I played a handful of turns last night and just to update you guys, my strategy ended up working out quite well. I sent a bishop to offer an alliance with the horde and to my surprise they accepted with this note: (paraphrasing) now is the time for us to attack mutually or something like that.

So I poured troops into Const. from Greece to hit the Byz. While hitting end year, the Horde feinted light attacks at Wallachia and Bulgaria from Moldavia, tying up any reinforcements the Byz may have sent to Const.

The battle for Const was a slaughter and about 500 men retreated to the Citadel. Meanwhile Bulgaria lay ripe for the taking, so I poured troops from Siberia and whatever else I had left in Greece. I hit end year and now I see the Horde coming to join the fun as well. I had a much bigger army, so I wasn't worry about losing the province. I deployed for battle and the Byz were set up on a long hill. I waited for the Horde to come up, baited the Byz and then let the Horde go in and take all the casualties. Byz and Horde went at it for about 5 minutes and eventually the Horde general fled (coward). But they did enough damage where my ILI and Fuedal Knights could clean up and take the victory.

So now, the year is about 1260 if I remember correctly. Spain controls western France, Iberia, N. Africa and much of middle east. I control pretty much the middle of map including eastern France, some of the former HRE provinces, a lot of eastern Europe, and all the Medit Islands. Poland has got a handful of provices, as do the Horde. France actually still lives on in Scotland The English have a few provinces and Turkey, Eggys and Byz are down to their last 1-3 provinces each. Looks like it's me against Spain for a big show down. The funny thing is once one of us strikes our economies are going to go to crap because all our ships are interlaced throughout the seas, so it's basically going to turn red and cut off all our trade.