Aragon rising?

[NewJeffCT]

Wow, I'm playing as the Danes in my current game and am trying something different to hopefully prolong things. I snagged Sweden, Norway, Finland & Livonia pretty early, and then Saxony when the HRE was ex'comm'd. But, I laid low for a while and built my trade empire. The Byz & the Spanish were kicking butt early - the Spanish eliminated the Almos, then drove across North Africa and wiped out Egypt and moved in to the Holy Lands and got Syria, Tripoli & Antioch. The Byz conquered all the eastern lands and eliminated the Turks, then proceeded to eastern Europe.

Meanwhile, the English & French were at war and wearing each other down, and the HRE was falling apart. In comes the Aragonese, getting Toulouse and Aquitine, then snagging Navarre when they rebel from the Spanish. Soon, a Spanish civil war starts and most of Spain falls in to anarchy.

Because I love to colonize, I landed in Leon. But, by the time I got there and put down a rebellion or two, the Aragonese snagged the rest of the Spanish peninsula and Morocco and now have conquered most of France. They are quite the power, and even have a few citadels, metalsmith workshops and things like chivalric knights and halberdiers.

First time I've seen them as such a power. They even snagged Constantinople from the Byz via Crusade, and the Byz is taking some hits from the Golden Horde now... the Aragonese might be my biggest challenge.

Anybody else seen such Aragonese power?

[kawligia]

Never. But I did see the papacy take most of southern Europe on an byzantine campaign.

[Monk]

Yes i have, but its rare for them to grow beyond Iberia in my games. Most of the time if they become a great power they attempt to ride North into France but are repulsed by either the English or French. It's actually nice to see that even the smallest factions sometimes can become the "team to beat" so to speak. Good luck in your wars, if your not careful the Aragonese may challenge you for supremacy http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cheers.gif

[Nowake]

I have another small dissapointment: never seen the Almohads win against the spanish. Quite the affair, why?

[Fragony]

Post-patch thingie. In my earlier games the Alhomads would always become a major power and conquer western europe. Now it is always Spain beating the almos.

[NewJeffCT]

I hope they continue to rise into a power, but I have my doubts on the Aragonese, despite their now having several citadels. The only other time a minor faction was a threat in about 25 SP campaigns now was the People of Novgorad re-spawned once and several rebellious provinces allied with them, so they ended up with 17 provinces in one turn and they had respawned into a few of my 'safe' provinces like Mercia & Northumbria with large stacks. In that same campaign, my biggest end-game threat was from the Hungarians - I did not want to attack and get huge rebellions for getting excommunicated, so the Hungarians ended up controlling most of the original HRE, plus the Polish & Novgo original provinces.

In response to the above poster, I did see the Almos rise into a major power post-patch – they wiped out the Spanish, Aragonese, French, English, HRE, Danes, Italians, Papacy, Sicilians, Egyptians, Hungarians and Byzantines. I was the Poles and held my original territories, plus one HRE province, plus all the rebel territories in northern Europe – Prussia, Pomerania, Lithuania, Livonia, Sweden, Norway & Finland. In the end, it came down to me with about one third of the map, the Almos with two thirds and the Byz with only Rhodes.

[R'as al Ghul]

I have another small dissapointment: never seen the Almohads win against the spanish. Quite the affair, why?
Because their behaviour is set to "Muslim_peaceful" in the Early.txt in the startpos folder.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-jester.gif
Kinda ridiculous if you consider their plan to get all of Spain, isn't it?
Well, you can easily change that back.
Cheers

[kawligia]

On my new English campaign, the pope had taken all of Italy including Sicily, Malta, and Corsica. This time they did it WITHOUT a re-emergence. Now they have ships as far as the English channel. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-dizzy2.gif

[metatron]

Upon hearing someone remark about strange happenings as the Polish, I tried the Polish. Suffice to say, by 1250, my emissaries were negotiating with the Argonese crown.