So Im coming to the end of my first complete run after a long hiatus and thought I might as well post it. This was a Haraldr Fairhair run with no mods, Ironman and achievements enabled. My goal setting out was to conquer all the lands around the North sea and Baltic and making sure I had all five norse holy sites, Bohemia and Poland were both late game aquisitions because I did not like how big my neighbor Bulgaria was getting. Almost as important I wanted to ensure I had clean external and internal borders while also maintaining complete control over my vassals, so I utilized grand duchy viceroyalties made up of 2-3 duchies each and kept all king tier titles for myself. In total Im finishing the game with 3 empire titles (2 titular), 21 kingdom titles (2 titular), 3 duchy titles (including the fylkirite), 6 county titles, and 4 baronies. I managed to max out the number of holdings in all six of my counties and opted for the 4 baronies in my capital for the huge levies (just over 50k from that one province).
As far as bloodlines go Im ending the game with 11, I grabbed the four historical norse ones before reforming the faith, got 5 from the warrior lodge legendary journies, 1 from the ambition, and managed to get the blood of Alexander which ended up costing me a ton of prestige lol. As far as reforming the faith I decided to go with Proselytizing/ Stability/ Agnatic Clans/ Temporal which after starting and quiting a few games learning the new mechanics Ive settled on being my favorite reformation. The one downside is that agnatic clans locks you out of matrilineal marriages so if you want to breed for bloodlines you have to do it before you reform. As far as artifacts went I aquired and horded quite a few and am ending the game with 55 some highlights included Mjolnir, Andvaranaut, Gjallahorn, Dragon Amulet, and the best ones I could craft. For books equipped I currently have A treatise on fishing with an angle, the odyssey, keeping feudal court, and the lost astronomy book from the library. For great works I focused on building one in each of my personal counties first, then repaired stonehenge, and in the late game Ive basically just been building them wherever to get rid of some cash, these ones will not finish before the end of the game.
All in all Ive got to say I love the new features and will definitely be playing more after this one is finished