As much as I hate to keep this thread alive, I'm going to reply as I'm a glutton for punishment . It is a wonderful thing that you have discovered these methods, I applaud your ingenuity and devotion to the game. However, of the methods and strategies you use:

#1 Using assasins to eliminate a factions ruling line, causing all their troops to turn rebel.
#2 Using other agents (emissaries,priests,alims,etc) as targets to train up your assasins.
#3 Manipulating events in a very unrealistic manner to improve valour (assasins used to get high security, etc.)

These have been previously discussed in these forums. They are not secrets or anything new to those who are fairly regular readers. I would suggest you read over older posts and also check out the Library--->MTW forum which contains many archived threads to gain insight into what has already been done. Dont' keep reinventing the wheel.

Some other previously posted, high impact methods that I would categorize as cheezy or cheating:

- Spy rushing, especially effective in pre-VI games. Put 10 or more spies in an enemy province and it is nearly guaranteed that it will rebel, regardless of loyalty buildings or garrison size. Your spies quickly gain valour which makes them more effective and soon nearly immune to border forts. Soon you can sweep your enemies into rebellion with an army of 50+ high valour spies.
- Rebel training: Cause recurring rebellions to occur in your own province. No loyalty+ buildings, no garrison, max taxes. When rebellion breaks out move a defending army immediately into province. Repeat over and over until your generals and troops gain lots of command stars, valour and vices. Use this enough times and you will get high command generals who often gain 'Field Defense Specialist' (+3 command on defense) and lots of troops who have gained valour through continuous and manufactured battles
- (edit) Forgot a great muslim tactic: Create many jihads, conquer enemy province but leave next turn. Launch all jihads at once with enough troops to conquer the objective province. You gain troops on the cheap (500 florins to build jihad, always produces more than 500 florins worth of troops), and +1 influence to the ruler for each jihad that invaded (province and general loyalty).

I am not telling you how to enjoy your game, each person should use the game to their personal satisfaction. However, some players feel the game AI is generally weak (myself included, search for posts about iron or titanium man rules for others who feel the same way) and feel using exploits or unrealistic methods is taking too much advantage of the system.

Someone earlier mentioned their appreciation of this Mongol decapitation tactic as it employed the Sun Tzu principle that winning without fighting is the epitome of excellence. Utilizing spies, assasins and inquisitors I can quite easily reduce all factions into rebel hordes. All I need is a decent trade network which can be manipulated by isolating a few opponents onto island provinces then moving ships out of their zones to gain quick ceasefires. This provides lots of weak trading partners to fuel trade income to bribe the many, many rebellions I make. Using these methods I'm sure I could get 100% domination in around 100 years fighting less than 10 battles. Does this make me a god or a demi-god then?