Gather 'round, ye kings and queens, and listen to my tale of the mysterious land to the west. There lies the nation of 'Hispania', where the endless hordes of fire-woshipping demons wait for the time to overthrow the nations of God in a tempest of holy wars...
And after all the Crusades and Jihads I had to weather in order to create that nation, a bit of karmic revenge was in order. (I apologize for the silly intro, but the situation was just too weird to me to not do something equally so.) This may seem a bit self-wanky, but the experience was just so weird and awesome that I felt it had to be shared
Anyways, let's start at the beginning.
One day, after deciding that I'd had quite enough of all that silly pope excommunicating me whenever I felt one of my nobles was getting a bit too uppity and not too eager to roll as a Muslim, I decided to give myself the self-imposed challenge of resurrecting the Zoroastrian faith. Without cheats, mind you. This was done through a series of marriages and indoctrination programs that soon made the majority of my lineage followers of that faith. Long story short, I had almost a third of the Iberian peninsula and the better parts of Mauritania. Then my king died, and up came my heir, full of bright ideas for the future and an army to see them enforced. This was sometime around 1200, because a session later I got the message about the Mongols.
"Not my problem!" I chuckled, and continued to hold my ground against the French hordes while subjugating the other crowns of Iberia.
Their arrival coincided with a sudden civil war in my lands that was happening alongside a wholy war from the HRE, and so in the confusion of that chaos I didn't really pay much attention to the fact that, far to the EAST (sorry, bit of a typo), there were 40,000 troops just waiting to make all my troubles go away. Eventually I did, though, but I was not about to look a girt-horse in the mouth. I promptly wound my arm back and pimp-slapped the French mightily in revenge, and called everything a happy accident. When that king inevitably died, I soon found myself with another lot. This filled me with joy. Some time after, I made Hispania, and everything was right in the world. I was happy to be a Portuguese Zororastrian with the mysterious Mongolian super-power of 'Summon Army'.
I only figured out something had gone terribly wrong when suddenly all of my vassals had 100k troop stacks just sitting around, waiting for me to anger their lord in some way. And that was the most common amount. Where internal fighting had been particularly intense, the numbers could climb to around 400. Apparently each and noble with a rank of count or above was considered a mongol invader. This would have been awesome if it wasn't so incredibly horrifying. My nation could be theoretically be influenced at the whims of a single duke.
Suddenly the whole mechanics of succession was turned sideways, as it was no longer as important that a good emperor succeed to the throne, but rather the one with the most troops. Primogeniture was quickly abandoned in favour of election, which had its own dangers. All the while trying desperately to pit my vassals against each other instead of me.
Then the mongols converted (which for some reason also mass-converted my own lords, which was also terrifying), and everything calmed down. By then I had consolidated around 600k troops. (And I didn't even get most of them.) At which point the game became an extremely one-sided battle as I proceeded to steamroll my way France, the HRE and the Fatimids.
I think until that moment it was the most satisfying lineage I'd played. Has anyone else experienced something like this?
And after all the Crusades and Jihads I had to weather in order to create that nation, a bit of karmic revenge was in order. (I apologize for the silly intro, but the situation was just too weird to me to not do something equally so.) This may seem a bit self-wanky, but the experience was just so weird and awesome that I felt it had to be shared
Anyways, let's start at the beginning.
One day, after deciding that I'd had quite enough of all that silly pope excommunicating me whenever I felt one of my nobles was getting a bit too uppity and not too eager to roll as a Muslim, I decided to give myself the self-imposed challenge of resurrecting the Zoroastrian faith. Without cheats, mind you. This was done through a series of marriages and indoctrination programs that soon made the majority of my lineage followers of that faith. Long story short, I had almost a third of the Iberian peninsula and the better parts of Mauritania. Then my king died, and up came my heir, full of bright ideas for the future and an army to see them enforced. This was sometime around 1200, because a session later I got the message about the Mongols.
"Not my problem!" I chuckled, and continued to hold my ground against the French hordes while subjugating the other crowns of Iberia.
Their arrival coincided with a sudden civil war in my lands that was happening alongside a wholy war from the HRE, and so in the confusion of that chaos I didn't really pay much attention to the fact that, far to the EAST (sorry, bit of a typo), there were 40,000 troops just waiting to make all my troubles go away. Eventually I did, though, but I was not about to look a girt-horse in the mouth. I promptly wound my arm back and pimp-slapped the French mightily in revenge, and called everything a happy accident. When that king inevitably died, I soon found myself with another lot. This filled me with joy. Some time after, I made Hispania, and everything was right in the world. I was happy to be a Portuguese Zororastrian with the mysterious Mongolian super-power of 'Summon Army'.
I only figured out something had gone terribly wrong when suddenly all of my vassals had 100k troop stacks just sitting around, waiting for me to anger their lord in some way. And that was the most common amount. Where internal fighting had been particularly intense, the numbers could climb to around 400. Apparently each and noble with a rank of count or above was considered a mongol invader. This would have been awesome if it wasn't so incredibly horrifying. My nation could be theoretically be influenced at the whims of a single duke.
Suddenly the whole mechanics of succession was turned sideways, as it was no longer as important that a good emperor succeed to the throne, but rather the one with the most troops. Primogeniture was quickly abandoned in favour of election, which had its own dangers. All the while trying desperately to pit my vassals against each other instead of me.
Then the mongols converted (which for some reason also mass-converted my own lords, which was also terrifying), and everything calmed down. By then I had consolidated around 600k troops. (And I didn't even get most of them.) At which point the game became an extremely one-sided battle as I proceeded to steamroll my way France, the HRE and the Fatimids.
I think until that moment it was the most satisfying lineage I'd played. Has anyone else experienced something like this?
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