This campaign has been a blast, despite several severe blunders I made.

The Mongols have arrived, but they're going South, apparently. I've read elsewhere on the forum that the horde tends to go where you're not.

Sixty-four battles in 73 turns, thanks to non-stop war with the Poles, and then the Danes, HRK and Hungary. That includes very few sieges. I've been outnumbered so often, the AI attempts siege relief so even the sieges turn into good field battles.

Less than a dozen of those battles have been sea battles or routine, outnumbered bandit stompings. Even some of the bandit battles have been decent.

Yeah, I've only lost six, inculding the sea battles. However, I've also been playing MTW for years, and I have control back. It's no longer the "fire and forget" of RTW.

I look back on all those battles and tell myself that there are some attacks by the AI that I would not have made. However, once on the battlefield, I cannot point out a single instance of idiotic AI behavior. I did find the "I'm stuck on the ladder" problem in one siege, while being attacked by the HRE. I took the gate back, let the castle fire at the one unit of HRE dismounted knights, and tripled the game speed. When the 60-man unit was whittled down to less than 10 survivors, they paniced and my cavalry ran them down.

As for the Russians, I love Boyar Sons, the javelin-armed unit. Predictably, I'm playing an HA-cavalry game.

There's never enough money. Agents are a luxury hard to afford. The Baltic is infested with pirates, who have become veterans by the time you can afford a navy. The Black Sea is much safer, for now.

Lessons from the school of hard knocks:

You'll be tempted to hire mercs in the opening moves. The distances are vast and the big temptation is to move with a cavalry army, then hire mercs for siege and garrison duty. Resist the urge as much as possible. You don't have the money.

There's no use building a navy in the Baltic until you can build a big one.

Pay attention to your mission assignments. You need the money.