How to deal with the "showdown" effect?

[caravel]

Yes, assassinating your biggest rival, near the end of the game, can often make alot of sense. All of their territories will turn rebel, with loyalty dropping to 100%. This allows previously wiped out factions to return. You can then make the most of the chaos and expand your territory, bribing some of the good rebel generals on the way.

Syrian assassins get a 2 star valour bonus, which means that with the 3 tavern upgrades they will get a maximum of 5 stars. Seen as a bit of an AI exploit, along with Inquisitors from castile, by many, including myself, they do make the training and deployment of assassins less tedious however. A mod I am working on has addressed this by removing the bonus in Syria and lowering the build requirements for the taverns and brothels to work similarly to how they do in the VI campaign, this means that the AI starts putting out assassins quite early so you need to be prepared.

When fighting the large factions try to not storm the AI provinces too much (invade in the hope that they will retreat). You should storm about 3 provinces, reorganise your troops so that your defensive troops are borught forward then wait for the AI's counter attack and punish them severely. This will halp you to reduce the numbers of his forces, instead of having to fight several massive "Golden Horde appearance" style battles later. Training massive stacks of units will enourage the AI to try and equal them also, this will predictably lead to more the huge battles, that you'll probably end up autocalcing due to lack of time.

Which facton are you playing as, and who are the rival "super power"?