Crusader Kings II

[Monk]

My last game was Lübeck, may have to return there. Changes sound very, very interesting. I resorted to editing my save file to keep the HRE at autonomous vassals, but your tweak is much better.

I love it personaly. The gameplay is much more dynamic and diplomatic. You're now forced to fabricate claims a lot more, use plots for titles, and plot to kill people who are blocking your rise to power. In short, it makes you use ALL of the game's tools to remain effective. The only downside is the Emperor loves to take one of my counts and make him a duke in his own right. Ugh. WHY YOU DO THIS AI? Oh well. It's an easy De jure war to re-establish power. Just odd.

The HRE's power fluctuates much more realistically i've found when you make this change. If they can stay together by way of a strong emperor they become a real force to be feared, but because of autonomous vassals they are always trying to deal with internal problems. The Ai is constantly fighting and pushing the bounderies of power and the emperor is trying to keep them in check. It's how the HRE should have been from the start imho.

I'd like to see the Fatimids nerfed a bit but I won't be the one to do it. Balancing iberia was enough trouble.

Speaking of which, a few new changes to my test build demanded a new game so here it is:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Aragon - 1138



Iberia hard mode: start as a custom character in control of the Kingdom of Aragon, 1066, dont go crazy with buffing your stats. The kingdom of Aragon is in such a sorry state at the start of the game, even with my buffs, but they've got great potential.

Pushing de jure claims against the one province muslim minor powers of the north is obviously the best way to go. But then you're stuck with a bunch of muslim counts! I decided to push to medium CA asap so that I could revoke infidel titles and clean up my internal organization while pressing continuous de jure claims against the southern muslims. What resulted was a court at home who LOVED me for continually winning wars and an ever growing demesne as i mercilessly revoked any title that was held by a sunni character.

Ever since tinkering with the HRE i've come to love elective monarchy. Did your first born get saddled with the imbecile trait? No problem, elect his genious sister instead. As long as you play the diplomacy game correctly (as in, your duke vassals like you) they will always back whoever you're voting for. The downside of course is if you get saddled with no good candidates, next generation might see another dynasty on the throne of your kingdom.

I've had to strike a good balance between expanding my own personal power and fighting in defense of Christendom as a whole. Castile has gotten into some serious hot water twice now only for me and my men to come riding to the rescue. The King of Castile owes me big time. The biggest challenge was waiting for a good time to seize the duchy of barcelona. I had a claim on it (fabricated claim on an entire duchy, Thank you high diplo chancellors!) but they were much more powerful than I was and they had great commanders. That's when the Pope declared the most hilarius crusade in history: A crusade for the Kingdom of Pomerania...

What.

I didn't care! Threw every character I had into that and got some seriously nice buffs to my martial commanders, when Barcelona got entangled in a war to help out Castile in their holy war for Badajoz I jumped them. They called in Castile but I spammed mercs at them and destroyed them with determination and overwhelming fire power. I've spent the last twenty years consolidating my power in Iberia but unfortunately so have the muslims.

The Almoravids have moved into Granada and are just as powerful as I am. Holy Orders should even the score but if they called in the other powers of Iberia into a fight, then not so much. Iberia is a powder keg - all of the south is allied, all of the north is allied, the next war is gonna set off a huge explosion of violence no matter what the CB is.

Meanwhile:



I'm not even mad at this. I can't be. This was the greatest power play i've ever seen the AI pull off. The Fatimids weren't expanding much, dealing with internal decadence problems. They looked like they were going to fall into an invasion soon or at least suffer a pretty big succession crisis. The Seljuks were at war with the Byzantines, they succeeded in taking Armenia but were having trouble locking down Anatolia - and that's when the Fatimids struck...

An invasion of Mesopotamia after the Seljuks had been fighting the Byzantines for at least a decade. In one fell swoop the Fatimids broke the Great Seljuk Empire in half and sent it spiraling into a half dozen independence wars. The Seljuk dynasty lost control of everything and has faded into obscurity.. and now the Fatimids have been slowly absorbing the Seljuk successor states.

God help us all.