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unmerged(26764)

General
Mar 14, 2004
1.833
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A lot of people around here have noticed that games in Iberia are a lot of fun. Plenty of Holy Wars. The French monster in your backyard. Lots of fighting and lots of challenge, with the possible payout of a big kingdom.

I just wanted to share my discovery of how much fun it is to play in Armenia because its pretty much the same thing but harder, with a little bit of the fun of playing the HRE thrown in.

Your stuck right in between Islam and the ERE. Plus you're a vassal and need to get independence to avoid the meddling emperor. And you have a free king title around if you can expand to get it.

You can Holy War your way to dominance if you're good. You can fight to expand inside the Empire. You can move up into Georgia. If you can form Armenia, you can then exercise all those tasty de jure claims in the eastern ERE. And eventually when the game starts to get dull the Mongols are coming. Good fun.

I played as the Duke of Mesopotamia, a one county Duchy with 5 counties to it with de jure claims for you (allthough the Muslims own two of them). You're right on the border with some smaller Islamic states so you can expand without directly taking on the Caliphates. But any power around that area would be good.

Try it. It's fun.
 
Seems awesome! Will give it a try.
 
Yeah that is a great area to play in -- I really enjoy playing as the duke of Armenia Minor, one of the few non-Western characters I regularly select.
 
How do you guys handle playing in the ERE when it has Absolute CA or whatever it starts out with, I have half-heartedly tried Doux(es) in the Empire, but I always got bored by the restrictive laws.
 
In my game, with all the court intrigue among the Byzantines, we were at autonomous vassals within a decade or two. But there are a lot of early targets in the islamic world that are free for the taking. Plus at the beginning of the game your neighbors have a habit of getting themselves holy warred so you can pick up all the counties they lose -- in this way it's just like playing in Iberia.

If CA went up too quickly, that would have no doubt put a spoiler on the game. Although it's surprisingly easy to beat the Emperor in a war if you strike when he's distracted and save up enough cash to buy big bands of horse archer mercs. Which he often is, with all the Jihads and throne usurpers he has to deal with. I took a few counties off him very early in the game that way -- knocking down CA in the process too. When he got nasty about it, I helped his rival out in his quest for the throne ridding the emperor of claims on my land.

I can't overstate the usefulness of those horse archer mercs. You don't get those in Germany. There's one band of about 1000 available for only 60 gold -- amazing early game helper. Later for the rich there's maybe three bigger bands of mostly horse archers for 300 gold each, plus a few other bands with substantial horse archer contingents. Putting 10,000 auto-regenerating horse archers on the field can really level the battle odds fast if you have cash.

The terrain is also perfect for defensive fighting against big stacks. Pull back and let the stacks run through the mountains everywhere in Asia Minor, bleeding men. When they're at the attrition limit, wait in mountain county for the stack to hit your horse archers. Laugh at dead Greeks.
 
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Oh haha I'm currently playing an AWESOME game in that area too! I started as a Doux of Antioch (it's actually de jure Kingdom of Syria, it's just east of Cyprus) and expanded east and south. Right now I'm the king of Jerusalem and Syria and doux of Edessa, Cyprus and Adrianopolis. Now I'm wondering where to expand next, whether to Mesopotamia (Seljuk Turks there, pretty strong), Armenia (ERE, not so strong as before, but still a challenge) or Egypt (Shia Caliphate, also pretty strong) :)
 
Yeah, Armenia makes for a very interesting setting, although possibly overlooked, as it is very much not western and not really crusader-like either. I would mostly expect history enthusiasts to go there to play. Speaking of which, it really should be interesting from that perspective. I've been thinking about that theatre for a while. Believe it or not, I've walked the ruins of Ani, the mediaeval capital of Armenia.