In my latest campaign as the Byzantines i have made it to 1200 Ad. Ive conquered the turks and the balkans. One turn i looked at the leading faction stuff at the bottom of the end turn scroll. It said that milan was both the richest and the strongest militarily. I thought, wow they must have conquered quite a bit i sent a diplomat to see if they would accept an alliance against venice. what i saw shocked me. after getting map info i saw they only had 2 provinces, milan and genoa. They had no less than 6 full stacks parked outside milan it also said they were the richest with me in second. I had 50000 florins too. I had an empire and they 2 provinces that were richer than my whole empire.