At last! My first successful campaign.

I just wanted to post here that I have actually managed to win the long campaign for the first time - WAHEY!

Played as the Sicilians on H/H after several severe drubbings at VH/VH level.
Before the year 1100 AD my cardinal had been made Pope, Jerusalem and Acre had fallen to the mighty Norman knights, and I owned over a dozen regions. After that it was just a very slow game involving taking a settlement every other turn or so. I gave up on my family tree as it was huge and the role-playing element had gone out of it long ago.
It was definitely the toughest win I've ever had in any TW game, but the elation of winning was worth the wait.

I have to say though that the nearby factions (with the exception of my faithful Sicilian Pope) were all completely treacherous towards me. The Venetians, HRE, Byzantines and Hungarians all broke alliances to do something stupid like blockade one of my harbours (why?). In the case of the Venetians and HRE, they were excommunicated and I barely managed to recover enough each turn to push them back and take some of their settlements. By the end of the game, the only alliances I still had intact were with the Papacy, Moors, England and Danes. I was actually at war with 7 other factions, and each turn I had to micro-manage not only each settlement, but the sea as well. This was to prevent a single ship trying to blockade one of my harbours, even though the harbour in question had 4 war galleys in it......(?)

Anyhoo, thanks to the game developers for a cool game, although I'm eagerly anticipating the patch in the hope that it will resolve some of the bigger problems.