Quickest collapse you've seen?

[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....

[Martok]

Wow, YLC! I second Deus ret.; that's quite a spectacular collapse. Here's to regaining what you've lost!

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).

It's been my experience that if your faction leader is commanding an attacking army somewhere, the game seems to treat him as being "cut off", just as if he were stuck on a island somewhere. This is especially true once your faction reaches a certain size (usually around 10-12 provinces).

[ULC]

I'm finally ack on track and have essentially replaced the Byzantine emperor, as I now control the three points. It seems my would be foes ransacked my home provinces, as their seems to be little in quality units coming my way. They have also wasted away their immense armies fighting each other. The only real players now are the Golden Horde, which is well estabilished in Novgorod, The English, The Spanish, and The Hungarians. Everyone else is either gone thanks to the English King (7 star general with specialist attacker) or the Golden Horde. But nonetheless, not a one of them has any chivalric units except for HRK's and CMA's. The year is 1317, do you think a still stand a chance? Oh, and for further reference, My Emperor had 6 Influence when my empire collapsed, and the main reason he was away from the kingdom was becuase he was that rarity among HRE emperors in that he had 6 stars, expert attacker, famously brave, killer instinct, Mighty Warrior. He was the main reason I was able to get back on my feet.