I admire your desire, and think a fair number of us share it

I believe however the game itself cannot support anything other than a blitz strategy

while winning through other means ie diplomacy, religion, agents etc - these functions are broken or have never worked (or are just made irrelevent by the behaviour of the AI).

In my recent game VH 1.2 vanilla as the danes

I thought Id play a non-aggressive alliance/religion game

However constant war with my neighbours as well as constant blockading and constant invasion by england and scotland (every 3 turns - kind of kills the immersion - ALOT)

I was going broke - fast

so the AI with its kill the player at all cost strat - forced me to expand to stay in the black, and then well - the remainder of the game is a forgone conclusion - sing along *just keep blitzing - keep blitzing*

you can try other strats but your subtlties will be lost on the game engine and at some point the 'attack at all costs AI' will snuff out any flame of immersion you mightve been sheltering

basically all the elements are there but until there is a serious reworking of how the AI behaves - they are just window dressing