better land and their trash kids maybe with a county each. However then we would have the people: "it's not historically accurate" that use this argument for anything that breaks their the sims immersion.
But I confess I haven't played them after nomads dlc, it was so uninteresting getting all nomads achievements that I never touched the government again.
The ai will lose them in three consecutive tyranny wars it personally sparked for fun and a Greek revolt because it doesn't understand the basics of the already overly simplistic warfare system.
it's unbalanced for already strong realms (so.... player realm if they are at least a duke...), but doesnt do much for weaker ones, which rum is, relative to byzantium
Ok I gave it another try to Rum now and besides the whole their sons rule the entire realm and the ruler is left with 3 bad counties I said before that's my 2c:
their starting army it's pathetic (it's something like 400 horse archers plus 50 heavy horse archer) and they start without a single trebuchet. it's like Georgia army, they clearly didn't bother to set up MaA for the new start date, both look like a 867 start army.
their tech it's all over the place, at the same time they've trebuchet unlocked they don't have buhrs so their military building upgrades are very limited (up to tier 2).
their starting buildings are pathetic compared to Byzantines where almost all holdings start fully built in 1178, if in theory they just conquered Anatolia they should have the same building quality.
even with ottoman succession I got war dec 2-3 times by Opsikion and Byzantines themselves. if you dont pick battles carefully against the Byzantines you'll lose battles even tho they have "shitty" army with like 5k light infantry, 5k pikemen, 500 varangian and 500 cataphracs but you can't beat them with 4k horse archers unless you pick very good battles which well AI it's unable to do it. winning these wars give you a ton of gold but there's not a lot you can do with it in terms of buffing your army or really increase your gold income, tech it's not there to do it. as player it's easy to solve this issue by hybridizing with greek, but AI it's not that smart.
I legit find impossible for AI to hold to their lands without a lucky alliance with Saladin or something like that giving what they start with. As a player with over 6k hours experience with my usual restriction of not having alliances it was challenging to beat Byzantines and fend off a crusade. It became relatively easy after my starting character died and the child I choose to play as became a great commander (3 perks away to complete all martial trees).
Ok I gave it another try to Rum now and besides the whole their sons rule the entire realm and the ruler is left with 3 bad counties I said before that's my 2c:
their starting army it's pathetic (it's something like 400 horse archers plus 50 heavy horse archer) and they start without a single trebuchet. it's like Georgia army, they clearly didn't bother to set up MaA for the new start date, both look like a 867 start army.
their tech it's all over the place, at the same time they've trebuchet unlocked they don't have buhrs so their military building upgrades are very limited (up to tier 2).
their starting buildings are pathetic compared to Byzantines where almost all holdings start fully built in 1178, if in theory they just conquered Anatolia they should have the same building quality.
even with ottoman succession I got war dec 2-3 times by Opsikion and Byzantines themselves. if you dont pick battles carefully against the Byzantines you'll lose battles even tho they have "shitty" army with like 5k light infantry, 5k pikemen, 500 varangian and 500 cataphracs but you can't beat them with 4k horse archers unless you pick very good battles which well AI it's unable to do it. winning these wars give you a ton of gold but there's not a lot you can do with it in terms of buffing your army or really increase your gold income, tech it's not there to do it. as player it's easy to solve this issue by hybridizing with greek, but AI it's not that smart.
I legit find impossible for AI to hold to their lands without a lucky alliance with Saladin or something like that giving what they start with. As a player with over 6k hours experience with my usual restriction of not having alliances it was challenging to beat Byzantines and fend off a crusade. It became relatively easy after my starting character died and the child I choose to play as became a great commander (3 perks away to complete all martial trees).
The funny thing is that, at CK3's release, the Byzantines expanded like crazy because its vassals would declare holy wars right and left (and once they gained the land, would never surrender it, as retaking it required fighting the entire ERE). It was so bad that they actually nerfed AI vassals of the ERE in a patch, to make them less likely to declare wars on their own.
Then, with RtP, they not only got rid of that restriction on declaring wars, but went ahead and gave the vassals a free Imperial Expansion CB on basically anybody, while at the same time making the ERE itself stronger as well (by giving them the ability to get extra MAAs). It's as if they forgot their own lessons.
In mountains it's almost a coin flip, some wins and some losses.
I tested in plains and you lose, they attacked me with 20-25k troops when I had 4k-5k MaA and for my surprise I lost. Then I remembered the fact that stationing it's terrible because the tech it's not existent. we're talking about 20% from hillside grazing land and another 20% from horse herds (both at tier 2 which it's the maximum you can build) and 25% from tier 3 castle.
Also worth noticing the cataphracts archers I started with are a huge bait, they're expensive and they count as heavy cav. All 3-4 times Byzantines declared war they raised 5k of their pikemen so heavy cav it's useless, they deal 10% damage and they're "bad" at hills.
I can see some improvements I could make to make my life easier but the point of the run was to see if AI could do anything, and they can't it's doomed to fail.
The Byzantines losing their claim on a core part of their empire that had been a core part of their empire for over a millennia after only about a century doesn't really make any sense, especially given that the Byzantines clearly never renounced claims to these lands and part of the whole point of the Crusade under Alexios Komnenos and the continued campaigns of the Komnenoi over the next several generations was that they were trying to resecure the border of the of the Anatolian plateau to put them in a better position to progressively harry the Turks out of Anatolia kind of how had been done to push out the Pechenegs.
That being said, I'm not sure how nomads (and by extension Turks) should be handled. Giving them super units that they kind of maybe should have would be a gigantic slog as it basically just means anybody who goes up against them is inevitably boned and there isn't much they can do about that except plan well ahead and get a gigantic empire and army to fight with a significantly outsized numbers advantage. That could be somewhat balanced by making them super fractious unless they settled (which is kind of - if not entirely - how they were historically), but that still leaves the problem of "you're still completely boned if you are in their way and there isn't much to do about it". And it also makes it quite unfun to play as a nomad since it becomes a roll of the die if your empire is going to survive a death regardless of how well planned.
Maybe it could be handled by carving up the claims into a sequence of events that allow you to take sections in a historically plausible way to represent the campaigns (and planned strategy) of the Komnenoi? You start with one claim and then sequentially get them duchy by duchy until you've recaptured the territory? That way it would have to be done over time, giving the Seljuks time to build up and also look elsewhere and expand to build up strength?
I think the problem fundamentally comes down to the fact that the kind of skirmishing and attrition warfare that was used by nomads and also most effective against them (e.g. see the Byzantine campaigns against the nomadic incursions into the Balkans, such as the Pechenegs) would be 1) super tedious and 2) very hard to represent given how the game works. IIRC it was basically a matter of the non-settled armies avoiding pitched battles and slowly wearing them down while razing food sources and other supplies. Likewise it's not even like a battle with nomads was a death sentence, as one could succeed - it was just difficult as it took a lot of discipline and planning - which again, is hard to represent in the game where battle is abstracted away so much. There's also a whole logistical side that would need to be represented, especially to represent stuff like the Anatolian campaign in the Second Crusade.
For example, the devastation of the Second Crusade's army was as much due to Crusader arrogance, hubris, and ignorance as it was Turkish capability. It was stupid decisions, stupid logistics, stupid organization, and absolutely reckless marching that caused the Crusaders a lot of their issues. This isn't to say that the Seljuk horse archers and army weren't formidable, they were, but the Second Crusade's massive organizational shortcomings on the part of the Crusaders are so substantial that it makes it really difficult to say anything actually meaningful about the actual fighting ability of the Latins (Phillips basically makes this point in The Second Crusade). What I mean is:
The Germans: a good chunk of the crusading army refusing to listen to Byzantine advice on routes and fighting the Turks and sticking together. The Germans went and got a bunch of themselves butchered basically from the start because of this. They left without the French because they didn't want to wait. They wrongly assumed that Manuel had far more control of the Anatolian plateau than he did and thus that it wasn't as dangerous as it was. They split up into two armies, one of which marched straight for the Turkish capital in Iconium while the other marched around the coast of Southern Anatolia. Oh, and they were already having supply issues so the Northern Army especially was low on food and water in the Anatolian steps where it was easy for the Turks to deprive them of those things and hard for them to resupply like it would have been in the South where they would have had the protection of Byzantine forts and resupply by the dominant Byzantine navy. Oh and a bunch of their party were non-combatant pilgrims, meaning a bunch of people who couldn't fight but still had to be defended and fed. Oh, and they aren't even loaded on supplies, they are packed lightly for like a week of travel, so no surprise that they soon start running short. Oh, and it was October, so there wasn't exactly a big bounty that they could take from the land to keep themselves fed and supplied. Several days of skirmishing/harassment by Turkish forces ensue, the Turks refusing to grant them a pitched battle. Then when the hungry, extremely thirsty Germans stop by the river to get some water they get ambushed by Turks as they dismount and are vulnerable. Oh, and then to add insult to injury they also get harried by the local Greeks because they had been plundering as they went along, meaning that the local population also hated their guts, adding to their problems. In multiple cases the inexperienced Germans falling for the classic false retreat tactic. The Southern army, on the other hand, had the greater share of the unarmed pilgrims, so they just don't have much fighting force relative to the Northern army so they get crushed stomped also.
The French: And then what did Louie, who had literally just seen Conrad retreating back to Byzantine lands after getting stomped, personally injured and with his force substantially destroyed? He too did not march along the Southern coast, but instead went through the inland road and . . . had supply issues as well! Oh, but the French were marching into the plateau not in Autumn, but in winter! Then more getting skirmished, the French forward section letting themselves get pulled away from the rest of the main army and the army hitting the exposed center, then more extended harrassing over several days, and finally arriving at Antalya where there are not enough supplies for the large army, the French king and some troops leave on ships and the Turks assault the exposed army remnants and harass them as they marched by land the rest of the way to Antioch. The Battles of Cadmus (where the French allowed themselves to get split stupidly and vulnerable) and the Battle of the Meander (where the French marched through maybe the most ambushable location maybe ever), it was largely organizational and planning incompetency that caused the substantial losses.
So now what did this significantly reduced French army that arrived at the holy land do, battered and beaten? Well, they tried to siege Damascus! One of the largest and most fortified cities in the Islamic world! . . . which they weren't even currently fighting and, moreover, was fighting Nur-ed-Din, who was nominally an enemy of Outre Mer! They were, of course, routed back to Jerusalem after extensive losses!
This isn't to say that it was ALL luck on the part of the Turks and incompetence on the part of the Crusaders (though there was . . . a lot - and this is true of the First Crusade also, where the crusaders had a LOT of luck that pushed them past their repeated incompetency and mistakes). But part of it is that the thing that makes horse archers so powerful is really hard to represent in a GSG like CK because their main advantage is that the mobility means that it makes it a lot easier for you to ambush in inopportune times and the features that allow a conventional army to stand up against such forces (e.g. a LOT of discipline and waiting for the right time to strike and not routing early) are also very hard to represent without making an army OP as heck - the converse is also true, representing the advantages of horse archers by abstracting their capability away into high stats makes them veritable god units that aren't a whole lot of fun to play against . . . because you just can't really do much to counter them except pray.
And even putting all that aside, a lot of the advantages of horse archers can be minimized, if not negated, by adequate planning and organization, which can happen with sufficient familiarity - and we know that that this is the case, because after the initial losses the Byzantines post-Manzikert, after the Komnenian Restoration the Byzantines managed to maintain a relatively and even progressively expanding border and achieve relatively consistent success against the nomadic Turks.
You could MAYBE represent this through some sort of substantial logistics system . . . but CK3 doesn't really have that at all at the moment, its current food system isn't really capable of representing stuff like the above, imho.
Another issue is that there isn't really a way of effectively using fortifications to impede and block nomads like was done historically. Because forts don't have ZoC, a fort is just a delay for an army until it can get around it - it has to deal with attrition, but you can get away with marching a fair bit in before it becomes too substantial to ignore, meaning that stuff like the Byzantine forts that would have blocked and impeded Seljuk advances aren't really doable in the game and capable of preventing their expansion if they get buffed too much.
Then there's the whole issue with the Byzantines not being nearly as fractious as they should be meaning that you don't need a huge amount of planning to make your dynasty stable. And while I think that it SHOULD be possible to make a stable dynasty, the game just doesn't put up nearly enough of a resistance to that within the Byzantine system to really make it feel like it should be (only real issue I've ever had was a faction to RETHRONE an Emperor I had gotten to retire early through a stress event - which is also weird, because that is like the one case where the game SHOULDN'T be trying to force dynastic squabbling).
I think on the part of the Turks it also comes down to needing them to have better initial conditions (e.g. army and infrastructure), getting the AI to handle succession and consolidation of power a bit better so that the ruler doesn't end up a total paper tiger - at least not right away. And some reexamining of HAs, at least on certain kinds of terrains like the steppe and plateau to make them punch harder - maybe a kind of system that gives them advantages early on/in the middle, but then get tapered off as other factions advance into the later game/last era? Dunno.
There are two main problems with Rum in the game (and a pet peeve of mine.)
First, admin government is just Byzantine cosplay and doesn't really represent the strengths, and more importantly, weaknesses of the Byzantine system of government. The big issue here is the fact that everyone can declare war when, in reality, on the emperor led or sanctioned military campaigns. In the very first 1178 game I played, Rum was devoured piecemeal by all of Byzantium's frontier vassals, the emperor didn't even need to get involved and they didn't even last a generation into the game. Despite there being an incredibly easy fix for this, the devs will never do it because, despite their insistence, CK3 is, in fact, a map painter.
Two, as already mentioned, the game doesn't, and probably can't, depict the way armies really fought and how their tactics in battles played out. The Byzantine loss at Myriokephalon* was because of an ambush by the Turks, not because horse archers are trump card that always beats the armies of settled societies. Disciplined heavy infantry vs disciplined horse archers is basically akin to an unstoppable force meeting an unmovable object - the only way for one side to win is for the other to make a mistake. This is basically how many of the battles between the Romans and Parthians went, with the losing side being the one that made the most mistakes, Crassus being the obvious example here. How you fix this, I don't know though I doubt you can within the framework of CK3.
Finally, the Seljuk's did not, I repeat, did not conquer Anatolia. During the civil wars that followed Manzikert, the various Byzantine factions used Turkic soldiers to garrison the cities of Anatolia but then could not dislodge them with the forces they had. This then became even harder once the Turkish garrisons called in some Seljuk rulers from the frontier in eastern Anatolia to unite them politically, hence Alexios asking the pope for assistance, and then the Crusades, and so on. This process also probably can't be replicated in game and, as far as we can tell, the Seljuks Sultans in Persia had no real plans or interest in conquering Anatolia because the Byzantines were a peer state and, generally speaking, fighting another peer state isn't worth the blood and money it will cost unless they are only polity you have to worry about militarily, which is not true for either the Seljuks or Byzantines. Anthony Kaldellis's book Streams of Gold and Rivers of Blood is a good read if you want more details.
*The Byzantines were lead by Manuel I, who is the reigning emperor at the start in 1178 for those interested.
Two, as already mentioned, the game doesn't, and probably can't, depict the way armies really fought and how their tactics in battles played out. The Byzantine loss at Myriokephalon* was because of an ambush by the Turks, not because horse archers are trump card that always beats the armies of settled societies. Disciplined heavy infantry vs disciplined horse archers is basically akin to an unstoppable force meeting an unmovable object - the only way for one side to win is for the other to make a mistake. This is basically how many of the battles between the Romans and Parthians went, with the losing side being the one that made the most mistakes, Crassus being the obvious example here. How you fix this, I don't know though I doubt you can within the framework of CK3.
I agree, though I will also point out/argue that more often than not the tactical and even operational options opened up by armies of nomadic horse archers meant that it was much easier to stumble and exploit these kinds of opportunities, meaning it was relatively easier to exploit the advantages of skilled archers against skilled heavy infantry and win the day than it was to do the converse because the relative mobility of the cavalry and the relative immobility of the infantry means that its easier for the cavalry to recover from their own mistakes and to punish opposing forces' mistakes than it is for the heavy infantry to do that against the nomadic cavalry. So I think that it does make some sense that HAs actually punch relatively hard above most units (given some considerations) to reflect that. But yeah, they weren't really "unbeatable super units" by any stretch, especially for armies experienced in fighting against them.
In addition to your point about the Seljuks conquering Anatolia, also worth noting that the devastating defeat at Manzikert wasn't really nearly as debilitating as generally thought and classically portrayed, and it wasn't just lost because the nomadic archers OP. Manzikert was preceded by many years of degeneration for the Byzantine army (due to both neglect and incompetence) from the highs it experienced under Basil II - a quick shot of revitalization under the short tenure of Isaac I Komnenos aside - especially under Constantine IX and Constantine X. Romanos for his part tried to alleviate these ages of systematic neglect, IIRC, but he didn't exactly have a bunch of time to work with and it takes time to do that level of neglect and institutional damage. Romanos appointing Androniko Doukas to lead the rearguard at Manzikert was also a really stupid unforced error also, which went as badly as one would expect when Doukas basically hung him out to dry instead of reinforcing him. That aside, even with the almost certain trechery of Doukas, the Byzantine losses at Manzikart were also far from crippling and unrecoverable - the army was mostly intact, and Alp Arslan even released Romanos IV with a peace treaty (so that the Seljuks could focus on what they considered their real enemy - the Fatimids). And while all of that may have certainly been suboptimal, that would at least have bought the Byzantines time to lick their wounds and reconstitute and shore up their position. But after Michael VII Doukas deposed Romanos IV and basically tore up the treaty, not exactly aiding the already extremely volatile political situation at home which the Doukas actively took part in creating at basically every turn. Government mismanagement, political infighting, and the civil wars more so than a debilitating defeat by the Turks were responsible for the further devolution of the Byzantine state, its army, and its borders post-Manzikert, which also led to the arrangement you mention above where Turkish nomads were brought in to help secure the frontier only to just slightly later turn around and be like "hey, this is kind of nice actually, we think we'll keep it after all" and end up seizing control of the exposed region that they had been basically walked into.
