Quote Originally Posted by Odin
I would have loved to have seen the Cuman horse tactics against the heavy armor of the Byz, with the back drop of catholic militias.
What a slugfest! I'm sure it would have been interesting to behold, but in the absence of arbs, it's the Cumans who are somewhat overpowered in XL early because of their ridiculously cheap (and low-tech) but absolutely devastating Cuman Heavy Cavalry, in fact the equal of Chivalric Knights. Consequently, it was them who ended up sieging the big C.....they tend to grow strong in XL in early.

My nicest enemy empire collapse was when I played the Aragonese back in vanilla (good ol' days ) and as always the Egyptians were eating everyone in their way. After cleverly waiting for the Byz and Turks to battle it out, they just swallowed the victor (Byz) and went nuts from there on. They didn't even build their typical giant peasant armies, so actually were a threat to reckon with. When they owned North Africa up to Morocco, half the steppes, the former Byz share of the Balcans and one or two stray provinces (among them Sicily!), I decided that something would have to be done. I sent a massive crusade bolstered generously with extra troops from Aragon (I owned Iberia and most of France) oversea when the Eggies finally left that gap in their line of ships.

What followed were the five or six longest turns I ever played, or so they seemed to me. Not only did our navies contest each and every sea square (a contest which I barely managed to win, mostly because my supply worked better), but the battles in the Holy Land were outstanding. I can't recall how many battles I fought with my isolated crusader force in Antioch, their numbers dwindling with each battle -....well five probably...- but I killed the Sultan twice who was foolish enough to lead his troops into battle himself, including his own 7-star jedi general . On turn 5, I took the opportunity to asassinate the Egyptian heir deeming himself safe in the Sinai - and bang, Egypt falls into a HUGE civil war and in the span of three more years the Turks and the Byz had reappeared, and their steppe holdings were largely lost to a Russian loyalist rebellion. Egypt was now (and until they were extinct) reduced to Arabia, more or less.

In retrospect I'm not too sure if it actually was the assassination which triggered the civil war, it would have been the only time I witnessed it so far. In any case, it was a rewarding deed