Cursed Sicilians, or a game feature?

[hrvojej]

I am playing as the Turks, on normal. I am happily mowing down the opposition, and my sultan is in Constantinople all the time. I own Spain, North Africa, and everything from Bavaria to the east. The Sicilians own the central Europe and Italy, while all other factions still in existance have apparently been more or less neutralized by civil wars, since, while hoovering emissaries over the provinces, most are shown as being controlled by the rebels. All of a sudden, the Sicilians sink one of my ships, and we are at war. That would be ok, except that all my Spanish and North African provinces go down in loyalty tremendously, even Egypt that I've held for 150 years, from 200 to 60. Now, as my empire was growing, I took more and more time to check things on the regular basis. I have spies, alims, and garrisons of at least 500 peasants in all provinces, none of my governors have a vice that would reduce happiness, and I have never raised taxes over normal in those provinces. I have not taken any new territory lately, and my sultan has been ruling for some 15 years now and has a good influence and the "occasional mercy" virtue. I have tried to attack the Sicilians myself to see what will happen, and the same thing occurs. Has anybody else noticed this? Is it the case suggested by barocca in another thread (http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum7/HTML/001573.html) that the distance between your king is actually calculated as the number of turns it would take him to get there? That would be the only explanation, since the Sicilians have fleets everywhere in the Mediterranean, and all my water lanes are cut off now. Still, I thought that it's calculated only by land distance in provinces, and thought I was safe?!
Also, if they have a ship in sea of Marmara, does that cut off Europe from Asia Minor? Same thing with straits of Gibraltar?
On a further note, why do all my new sultans appear in Egypt when they are crowned every time ever since I've owned it? Why not in Rum?
Thanks.......

[solypsist]

hmmm..methinks the game chooses one faction or another to "boost" in equality with you, the player's, own empire size. One game it was the Almohads, most recently the Sicilians are controlling a large part of the map. Either way, one faction seems to be immune to falling economies and other "realism" features that plague human players, so expect a very slanted game.

[solomani]

I noticed the same thing. The game must use the fastest method of travel, which would be sea in your case.

I noticed whenever there wasnt a clear seazone link my loyalty would drop, as soon as their was a link, it would return to normal.