Pics and History of your Empire

[PBI]

For almost two hundred years, the plains of north Italy had been ravaged by near-constant warfare. Venice, Sicily and Genoa were locked in a vicious three-way war. The Venetians at first had the upper hand against the Genoese Republic, taking the cities of Genoa and Milan, before the Genoese rallied and drove them back to the Adriatic. Meanwhile, Sicily repeatedly but unsuccessfully laid siege to the Venetian fortress of Ancona, while Sicily and Genoa fought their own bitter conflict over control of Tunisia and the western Mediterranean. Meanwhile all three engaged in side wars with the Moors, the Holy Roman Empire, Hungary and the Byzantines.

The deadlock was not broken until the Genoese, buoyed by their successes and the recent demise of the Moors, decided to open yet another conflict, against the burgeoning English empire. The attack was a disaster; in the wake of the Genoese defeat the English swept through the western Mediterranean and overran the Genoese Republic, gaining a foothold in northern Italy in the process. Meaning to take advantage of the exhausted combatants, the English pushed on to attack Venice; Ancona was quickly taken, the garrison which had withstood so many Sicilian assaults apparently unprepared for an attack from the other direction, but then the campaign began to bog down. The garrison of Venice itself was strong, and the fighting on the approach to the city was savage and often came down to sheer attrition. Meanwhile the desolated lands around Ancona once again found themselves host to a Sicilian invasion force as the Sicilian king strove to take advantage of the coronation of a new English king in faraway Palestine, and take the prize of Ancona so many Sicilians had died for.

However, by the year 1254 the great Venetian host was at last whittled down and forced back into the city itself; with the garrison under siege, the English were able to bring up an elite army of Hospitallers, freshly raised in Spain, to make the final assault. At last, the English besiegers moved in to attack the great city.



The English force closes in on the formidable garrison of Venice, but only after a lengthy bombardment from cannons and trebuchets to breach the wall in four places.


English mangonels rain fire upon the Venetians, throwing the defenders into chaos.


A courageous lone Hospitaller is the first into the breach, leading the rest of the knights to rout the lighter Venetian cavalry before the infantry enter the breach.


The infantry flood into the city, eventually getting the upper hand over the Venentian heavy infantry and pikemen.


The siege of Venice was a costly victory, but it transformed the situation in north Italy; with the remaining Venetians driven back to their holdings in the Balkans, the English armies could concentrate against the Sicilian threat.

King Edward was pleased to hear of the great victory at Venice, but he had other things on his mind. His most hated enemies the Fatimids, whom he had fought for much of his adult life, had been driven back to a small enclave on the coast of the Red Sea, centered on Medina. However, even now they were determined to stubbornly fight to the bitter end. His plan had been to dispatch a large force to bypass the great fortress and take the only other significant Fatimid settlement of Mecca, while he himself laid siege to the Sultan himself in Medina. However, the plan soon faltered; although Mecca was taken, a great propaganda prize for the Crusaders, Edward's own force took heavy casualties in the fighting on the approach to Medina in which Edward himself made a narrow escape from death, coming through with only a wound a battle which claimed the lives of most of his bodyguard. The remaining English force was sufficient to keep the Fatimids bottled up in Medina, but not to take the fortress by storm.

After several years of siege Edward's supply situation was dire, while the Fatimid garrison showed no sign of weakening. With his men close to mutiny, troubling news coming in of attacks all across his far-flung empire, and in constant pain from his wounds which could not be treated in the filthy conditions, Edward relented; leaving the siege in the hands of a lesser commander with a fresh army from Egypt, Edward retreated to the relative sanctuary of Tayma, to rest his troops and to recuperate himself while he directed orders for the many other wars across his empire.


Edward retreats from Medina, leaving another commander to continue the siege.

The situation across the empire was severe indeed; in spite of the victory at Venice, the Italian front was still precarious, any success by the repeated Sicilian sieges of Ancona threatening to undo all the English gains, while the Venetians were reduced in strength but certainly not eliminated as a threat, and kept from counterattacking Venice only by constant skirmishing with the Hungarians. Far to the north, meanwhile, the English Crusader force in Lithuania had run into trouble after taking Vilnius, struggling to hold the lands they had taken from Lithuanian counterattacks and constant unrest in the local populace, while a devious Polish attack took Palanga and threatened to cut off the English expedition.

And closer to Edward himself, things were no better. Although the Fatimids were all but defeated, the siege of Medina still took up most of his resources, and at the same time the Byzantines decided they would make a bid for dominance in the eastern Mediterranean, besieging Iraklion on Crete and landing an army on Cyprus. To add to an already difficult situation, the Turkish fleet decided to lend their aid to the Byzantine attacks. Thus Edward found himself at war with fully seven different factions at once.

Edward thus set about the business of reducing the number of enemies he had to fight. Ordering new armies raised in Spain and Africa to fight the Sicilians, and in England and north Germany to sail for Lithuania, he made it a priority to inflict a defeat on the Byzantines and thus sue for peace on favourable terms.


At Iraklion, the Byzantines assaulted, but found the garrison and the defenses more stubborn than they had anticipated; though the attack was fierce, it could not break the defenders in the gateway and the Byzantine force was scattered into the hills of Crete.



Meanwhile at Nicosia, two larger forces clashed on the field; the Byzantine infantry fought bravely, but ultimately marching uphill into longbow fire had cost them too dearly, and they were crushed.

With the Byzantine invasions repelled, the English garrison at Rhodes took the offensive; making the short naval crossing to mainland Anatolia, they besieged and took Smyrna. This was the victory Edward needed to seek peace; and he sent his diplomats to speak to the Byzantine Emperor.


At the following talks at Cannakale, both sides were eager to come to terms; the English were still militarily weaker locally, but the Byzantines had lost Constantinople and were embroilled in a long war with Hungary and Kiev; they desperately needed Smyrna back and could not afford to wait to retake it. Thus Edward agreed to peace in exchange for ceding the cities of Smyrna and Iraklion back to their previous rulers, needing them little and reasoning that a resurgent Byzantine Empire could act as a counterbalance to the dangerous Hungarians.

With peace agreed, the eastern Mediterranean was secure; the Turkish armies could do little to threaten Rhodes or Cyprus with the English fleet patrolling the seas and a Templar army invading their eastern provinces. Thus, Edward found himself free to plot the final capture of Medina and the demise of his bitterest enemies. His spirits were not even dampened when word reached him that the army he had left to man the siegeworks had been routed by the Fatimids and its leader killed; undeterred, he led his well-rested and re-equipped army south to besiege Medina once more.

This time the Fatimid ruler did not wait for him to come; perhaps weary of the long years of virtual imprisonment in the increasingly fetid fortress, he marched out to meet his nemesis in battle. In the hills just west of Medina, the armies met.

Edward, experienced strategist as he was, had positioned his army such that to reach him, the Fatimid force would have to pick their way up a rocky, uneven mountainside, all the while under constant fire from English cannons, trebuchets and longbows. The barrage decimated the Fatimid army, and the rough terrain left their formation in chaos; the resulting battle could only have one result. Although the Sultan made many brave charges, and inflicted grievous casualties among the longbowmen, he was finally cut down along with his heir, and his great army destroyed.


An English cannonball rips through the Fatimid ranks.


With the last of the Fatimid ruling family destroyed, the faction was effectively ended; a small band of loyalists still held out in Medina, but they were easily overwhelmed by the triumphant English army. At last, the Fatimids were gone, and Edward was undisputed ruler of Egypt and the Holy Land.

To cement his control over the region once and for all, Edward now turned his entire strength in the Middle East against his last remaining enemy in the region, the Turks. Army after army of his landed on the south coast of Anatolia, seizing Isparta and Adana before any defense could be mustered. The Turks proved a far weaker opponent than the tenacious Fatimids; exhausted by the long war against the Templars, the Turks proved unable to withstand the vast English force now rampaging through Anatolia, and Ankara, Iconium, Caesarea, Sinop and Trebizond fell in quick succession.


The Turkish commander at Isparta braves a hail of arrows to charge to his doom against the English onslaught.


English archers employ the same tactic at Adana as at Isparta, taking an elevated position from which to butcher the Turkish horse archers with arrow fire.


An English knight, eager for glory, charges to engage the Turkish sultan in personal combat at Ankara.




The Turkish defenses in Anatolia collapse; soon they are left with only the citadel at Tbilisi and a single city in Iran. Leaving the Iranian remnant for the Templars, Edward begins the long trek from Trebizond to take Tbilisi.

On the Italian front, the war had become one of attrition. Venice had been taken, and the Sicilians defeated at sea and their ports put under siege, crippling their economy. However, the English land forces could not find a way to easy victory over the mighty Sicilian armies in the Marche of Ancona. The English forces could find no effective way to counter the massed Sicilian Norman Knights and crossbows, and although every assault on Ancona was repelled and every Sicilian army which attempted to penetrate further north defeated, it was often at the cost of equal if not greater casualties among the English ranks. However, the English had a key advantage in such a contest of attrition: While the English could afford to replace their losses, the Sicilian economy was stifled by the blockade, and with all their resources going into supporting their vast force, no more troops could be recruited; every army lost was an army which would not be replaced. Meanwhile, the English could use their naval supremacy and stranglehold on the Sicilian economy to gain another advantage; with the Sicilian forces in Italy and powerless to help, the English army in Africa took the Sicilian possessions of Tunis and Tripoli.


Another Sicilian attempt to take Ancona fails dismally.


English cannons bombard a Sicilian army in a costly battle for both sides.


With the Sicilian army slowly being ground down in the Marche, the English once again used their fleet to put into action a plan to end the war. The victorious army in North Africa was ferried across the Mediterranean to besiege the Sicilian king at Syracuse; meanwhile a fresh army from Spain under the English Prince Edward landed at Naples and besieged the Sicilian crown prince.



The Sicilians could not afford the loss of their two remaining cities along with the entire royal family; rallying all the forces they could muster they met the English in the field to break the sieges; however, despite the heavy losses they inflicted, the Sicilian armies still had no means to break an English longbow line; both the King and the Crown Prince were killed in battle, triggering a succession crisis and effectively destroying the Sicilian kingdom.


At Syracuse, the Sicilian king watches his army wither under the English barrage.

The Sicilian Kingdom descends into anarchy.

The English plan had worked even better than hoped; the Sicilian kingdom disintegrating, the English were free to take Bari and Palermo and mop up the remaining Sicilian forces at leisure. There was only one negative; the English crown prince had been killed in battle at Naples. However, King Edward soon named a new heir, the hero of the Seventh Crusade, now Prince Miles, in Lithuania. On the Italian front, the death only spurred the surviving generals on to greater efforts, hoping to be named steward of the new Italian provinces.

To this end, with the Sicilian threat gone, the mighty armies in Italy sailed across the Adriatic to eliminate the last of the Venetians once and for all. The assault on Ragusa was long and bloody, but as usual the English tactic of standing off with artillery and archers to deplete the defenders before commiting men to a costly assault on the breach paid off, and the fortress fell. After this all that remained was an expedition deep into the Balkans to take the last city of Belgrade. At last, the Venetians were gone, and the English were undisputed rulers of Italy.


The English general hardens his mens' resolve for the assault on Ragusa.

The Venetian defenders are once again decimated by English mangonel fire.

Deciding to preserve the lives of his men, the English general instead brings up the cannons to finish the last defenders in the center.

The Venetian last stand in the center of Belgrade.

The English now no longer had any enemies in the region; apart from a quick expedition to "restore order" in Vienna after a revolt (and thus quietly sneak Vienna from the Hungarians while they were distracted against the Byzantines) the English armies in Italy were now free to rest and recuperate in the cities they had taken.

While Venice was under siege, and while King Edward had been closing in on Medina, a great war was raging far to the north in the forests of Lithuania. At that time the English position was in danger of being overrun, with the English armies struggling to hold the settlements they had taken, the Lithuanian forces regrouping to drive them back into the Baltic, and a great Polish army attacking from the other direction to cut the English off from retreat. However, the English did have complete naval control of the Baltic, leaving them able to ferry in more troops as needed from Denmark and England. It was these troops who managed to stabilise the situation, among them many advanced Retinue Longbows, English Knights, Demi-Lancers and foot knights from the newly constructed citadels at Hamburg and Nottingham. These new troops, coupled with the Lithuanian over reliance on heavy infantry instead of more balanced forces, gradually turned the tide; in the first landing, Palanga was retaken from the Poles, and a powerful garrison left behind to prevent the fortress falling again.

Next a force landed at Reval, took that city, and marched on the fortress of Pskov. The English were finding the Lithuanian forces, while large, could be dealt with relatively easily; with few archers or cavalry, the many swordsmen or axeman could be dealt with by cavalry charges with ease, while the spearmen were easy targets for the English archers. By far the greater demand on manpower was the large garrisons needed by every city to quell the rebellious pagan population.


The Lithuanian massed infantry proved highly vulnerable to English combined arms, allowing for crushing victories.

An illustration of just how hard a task the Lithuanian infantry faed to advance against the English longbows.

With Pskov taken, and the longer-held English lands starting to be calmed, the expedition could mount an attack southward, to the last Lithuanian cities of Hrodna and Minsk. With the fall of these cities, Lithuania was defeated, and England faced only one more enemy in the north.

However, the Poles would prove formidable enemy than the Lithuanians. For one thing, their army was immense, having been constantly built up for years with no wars to deplete it. However, more importantly, the Poles were not only Catholic but directly allied to the Pope. This meant that the Poles could attack more or less constantly without sanction, but after retaking Palanga King Edward was warned in no uncertain terms that if he made further attacks against Poland he would face excommunication. Rightly fearing such a fate, Edward forbade any more attacks against the Poles for the time being, and ordered his planned landing in Prussia to turn northwards to attack another target. Meanwhile, his armies in Lithuania would gradually wear down the Poles on the defensive.

Instead, the planned attack force moved to intervene in Norway. For years England's Norwegian allies had been at war with the Danes, at first successfully, but in recent years the tide had turned and the Norwegians had been driven steadily back. At last Oslo had fallen, and only the fortress at Bergen remained. Seeing that the Norwegian king no longer had the means to protect his own people, Edward ordered an army to land at Bergen and take control in a quick campaign, killing the Norwegian royalty, but saving the people from butchery at the hands of the savage Danes.



The brief Norwegian campaign.

In Lithuania, however, the onslaught was fierce and unrelenting. Polish army after Polish army laid siege to the fortress of Palanga and the cities of Hrodna and Minsk. Time and again they were driven off with great slaughter, but always more armies were sent to take their place, so that the garrisons could not reinforce between attacks.


Destroyed Polish siege towers before the walls of Minsk.

Polish attackers once more strive to take the walls of Hrodna.

The last and greatest Polish attack against Hrodna.

English trebuchets and mangonels inflict a heavy toll on attacking troops waiting to breach the gate.


However, as the defenders fought off yet another furious Polish attack, Prince Miles began to notice that the Polish armies, while each being larger than the one before it, were becoming of steadily worse quality. The early armies had been truly dangerous, with many hardened Crusader troops, Polish Nobles and swordsmen. However, the later armies consisted mainly of massed spear militia and light cavalry, troops ill suited to a siege. Miles correctly assessed that this was a sign that the Polish king was becoming desperate, as he was running out of both troops and money.

With the Poles having fallen out of Papal favour somewhat, and more importantly with the money now in place to buy the Pope's forgiveness for any transgressions, King Edward gave the word for Prince Miles to launch his counterattack. Two armies marched from Palanga and Minsk aiming to take the fortresses of Thorn and Halych, cutting Poland off from the sea and depriving them of the ability to train additional troops to repel the invasion. Behind them followed the long-prepared reserves from Vilnius and Pskov, led by Prince Miles himself, while the army which had occupied Norway landed on the Baltic coast to threaten Poland from the north.


The English counterattack on Poland.

The invasion made quick progress; the Polish king had clearly thrown almost all his forces into the attack on Lithuania and had not prepared any significant reserves, while the long years on the defensive in southern Lithuania had given Miles time to prepare a vast force in the north. Thorn and Halych fell quickly, followed by the cities of Wroclaw and Plock, leaving only the capital at Krakow remaining to the Polish king. He had rallied here along with all that remained of his nobles, but they were not enough to repel the coming siege; although their javelins took a heavy toll against the English infantry, they were too few to prevail once the English spearmen closed in.


The first English troops enter the breach in the walls of Krakow.

The nimble Polish nobles are bogged down in close-quarters fighting with densely packed spearmen.

The last Polish horseman is brought down by a charge of German mercenaries.

After years of war, the exhausted Polish kingdom had collapsed within a few turns under the weight of the English attack. King Edward had eliminated the last remaining threat to his rule; of the seven factions who had threatened his realm during the first years of his reign, only two remained: The Byzantines, who had agreed to peace after only a short war, and the Turks, who with the fall of Tbilisi would be reduced to a single city sandwiched between the Templars and the Mongols.


Europe just after the conquest of Poland.

Indeed, the kingdom would have been at peace, were it not for a new turn of events in Scandinavia: Incensed at having been denied Bergen by the English annexation of Norway, the Danes had long been planning to take revenge and make a bid for control of all Scandinavia. Finally, they sent a powerful army to besiege Roskilde. Although the defenses of Roskilde were strong, the large garrison was nonetheless composed mainly of spear militia, while the Danes had brought an army of swordstaff militia, dismounted Huscarls and Feudal Knights. Though Danish losses were heavy, the attackers broke the gate, the garrison were slaughtered to the last man, and the city sacked.

Furious that a city which had been in English hands for so long should fall into the hands of the enemy, Edward ordered an immediate counterattack to liberate Roskilde. At first it was heavy going: Roskilde was retaken by the English under Henry Lovell at considerable cost, but then immediately came under siege once more by an even more powerful Danish army. However, this military setback proved to be a political stroke of good fortune: Disgusted by the Danes' unprovoked attack on the English, and at their lack of mercy shown to the population during the sack of Roskilde, the Pope excommunicated the Danish king for warring against his fellow Catholics.


Danish knights charge the English attackers during the liberation of Roskilde.

This gave King Edward the pretext he needed to rid the north of the threat of Denmark for good, and unify Scandinavia under his rule; he thus ordered an all-out attack on Danish holdings by his armies in north Germany, Poland and Lithuania. The Danes had deployed most of their troops in the west, to attack Roskilde and to threaten Eikundarsund (though the army sent to besiege the latter was deterred by the large garrison and instead settled for raiding the countryside), and were thus unprepared for the series of amphibious landings throughout the Baltic. Visby on the island of Gotland was first to fall; not a great city, but a key strategic holding due to its silver mines. The army which had occupied Visby then continued to the mainland, besieging and taking Nykoeping. Meanwhile the garrison of Roskilde sallied; the battle before the walls was long and tense, the Danes having brought a a great many feudal knights which the English longbows without their stakes would be vulnerable against. However, the English edge in artillery, forged in the great cannon foundry at Arhus, proved decisive; the Danish general was cut down at long range by a cannonball, and the Danish ranks were thinned and demoralised by the cannon and mortar fire. Thus when the feared Danish charge came, the men had little stomach for a long fight after the death of their general and the demoralising barrage. Although many English troops fell in the charge, it proved too much for the Danish discipline; as Lovell's cavalry threatened to flank them, they fled in dismay.




With Roskilde once more safe, and two major Danish armies destroyed, Henry Lovell took the fight to the mainland, landing at Lund and taking the city. At the same time, an English force landed in Finland and took the castle of Turku. Finally, Edward Barlow landed at Kalmar leading his army fresh from the conquest of Poland; drawing the powerful Danish garrison into a field battle and destroying them utterly.

It had been a disastrous year for the Danes; half their empire, and all their economic centers, had been taken in a single season of campaigning. What was left of their kingdom was split into three; Oslo and Skara in southwest Sweden, Uppsala in the far northeast, and isolated Stettin on the European mainland.

Meanwhile, Prince Miles, trusting his lieutenants to take care of the Danes, had been giving thought to the situation in central Europe. The English rulers had long been concerned by the power of the Hungarians, who had been locked in a long war with the Byzantines which would have left them immensely strong had they been victorious. In recent years the Byzantines had been resurgent, retaking Constantinople, Thessalonika and Greece. However with the elimination of the threat of the Venetians the Hungarians had rallied; after a bitter struggle, they finally stopped the Byzantine counterattack at Skopje, a fortress whose loss would have seen Hungary effectively defeated. Although it had taken them committing their entire army, leaving their northwestern provinces all but defenseless, they had steadily regained ground, retaking Bucharest and Thessalonika.

Edward and Miles were concerned by the Hungarian resurgence, regarding the Byzantines as significantly less of a threat, and preferring to see Constantinople an isolated city-state than capital of a vast empire. They also were aware that Hungary was now the only barrier preventing them from linking the isolated northern parts of the empire in Poland and Lithuania with the Italian territories. They thus ordered the invasion of Hungary, both to remove a dangerous rival and to complete their hegemony over eastern Europe.

The English attack was designed to overwhelm the defenses before the Hungarian army busy battling the Byzantines at Sofia could come to the rescue. In the end, Hungary was entirely overrun within two years; in the first attacks, isolated Prague was taken by the garrison of Wroclaw, while an English force from Vienna took the largest Hungarian city of Buda. In the Balkans, the fortress of Skopje also fell to an army from Belgrade, cutting the Hungarian army off from its base of operations, while Prince Miles himself captured the fortress of Satu Mare in the Carpatian mountains.


English Crusader swordsmen bring the fight to the Hungarian crossbowmen in the streets of Prague.

At Satu Mare, Prince Miles' artillery relentlessly batters at the second curtain wall, the first having already been overrun.

After a single turn of attacks, Hungary is fragmented and left with only three isolated provinces.

With key Hungarian settlements taken on every front, and with ever more English armies flooding up from Italy, the completion of the conquest would not take long. Prince Miles continued south to besiege and capture the fortress of Bran; with Bucharest having fallen to the Kievan Rus, this meant the Hungarian eastern marches had been completely annexed. Meanwhile Thessalonika fell to the army continuing its march from Skopje, meaning that for the first time English lands stretched uninterrupted from the Baltic to the Aegean. The Hungarian king made his last stand at the fortress of Szekesferhervar, with a vast army of dismounted feudal knights, pavise spearmen, and the dreaded Templar Knights; the siege would be by far the hardest battle of the campaign.

The siege opened, after the cannons had breached the outer wall and the English mortars had shaken the defenders, with a savage fight for the breach. The English infantry poured in and set about the defenders, trying at first to focus on the enemy spearmen and leave the swordsmen for the cavalry, but soon descending into a free-for-all. The cavalry, meanwhile, forced their way through the Hungarian infantry into the empty streets beyond; although this was costly and lost them many horsemen, it paid off as the survivors wheeled about and charged into the rear of the Hungarian defenders. Beset by swordsmen in front and cavalry behind, the Hungarian infantry were hard pressed and finally broke, leaving the outer wall to the English.

However the siege was far from over; the defenders at the first wall, though they had fought heroically and sold their lives dearly, proved to be less than half of the Hungarian garrison. The remainder had withdrawn to defend the inner wall, no less formidable an obstacle than the outer, only now the English had tired men and not many cannonballs remaining.

The cannons set carefully about reducing the second line of defenses; breaking only the gate to access the inner courtyard, the guns proceeded to knock out the ballista towers and gatehouse guarding the gateway, which otherwise would exact an appalling toll on any English attack. The last cannonballs were used sparingly; drawing the guns right up to the open gate itself, the gunners discharged the last rounds straight into the thick of the Hungarian Templar knights, before withdrawing from the field.

This was the tactic repeated by the English to gradually wear down the formidable Hungarian force within the inner wall; first the English longbows would advance to the gateway, and fire a volley at point-blank range into the nearest Hungarian formation; then they would fall back, and the Hungarians counterattacking through the gate would be surrounded on three sides and worn down by the English infantry. The battle at the gate was long and extremely bloody, but at last the huge Hungarian force was whittled down to nothing.


English longbows fire through the gates to draw out the defenders at Szekesferhervar...

... and the German mercenaries equipped with armour-piercing maces close to cut down the counterattacking Hungarian spearmen.

The last Hungarian stronghold had fallen, leaving England as sole ruler over eastern Europe. King Edward, latest in a line of great English kings, was perhaps now greatest of them all; having inherited a kingdom that was already great, but disjointed, he had now forged it into a vast unified empire, stretching from Lisbon to Vilnius, from Inverness to the Aegean, not to mention a vast kingdom in Africa, the Levant and Anatolia conquered by his own hand.


The current extent of the English empire.

The question, of course, is what to do next. The current province count is 116 in 140 turns; the lesser target of matching my vanilla haul of 98 in 199 turns was achieved with the fall of Trebizond. With 59 turns remaining, and only 84 provinces left to capture, the harder goal of matching the geographical extent of my vanilla empire is starting to look achievable. The only question is where to attack first. The Danes are inevitably headed for elimination of course, but beyond that there are three or four overall strategies I like the sound of:

1) The Pope's Right Hand: Not counting the Danes, there are now only two other Catholic factions left, the HRE and the Templars. Both are allies, and thus pose no threat, but it would be possible to target them next to unite the entire Catholic world under a single ruler, allowing all Catholics to continue the fight against the heathen without fear of betrayal by fellow Catholic lords. Practically speaking, taking Syria and Armenia from the Templars would make for a great base of operations for further attacks north or east, and swallowing up the HRE would bring all of Europe as far east as the Balkans under my sway, allowing my armies to march straight through the center rather than cutting around through Italy or the Baltic.

2) The One True Church: A variation on the religious theme of 1), I could instead focus on eliminating the remaining Orthodox factions, namely the Byzantines, Kievan Rus, and Republic of Novgorod, leaving the Catholic church as the sole undisputed Christian faith. Practically, taking the Byzantine lands around the Aegean would have great strategic value, while taking out Kiev and Novgorod would move me several hundred miles further east and leave Iran as the last significant portion of the map without an English presence.

3) Saviour of Baghdad: Focus everything on a concerted attack into Iran to deal with the threat of the Mongols. Likely would start with a campaign in the north from Trebizond to consolidate the eastern Caucausus, and another in the south to march across the Arabian desert and take the Khwarezmid Gulf coast and the fortress of Ahvaz; alternatively an attack on the Templars to gain a more secure footing in Mesopotamia to attack from. Either way, the next step would be an all out attack against the Mongols. Not truly necessary as the Mongols seem to have run out of steam after the initial rampage, but would lead to quite an interestingly shaped map for the end game.

Alternatively some combination of the three is quite possible.

I am also considering killing off the current faction heir, in the hope that he will be replaced by someone with a more royal-sounding name. "King Miles" just doesn't seem to me to have the right ring to it.

Incidentally, nice stuff glyphz, I hope to hear more about the rise of Portugal. I feel I must also salute your siege skills, very impressed that you can manage such low casualties, my sieges are almost always bloodbaths for both sides. And how on Earth did a unit of peasant crossbows manage to rack up 154 kills in a single battle?! I think that's about as many kills as I've managed in total with peasant crossbows in my entire time playing M2TW!