Crusader Kings II

[AKB]

I think I'm tired of CK2 for a long while, or at least challenging starts. I was playing a Doux in Byzantium, rose from a single county count to technically more powerful than the emperor himself. So I had a bunch of land in Syria, which the Abbasids decided to invade. Now, I was defending the land myself fine. I had managed to get the warscore up to about 79% positive by myself because the emperor decided it would be fun to have his 20k troops stand in the capital for no reason, when the emperor finally sent a 290 man unit to reinforce Syria, which he personally led. He immediately got captured, and made me lose half my holdings. And since the AI is [&@%!] idiotic, the emperor was of course never going to declare a war the day after to retake all of the lost land, even though the Caliph had something like 4000 troops available, while the empire could muster tens of thousands.

Unwilling to accept this frankly stupid loss, I declare war on the Caliph to press all the claims on my lost lands. Of course, I lost most of my troops fighting the Caliph in the war that the emperor lost for me, but I figured I could still win this. And wouldn't you know it, after some dicey battles against an entire empire while I'm a mere duke, I finally break the Caliphs forces to the point that he has even lost all of the mercs he hired to fight me off. So I start sieging down my holdings again, get to about 20% positive warscore after spending about 1k gold on this war, when 9000 troops spawn on my 5000 man strong army. As it turned out, Orthodox zealots had decided to revolt! I mean, it makes perfect [&@%!] sense for Orthodox zealots to attack a zealous Orthodox ruler who was currently in a war to liberate the province that they revolted in, right?

If it wasn't dumb enough that I was attacked by my coreligionists with the exact same goal that I currently had, they proceed to pursue my army and wipe out almost all of my soldiers. Then they proceed to undo each and every single one of my sieges, taking them over for themselves (not even considering attacking the 5000 Caliphate troops who were marching right by them, even when extra revolts happened to increase their numbers to over 15k). And at this point, my vassal levies had around -100 opinion modifiers due to raised troops (about two were actually at a negative opinion of me at this point, actually. Everyone really liked me), I had lost all of my money on mercenaries, and my own levies were depleted. So the game just shat on my ability to respond to issues for so long that I got tired of that character.

It's my fault for playing on ironman mode as a vassal (especially considering I had to restart five times to just get lucky enough to get a character who could do anything), but that run just went so [&@%!] for so long that I'm a bit bummed out. I could still salvage that campaign by consolidating my territories in Africa so I can become a despot, and then just eat up the rest of the empire bit by bit until I am the emperor, but it has just lost its luster at this point.

[Br3admax]

I figure now would be a good time to attempt to revive this thread. I've managed to unite Italy, Venice, and Sicily into a united Italia after a few years of conquest and marrying the Queen of Italy, currently playing their son. The Karlings in the rest of Europe, at the OG start date, have all but killed each other off, but the HRE was formed from all of their lands. Currently the empire is split in half from a brutal civil war as the French side goes on it's bid for the throne. The Germans are holding out though, and I'm interested in seeing how it ends.

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[AKB]

Here's a hint: never. The HRE successfully forming is a giant pain in the ass for expansion into Europe, especially since there is no way to destroy an Empire without either taking over eighty percent of it, or the last holding of the Empire being conquered. That's something that does need to come about in a future update, natural title dissolution.

[Br3admax]

Well I'm hoping the French part splits off and forms Francia. Two empires would be a lot easier to deal with than one giant one, especially if I can get it to pass to a different dynasty. Then I figure they just destroy each other. Spain is still ripe for the picking, so there's hope. Not much, but still hope.
Edit: Wars over and they formed Francia, though the Empire's name was changed to France with a mod I'm using.

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