What challenges do you set?

[RunAway!!]

As the title asks, what do you do in your campaigns in order to make them more of a challenge? Has anyone tried rampaging peasant hordes?

Right now, my Italian campaign focuses on total victory or no war at all; basically, trying to conquer countries in a single massive assault. So far, I've just manage to take the Iberian Peninsula and the Papacy; but a few other countries have been reduced to island and coastal provinces, so they are next on the chopping block.

[pyhhricvictory]

I have tried to take out the Muslim world using only crusades. It failed, it is just way to expensive and if you lose a couple, you may have a nasty civil wart on your hands.

[seamusmoon]

I recently took all of the Byzantine provinces on the Black Sea coast (incuding Constantinople) in a single turn. It took a while to build the armies necessary for such an operation, but was well worth it...I took over 3000 prisoners which were ransomed for ~5000 florins.

[rasoforos]

as HRE i made 18 full armies , put em in egupt and then made a 'horde' stuly asault and conquered everything from egupt to greece one or two provinces at a time , of course it took em a while to decide to stop running and defend themselves , for some reason after i made the army everytime i would try to save it would crash but then i installed the patch and it was ok .

[Negative]

If either or both armys have more than 1000 troops I autoresolve since it is not realistic for 1000 troops to beat 5000 every time. Also this saves a lot of time. No more 4 hour battles

[woodsman22]

Playing as the danes I enjoy taking teritories and burning all the buildings. Turned the entire spanish empire into ruin Now owned as rebels. Gave me some quick needed cash and satisfaction that I sent them to the stone age in technology. My goal is to try and have nothing but rebel provinces left and take them all in one final turn.

[Foreign Devil]

Quote[/b] (Negative @ Dec. 05 2002,17:50)]it is not realistic for 1000 troops to beat 5000 every time.

I'm forced to disagree- there are many instances in history where the winning side was not the one with the most numbers.

[Alrowan]

as danes i try to establish the old viking empire, and perform the norman invasions all over again

[FesterShinetop]

I set a goal to not attack any other player, just expanding my empire by bribes and using spies and assasins to provoke rebellions (then bribing the rebels). Of course I did have to defend myself against some attacks and that's where it goes wrong...: an ally will attack me - I am shouting Vengeance is mine at the monitor and attack the traitor with full force... Hehehe...

[desdichado]

One thing I've been wanting to try is to have my ruler be a total utter bastard. Tax rates always very high, putting down rebellions and killing everybody, always killing prisoners, backstabbing allies, torching provinces etc.

If anybody has tried this can you tell me how it went?