In my game they had a stalemate for 20 years. Harold's son was still fighting William when the game ended.
william doesnt have enough ships to send the whole 7000 men over in one go which is probably causing problems for the AI. i dont think william had this problem as he was able to send over the whole army in one go.
a simple fix would be increasing the number of ships william can raise which would be more in line with how it happened in history.
Historically William had a fleet of 700 ships.
They must have just tweaked something with the demo version. William used to win the majority in the beta Let's Plays I saw.
Every game I've played so far the Normans and Norweigens have wiped each other out after killing off Harolds initial stack, then Harlolds new levies wiped up what was left when he remobilised. Never seen anyone but a Godwinson with the Crown. Also, playing as William, I was able to take most of southern England but then had to peace with Harold when the funds run out. Even though I was now king of England all of Harolds old vassals went independent. I managed a few years of peace but then somehow king Philip of France gets claims to all (including king of England) of my titles. I get a DoW from him and manage to survive for about 5 years by ransoming captives to pay for mercs, but eventually the gold runs out as not only do I not have all of England like I should, (I know for a fact that William didn't have to conquer every province in England to become he new de facto king) but I can't raise the levies for any of the provinces I have as I still have the 'recently conquered modifiers'.
At the time of the DoW from France I was allied with them with 100 rep each way. If the AI has any of the problems I faced I can see why William never wins England. But as far as getting the army across the channel is concerned, isn't that hard to split the army in half, land in Kent and reassemble whilst Harlold is in the North.
I believe you have to capture the capital of every duchy to prevent independence.
[Mini-AAR]
Just played through as William, and what an amazing game that was; I cannot wait to buy this new entry from Paradox. Seriously, I decimated Harold's forces capturing his dukes and counts in the process and post victory; I besieged southern England. After gaining a decent foothold I moved north and let the Godwinson and Yngling fight it out and then at the last second joined in on the fray which was taking place in York. After the armies of both kingdoms were essentially defeated it was just a matter of besieging as quickly as possible with my combined army of a few Italian mercenaries and the feudal levies. I almost suffered complete defeat a few times and only won because of Williams martial prowess due to Harold constantly raising fresh levies along with the Isles levies from Norway. After achieving relative victory in England and going nearly bankrupt the final battle in Derby left William in a coma....
I honestly was so shocked and saddened by the turn of events. William had single handedly gave both the Norwegians and the English their asses haha. So I won the war regardless and left the mopping up to the Prince. Sadly, after about a month of victory in England the Welsh and Isles declared war and were able to raise a larger levy than I was due to having a different culture and having the recently conquered modifier on all of my 'demense'. I found it extraordinarily difficult to maintain even a 1000 man levy due to the extreme penalty when William conquers England, nontheless I was able to defeat the Welsh and Isleish and then had to face insurmountable rebellions from the Anglo Saxon vassals. :wacko:
I had managed to make the rebellion a little less harsh at first by marrying into one of the Saxon duchies but when nearly every English vassal revolted it became a landslide effect with a "Four way civil war for the English throne". Even as I fought on hoping to achieve some kind of minor victory in the end even my brother fled the kingdom to join the Saxons with a claim to my throne.
Granted this is the greatest game of Crusader Kings I have ever played, the extreme penalty for raising levy's imposed once William conquers England makes it nigh impossible to maintain order. I could find no conceivable way of holding the demense together, even with all of my efforts.