Quickest collapse you've seen?

[Xehh II]

Uff da! That's rough, man. Were you that badly outnumbered by the rebels?

No, we were about even but they appeared in every province, those that survived the first turn were slaughtered the next turn because they loss so many troops defending the first rebel attack.

[_Aetius_]

One of the biggest collapses ive personally ever had was as Egypt in Vanilla. It was fast considering I was playing and you would expect players empire not to collapse as mine did, but anyway.

Background

I'd gotten into a position where I was at war with all my major potential trading partners so wasnt making any money, but I still needed a massive army to hold my empire together. Discontent was rife but I was holding things together, my empire was from Tunisia to Bulgaria, Armenia to Arabia, basically everything between those points.

The problems arose when I was forced to invade Italy because of persistant Sicilian attacks on my naval forces, I didnt have many native troops to spare so had to hire mercenaries locally. When Sicily, Naples and Malta where under my control the Papacy declared war and I was forced to keep a considerable mercenary army stationed in Naples. During this brief 5 year campaign a new Sultan had come to the throne with very poor influence, so to lose my recent conquests by disbanding disloyal units would of been catastrophic.

The cost of maintain my empire which needed huge garrisons in Africa to fight the war with the Almohads, massive garrisons in the Balkans to hold back the Hungarians and rebelling Byzantines and a large force in Armenia and Trebizond to hold the Mongols was breaking my economy. I also needed large garrisons in the provinces to.

Start of collapse

The breaking up of the empire began when the current Sultans brother rebelled in Anatolia, it wasnt huge but it was enough to stretch me to far. I had to neglect my western armies to deal with repeated rebellions and invasions in the east during this time. My most loyal generals were pulled east and clustered together with my relief armies leaving less loyal men in charge of the west, something I simply couldnt avoid.

In the middle of this madness the mercenary army in Italy rebelled and a major civil war broke out led by yet another brother in Syria, of a total number of 3,500 men in and around Italy 2,800 joined the rebels. So I instantly lost control of my most recent conquests, thousands more men rebelled throughout the empire including a large army of reinforcements i'd sent to smash the forces of the last rebel army in the previous civil war.

About 50% of the empire was either rebel or being fought over, I lost most of the interior of Asia Minor and every island I had, worst of all my army in Tunisia was fighting itself as half was rebel the other still mine and the Almohads launched a massive offensive and crushed both sides at once and marched on Egypt.

Outcome

Over the next 10 years my empire was dismantled, I ended up with about 20% of what I had had 20 years earlier. I managed to withdraw enough men in time from the Balkans to secure the holyland and repel the Almohads, but couldnt withdraw over 800 men stranded on Sardinia thanks to enemy fleets nearby. Sardinia was eventually lost a few years later along with several important generals.

The main collapse probably took place over about 8 years the following 10 just summed up the chaos that followed, repeated rebellions and ridiculously large invasions. What I performed was a series of large withdrawels to the interior of the empire. I feel that I couldnt of done any better than I did, I was caught in a situation where I needed a massive army my economy couldnt afford to defend the heartlands where my economy was based.

I did recover, but for what ever reason provinces were constantly disloyal to me and I could never expand, but I did get my revenge in Italy and utterly smashed the mercenary army. However I did have to withdraw again, because of you guessed it a rebellion

I've never been huge and literallylost everything before, thats the closest ive ever come to being a superpower to nothing.

[Martok]

Wow _Aetius_, that's rough. I still compliment you, however, for sticking it out and fighting your way back. That takes guts.

I had a fairly epic collapse involving my own faction happen to me when I'd been playing MTW for only a few months. I had led a resurgent Byzantium to glory, recapturing most of the lands once held by the Romans and restoring the Empire. By the end of the Early period, I'd managed to gain control of all the lands surrounding the Mediterranean (save for the Papacy, whom I left alone), and had conquered most of the continent west of the Rhine.

I made a fatal mistake, however, when I decided to invade Britain. Specifically, I committed the error of having the Emperor (one of the Constantines, I think) personally lead the expedition. (This was before I was really aware of the effect of your faction leader being cut off from his lands. Oops!) Well you can guess what happened next: As soon as Constantine had crossed the Channel with his army, the entire empire suffered mass rebellions. Some factions re-emerged, and other kingdoms took advantage of my weakness and invaded some of my more vulnerable provinces.

I reluctantly ended up ceding large portions of my empire, instead focusing my efforts on preservering my heartlands. Of course, this loss of territory spurred yet more rebellions. Fortunately, I was able to crush most of them, but it stretched me nearly to the breaking point. Things were very touch-and-go for a while; I was hanging on for dear life the entire time.

It was at least 10 years before I finally started to get the sitution back under control. After all was said and done, I possessed little more than the provinces I started with, although I did manage to retain control of the Levant. And of course, around the time I got the situation truly stabilized, the Golden Horde showed up in Georgia....

[EatYerGreens]

Not the quickest, nor the biggest, but possibly one of the strangest, was in the campaign I'm currently running.

The Spanish had completely wiped out the Almos but before they'd got around to troubling me, the Almos had a multi-stack re-emergence, in Portugal, which enabled them to completely eliminate the Spanish. They were then held at bay by the Egyptians, in Morocco and me (English) at the (predictable) Navarre/Aragon borders.

I was doing quite well from trading to the Almos for a while (they built the ports the Spanish hadn't bothered to), although only on the northern and western Iberian coasts (a new policy of not spreading my ships too thinly) but then the Almos got jealous (??!!) and went and sank a ship...

I let a number of turns go by, with only naval exchanges (and they never ventured far enough north with their fleets to disrupt the surviving half of my trade), before steaming into Castile, from Navarre and then into Cordoba, so as to get into Valencia, avoiding the river battle that Aragon's border demands. I can only recall two proper 3-D battles with them (I got a Skilled Attacker general, after routing a very long chain of reinforcements in one of them). Leon went straight to a siege. More years of building up troop numbers by me, all the while hoping they'd attack and lose, so as to make the final battles a bit easier.

Finally, I got fed up of waiting and attacked Portugal. In spite of pretty decent numbers/quality on their side, they completely baled out and escaped to Granada by ship! This meant the final battle was against about 3 or 4 stacks in Granada (plus defence in mountains).

I expected a complete bloodbath, with heavier losses on my side, so I sent in an equivalent, or greater, number of stacks.

Despite it being their 'last-stand' territory, there was no 3-D battle and no siege. They completely vanished off the map!

I was really looking forward to using my first unit of CK's in this campaign in the battle as well. (Given my propensity to abandon campaigns without ever finishing them, this might have been the first time I'd ever used CK's in anger, outside of multiplayer battles....)

Also annoying was that Granada's Citadel was reduced to Castle-ringwall-CTs by the pillage effect.

[seireikhaan]

Wow, that certainly was odd, I've never had that happen to me when facing an actual faction. I've had rebels "surrender" a few times when they had no place to retreat, though.

[ULC]

That would be me as the HRE in 1226. I owned all but the Northern most steppes and the lands between cyrencia and armenia. I moved my 15 stacks of CMAA, HRK, CS, XB, and Halberdiers out of khazar ( they had been witing their for 10 plus years for the horde) down into edessa, antioch and syria, and up north into muscovy and chernigov wiping out everything in my path. The egyptians put up a good fight, but I eventually pushed them down into syria by 1228. They launched a counterattack from egypt, and my army being stretched thin trying keep everyone loyal, plus my best men and generals in georgia and khazar waiting for the horde, meant a quick and suprising defeat. I thought nothing of it st first, as all my provinces had 200 loyalty to me, but when I ended the turn, every province INCLUDING khazar and georgia, which had five stacks each, rebelled. Plus the English, the Danes, the French, and the Byzantines all reappeared, generally with 3-10 stacks themselves. The collapse of my empire was swift, but not over. I still controlled a good portion of my provinces, and my military still outclassed anything the reemergent factions had, the GOLDEN HORDE invades with 25 stacks in Khazar and 15 in Georgia (plus the other half of my empire that I wasn't able to put under control). I fight it out, but the sheer wieght of the reemergent factions, plus defeat after defeat and abondoning provinces, causes the rest of my empire to fall into civil war. I the end, I am reduced to Tripoli, Antioch, and Cyprus (Ironic, huh?), with just about everyone back into power. Presently they are beating the pulp out of each other, and I think I'm making a comeback.

[Deus ret.]

Impressive! Either your emperor must have been very weak influence-wise, or you sent him in some kind of province not connected to the rest of your empire before (while attacking?). Or some kind of bug had its hand in there, as I suspect somehow occured to me while I was playing the HRE (see this thread).

In any case, what a magnificent ruin! I'm interested in how you'll fight your way back to the top, given that all of your precious and upgraded heartland provinces are now owned by your rivals, wish you good luck on that....