I hear yao'll on this one, it's WAY more fun to play a slow, steady GA game.

I'm currently playing as the Spanish, I set up some goals for myself along with the GA goals. I want Castile to be rich and full of buildings and updates, I have acomplished this, I have all the buildings I want, all the religious ones, and the military ones aswell, I built up a nice army there to defend it, half of the army is Lancers at Valour 4(because of my 8 star general) and the other half is chiv. men at arms, and Haldberiers.

I only wanted to expand until I reach and border at Aragon. I sent 1 succesful Crusade to Palestine and I'm setting up a good settlement over there. My 2nd Crusade towards Antioch is in Austria right now, the army is pretty large with a good 4 star general.

South of spain, the Alhomads attacked me I lost the first battle, but then sent in my army with the 8 star general and the lancers, I had roughly 1000 men against over 3000, I won because of my great Lancers and General.

So far it's good, Spain is very rich and safe from invaders, now I'm focused on reaching my GA goals and perhaps expanding into Africa.