Turn 102 as the Turks right now. I own all of the Holy land except Jerusalem, I also own Dongola and Jedda, and as far north as Tblisi. I have all of Turkey (obviously) and also Thessalonika, Sofia, Bran, and Budapes, as well as Rhodes to the south, used to keep forgetting about that place. I had been going to play as an evil horde faction and sweep across the world, but though I would be better using the Jihad function and getting high chiv characters to prepare my lands and armies for the Mongol invasion. I'm still fighting the Mongols, they've yet to take anywhere, doing the usuall lurking about just south of Yerevan. I'm currently building stacks of Ottoman Infantry/Sipahis/Qupakulu to tackle them.

And BTW, Qapukulu are everything Kataphracts should have been. Exactly the same (including the AP mace ) but with much better stats. And I can train them with +1exp thanks to a Swordsmith Guilds HQ I captured in Bran.

Right now I'm looking to tackle the Italian factions since Milan just sent about 3 stacks consecutively to besiege Budapest, unluckily for them they were up against a 10 Command 10 Chivalry 9 experience General.

In diplomatic terms, I'm allied only to the Moors and Egypt. I have had in the past Hungary and Egpyt as my vassalls, the first time in TW I have ever had a vassal. The good rep I had back then did it I think. But now my reps down due to executing Mongols, so I'll just backstab the Egyptians and get all their wealthy undefended cities.