Currently playing my first game as England on m/m. I started with taking my army from the isle and taking York, Caernaveron (sp?), and Dublin asap. I made a move after York to take Inverness but the Scots already had it under siege so I moved on to Caernaveron. At the same time as that I took Rennes with my mainland forces and a few added units from Caen. I waited for missions to try and make some extra cash but I took Dublin and Rennes early because the Scots and France had guys on their way there.
I made an extra diplomat so I could have one to negotiate with near my settlements and one to head south. The south one I used to do a few diplomatic missions from the nobles and ended up using him to form an alliance with the papal states and the HRE. HRE took an alliance with nothing extra, but the papal states took a little but of bribing. I offered them cash gifts when I could spare it, which they really seem to love as well as cash tributes and map info. After a few turns of doing this I formed a perfect relationship with the pope which was very helpful. Of course you can't forget to keep up with churches and priests as well.
During this France got aggressive and started a siege on Caen. I took my units that were still in Rennes and positioned them directly behind the French and as soon as they were excommunicated I decimated them and moved to take Angers. The French army was decimated very badly after this so they sent in a diplomat to talk to my general and I negotiated a ceasefire in return for giving me Rheim, which they barely accepted.
When the pope called for the first crusade I was in the middle of my war with France so I decided to ignore his call and take the consequences which weren't too bad at all because of our diplomatic relationship. About 10 to 20 turnws after that I recruited about 7 priests from Caernaveron and Dublin along with a stack of 5 cog units and shipped them to Africa while I was screwing around in Europe. Once there they were they started converting the muslims and their piety skyrocketed. Once the Cardinals started dying the pope was more than happy to replace them with my missionaries from Africa. When the pope died my cardinal was a complete shoe in. Now I have nearly free reign over anyone with less than 5 papal rating.
Scotland proved to be the thorn in my campaign's side. They became aggressive right around when I sent the priests to Africa. During this time Milan had started a war with me and Scotland started soon after them. The Scots took York for a few turns and I took it back after mustering all my isle troops. They ended up becoming allies with nearly all my neighbors (Portugal, France, HRE, and Milan) so when I sacked Edinburgh they started to get pissed at me and eventually started to attack me.
After taking Edinburgh the pope (this was still the original pope) told me to cease hostilities with Scotland because they had managed to keep a 6-cross rating. So I sent a spy to Inverness and kept my troops in Edinburgh while the Scots kept sieging it and being beaten back, and as soon as the ceasefire was over I rushed Inverness and wouldn't ya know it, my spy came through and I didn't need to siege it, I rushed the gates and killed off the Scots, finally giving me full control of the British Isles.
During tthe Scot invasions I also had to fend off southern invasions by Milan and HRE, who turned on me after allying with Scotland. I was able to take Bordeaux, Paris, Bruges, and Antwerp, which has made me very financially secure. I'm currently in the middle of a four-front war with France, Milan, HRE, and Portugal, but with my pope I should have no problem with him interfering with my slaughtering.
My biggest mistake was ignoring diplomacy with everyone aside from the pope. Of course I granted trade rights and was nice to everyone at first I let that go away and now I have a bunch of angry neighbors who are allied with each other. Luckily Spain hasn't allied with anyone except for the Moors (go figure) so I'm currently trying to secure their alliance and hopefully I'll be able to marry into their family to form at least one secure alliance.
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