A Random Game - A Gameplay Mega-Campaign AAR

[tnick0225]

@Richards840: You know my reaction when I became the Caliph was sort of identical....but it was more like, "The fu...just happened?"

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@mike the knight: I don't know if I'll ever be able to go anywhere mike. The way things are going right now I'll be stuck fighting civil wars for the next thirty years...but should we have some peace I'll begin exploring some expansion options.

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@Stuyvesant: Cruelty worked miracles for Aarif...and made me decide to be a complete evil insane tyrant over in the Caliphate. This being a Muslim in game is a whole new experience for me as well, first time for me so all the events and stuff are completely new to me. I was a little disappointed the djinn didn't possess Najib though, I thought that could have been a lot of fun playing a possessed tyrant Caliph.

 

[verdas]

Niiice; Aarif must have been just slightly more tolerable than a toddler, so they gave him the caliphate. As for borderline-tyrannical moves that Muslims get away with, you can revoke emirate (duke) level titles for free, like the byzzies, so use that to cut superdukes / rebels down to size. And if any of your vassals are kinsmen, lock them up asap, then lock up their kids, since the opinion hit won't matter.

In any case, even with all the civil wars and whatnot you're one of the most powerful characters in the game; make it count! Invite claimants to dejure lands and press them, war on any and every minor around, etc. You should even be able to call a jihad.

 

[tnick0225]

@verdas: Yeah Aarif probably was more tolerable, guess they didn't expect the man to drop dead a few months later. Now they're probably regretting their decision. Actually discovered the revoking of Emirates for free thing thought that was entertaining and used it a few times, well until it started a war...then I said oopsies.

I'm trying to make it count though, I did try to call a Jihad and unfortunately that option is not yet available as the Jihadi era for some reason has not yet started. But I will use the subjugation and invasion CBs. Aren't the Seljuks supposed to invade sometime? Not sure when they do...

Anyway off to the update...

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Part 2.2 - Abbasid​

When last I left I had gotten an emir to swear fealty. Which was nice I'm all for gaining lands via peaceful means. It's so much less of a headache and allows me to focus on other foes. Like Aghlab or whatever his name was you know that former Caliph that was a baby and deposed by angered nobles in favor of Aarif the Cruel. Well the former Caliph in independent therefore I need to get his lands back. He refused the fealty thing which isn't surprising because if I were him and a usurper requested my fealty my response would be, "Hell no!"

At least the AI thinks like me in that regard.

While I have a few seconds of peace because you only get a few seconds of that as Caliph, I decide to send our Imams off on a tour of the steppes. Much like Brigacos's pilgrimage of the Norse prisons. Well these kind of end up the same way.

I halfway expected these nomads to be kind and release my Imams after a year or two...but I was quite wrong. They weren't nice like the Norse always sending Brigacos back home well fed and singing songs of Odin and such. Nope they just kept them. I don't know why maybe Imam's are just nicer to have around.

Najib then finally makes a baby, well impregnates one of his four wives. A little while later he knocks up a second for good measure.

Nothing happens during the interim and I have a boy named Ashraf (the new heir to the Caliphate and Empire), and a little while later a daughter with the really really odd name of Mahwash. That's when I decide these Bedouins have just as crazy names as the Welsh.

I was going to put screenshots of the babies but there will be so many of them that merely mentioning such a thing should suffice.

One of my local Sheikhs decides it a good idea to ask us to be merciful to one of my prisoners. To be honest this is just a bad idea to ask. Najib is the son of the Cruel Aarif and intends on being even more so than his daddy. Thus, this little ole Sheikh finds himself locked up in the dungeon as well.

Remember how I said you only get a few seconds of peace. I lied I actually received a few minutes. Enough time to grab a breather ponder and wait...

So off to war we go again.

And for some reason I'm beginning to think the AI adventurers have some weird fetish for Mosul. And I for the life of me do not understand that fetish.

I go about calling forth levies, and while I wait for them to merge into a large enough stack to fight the would be liberator of Mosul, we suffer some setbacks. In fact before I really get a chance to engage the warscore is already floating around 22% in the adventurer's favor. Not a dire situation more annoying than anything. He even successfully sieges some of our lands.

Once the armies of the Caliph are merged I march one of the stacks to engage and victory would of course follow.

Manzikert...hmm...

Of course with the war swinging in my favor Najib would fall ill.

I get to worrying again for a few more moments, if Najib dies that leaves baby Ashraf to defend the Caliphate. And I don't think that kid has it in him yet. While Najib lays ill I begin imagining what an Abbasid implosion would look like. That's when I notice the Fatimids in Syria kind of...they're sitting there slowly growing waiting for an opportunity to pounce. Which is all well and good, I may one day even say screw it and give the Fatimids the Sultanate of Syria just to see what kind of insane chaos happens when I leave.

Then I get over my head cold and remember that Muslim doctors at this time were quite a bit more intelligent than their Christian "get the leaches!" counterparts.

The final battle of the war then takes place, out of all things at a place called Martyrpolis. The city of martyrs. I thought it was a fitting place for a final battle, even though it wasn't all that magnificent or anything. But at least the invasion for Mosul is once again over.

Seeing another war won I decide it would be quite fitting to hold the Muslim version of the Grand Tournament called the Furusiyya.

While word is being spread I keep looking at Aghlab's little slice of Emirate and start looking through all the CB options. I begin thinking, perhaps just perhaps pulling the trigger would be fun. Put that little turd in his place.

I know my vassals are getting excited to show their martial talent in the tournament, but screw that we want WAR!

So little (now grown) Aghlab will be facing the Abbasid Subjugation of Mesopotamia. Yep that's right, subjugating him.

Speaking of which that's also when I realize I'm sort of missing the Sultan title myself...and begin pondering the Creation of the Sultanate of Mesopotamia. Not sure if it'd be a good idea but it may come in handy in case I ever randomly get deposed as Caliph/Badshah.

While the war preparations are on their way I get that even for wanting to increase my martial abilities and the peasants of Baghdad finally get a chance to slap the Caliph around a little bit.

Najib retires to the Caliphal palace in Baghdad to lick his wounds while his army is out fighting the evil former Caliph.

Things start out bad, losing a battle due to careless troop movements. Which is something everyone should definitely remember to pay attention too because sometimes not paying attention can reduce your armies quite a bit! Luckily this time it was only a few thousand so no big deal.

Needless to say the mistake in troop movements got my attention and therefore ended up slapping little Aghlab around quite a bit.

In fact in that final battle of the war, the former Caliph would be captured and brought to face his crimes in Baghdad.

I pause the game when this happens. The war is won, all I have to do is enforce peace. But there's a part of me that wants to execute this guy for being a pain in my rear end. I go back and forth on whether to chop his head off or just take a large chunk of his land and call things even.

After about ten minutes of arguing with myself I settle for peace, and tell Aghlab next time he's going to be earning a one way ticket to have a chat with Allah.

The war is now over and my borders are looking a little cleaner. I discover Aghlab still has Damascus or at least I think thats the county he still is independent in. This aggravates me a little but I move on doesn't matter much anyway.

Which is when another baby is born by the name of Rasul. I did forget to mention there was a second boy named Abdul-Hamid born as well during the war with Aghlab. Bringing Najib's tally up to three boys...which probably isn't a good thing.

Having finally expanded the borders a little or at least reclaiming some former lands, I decide to have Najib call forth the Furisiyya again. This time I won't sabotage it by declaring a war...I promise.

 

[Dredcor]

Well, this is going a lot better than I thought it would when you said you were going to Baghdad. Good job. :happy:

 

[verdas]

Continuing with my theme of giving SoI-related advice, you can imprison your brothers easily, but you can't imprison your own kids without incurring tyranny. You can, of course, murder the poor children, and since they're in your court and won't have decent intrigue for a while it won't be hard. That being said, under open succession the kid with the most land inherits, and barring that the eldest inherits. For that reason, I tend to try and foster the kids with different specialists and wait till they grow up before deciding on an heir - if they're talented, give them a council spot, but I would only land one if he was younger and I wanted to assure he inherited. If you land them, you lose control, they start spawning more decadence machines, and invariably rebel when the next generation takes over; for that reason I usually don't even marry them off, making life much eaiser.

Of course, a gamey method around this is marrying only one or two young females, filling up the rest of the spots with 40-year-olds unlikely to procreate. I like to lie to myself and say it's roll playing - "middle eastern polygamy was in large part about taking widows into your household! The Prophet's first and favorite wife was an older chick!" etc.

And the Seljuks ought to come smashing through Persia any day now. You should try to get a marriage alliance with them asap, and do your best to keep it; as they don't have (and often won't make, at least for a while) the de jure Persian Empire title you shouldn't have any problems with "political concerns."

 

[TSSL]

This is a quite nice premise for an AAR, and well-executed, too.

How are things going back in Wales now that it's under the AI?

 

[Stuyvesant]

Continuing with my theme of giving SoI-related advice, you can imprison your brothers easily, but you can't imprison your own kids without incurring tyranny. You can, of course, murder the poor children, and since they're in your court and won't have decent intrigue for a while it won't be hard. That being said, under open succession the kid with the most land inherits, and barring that the eldest inherits. For that reason, I tend to try and foster the kids with different specialists and wait till they grow up before deciding on an heir - if they're talented, give them a council spot, but I would only land one if he was younger and I wanted to assure he inherited. If you land them, you lose control, they start spawning more decadence machines, and invariably rebel when the next generation takes over; for that reason I usually don't even marry them off, making life much eaiser.

Of course, a gamey method around this is marrying only one or two young females, filling up the rest of the spots with 40-year-olds unlikely to procreate. I like to lie to myself and say it's roll playing - "middle eastern polygamy was in large part about taking widows into your household! The Prophet's first and favorite wife was an older chick!" etc.

And the Seljuks ought to come smashing through Persia any day now. You should try to get a marriage alliance with them asap, and do your best to keep it; as they don't have (and often won't make, at least for a while) the de jure Persian Empire title you shouldn't have any problems with "political concerns."

You know, your advice is so appealing, I might actually try a Muslim game myself one of these days. Thanks!

As to the update: things appear to be going quite well for the Caliphate in general and Najib in particular - even if he got beaten up by a street thug. Of course, when said "fist-fighting" thugs are displayed as carrying pitchforks and hatchets, perhaps caution would be the better part of valor.

 

[tnick0225]

@Dredcor: It's going way better than I imagined it to go as well. I guess getting the Caliphate peacefully given to me by the AI helped in making things go well. Definitely wasn't expecting that to happen.

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@verdas: I've appreciated your advice its definitely helped me out a little. I unfortunately already racked up some tyranny but it doesn't seem to make much of a difference. I haven't married off any brothers and in fact ended up imprisoning the brothers on their 16th bday. Probably gamey but its worked out so far. Although I had no idea that's how open succession worked. I guess if I would have known that I would have picked out a better looking heir and landed him. Definitely something I'll keep in mind for the future.

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@TSSL: Thank you! I got the idea from CatKnight's wonderful EUIV AAR found here: Random World Order it's a great AAR he rolls a dice every five years to decide whether he stays or goes to a new nation. It's a great AAR and definitely suggest checking it out! But anyways the idea appealed to me since there's a lot I haven't done in CKII and thought it'd be fun to just randomly play nations and port the final 1444 result to EUIV to see what happens

As far as Wales. Ricat's grandson Karadeg didn't inherit the Welsh throne like I wanted. Instead Ricat's son Glenn became the King of Wales shortly after we left. Ricat died of that illness he contracted in the last few months I was playing him. But other than that Wales has been stable, England hasn't attacked them or anything yet so things are looking quite good for them at the moment. Although England almost has unified all of its de jure territory so Wales may end up being its next target. It seems House Stawell is destined to be a great dynasty in game.

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@Stuyvesant: After playing this and following some of verdas's advice I think I may play some more strictly Muslim games in the future as well, they are pretty entertaining to play And as far as Najib things are going surprisingly well for him considering his dad's ill-timed death and everything. I probably should have used caution for that event chain since technically Najib is craven but wanted to increase that Martial ability for him so eh, bad roleplaying decision I suppose.

 

[verdas]

You know, your advice is so appealing, I might actually try a Muslim game myself one of these days. Thanks!

Yes, filicide is very appealing!

In all seriousness I'd recommend it; despite the fact that decadence is clearly broken (not every Muslim dynasty acted like the Ottos), once you get the hang of managing it (murder), you can sort of put it out of your mind; some of the best games I've played have been with Islamic rulers (forging Greater Kurdistan ftw) :happy:

 

[verdas]

Sorry to double post, but I felt I should add:

If you enjoy the eugenics side of CK2, you haven't lived until you've played an Islamic dynasty; not only can you marry several wives, produce a multitude of potential heirs, and then easily select who you want to inherit - you take absolutely no prestige hit from marrying down! So go ahead - marry a couple lowborn women with good inheritable traits (I will often select my first wife strictly on the basis of stewardship, since hers is the only one that matters), then save the last one or two spots for those high-born ladies with important fathers but poor stats.

 

[tnick0225]

Part 2.3 - Abbasid

@verdas: I can definitely see how Muslim characters make for a good eugenics style of play. Can't marry for inheritances so stats and traits are really the only way to marry and a few alliances. When I play as a Christian I try and marry for land. I like your pointers though so keep them coming you've definitely helped me out with those!

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Part 2.3 - Abbasid​

With the victory over Aghlab and stealing of his territories I decided to have the Furusiyya tournament. As of right now Aghlab still has land though but has been reduced to an OPM in Damascus so the former Caliph is not exactly a threat anymore and will be crushed sooner rather than later.

To celebrate the games I decide to incarcerate a kinsman of mine Sheikh Murad, I don't remember if he did anything wrong or the reason why I imprisoned him, guess it just seemed like the right thing to do.

While awaiting the tournament to start I discover that by clicking the Religion button it shows me who the decadent members of the dynasty are. Funny that it took me this long to realize this due to not clicking the religion tab previously. Minor oversight on my part.

What I find is my rival Aghlab even though landed is a decadent member of the dynasty. Which would figure, I thought that landed dynasty members didn't create decadence, so I guess I'm still not totally understanding how that whole mechanic works just yet.

The tournament begins and ends, with the winners. The first two are random courtiers, sometimes when playing Christians I'll try and remember who the Champion was and give them land if they didn't already have land just as a kind of roleplaying thing, but nine times out of ten I forget about that.

Third place went to an Emir of mine which I get a good laugh at due to him being horribly bad at the whole Martial thing.

Shortly after the Furusiyya, my brother Prince Khaireddin turns 16. As part of his coming of age celebration I give him a tour of the dungeon in Baghdad and lock him in a cell. Probably be a good idea to through away the keys too. Truly its the best kind of birthday present to give to a 16 year old brother.

I then have a Sheikh think its a brilliant idea to request that I show mercy to my kinsman Murad by releasing him. But we all know Najib son of Aarif the Cruel is trying to live up to Aarif's cruel ways. So the vassal get's imprisoned as well. He can be cellies with Murad.

With his incarceration it would seem I'm doing a grand job at rounding all my family members up for a reunion in prison. Hopefully we can get Aghlab in there eventually.

Speaking of Aghlab I want his last province of Damascus. So I go scrolling through the CB screen and select one that is the most fitting for the situation.

As the Caliphate Armies are gathering for our assault upon Damascus a wife of mine Touran becomes pregnant, she's also my Spymaster if I remember right so she may have issues tracking spies and rogue family members for the next nine months.

Even though Touran is pregnant it doesn't seem to stop her from creating schisms within my harem. As I get a notification that I can imprison one of my other wives named Qamara. I have to think about this a little bit. Why would I want to imprison a wife of mine? She isn't a family member. But there's got to be a reason I can. I try and find out why but unfortunately nothing tells me what Qamara did. I think Touran is just trying to ex off her rivals.

Normally when I discover female rivalries in the real world or in game, I try my best not to take sides. Its always best to leave the female arguments alone and stay far far far away from such convoluted craziness. But this time in game, I say screw it, Touran is the Spymaster surely she is correct in suspecting Qamara of some obscene crime. Thus I imprison Qamara and hope that's the end of the womanly dramas in my harem.

My vassals are getting annoying with their constant requests for me to finally just once in Najib's life show some mercy to my fellow Abbasid monsters. Some Emir decides to request clemency for another member of my family, to which I allow the Emir to become a tenant of Prison Baghdad.

The war for Damascus then comes to an end. It was a boring war. In fact all it took was marching some men to Damascus siege some of the holdings and then done 100 percent warscore. Aghlab didn't even have an army to send out to fight. Which shouldn't have been surprising I know I damn sure wouldn't march for some crazy disgraced leader who's resume included being held captive and forced to surrender to his enemies.

Touran gives birth to a baby after the war. It's name is Akab. Which I got a chuckle out of. Previously in my Welf AAR (not to like promote it or anything) but there was an Akab. That Akab was a bastard of the reigning Diogenes dynasty and subsequently overthrew the Emperor and founding a new short lived dynasty named the Diasorenos. Why does it make me laugh? Why did a Greek in my Welf name have a Bedouin name???

It is a paradox for sure.

An event then happened that just made me roll on the floor in a sick and twisted way. I've been playing this Caliph Najib as a cruel dude, so this one was perfect from a rp perspective there.

Apparently I had a 10 year old girl in my dungeon. No idea how she got there. Maybe her mom gave birth to her in there and I never knew it? I don't know regardless its quite bizarre.

But I am given a choice between being nice or torturing the poor girl. I'm sure you can already guess which option I chose...

Put that brat on the rack!

My new found toy does not survive the torturing however. As if that is surprising I mean a 10 year old going to the rack definitely going to die...a bit of a twisted chain of events I suppose. But cruelty is what we are aiming for here.

I kind of felt bad after that to be honest. Felt like a monster. I begin rethinking the gameplan to make Najib a cruel ass dude.

Rethinking that doesn't last too long when my son Rasul age two hasn't uttered one word besides wailing like the child he is. I could have been nice to the boy and patted him on the head but I discover at the age of two he is for whatever reason friendly with both Jews and Christians alike. This reawakens the spirits of Cruelty and quickly click on the option to birch the words from him.

Besides all kids need some good corporal punishment every now and then right?

Anyway he becomes deceitful at the age of two which is promising. Perhaps he's lying about those friendly traits as well...

I take a momentary break because the Ummayads had recaptured Aquitaine and with it Poitou as well. So the Christian Jihad was well pointless.

Curious about what fate was left for the Cerneu rulers over there I wander on over to Western Europe for a timeout. What I find makes me laugh again.

The Cerneu family now has a Sunni Muslim Duke. I actually debate trying to marry one of his daughters but decide not too. Although that would have been rather fun.

Coming back from my timeout I decide to embrace one of the two schools. I don't really know if there is one that is better than the other or what. But I choose the Mu'tazila School, I don't really have a reason for this other than it sounded more progressive than the other.

Apparently some Viking in some cold ass snowy (Najib doesn't really know what snow is) land decides he's going to invade the Caliphate. I shrug my shoulders I don't even try to assassinate the guy. When the time comes I'll merely call the levies and have them sit and wait along the shoreline to intercept the Viking thugs.

Due to the Vikings having low morale when getting off their boats I think I could survive having a few thousand men on each county along the Coast to repel the Vikings.

This was a mere experiment. But it actually worked.

I get slapped for a few gold due to being arbitrary, again I shrug this off as well the Caliphate does have several thousand stored up for hard times so 12 gold is about a weeks worth revenue from the Caliphate's taxes.

That being said currently I think we are bringing in around 35 to 45 gold a turn.

Which is when I decide to host Ramadan again.

Above I combined a bunch of screenshots from Ramadan and a few things that happened in between and a little afterwards. As a note this is the second time I've done Ramadan and everytime I have I've received the book event not sure it that's tied to the chain for some reason or just a simple odd coincidence.

Also around this time I decided I wanted Najib to have a Sultan title as well just in case his line of the family ever loses the Caliphate again. So I form the Sultanate of Mesopotamia.

I also put Qamara into the Oubliette, hopefully she dies quicker in there.

Which is when I get the happy notification that some dude named Xarmander an Orthodox Priest decided it would be a grand idea to try and seize power and convert the lands of the Prophet to the Orthodox faith.

My brother Abdullah then comes of age, as per family tradition he also get's moved to the dungeon.

We will leave this update with some random Sheikh trying to take the Emirate of the Tigris from me.

Which means he too will more than likely end up in prison as well.

As of this moment the year is 937. Leaving us with thirty more years to go. I still haven't really accomplished much of anything yet for the Abbasids besides bringing the Caliphate's capital back to Baghdad.

So right now I begin thinking about attacking the Byzantine Empire. We are about equal in numbers, so an invasion of Anatolia could be doable. Unfortunately those plans will of course be sidetracked due to the usual civil wars and untimely deaths...

 

[TSSL]

Nice update

Being landed reduces the amount of decadence gain, but doesn't necessarily remove it entirely. Basically, the more titles someone holds, the less decadence they gain. The amount of titles they need to cancel out their decadence increases with the strength of the dynasty head. If the dynasty head is really powerful, his landed kinsmen must also be really powerful to negate their decadence.

I notice that the girl you tortured had the trusting trait. That makes it even worse, you scumbag.

The continued adventures of the Cerneu family in Poitou amuse me. Heranal seems like a nice fellow, anyway. And I'm sure he was very thrilled about converting to Sunni: "Woo, Islam! I get to marry extra women... yay... wait..."
How exactly is he related to your original Cerneu characters and the current Welsh line?

Could I see a map of what the Abbasids currently control?

 

[Wilkey]

Interesting idea for an AAR, I finally got around to reading though it today. It's a lot different from you Welf one, but it's very funny and I have enjoyed reading it.

 

[verdas]

Sunni Piotu? Looks like the reconquista didn't go so well. Love seeing the Cerneus thriving in even the most bizarre situations.

As for decadence, TSSL has it right; decadence gain scales based on several things like the character's traits (greedy gluttons are obviously decadent), how closely they are related to you, and the power of the family head, in this case being you and your emperor-tier title.

Aaaaand that's why decadence is broken; it is actually impossible to treat your family well and maintain any reasonable amount of decadence over time (if you've hovered over the decadence tooltip it should show how it is effecting unit moral, coreligionist opinion and a couple other things; if yours is still topping 50, you're troops will be seriously demoralized as 25 is the baseline.

So, if you want to leave the Abbasads in good shape, I would strongly recommend you continue being a cruel heartless bastard, but focus especially on your own dynasty; they can't be trusted with land, given that even distant cousins will raise decadence faster than you can lower it. The family tree must be trimmed.... liberally.

But I also like the idea of going at the Byzzies. Perhaps a strategic murder or two first, to place a child on the throne? A little instability can only help

 

[mike the knight]

Such an awful man to torture a little girl ..... I hope you will crush and burn! You dishnour the Mutazite movement

 

[Jorlem]

I feel kinda bad for that Sunni Cerneu. All of his non-Sunni relatives are forcing his decadence up, uncontrollably.

 

[TheKaspa]

Funny reading.
I want a Map too.

 

[Stuyvesant]

Touran gives birth to a baby after the war. It's name is Akab. Which I got a chuckle out of. Previously in my Welf AAR (not to like promote it or anything) but there was an Akab. That Akab was a bastard of the reigning Diogenes dynasty and subsequently overthrew the Emperor and founding a new short lived dynasty named the Diasorenos. Why does it make me laugh? Why did a Greek in my Welf name have a Bedouin name???

It is a paradox for sure.

Ba-dum Tish.

As of this moment the year is 937. Leaving us with thirty more years to go. I still haven't really accomplished much of anything yet for the Abbasids besides bringing the Caliphate's capital back to Baghdad.

Not to mention repopulating Baghdad, if we count the swelling prison population.

Must overcome my distaste for harming the Byzantines. <Repeats "It's only a game. It's only a game." to self>

Okay, with that out of the way, it sounds like a grand plan. Obviously, the Caliph should be spreading the faith by destroying that bastion of Christendom. And it should be quite the raging war, different from the "walk-over-to-Damascus-until-the-enemy-gets-terminally-bored" kind you just waged.

 

[tnick0225]

@TSSL: Haha yeah I felt bad after doing that to her, when I played I didn't even realize it was a girl till I got the pop up saying I was over enthusiastic...felt bad after seeing she was 10 and trusting. As far as Duke Heranal or Emir Heranal, he is the grandkid of the first Cerneu I played Dumnarth: So it would go Dumnarth (who was my first character) his son Koulizh Cerneu, then Heranal Cerneu. I actually don't really have a screenshot from where we are at right now in this, as soon as I find a screenshot that shows a good portion of the Caliphate I'll post it. But to be honest the borders look pretty much the same as they did in the map I posted at the end of the Wales play-through, with the exception of Baghdad now being integrated and some of the lands of Armenia that we took through Invasion.

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@Wilkey: Glad you are following! I decided to start this as a completely different experience from my normal narrative style. It's a nice timeout from trying to craft a narrative. Very happy to hear it's been funny and entertaining to read!

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@Verdas: I guess from what you and TSSL said about how decadence works where it scales to the power of the dynasty would make decadence broken. There's no way at all to control it! It's ridiculous. Before I used to wonder what people meant by it being broken but now I completely understand.

But yeah Sunni Poitou! I got a good chuckle when I saw my Cerneus turned Muslim. The fallout from that will be quite entertaining.

As far as the Byzzies I intend to go after them. I probably won't assassinate the top dog Emperor, I have an experiment I'm going to try regarding instability there. We will see if it works

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@mike the knight: I know I'm evil what can I say!

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@Jorlem: Thanks for commenting! And yeah I feel bad for him too, not a good thing being a Sunni in a Catholic Dynasty. But maybe something bizarre will happen and we'll end up with a Sultanate of Wales.

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@TheKaspa: Thanks for commenting! Glad you like it. I will post a map when I find one that corresponds with the time we're at right now. It may be a little while sadly, but like I said in reply to TSSL's request there really isn't anything that has changed yet, pretty much looks the same.

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@Stuyvesant: Haha yeah may have to reopen a new prison in Baghdad. Had a chance to release a bunch of them during Ramadan but said no to it. Need some toys to put on the rack you know.

I feel bad about wanting to target the Byzzies. But at the same time, they're truly the only viable target I think. I could go after Persia but I'm allied to them at the moment, could go after Egypt but same thing there, and I really don't want the Abbasids bordering Abyssinia just yet. So to the ERE I will go, and hopefully it will be a bit better of a war than the walk to Damascus and sit around the walls war.

 

[tnick0225]

I found a partial map for this next update for everyone that was interested in seeing it. It's missing Southern Arabia down around Oman and Yemen but like I said not really a lot has changed so far.