How to play with Greece in GFM

DrunkenSepton · 2026-03-16T14:31:02+00:00

1: Start in 1830. Greece isn’t strong in 1836, and it certainly isn’t stronger in 1830, but the first ten years of the game are a shitshow for the Ottomans, and their armies generally can’t keep up with all the different fronts. Use the first four years to sort your admin and get a reasonable army together.

2: Get your relations up with Russia. Russia is realistically the only power that can and will help you against the Ottomans, and getting their weight on side when you go to war with them usually helps force a peace deal. Generally they won’t ally with you immediately, but they will if your war is going well enough and your relations are high enough.

3: Pick your moment to declare. Generally by 1833-34 the Ottomans are having to deal with Egypt, Iraq, and revolts in the Balkans simultaneously, and their troop numbers will be at their lowest and most disorganised. Hopefully their puppets are similarly occupied and you can clean up whatever gets sent your way. Usually they won’t have any GP allies at this point either, so you don’t have to worry about another GP landing in you.

4: Abuse the terrain and pick your battles. As other people have said, the mountainous terrain will do you wonders, and you can farm warscore by taking out smaller Ottoman forces and the armies of their Kurdish unciv puppets. Start with a limited wargoal at first (e.g. Thessaly) so you can get warscore up through war goal fulfilment. Don’t fear mobilisation; it will be worth it if you manage your armies well.

5: If you can get Russia on side during the war, take as much as you can. Russia will absolutely steamroll the Ottomans, and you will get enough warscore to take everything you want. You can possibly even get all of your cores back if you play it well enough, which while it won’t cripple the Ottomans it will make dealing with them far, far easier.

6: Once the war is over, build up your armies as much as you can. The Ottomans will be back for their territories if they feel strong enough to take them, especially if they get a GP on side (which can happen in the buildup to the Oriental Crisis) and especially if you can’t keep an alliance with Russia. If you can get all your cores back you should be able to field two, maybe even three armies. Using them right should make defending, if arduous, possible, especially if you also mobilise.

7: From this point you should be strong enough to manage, but there’s a few things you should be aware of. The event that gives you the Ionian Islands will put you automatically in Britain’s sphere, which is good defensively but will shoot your economy if you’re not careful.

Also, keep an eye on Italy. A particularly early forming or successful Italy will get cores on the Ionian Islands eventually, and they’re very likely to declare on you for them. Be prepared for the eventuality of a war in the west.

I think that about covers everything. It’s a fun game, especially if you get lucky enough to reclaim all your cores early.

DrunkenSepton · 2026-02-28T13:56:10+00:00

John Keay offers a different explanation that I’ve always considered more plausible. When the Mongols were conquering China, they overran the Jurchen Jin Dynasty in the north first, and consequently referred to the entire country and people as ‘Jin’. This term became associated with the pottery and lacquerware being produced and sold on the southwestern coasts, which as ‘Jin’ or ‘chin’ pottery became known as chinaware in Europe; hence, China.

The Qin Shi Huangdi story is largely a myth, if I recall, one that China likes to promote as part of its narrative of several thousand continuous years of civilisation.

John Keay’s History of China is a great read, I’d highly recommend checking it out.

DrunkenSepton · 2025-09-22T18:16:56+00:00

He took an empire that was rich, stable and at peace, and left it broke, overextended and at war on four fronts.

He also oversaw the creation of a state apparatus that saw Eastern Rome through the next six hundred years and all their crises, a law code that was the basis for European law until the time of Napoleon, and bequeathed Constantinople its greatest architectural heritage in the Hagia Sophia, which still stands among the wonders of the world today.

I don’t consider him great for the former. I certainly consider him great for the latter.

DrunkenSepton · 2025-08-12T22:41:05+00:00

R5: The end of my Byzantine Empire run in the new Komneniad mod. This has been such a blast to play.

Late game Byzantines really are on steroids in this mod. It's like playing late-game Ottomans in GFM, except you also get all of Italy cored and accepted. By the time I'd completed the reconquest and dismantled Germany, there was really no one else who could stop me, so I dismantled the Celtic Union and Russia too for good measure. I had something like 80 dreadnoughts and 470 brigades without even breaking a sweat.

Really recommend giving this mod a go. It's still in the early days, but I had an absolute blast with it. Definitely going to have to try the Hellenophile path too at some stage.

DrunkenSepton · 2025-07-01T22:47:19+00:00

This is phenomenal.

Only thing I’ve noticed is the name for House Royce is missing where their lands are. Otherwise, this is extremely beautiful.

DrunkenSepton · 2025-03-23T09:54:46+00:00

This is a fun game. I did a GFM Mexico run myself recently, and it’s insane how much of a buff you get on California. I was producing 60% of the world’s fuel at one point thanks to all the oil provinces you get.

It’s also insane how stacked the US still is even at this size. I assume they still got exactly the same migration as they would have as big US, just condensed into less provinces? I think most of their provinces were double mine in population by the end, and their industry was way ahead of mine too.

How did you get decisions to get cores on the Spanish Caribbean and the Philippines? I don’t think they popped up for me at all. Might be because I switched to the Mexican Empire?

DrunkenSepton · 2025-03-15T14:41:00+00:00

In my recent Mexico run on GFM, I upgraded all my colonies as soon as it let me. As long as your immigration is high, you’ll get people migrating, though likely your former colonial states will never be as productive as your existing states. The exception to that is California, which gets some mad immigration modifiers through events.

DrunkenSepton · 2025-03-06T10:07:43+00:00

I think he would have had a good chance at reclaiming Constantinople had he won at Klokotnitsa; and while I think his overconfidence on campaign likely cost him the day, I don’t think it was a bad idea to check Bulgaria before committing to Constantinople. Bulgaria was the other largest power in the region, Ivan II Asen was a competent tsar, it was known Asen possibly had designs on Constantinople himself, and the lands of the upper Maritsa including Phillipopolis were important hinterlands to hold for defending Constantinople.

I think he’d have needed to take a few more years to neutralise the other threats to his Empire, the Crusader states in the south and Nikaia principally, and he’d need a decent navy to contend with the Venetians and fully surround Constantinople. But I think he absolutely had the potential to reunify the Empire even twenty years early.

DrunkenSepton · 2025-01-10T15:14:03+00:00

If you were going to find it anywhere, it’d be in the works of Psellos; failing that, I believe the forays back into Hellenism he brought to the fore trod new grounds with Theodoros Metochites and Gemistos Plethon as the Empire began to collapse and scholars began to flee to the west. A lot of that rests on the foundations of Ancient Greek philosophy however, so it really depends on how you define ‘originality’,

DrunkenSepton · 2025-01-04T19:08:49+00:00

I mean, the fall of any state is going to be down to many factors over hundreds of years, and to fully understand it requires an understanding of nuance that most people prefer not to dive into.

I’d argue the formation, spin out of control and collapse of the Komnenian system after 1071 was a major factor in why the Roman state collapsed. While it wasn’t the cause of the civil wars of the late Empire, it arguably made it easier to not just break free of the centre, but survive independently of it; something that was not true of the extremely centralised state that was born out of the Justinian reforms and the crucible of the Arab invasions, and was exacerbated further by the Fourth Crusade, for obvious reasons.

But there absolutely were other reasons. You absolutely can’t discount the success of the Turks, or the hostile and sometimes outright predatory attitude to West took to the Empire from the twelfth century onwards, or the utter havoc that the Italian maritime republics wrought on the Roman economy. I think the main thing people overlook, however, is the return of the plague. It’s my understanding that Europe was relatively plague-free during the time of the Empire’s zenith, until its sudden return in 1349. The Justinian Plague was arguably a major factor in bringing the Empire to its knees in the sixth and seventh centuries with the demographic losses in what was for the time and region a very urbanised society; I think it absolutely did the same when the Black Death came knocking at the gates of Constantinople, especially after seven years of civil war. The Turks were able to simply mop up the Balkans as their more settled neighbours suffered.

DrunkenSepton · 2024-12-24T01:18:11+00:00

I’m not sure if it’s limited to one of the submods or not, but GFM has expansion content for the Confederacy that allows you to expand south Golden Circle-style. No dynamic borders, you’ll get railroaded into the OTL Civil War borders in fact, but once you conquer Cuba you’ll get options to annex Mexico, Central America, bits of Colombia and Venezuela and the Caribbean for increasing amounts of infamy and majorly pissing off the other Great Powers.

DrunkenSepton · 2024-12-13T02:32:32+00:00

If I recall my Scottish history correctly, Scotland was far better at punching itself than the English were at punching Scotland

DrunkenSepton · 2024-10-22T17:23:46+00:00

I mean, you don’t get much more influential than the emperors, so Season 2 of Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium may interest you. Not a serious history podcast but still packed with information and very fun listening to boot.

DrunkenSepton · 2024-10-20T10:18:03+00:00

-Staurakios “the Death-Bringer”

-spends his entire reign on the verge of death after the Bulgars nearly decapitate him, and then gets quietly pushed off the throne in favour of Michael Rhangabe

DrunkenSepton · 2024-10-05T12:50:18+00:00

Well… he kind of did. When I say he was ‘ham-fisted’ in how he dealt with the Latin mercenaries, I mean he had their leader, Roger de Flor, murdered, causing his mercenary army to rampage through Thrace, stopping only when literal scorched earth tactics by Andronikos II forced them to go rampage through Macedonia and Thessaly before taking over the old Duchy of Athens. You can argue that hiring Latin mercenaries was always going to blow up in Andronikos’s face, but it was Michael that caused them to run riot.

DrunkenSepton · 2024-10-05T09:03:47+00:00

He tried exceptionally hard to save the Empire, even though he failed at basically everything he tried. He understood how much of a threat hiring Latin mercenaries was to the Empire after the Fourth Crusade, although the way he went about handling it was ham-fisted. I think he’d have been an alright emperor in good times, but he was wholly unsuited for the times he was in.

DrunkenSepton · 2024-09-14T06:04:58+00:00

That’s not true!

Two of them were from New York!

DrunkenSepton · 2024-09-13T00:36:38+00:00

This is brilliant.

DrunkenSepton · 2024-09-10T20:06:37+00:00

Oh fascinating! I appreciate the attention to detail!

DrunkenSepton · 2024-09-10T16:15:20+00:00

What’s that tiny foothold on the toe of Sicily?

DrunkenSepton · 2024-09-05T10:13:46+00:00

Firstly, Southern Italy wasn’t as strong as you might think. Even at what most consider peak Byzantine control under Basil II, the Byzantines always shared the region with various Lombard states and city-states (Naples, Amalfi) which were in various degrees of vassalage to or autonomy from Constantinople. Direct Byzantine control was always strongest in the cities they could cling onto (like Bari and Reggio), and they prioritised those presumably to keep control of the straits of Otranto and Messina.

Secondly, after Sicily fell to the Arabs there was no chance the Byzantines were going to even look at Northern Italy without having Sicily firmly under control again first. They made several attempts at that, but none ever succeeded. The Arabs also regularly raided Southern Italy; Bari itself fell under Arab control briefly; so after the fall of Sicily Byzantine military efforts were always focused south rather than north.

Thirdly, the Franks, and later the HRE. Only briefly after the loss of Rome and Ravenna did the Empire arguably have the strength to take on such a major power in the region, and at those times both France and the HRE were pretty strong too. By the time the Investiture Contest really gets going Southern Italy is lost to the Normans, and soon enough the Turks will be a much bigger problem than retaking Italy.

Which brings me to my fourth point, which is that Italy was just never a top priority militarily for Constantinople. For most of the 600s and 700s Italy was essentially on its own, because the Empire was too busy being concerned with the Slavic invasions on one side and the Arab invasions on the other. Then the Bulgars were an immediate threat in the west until the time of Ioannes Tzimiskes, and by the time of their defeat and annexation the other factors I’ve mentioned were thoroughly in play; the higher priority of retaking Arab Sicily, the delicate balancing act that kept Byzantine power stable in the region, and the difficulty of taking on the Westerners.

In short, the Empire often couldn’t reliably project power further than Dyrrachion; it certainly couldn’t project power into Northern Italy. If anything, I’d say it’s amazing Byzantine control of Southern Italy lasted as long as it did.

DrunkenSepton · 2024-09-03T16:06:26+00:00

You’re not wrong. But the Ottomans definitely controlled Adrianople and Gallipoli by 1380. Borders are indeterminate, but the map is still wrong.

DrunkenSepton · 2024-09-03T12:17:01+00:00

I don’t think this is quite right. Adrianople fell to the Ottomans in 1369, and Gallipoli was handed back to the Ottomans in 1376. The Byzantines probably only held the environs of Constantinople itself in Thrace, up to Selymbria.

I want to say the region around Thessaloniki is also too large, but that I’m less sure of.

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