This thread is quite fun
Loved that one about the battle in Greater Poland -- 10000 Frenchmen! -- very impressive prince character there, made me want to play a game solely for training up legendary generals.
Anyway here's my current game. I'm only playing vanilla at the moment (VI, v2.00). This is my special campaign with the Papacy. Obviously I'm not trying to expand my lands or play a typical conquest game but rather trying to convert the whole map to Catholicism (95% in all provinces is my goal) and generally promote the Catholic factions.
In the early age the Byzantines conquered all of Russia and Eastern Europe all the way to Germany and Austria. Meanwhile the Catholics bitterly fought each other, though the Spanish did defeat the Almohads and eventually were at the border with Egypt. I was certainly in for a challenging game since I had to somehow unite Catholic Europe under one flag and roll back the Patriarch in Constantinople and his imperial bunch of invincible 8-star generals.
The HRE dissolved early on while the French came out strong so to begin with I placed my bets on them and had all my agents undermining their enemies. The English were at war with them so my inquisitors burned all their heretic generals worth a star.... eventually I killed off the English royal family and let them go rebel. Unfortunately the French continued to disappoint me and ended up losing all their homelands to Spanish and Italian invaders. By now the Spanish are my champions as their empire is stable and healthy and they're finally managing some great crusades.
The Golden Horde helped a lot with my situation with the Byzantines, which I was of course hoping for. The Poles and Hungarians re-emerged and finally after a long persecution of the Byz royal family I was able to kill off their last heirless emperor and make them neutral. The stage is now set for a Catholic east.... after I assassinate the Khan of course
Enough BS, here are the screenshots:
All the rebel territories in the east are basically the former Byzantine empire, after the tragic death of their last emperor
Most of the Middle East is around 70-90% Catholic, despite still being ruled by the somewhat estranged Muslim factions.
Bookmarks