Thanks for all the tips in the thread, has made life in my English realm much easier.

One thing I've noticed though is that EVERYONE hates the English. I'm serious, every damn faction keeps attacking me constantly. I did make a grave mistake in my planing and it's costing me greatly. The froggies had decided to try to back-stab me but I swiftly moved in one of my stacks and smashed two of theirs in a bridge-battle (oh how I LOVE defending a bridge ). The following round I sent in a diplomat and offered a ceasefire in exchange for a hefty sum of money. They decided to change the deal and offered and smaller sum of money and Metz. Like a fool I accepted, BIG mistake.

I seems that every European faction thinks Metz is the best thing since sliced bread and I consequently had stacks from HRE, Denmark, Milan, and Venice (go figure) all hotfooting it towards my newly acquired castle

After beating off both the Danes and Milanese in some very heavy battles I came under siege from a 1k+ HRE army. I had a grand total of about 320 troops, none of them very hardcore to say the least. There were 3 peasants, 2 peasant archers, and a unit of cavalry militia. As the battle started they rolled up 4 sets of ballistas. To my luck they had their army placed way back in the middle of the forest so the ballistas had to move up quite a bit away from the rest of the army. I decided to go gungho and raced my cav out to as a welcoming-party. I managed to catch the arty without any backup and proceeded to slaughter them swiftly. By the time the rest of the army had gotten to my cav I raced back towards the castle. This is where the fun really began.

They used one tower, one ram, and only one set of ladders. This would be my saving grace as the tower and the ladders both decided to try to sneak off to my right side. I dispatched two of my peasants over there while the remaining one sat inside my gate and my archers let their fire-arrows fly against the mass of infantry trailing the ram. They managed to get the ladders to the wall but for some strange reason, not that I'm complaining, they had manned them with a set of archers. These were no match ever for my poor peasants and sure enough they routed within minutes. By another grace of luck I managed to set the siege-tower ablaze and that left them focusing on only the ram. As the ram was knocking on my front door they had placed some of their archers a bit behind the rest of the army. They just sat there for some reason and I manged to take my cav (that had just been moved out of the way of the incoming army after their arty-smash) and crush in to them from the rear.

Just as both their archers broke down and ran home to mommy their ram broke through my gates and they started pouring in. My three peasants fought like there was no tomorrow (which was actually the fact for all of them) but were slowly wittered down by the onslaught. By the time the peasants were routed the HRE decided to send two of it's spear-units up on my walls to deal with my archers. This is where the archers really hunkered down and actually managed to rout both spear-units while only losing about 30% strength. The rest of the battle I used my last firearrows and the remnants of my cavalry to try to just score as many kills as possible before losing the battle. They had placed two units of cav in my square and won by holding it.

It was one helluva battle to say the least and even though I did end up losing the battle in the end I managed to kill 700+ of his units which made it much easier the next round when my stack of longbows, spears, and heavy cav showed up and cleaned house.

Now it's time to teach the Danes a lesson