Most recently finished game:

Milan, vanilla time settings (have since found 1 turn=1 year is the way to go)

Overall strategy was to unify Italy and then push east towards Constantinople. As things turned out, I ended up supplanting the French throne and nicking the eastern coastline of Iberia.

The start was very tricky. Was against Venice, Sicily and France went on for at least 50 turns, with the Milanese beating back wave after wave and occasionally taking a city, but after I finally crushed the Sicillians I was only fighting on two fronts, and when pease was agreed all round I found myself with a kingdom comprising Italy, Marsaille, Dijon, Bern, Venice, and Ragusa.

I then turned my hand to the sark arts of assassination and spying, and ended up with the master assassins guild in Genoa. Hit upon the strategy of sabotaging enemy cities and pushing them into revolt, before marching in and clearing up the rebels. It worked far too well, to be honest, and I added numerous provinces following this tactic. Short, sharp wars saw a number of other areas added, including the remnants of Spain, and before I knew where I was Constantinople was revolting and I was marching in with a hardened army that had already crushed Hungary.

I ended up with scheming, espionage favouring generals in Italy overseeing legions of highly trained assassins, with the occasional far flung army led by a rare chivalrous Italian who had managed a crusade or two.

I enjoyed the game, but the first half (with the constant invasions and the desperate defences) was certainly more fun than the second half, where I had become too powerful for the AI to offer much of a challenge. I also sped through quite quickly (I was finished by the Black Death) and so missed a lot of the buildings and units at the top end of the tech trees. My new game is slower paced, with more of an eye on still being interested when the New World opens up.