Deleted member 67076
The Janissaries were arguably created during the reign of Orhan when his brother gave the idea of training slave soldiers as children in an attempt to copy the Mamlukes. So that's probably going to stick around, although the supply for the Blood Tax is going to be smaller. I suspect there's probably only around 2,000 or so troops that we might call Janissaries.
Don't forget that here, whatever semblance of professional troops in the noble levies was shredded by the Civl War! We're basically at Themata level at the best.
Hmm... France and Italy come to mind. The Hundred Years War is ongoing and theres going to be massive amounts of well trained captains and mercenary groups that will need a job. Having them tutor captains, along with modifications of the old military manuals might help out, although Im not too sure about the plausibility of that.
As for cash? Yeah, they can afford a buildup and reform- after decade or 2. The Byzantine Economy, with more territory, more people to tax, stability, investments and a shift towards commercial matters (and to a very small extent production) has whats necessary to build up a relatively economy once more. This isn't something that will happen overnight per se, but given time the profits will stack and the state will have enough money to do whatever buildup they want. It gets better when one realizes that rebuilding roads to aid in the Roman's defense in depth strategy can be used to speed up internal trade. There is a drawback in that quite a lot of grain would be imported from Bulgaria as urbanization increases once more so profits won't be as optimal as one might expect.
However, I don't want to give away too much on army reform but I need to say all of this will depend on the list of priorities the state has. Right now the state is interested in, for lack of better terminology, 'maxing out' what they've got left before going on the offensive- its a reaction towards decades of futile efforts at expansion and doing nothing instead of improving the conditions of the power base. So the army is going to be a bit neglected; it'll get better equipment of what they have now, especially with the better trade relations with the Marinids and the Golden Horde allowing for good Iron to come in, but, er, the empire is going to get a 'wake up call' that signals the army needs reform.
Make no mistake though, just because the army is no long the favorite department of the state doesn't mean the Empire won't gladly seize whatever opportunity it can get to retake its former territories as we've seen, but the new administration is wary on launching invasions. Defense is the priority right now.
From what Ive read, most of the ingredients for Greek Fire were found in the Crimea, which means paying the principality of Theodoro a visit. Since historically even in the rump state the empire did have a lot of contact and influence on the principality, there's an opportunity for buying the ingredients. The necessary experimentation to rebuild it and then rearming boats to use Greek Fire (along with cannons) will also take some time. I'm guessing if this happens we won't get Greek Fire until the 1400s, with the 1380s being the fastest amount of time I can reasonably see.
Af for longbowmen, that's a good idea. I'll see about it depending on the dynamics of the Hundred Year's War, although importing French soldiers is easier.
Its in flux. King Louis here would be spending most of his energy and men trying to reinforce the centralization his dad worked hard at achieving, but Croatia was always a bit more loosely controlled from what I gather (if I'm wrong, please point it out) so Croatia might still have some amount of autonomy. But there's probably been a few campaigns into the region to enforce the king's control during the late 1340s-50s.
So Serbia won't implode then and the rest of the Balkans is in detente. (Bulgaria did ally with both Serbia and the Byzantines here) That's... going to lead to some interesting developments.
