Pics and History of your Empire

[Dead Guy]

I think I'm actually at the point where I can comfortably wage war on all fronts. I was thinking about undertaking an expedition instead, load up a fleet with priests and 2 good armies and set sail for the holy land. But to do that without too much hassle I'd like to take a settlement with a port in the mediterranean... Venice seems like my best bet, since I border it with Innsbruck. I am sailing a fleet around Iberia now though so I might just borrow the Italian roads for a while :p

Right now I've taken a break because I got a little tired of the infantry line that can't die tactic. I decided to try out Bygs grim reality and real recruitment, as well as total combat and lusteds latest battle and campaign AI, all at once =). Unfortunately I haven't been taking screens :(. My choice of faction was Knights Templar early era, which turned out to be the hardest campaign I've ever played. I had to make some pretty strange moves to survive against the fatimids early on. The problem is that KT combined with Byg's means that you basically have one castle to recruit units from, Tortosa, your one and only starting settlement. Every other region you conquer needs to be brought up to 75% catholic before you can recruit worthy troops... It's a headache to which the only cure is mercenary alans, armenian cavalry and turkopoles. Since the AI mainly fielded huge armies of spearmen and some javelin skirmishers, it proved to be a very effective army though. The alternative would have been a boring horde of spearmen. However, I could only afford a single 3/4 stack and it had to run around all over the place hehe, the general that's been leading it for 12 years is quiet able by now though!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Now I've taken the coast from Adana to Cario and I'm finally making a profit.

How did your own SS campaign turn out by the way?