also denmark is one of the richest if not the richest nations in the game. take over the north with mercs, then see if you can't take on scotland. loadsa money
You also start the game with like 4000 kids, so you'll have plenty of allies. :-p
For business reasons, I must preserve the outward sign of sanity.
--Mark Twain
Started a new game as the King of Georgia and it's actually going pretty well; this area of the world isn't talked about all that often in CK2 threads. With my first and current ruler (he's 76 years old and still tap-dancin') I was able to expand to 9 holdings and 2 Duchy titles, while expanding the demesne for an existing Duke.
Problem.
To the south lies my powerful Byzantine ally (my own grandson is the Emperor, no less), to the north lies a powerful Muslim ruler and on the east and west flanks are bodies of water (east being a lake with no boats and west taking me past Crimea into Hungry, which is quite distance for my pint-sized kingdom and is currently being heavily expanded into by the Byzantine Empire).
So I'm sort of stuck in terms of further expansion. The Muslims to the south-east have been in-fighting a little bit, so hopefully some independent realms fracture out of that and I'm able to snap them up by the BE is occupied in the west.
King of Georgia was my very first game and I found it to be a very good place to start. You have a bunch of de jure claims and there are several nearby counts who agree to swear fealty. You're also large enough that the nearby Muslims can't push you around too much.
The trick I found is to Holy War for Semender as quickly as you can (use mercs) and then relocate your capital there. Then I converted to Catholicism, married into some more land, and waited for a Crusade on Jerusalem.
Denmark? won't you have to deal with the HRE then?
they are also excellent to fuck with. as long as you are in with the pope and gain some allies, you can start taking a crack at starting some rebellions there. when the golden horde arrives, the HRE can be smashed to shards.
Screwing with the HRE is always fun. I had one game as Barcelona where I noticed the sitting Kaiser had a lot of enemies and his successor was an Imbecile with no stat higher than 3. One murder plot later and a lot of the HRE had successfully declared independence. The imbecile died in battle eventually due to the unending civil wars and things got quieter after that but they had to sit out of a crusade which let me take the most territory and expand my holdings.
Related to that, it's sometimes fun to load up your game as another ruler.
For example, once I loaded up my Spanish Muslim game as the last remaining Catholic ruler (the Khan of the Golden Horde). I had taken everything from Iberia to Poland, Sicily to Norway.
It fell apart hilariously quickly when the AI decided that High Crown Authority was a good idea.
I don't know exactly what causes it. It looks like it comes up if you have a vassal controlling a particulary wealthy county (maybe like one of the top 5 most wealthy). Then you just need to get one person in on the plot (somehow it doesn't really seem matter who that is) and you can revoke it with a bit less blowback than if you had just revoked the title through the regular diplomacy menu.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
So, I'm playing a game at the moment where I came in intending to role play and never go beyond having a duchy. A Duchy of Lancaster that was independent, but a duchy nevertheless.
Basically:
A. Have no vassals higher in rank than Bishop/Baron/Mayer.
B. Never play as a male character.
C. Role play each Duchess within those constraints.
I sort of failed with my first character. She was a zealous lunatic I made with the character builder. I decided that after she was excommunicated she needed to win back the love of God, and declared a Holy War for Jerusalem. It was in the hands of the Fatamids, who had won the first Crusade thirty years earlier pretty effortlessly, and who were the most powerful nation on earth by quite a bit (HRE was being torn apart by civil war, ERE had lost most of its holdings to the Fatamids, and the Sultan's Decadence was around 32%). Somehow, I won that shit, taking Jerusalem. So, I gave it to the Pope.
My next character was also zealous, though not a Lunatic. She bankrupted the realm fighting the Crusade, and won the damn thing. Caught me by suprise - the war score was only around 60% or so. So, Papa got more land, and now the Queen of Jerusalem rules in Lancaster, with no counties under her rule in the Holy Land.
I need to stop getting zealous as a trait.
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Started a new game as the King of Georgia and it's actually going pretty well; this area of the world isn't talked about all that often in CK2 threads. With my first and current ruler (he's 76 years old and still tap-dancin') I was able to expand to 9 holdings and 2 Duchy titles, while expanding the demesne for an existing Duke.
Problem.
To the south lies my powerful Byzantine ally (my own grandson is the Emperor, no less), to the north lies a powerful Muslim ruler and on the east and west flanks are bodies of water (east being a lake with no boats and west taking me past Crimea into Hungry, which is quite distance for my pint-sized kingdom and is currently being heavily expanded into by the Byzantine Empire).
So I'm sort of stuck in terms of further expansion. The Muslims to the south-east have been in-fighting a little bit, so hopefully some independent realms fracture out of that and I'm able to snap them up by the BE is occupied in the west.
King of Georgia was my very first game and I found it to be a very good place to start. You have a bunch of de jure claims and there are several nearby counts who agree to swear fealty. You're also large enough that the nearby Muslims can't push you around too much.
The trick I found is to Holy War for Semender as quickly as you can (use mercs) and then relocate your capital there. Then I converted to Catholicism, married into some more land, and waited for a Crusade on Jerusalem.
How do I go about converting to Catholicism? Do I have to mentor my heir with a Catholic in hope that he'll get converted so I can play as him in the next generation? Or is there some other way?
I missed out on a failed Crusade on Jerusalem and I'd like to get in on the next one
On another note the south-east Muslims are tearing themselves apart after an unsuccessful Jihad so I'm keeping an eye on a couple of rebelling vassals and hoping they're successful. As long as they're not in the de jure territory of the big Muslim ruler, they'll be ripe for the taking. The current conquest-downtime is actually a good thing because I've got a new ruler, so I'm better off on focusing on infrastructure than relying heavily on my vassals levies.
edit: Also should mention that my current King is a bit. weird. He's in love with his step-mother (who is actually 11 years his junior, the old King re-married at 77 and fathered another daughter the fertile old bugger haha) and actually fathered a bastard daughter. Dude...
Started a new game as the King of Georgia and it's actually going pretty well; this area of the world isn't talked about all that often in CK2 threads. With my first and current ruler (he's 76 years old and still tap-dancin') I was able to expand to 9 holdings and 2 Duchy titles, while expanding the demesne for an existing Duke.
Problem.
To the south lies my powerful Byzantine ally (my own grandson is the Emperor, no less), to the north lies a powerful Muslim ruler and on the east and west flanks are bodies of water (east being a lake with no boats and west taking me past Crimea into Hungry, which is quite distance for my pint-sized kingdom and is currently being heavily expanded into by the Byzantine Empire).
So I'm sort of stuck in terms of further expansion. The Muslims to the south-east have been in-fighting a little bit, so hopefully some independent realms fracture out of that and I'm able to snap them up by the BE is occupied in the west.
King of Georgia was my very first game and I found it to be a very good place to start. You have a bunch of de jure claims and there are several nearby counts who agree to swear fealty. You're also large enough that the nearby Muslims can't push you around too much.
The trick I found is to Holy War for Semender as quickly as you can (use mercs) and then relocate your capital there. Then I converted to Catholicism, married into some more land, and waited for a Crusade on Jerusalem.
How do I go about converting to Catholicism? Do I have to mentor my heir with a Catholic in hope that he'll get converted so I can play as him in the next generation? Or is there some other way?
I missed out on a failed Crusade on Jerusalem and I'd like to get in on the next one
On another note the south-east Muslims are tearing themselves apart after an unsuccessful Jihad so I'm keeping an eye on a couple of rebelling vassals and hoping they're successful. As long as they're not in the de jure territory of the big Muslim ruler, they'll be ripe for the taking. The current conquest-downtime is actually a good thing because I've got a new ruler, so I'm better off on focusing on infrastructure than relying heavily on my vassals levies.
edit: Also should mention that my current King is a bit. weird. He's in love with his step-mother (who is actually 11 years his junior, the old King re-married at 77 and fathered another daughter the fertile old bugger haha) and actually fathered a bastard daughter. Dude...
That's not weird. Accidentally marrying your great-granddaughter is weird.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
I'm always fond of the bizarre soap opera shenanigans your family can get up to. Like when my 40 year old king arranged a marriage for his son with a 16 year old, then she started hitting on him so he ends up having twins by her, which enrages the son who complains and then gets locked up for the next 10 years or so, while the king continues popping out bastards and generally getting along just great with his son's wife.
And throughout the whole thing somehow his wife never even noticed anything was going on.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
That's not weird. Accidentally marrying your great-granddaughter is weird.
Nah, back in the Hapsburg heyday, that was diversifying the genepool. Actually skipping 2 generations before marrying direct blood was a long ass time for them.
And just think, it only took around 400 years of such marriage to produce:
Try being an effective ruler as Carlos II in one of these games. I think you may have to hex-edit shit to allow negative values for certain skill/talents.
BlackDragon480 on
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
Sounds like my stupid dynasty members in other courts who refuse to accept invitations to my court or any sort of marriage offers, especially matrilineal. And then turn around and marry another uncooperative cousin as soon as I unpause
Carlos really does have a damned amazing familty tree
Seriously man, your family tree does not fork
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
What is amazing is that they didn't grasp that was a bad thing.
To cut them a little slack, marriages like that once or twice are actually pretty unlikely to cause any troubles, especially compared to all the other things that can go wrong with a medieval baby. And it's not like they had genetics to tell them about inbreeding negative traits. Plus intermarrying was pretty pressingly urgent to help them keep alliances fresh.
Or I guess to cut them slack in a different direction, they were stuck in a bit of a catch-22 that the more the clues piled up that interbreeding is bad the less capable they were of understanding the clues in the first place.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
IIRC even in the Old Kingdom, people objected to their rulers intermarrying.
Seems like knowledge should have been there for the Hapsburgs and other houses to know it was Not Great ™.
Consanguinity was pretty damn common back then, especially when dealing with houses with cadet branches. If you're a monarch, the pool of sufficiently prestigious brides is pretty low, and even lower when you consider those who will actually say yes to your proposal.
This has been an awesome game to watch and learn from. I bought CK2 during the Summer Steam sale, and was hesitant to fire it up, knowing the way these Paradox games overwhelm me quickly. After reading through the great writing by our noble Spanish leaders, I'm starting up my own game to see if I can figure it out!
Thanks for the great read so far, can't wait to see how it ends!
1197-1200 : End of an Era, Beginning of a New Century
So as I mentioned last time, Hispania's war strategy is to decapitate the HRE by seizing their Emperor's lands. Even though they're a lot bigger than Hispania, there aren't a lot of men showing up to fight for their excommunicated Emperor per county, so while they can still dominate in a stand-up fight, it takes them a damn long time to field an army and march it overland to counter the Hispanian attacks, who can retreat back onto their ships when overwhelming force shows up.
Early on this strategy goes swimmingly. The HRE vassals are able to hold the line against my allies attacking their borders, but it keeps their forces divided. I'm taking heavy losses, as I can't avoid getting caught sometimes by defending armies and beaten back, but the war score keeps ticking steadily upwards. For really the first time it seems like we really might be able to pull this thing off.
Come on
Although Fruela's had a pretty good record, and this isn't necessarily disastrous, it's still a pretty boneheaded move to be surprised that the Muslims wouldn't see the entire Christian world at conflict with itself as an obvious invitation to start some shit. Lesson learned: just because you're not thinking about your enemies doesn't mean your enemies aren't thinking about you.
Fortunately while Hispania's definitely been caught flat-footed, we're still not defenseless.
I hire all 3 Holy Orders and send them on their way to help defend Anatolia. Several other Christian leaders volunteer their help as well, most importantly England and The Papacy. Although the Muslims seize a few territories, we're eventually able to reclaim the lost holdings, although as always fighting in the mountainous terrain of Anatolia inflicts heavy losses on everyone involved.
Although no Spaniards are actually fighting in the east, it's still been hurting the war effort against the HRE. The spanish fleets are largely occupied ferrying troops over for several months, we're spending money for upkeep on the holy orders, and the Muslims also send a couple army stacks to harass the Spanish peninsula. Although they're not big enough to be a serious threat, all these things combined are really slowing down the pace of the HRE invasion, giving those big lumbering German armies time to liberate conquered holdings. Requesting a white peace with the HRE in briefly considered, and then rejected in favor of spending even more money!
Once the Spanish navies are freed up they bring back the battered invading force, who are disbanded and then called back into service. This lets us call up all the new recruits for these units, who'd otherwise keep kicking their heels back at home. We also hire 3 of the biggest mercenary companies (which aren't really that big anymore, compared to the scale of Empire vs. Empire warfare). Our 3 best commanders are appointed to lead the new army, and things are finally looking up again. But as the fleet is about to pull away from local Spanish waters, the messenger arrives:
Fruela finally dies of old age in his army tent, at the downright ridiculously old age of 72, and his claim dies with him. The invasion ends in a white peace, and his son Emperor Juan I takes the throne, with a messy Jihad in the east and his brother, the powerful King of Galicia Felipe I lurking in the wings.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
The good news with Juan is that he's already over 1k prestige and 600 piety, since he got his own lands, even though becoming a lord young meant he probably got crappy tutoring. And while he's a kinslayer, I believe the kin he killed was a brother with a claim to the throne. Also he's got a pretty good share of titles to give away, plus iirc I gave titles to a lot of counties without giving them their de jure cities and bishoprics as vassals, so that can help with bribing as well. The Jihad is kind of a blessing really, because your lords will stick with you until it's over, giving a few years to clean house first.
So who's playing next?
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
And zealous. And craven. And arbitrary holy moley that's going to be a handful.
In King of Georgia related news, the fractured powerful South-eastern Muslim ruler was too busy putting down rebellions to fight my claim on a county so I won virtually uncontested, woohoo! The BE is in a sorry state too, so it's a perfect time to press my claim on a very wealthy bit of real-estate (Travpezous, I believe it's called).
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DuriniaEvolved from Space PotatoesRegistered Userregular
edited August 2012
I am comforted by the fact that Fruela's stats weren't good when he started either...
...but that's pretty hideous.
On an unrelated note - I'm Emperor of the HRE and have managed to get to high crown authority (with no one even thinking about revolting) - I want to switch to primogeniture, but how the heck do I get my bajillion (ok 33) vassals to quit fighting?!?
I could mask some of them by creating Germany, but right now, by some series of farked up conflicts, Poland exists right in the middle of De Jure Germany (and not at all where Poland actually is!)
Thoughts? I can't raise crown authority to absolute on this guy (his son could do it but that's waaaay risky).
Durinia on
For business reasons, I must preserve the outward sign of sanity.
--Mark Twain
British Isles are looking rather sleepy, with Ireland united under Munster. England has absorbed Wales, Scotland has absorbed the Duchy of the Isles. Zzzzz....
The Middle East is holding fairly steady, still split between the Farazids and the Kusai. The Byzantines, apparently uninterested in clashing with the Hispanians (wise move) are instead picking up poorer lands to the north of the Black Sea and Serbia. Meanwhile Hispania's managed to hold onto its' holdings in Turkey, with the land FINALLY starting to become useful after years and years of occupation.
Russia has undergone the most change, with the old Russian dynasties almost completely collapsing, and the very rapid rise of Volga Bulgaria and Cumania. Meanwhile a lone Hispanian vassal has somehow managed to forge a respectable little duchy all by their lonesome. This could draw Hispania into conflict with a hungry, expansionist Bulgaria in the future. The HRE is holding steady but not expanding, and is no longer the only powerful force in the region. The HRE and Hispania may well come into conflict if either decides to start picking up territory in the divided and weakened lands of France and Aquitaine.
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Somehow France let Aquitaine gain independence, and Aquitaine took about the bottom third of France. But Aquitaine's had some good luck and good rulers, and they've kept gaining while France has lost ground, up to the last few years where they've pretty much totally collapsed. Aquitaine is still doing well, but considering they're stuck between the HRE to the east, England to the north, and Hispania to the south, their long term prospects don't seem hot.
The map really wasn't looking that crazy up until the last decade or so... Empire vs. Empire wars have a tendency to fuck shit up, it seems
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
So I was (re)reading Wiz's Schwaben LP (if you have not read it, you should, it's here), and thought I'd see how I could do with the same start. My plot to get Swabia didn't quite pan out, but I'll have Lothringen in the next generation. I would have just become Duke of Tyrol, but the Duke of Swabia married the King of Bohemia during the war, brought them in as an ally, and they preceded to beat me up with 3000 mercenaries. Meanwhile, the Queen of Hungary is invading the HRE for the Empire itself. For a while it looked like she might pull it off, but assaulting cost her about half her troops, which has allowed the child emperor to gather enough forces to probably win. Dang.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
So I'm playing a bit of a ahistorical game where I began as the Duke of Connacht with a personal and devoutly belief in the Zoroastrian religion. Difference between playing a Zoroastrian contra pagan is that I can both perform a Conquest casus belli (that's my shit now!) and declare holy war on different faiths (although doing that as a Zoroastrian in Ireland is politically as well as personal suicide considering that Zoroastrianism is a dying faith in CK2).
With a bit of luck I managed to actually AVOID converting my populace to Zoroastrianism which protected me from the Catholics ganging up on me. I have begun claiming Ireland as my Holy Stronghold and am currently the ruler of 6 counties.
However I have run into a problem. Two of the conquered counties are not generating any levies for me. I have sent my Marshal to train troops, but nothing happens. I even build a Guard Quarters in one of the counties, but to no avail.
Can anyone explain what I need to do so the counties start generating troops for my Holy War Machine?
As a general rule, conquering counties of a different religion stops levies from being raised for awhile. This is marked by a small red cross on the county captial image when you select it.
Did the modifier go away yet? Each county gets a recently conquered modifier that basically gives you no levies for like 3-5 years, open the county view and you can see the modifier, it's a red symbol.
Because if you're going to attempt to squeeze that big black monster into your slot you will need to be able to take at least 12 inches or else you're going to have a bad time...
As a general rule, conquering counties of a different religion stops levies from being raised for awhile. This is marked by a small red cross on the county captial image when you select it.
Also the defenders are replaced before levies
Oh well. Good thing I have established myself as the dominant force on Ireland then. I only have to worry about counties with allies on the mainland until the levies are back up.
As a general rule, conquering counties of a different religion stops levies from being raised for awhile. This is marked by a small red cross on the county captial image when you select it.
Also the defenders are replaced before levies
Oh well. Good thing I have established myself as the dominant force on Ireland then. I only have to worry about counties with allies on the mainland until the levies are back up.
If you can manage to convert the county with your court-chaplain, the Recently Conquered - Different Religion penalty will go away.
Which is nice, because it lasts something absurd like 50 years.
Posts
--Mark Twain
Kings can't swear fealty to anyone
King of Georgia was my very first game and I found it to be a very good place to start. You have a bunch of de jure claims and there are several nearby counts who agree to swear fealty. You're also large enough that the nearby Muslims can't push you around too much.
The trick I found is to Holy War for Semender as quickly as you can (use mercs) and then relocate your capital there. Then I converted to Catholicism, married into some more land, and waited for a Crusade on Jerusalem.
Screwing with the HRE is always fun. I had one game as Barcelona where I noticed the sitting Kaiser had a lot of enemies and his successor was an Imbecile with no stat higher than 3. One murder plot later and a lot of the HRE had successfully declared independence. The imbecile died in battle eventually due to the unending civil wars and things got quieter after that but they had to sit out of a crusade which let me take the most territory and expand my holdings.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
For example, once I loaded up my Spanish Muslim game as the last remaining Catholic ruler (the Khan of the Golden Horde). I had taken everything from Iberia to Poland, Sicily to Norway.
It fell apart hilariously quickly when the AI decided that High Crown Authority was a good idea.
I am a freaking nerd.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
It comes up when your vassal controls a county that isn't a de jure part of his lands.
Basically:
A. Have no vassals higher in rank than Bishop/Baron/Mayer.
B. Never play as a male character.
C. Role play each Duchess within those constraints.
I sort of failed with my first character. She was a zealous lunatic I made with the character builder. I decided that after she was excommunicated she needed to win back the love of God, and declared a Holy War for Jerusalem. It was in the hands of the Fatamids, who had won the first Crusade thirty years earlier pretty effortlessly, and who were the most powerful nation on earth by quite a bit (HRE was being torn apart by civil war, ERE had lost most of its holdings to the Fatamids, and the Sultan's Decadence was around 32%). Somehow, I won that shit, taking Jerusalem. So, I gave it to the Pope.
My next character was also zealous, though not a Lunatic. She bankrupted the realm fighting the Crusade, and won the damn thing. Caught me by suprise - the war score was only around 60% or so. So, Papa got more land, and now the Queen of Jerusalem rules in Lancaster, with no counties under her rule in the Holy Land.
I need to stop getting zealous as a trait.
How do I go about converting to Catholicism? Do I have to mentor my heir with a Catholic in hope that he'll get converted so I can play as him in the next generation? Or is there some other way?
I missed out on a failed Crusade on Jerusalem and I'd like to get in on the next one
On another note the south-east Muslims are tearing themselves apart after an unsuccessful Jihad so I'm keeping an eye on a couple of rebelling vassals and hoping they're successful. As long as they're not in the de jure territory of the big Muslim ruler, they'll be ripe for the taking. The current conquest-downtime is actually a good thing because I've got a new ruler, so I'm better off on focusing on infrastructure than relying heavily on my vassals levies.
edit: Also should mention that my current King is a bit. weird. He's in love with his step-mother (who is actually 11 years his junior, the old King re-married at 77 and fathered another daughter the fertile old bugger haha) and actually fathered a bastard daughter. Dude...
That's not weird. Accidentally marrying your great-granddaughter is weird.
And throughout the whole thing somehow his wife never even noticed anything was going on.
Nah, back in the Hapsburg heyday, that was diversifying the genepool. Actually skipping 2 generations before marrying direct blood was a long ass time for them.
And just think, it only took around 400 years of such marriage to produce:
This Guy
Try being an effective ruler as Carlos II in one of these games. I think you may have to hex-edit shit to allow negative values for certain skill/talents.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
Seriously man, your family tree does not fork
Especially when the lady at the top was known as Joanna The Mad
Or I guess to cut them slack in a different direction, they were stuck in a bit of a catch-22 that the more the clues piled up that interbreeding is bad the less capable they were of understanding the clues in the first place.
Seems like knowledge should have been there for the Hapsburgs and other houses to know it was Not Great ™.
Thanks for the great read so far, can't wait to see how it ends!
Early on this strategy goes swimmingly. The HRE vassals are able to hold the line against my allies attacking their borders, but it keeps their forces divided. I'm taking heavy losses, as I can't avoid getting caught sometimes by defending armies and beaten back, but the war score keeps ticking steadily upwards. For really the first time it seems like we really might be able to pull this thing off.
Come on
Although Fruela's had a pretty good record, and this isn't necessarily disastrous, it's still a pretty boneheaded move to be surprised that the Muslims wouldn't see the entire Christian world at conflict with itself as an obvious invitation to start some shit. Lesson learned: just because you're not thinking about your enemies doesn't mean your enemies aren't thinking about you.
Fortunately while Hispania's definitely been caught flat-footed, we're still not defenseless.
I hire all 3 Holy Orders and send them on their way to help defend Anatolia. Several other Christian leaders volunteer their help as well, most importantly England and The Papacy. Although the Muslims seize a few territories, we're eventually able to reclaim the lost holdings, although as always fighting in the mountainous terrain of Anatolia inflicts heavy losses on everyone involved.
Although no Spaniards are actually fighting in the east, it's still been hurting the war effort against the HRE. The spanish fleets are largely occupied ferrying troops over for several months, we're spending money for upkeep on the holy orders, and the Muslims also send a couple army stacks to harass the Spanish peninsula. Although they're not big enough to be a serious threat, all these things combined are really slowing down the pace of the HRE invasion, giving those big lumbering German armies time to liberate conquered holdings. Requesting a white peace with the HRE in briefly considered, and then rejected in favor of spending even more money!
Once the Spanish navies are freed up they bring back the battered invading force, who are disbanded and then called back into service. This lets us call up all the new recruits for these units, who'd otherwise keep kicking their heels back at home. We also hire 3 of the biggest mercenary companies (which aren't really that big anymore, compared to the scale of Empire vs. Empire warfare). Our 3 best commanders are appointed to lead the new army, and things are finally looking up again. But as the fleet is about to pull away from local Spanish waters, the messenger arrives:
Fruela finally dies of old age in his army tent, at the downright ridiculously old age of 72, and his claim dies with him. The invasion ends in a white peace, and his son Emperor Juan I takes the throne, with a messy Jihad in the east and his brother, the powerful King of Galicia Felipe I lurking in the wings.
So who's playing next?
In King of Georgia related news, the fractured powerful South-eastern Muslim ruler was too busy putting down rebellions to fight my claim on a county so I won virtually uncontested, woohoo! The BE is in a sorry state too, so it's a perfect time to press my claim on a very wealthy bit of real-estate (Travpezous, I believe it's called).
...but that's pretty hideous.
On an unrelated note - I'm Emperor of the HRE and have managed to get to high crown authority (with no one even thinking about revolting) - I want to switch to primogeniture, but how the heck do I get my bajillion (ok 33) vassals to quit fighting?!?
I could mask some of them by creating Germany, but right now, by some series of farked up conflicts, Poland exists right in the middle of De Jure Germany (and not at all where Poland actually is!)
Thoughts? I can't raise crown authority to absolute on this guy (his son could do it but that's waaaay risky).
--Mark Twain
The Middle East is holding fairly steady, still split between the Farazids and the Kusai. The Byzantines, apparently uninterested in clashing with the Hispanians (wise move) are instead picking up poorer lands to the north of the Black Sea and Serbia. Meanwhile Hispania's managed to hold onto its' holdings in Turkey, with the land FINALLY starting to become useful after years and years of occupation.
Russia has undergone the most change, with the old Russian dynasties almost completely collapsing, and the very rapid rise of Volga Bulgaria and Cumania. Meanwhile a lone Hispanian vassal has somehow managed to forge a respectable little duchy all by their lonesome. This could draw Hispania into conflict with a hungry, expansionist Bulgaria in the future. The HRE is holding steady but not expanding, and is no longer the only powerful force in the region. The HRE and Hispania may well come into conflict if either decides to start picking up territory in the divided and weakened lands of France and Aquitaine.
I guess that I'd be up for trying it if no one else is.
That's a truly terrifying mess though.
The map really wasn't looking that crazy up until the last decade or so... Empire vs. Empire wars have a tendency to fuck shit up, it seems
With a bit of luck I managed to actually AVOID converting my populace to Zoroastrianism which protected me from the Catholics ganging up on me. I have begun claiming Ireland as my Holy Stronghold and am currently the ruler of 6 counties.
However I have run into a problem. Two of the conquered counties are not generating any levies for me. I have sent my Marshal to train troops, but nothing happens. I even build a Guard Quarters in one of the counties, but to no avail.
Can anyone explain what I need to do so the counties start generating troops for my Holy War Machine?
Also the defenders are replaced before levies
Want to play co-op games? Feel free to hit me up!
Oh well. Good thing I have established myself as the dominant force on Ireland then. I only have to worry about counties with allies on the mainland until the levies are back up.
If you can manage to convert the county with your court-chaplain, the Recently Conquered - Different Religion penalty will go away.
Which is nice, because it lasts something absurd like 50 years.