With the Reich at war against three opponents, prosecuting one enemy to the bitter end proved a difficult task. I found myself constantly strapped for cash and faced with a surly populace. It seemed like every time I could mount a respectable stack, some tragedy or another would come to snatch victory away before swords were ever crossed. I lost count of the number of family members and agents who were purged by (un)holy fire, but suffice it to say that if I could've afforded the hit to population contentment excommunication entails (I THINK that's what happens), I would have carried out my desire to crucify the Pope and his Italian and Scandinavian lackeys with little regret.
Sadly, loyalty to the glorious empire was always fleeting. For example, I once lost half a stack of Teutonic and mailed knights with multiple silver chevrons (hooray for retraining!) to a captain who didn't have his priorities straight. On top of this, it seemed that every time I would take the upper hand against one foe or another, the Pope would call me off. Even ceding a blood soaked Ragusa to him proved too little to gain his lasting affection (not to mention that Popes who favored the HRE seemed prone to fatal maladies). Struggling to make my forces meet every threat, the Reich was forced to rely on mercenaries. Untold numbers of expensive crossbowmen and papier mache spearmen were enlisted, and they performed as well as could be expected. I managed to get a few units of mercenaries to high levels of experience. Of course, the tradeoff for this military success (more properly: equilibrium) was that I had a hard time getting ahead financially. It wasn't until I finally pushed the Venetians back to their holdout in Iraklion that I could gain the upper hand.
Of course, all this sounds like warmongering, but it was through no intent of my own. I tried to make peace with each and every one of my foes at favorable times, but they would never listen to reason. Apparently the diplomats of the Holy Roman Empire were higly flatulent irrascible bastards as no one seemed prone to accepting even the most lucrative offers for peace. NOt even soundly defeating armies that outnumbered my own 3:1 was enough to convince my enemies that their resistance was only prolonging the inevitable.
However, in the end, the joke was on them. After I pushed the Venetians off the continent proper, reduced the Sicilians to impotent paupers, and showed the Danes the folly of sending militia to face the might of the Teutons, my victory was inevitable.
To cap my ultimate triumph, I decided to finish the Ventians off with an amphibious invasion. It isn't too often I taunt my computer, but when I crushed the Doge and his family on a battle on a Cretan hillside, I found myself mocking the computer's feeble defense. I was all too happy to show the Venetians the scientific advances that had been made while they were away from Europe proper, and nothing was quite as sweet as dropping a flaming cannonball on hi face before parading my armoured sergeants through his town.
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Sorry if my posts were rambling comma-ridden exercises in boredom, I had a hard time deciding what sort of perspective I wanted to relate my tale through; as my retelling was spur of the moment and after the fact, some of the more interesting details have been lost. Next game I play, I'll make things a little more cohesive and keep track of the cooler bits better. For example, I just remembered that I took Venice TWICE, once in a Crusade. I still had a unit of Crusader Sergeants last me almost thirty turns after that, marching up and down the Balkans gutting Venetian dogs...ahh the memories.
In sum, if you want an exciting game, I think the HRE is where it be at. Just remember that you have way too many castles and way too many enemies to afford making units out of all of them--and don't even THINK about keeping them all upgraded to the latest tier of goody (or even about keeping them all AS castles).
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