Trough all this whining I feel that people are forgetting what makes CK2 great: The story. It is kind of like rougelikes in that what in the end becomes important is the history of you, your dynasty and the world. Once Byzantium managed to mend the schism and most of the world except Britain converted after some time, then came the mongols and took all of mainland Europe. The Mongols converted to Orthodox and after some internal struggles fractured, this left Europe as many small orthodox countries ruled by Mongols and Britain as a refuge for catholic non Mongols. So I as the small kingdom of Wales started to kick the Mongols out of Europe over 200 years, the struggle was bitter but when I finally managed to conquer Europe I got an incompetent ruler and everything went to shit, and so a new fractured Europe emerged. How many dynasties will emerge victorious from the new power struggle?
It was awesome and just shows how purely awesome CK2 can be if you play it in a way that is not all about conquering, when you have lost just choose an autosave pick a different interesting ruler/dynasty and try again. In the end it is the journey that matters, because losing is fun.
Imagine this fun little story; You play as a small count in Russia, who is trying to just be a good vassal, eventually his descendants manage to become dukes and expand the dynasty all voer Russia. Eventually, news is heard of a great eastern horde, the duke doesn't worry too much, the king of Rus became emperor of Russia and his realm if very large and powerful but eventually the Golden Horde starts attacking Russia and to your surprise, a unbeatable army soon eats up the parts of the empire, taking away the holdings of cade branches of your dynasty, eventually the golden horde invades your duchy, the great imperial russian army is totally destroyed and the Mongol's doomstack jsut lsot a few men. The end, game over.
Basically, in this new patch, if you want to be a power in the east, you are forced to become emperor yourself, conquer very large parts of Europe for a giant army, and even then you still will probably lose agianst the invicible hordes of the Mongols who seem to have no civil wars at all, have a huge doomstack that doesnt get attrition and have superior troops as well.
This patch really is broken in so many ways, like how generals keep getting out of nowhere, messing up courts everywhere and slowing down your game, factions being started by people with 50+ relations with you and extremely large doomstacks that match the amount of troops you have over your whole empire, popping up to help a insignifcant duchy gain independence.
