Now, your adventure into destroying The Byzantine Empire begins. First, take a look at what types of settlements you have, and your win conditions. You start off with Iconium and Yerevan, both which are towns, and your castles are Mosul and Caesarea. Your win conditions are to hold 15 Regions, and destroy the Byzantine Empire.

Having a good economy can be very difficult, especially with the Byzantines threatening to take you capital, which is dangerously close to their borders. A good thing to do when making money as the Turks is not to build a large military and conquer the Rebel cities around you (Those cities will be essential in keeping a large military later), but try to focus on building trade buildings first, such as Ports and Roads. Also try to secure as many trade deals as you can, as it will boost your economy a lot.

Now, I know what your thinking, how am I gonna secure these trade deals? I don't have any way to contact them because I only play the modern total war games and I'm too used to pressing a button to talk to other factions! Well, you start out with a Diplomat to help with this. His influence level is mostly 3/10 in the beginning, but you can take him on a tour around the world getting trade deals to increase this. I've gotten this diplomat around 7/10 influence level over others factions.

Just keep in mind that in the short term, building buildings does cost money, and the high tier ones cost A LOT of money. So try to make a lot of money before actually mass building, as it can bankrupt you severely if left unchecked.

Now, I know what your thinking, why do you keep saying now, I know what your thinking what building do I prioritize? Well, I've found that theres a good order when building things in a town. The order goes like this:
1. Economic Buildings
2. Religious Buildings
3. Military Buildings
4. Basically any other buildings

If your in a castle, the order changes a bit, but not really too much.
1. Military Buildings
2. Religious Buildings
3. Economic Buildings
4. Basically any other buildings

So, now that you've gotten a large amount of money, and a stable economy, its time to conquer. Now, the Byzantines are relatively weak, and are ripe for conquest. Though waging a early war with the Byzantines may be a bad idea, due to relations with its neighbors, but theres more of a chance that they already declared war against you before you could them.

If you don't feel like dealing with the Byzantines, as they are normally busy dealing with Venice, than you can easily conquer the Rebel cities and castles surrounding you. You may want to conquer Trezbiond quicky, as its a target for the Byzantines pretty early on.

Once Trezbiond is taken, and you want to move on to conquering the Byzantines, it would be a wise move to take Nicaea as a staging point to move on to Constantinople, so try to take it before moving on to Constantinople, as Constantinople is mostly either heavily defended, or with armies near it ready to retake it.

Now that you've taken Nicaea, your ready to move to Constantinople. If you want a nice boost to the experience of your troops taking Constantinople, you can always just call a Jihad on it so its not as easy to take back as it would be with fresh troops with no experience.

Taken Constantinople? Great. Now you can either move to conquer Thessalonica, giving them little to no income, or by trying to cut off there military production centers, which at this point only Corinth and Nicosia should remain. (Sofia is another Castle the Byzantines may have, but its not a 100% chance, as Hungary or Venice may have taken it already.)

Chances are at this point that you have met Egypt, Hungary, Sicily, Venice, and The Byzantines. Now, making an alliance with both Venice and Hungary may prove to be a good idea, as they will both end up in a conflict with the Byzantines at a point. Egypt and Sicily however, may be a problem to deal with. Egypt normally likes to expand to regions right next to your border, so you may end up in conflict with them. Sicily mostly remains out of everything going on, but they may ally with the Byzantines at one point, so move quickly to make sure that Sicily doesn't ally with them.

So, you've made it this far. Congrats! But now this is where things get rough. The Mongols have invaded, and are ready to conquer. Now, the Mongolians normally spawn around Sarkel, Bulgar, Tibilsi, Yeravan or Baghdad. Now, if they spawn near Sarkel, or Bulgar, than your fine. They'll probably just go conquer Russia and Hungary. Now, if they spawn near Tibilsi, Yeravan, or Baghdad, your in trouble. They spawn with armies consisting mainly of elite units lead by experienced generals, so you should work hard on fortifying your defences if they spawn in these regions, as they will easily take one of the three cities if you don't. Also, try to upgrade your cities so they are better equipped to fight the Mongol calvalry.

So, you've successfully either dealt with the Mongols, or they just spawned near Russia. Sadly, your not done facing threats yet. Why are you not done? Because now you gotta deal with the Timurids. They will appear just east of the Holy Land, so if you own any territory there it would be a good idea to reinforce it heavily, as they are WAY stronger than the Mongols. They spawn with atleast 6+ armies, so its very hard to defend against them unless you have a night fighter general in the settlement.

Now that you've learned all there is to playing the Turks (Atleast on a somewhat simple scale), You are now ready to conquer all the Holy Lands and the Mediterranean! I will leave the specifics to you Mighty Sultan, but I wish you good luck in this journey. Now If you excuse me, I have to go play some Chess with King Rufus.

This guide is kinda like a project for me, and although I went somewhat in-depth in certain parts of the guide, It can be more polished than it currently is.


What I plan to do:

Add a Jihad section
Add more to the Mongol section
Add more to the Timurid section
Expanding the information given on the Starting as the Turks section
Adding more information on how to deal with each of the Turks neighbors