They do survive for a bit longer, now that the HRE and France actively supports them.
Perhaps you should register your game, and update it to the most recent patch? That sounds like the old problem (which still can occur, unfortunately).
That patch everyone is calling buggy?
In my experience the French haven't been romping through Iberia from the outset in any of the patches. If you don't want the latest patch, then go get one of the 1.03 or 1.04 patches, the last of each of those was stable, but 1.05c, 1.05e and 1.05f are all also pretty much fine, with 1.05f being the most stable and balanced version of the game to date.
I have 1.05c. maybe 1.05f is balanced but will have to wait for better stability. Sorry, I am one of those that let others jump to water first
i watched the situation in iberia a bit as duke of lancaster(in which i m taking all of the british islands). i did not interfere in the situation in spain, save for a marriage or two with a courtier of leon and castille.
almost all the kingdoms had been wiped out before march 1100(somewhere in february the war for navarra ended). only a 1 county castille, aragon, and barcelona are left.
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/595845186321396943/18FD2618258F0C3093E05809882E90E385417AF2/ cristian kingdoms were already driven back a lot in 1092. in less than 3 decades they lost quite a bit of land. but with help of france they COULD have survived.
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/595845186321385920/7B807DACE50921690CD539C788DBA3FBFEC6FF02/ leon and galicia have been wiped out. its about game over for the cristian kingdoms now, and its only a matter of time before iberia is muslim.
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/595845186321432724/A9693F029DBAD86F296D1ACFFF21F08ED2C4F362/ navarra has been taken out, and atm cordoba is marching on france and winning. ill probaly have to invade ibeira within a decade or two and install a brother or second son there while activly supporting him to keep the muslims out of france(as france isnt too stable)
this happens 99% of the time. i dont call this balance. either nerf the muslims in iberia(i.e. make them MUCH mor elickly to not fight the cristians but eachother the first century or so) or buff the cristians there(i.e. a weak holy order for iberian based kings).
what do YOU think that should be done to fix it?
Despite you being half the posts in this thread, most people still don't think there's anything to fix.
It's not really a "problem" - especially vs. the berbers, it was always a possibility - but it should definitely happen a lot less consistently.
hmm in my games usually barcelona gets quite powerfull and sicily is almost always formed but survives with changing succes.
i also dont get how people find it hard to play an iberian faction, ive usually conquered all of it by 1100.
i dont think YOU get the context of balance. holy wars are fine in about every area on the map, exept in spain. that doesnt seem like a holy war problem for me. that has soemthing to do with either the iberia AI or the relative strenght of the nations. also, even weaker factions shoudl come out on top sometimes. i wouldnt complain if it was a 1/5 chance that iberia wins(though 2-1.5/5 would be better) but atm its a miracle if they survive without the direct intervention fo the player.
the changes i propose are only EXAPMLES. im not saying that is the fix and should be added in the next patch. im just throwing in some ideas. tellign me im wrong doesnt fix the problem either. what do YOU think that should be done to fix it?
Clearly you have a very different idea of balance to how this game is meant to work. In any case, I presented my solution in my posts. It very much is the inability to gauge the difficulty of Holy Wars that is the only problem here, and the circumstances that make it an issue for the AI are unique to Iberia, as that is the only place where the AI will use a Holy War CB because he thinks his foe is weak and then gets destroyed by the resulting defensive alliance. If the AI was bearing in mind that it might be starting a war with all of Muslim Iberia, it wouldn't do so. Humans can calculate this risk, know to use De Jure claims instead when possible and know it is better to make Iberian Holy Wars short rush jobs. The AI doesn't do that. Similar circumstances to this do not exist elsewhere on the map. If they did, the AI would show the same problem. Any possible issue here can be resolved with some improvements to the AI to calculate war risks better and use a safer CB than Holy War (the concept of Holy War being a more 'dangerous' CB being one that has been introduced to the game long after the AI was designed). And even then, the default should be that the Christians lose.
Changing the power of the factions there when their relative power is not the issue would be a design mistake.
Every time I started as them the kingdoms get destroyed by the saracens....
i dont agree. what do you wnat those kingdoms to do? sit there the whole game doing nothing?
the problem with that is that the kingdoms
A. have a tendecy to go to war with eachother a lot, resulting in a muslim state swooping in taking a duchy
B. get dogpiled when they fight a muslim. this is not fixable by improving the AI as you have a high probability of them either sitting there for 300 years doing nothing, or swoop in for a swift kill with the war ending in the middle of a war, resulting in them getting dogpiled anyway.
i may be wrong on how to balance this. but currently i see no way of giving the cristian kingdoms a fighting chance in 1066 without nerfing the muslims or buffign the cristains. it doesnt have to be a insta OP buff like giving them 10K free troops, but i.e. cordoba and beja starting with a little civil war would helo a lot already, as it allows the cirstian kingdoms to fight eachother a tad without getting a muslim attack. a simple strategic buff or nerf should be enough.