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I'd suspect yes, he's better prepared and Manuel here has left him with an excellent position; the Komnenos are still riding high with new victories.

Maybe, maybe not. France still has the HRE to contend with and England is certainly no push over either. Think bigger, honestly. The Byzantines doing better from ~1176 onwards likely means the Steppe nomads to their North might get Christianized as Byzantium can assert more influence in this...

Fisherman from the Basques, Brittany and the British isles were likely already fishing off the coast of North America sometime in the 1400s, so it seems likely something may eventually happen from there; albeit delayed. I can't really see the Spanish states sponsoring expeditions though, both...

So how do we think new world discovery and colonization will go? I like @stevep suggestions on that front, but wanted more input on them.

IIRC, you could also get England in the HRE at this point still....

For the first, it's not as big of an issue given Byzantium was a Christian power; the Ottomans being Muslim and having a strategic economic advantage was very much cause for concern for the rest of Christian Europe. The rest though is a good point and very interesting to consider, although IIRC...

I left the PoD vague, admittedly, to allow for full creativity but if we go with the one of 1176 I suggested upthread (Byzantine victory over Turks, Almohad victory in the 1200s against the Iberians), than by that point you already have recognizable France and England, both in control over most...

The biggest issue with such is the intense rivalry between the English and French, as well as the later being absorbed into the HRE's affairs. On the other hand, there is no Spain here to menace France nor England; perhaps the French are content to only take a few colonies in the America while...

By whom and what shape does it take? While the fishing and timber opportunities are large, they might not be as much of a "pull" factor as Gold, Tobacco and Sugar, for example. On the other hand, it could lead to a general adoption of English settler colonialism as opposed to the "smash and...

I can foresee the Byzantines long term undergoing a Basil II style renaissance, taking the place of the Ottomans as far as Balkan expansion. Perhaps, too, they can come to puppet/annex the Crusader states in the Levant and then fulfill Manuel's OTL goals for re-conquering Egypt. In essence...

I like this, although to reduce butterfly effect you could also go with the 1176 Battle of Myriokephalon. Also comes with the added (And cool, imo) bonus of Christian and Hellenized Turks in the long run; imagine an Ottoman Dynasty as the eventual ruling family of the Empire.

Basically, achieve the reverse of what happened OTL (or maintain the Middle Ages dynamic, if you prefer lol). Historically, the Turks ultimately broke Byzantine rule in Anatolia and gradually converted the region, ultimately birthing the the Ottoman Empire while in Iberia the petty Christian...