What have you done to survive utter destruction?

[Traggadon]

Pretty straight forward question, but what have you done to save yourself from being crushed by any foe in the game?

For me i did the most morally incorrect thing i good catholic king could do, i allied myself with my good buddy the Caliph of The Seljuk Sultanate.

And yes, i cheated myself a start in Jerusalem at the original start date rather than the save start date. ( i like the added time ) And i waited till i had 2000 gold and i fake bought myself an empire because i wanted to role play a crusader state empire....... just thought id mention that before people started to call me out.

 

[LordNeidhart]

Massive scramble as Britannia to fight the Almoravids who had completely conquered Hispania and Francia while the HRE was busy playing whack-a-pole even as islam slowly but steadily devoured christianity from all sides. After so many broken truces, blitzkriegs, assassinations and general poor behaviour from my part, all that dragging over a period of 60 or so years until I managed to slowly but steadily beat Mauretania back from their appex to a 3-county realm squashed against Mali, I theorized that the name of my Dynasty was by that point a horrible curse word in Arab.

 

[cyrileom]

Well, lets see: Playing as Navarra, everything's nice and shiny, I control 1/3 of Hispania, things are going well. Shia Jihad on Aragon. I'm like "WTF? That's Sunni Land. Dafuq you care?" So I cheat myself a bajillion gold, hire merc armies, and woop the caliphs ass. I go "well, I cheated, but fuck the AI." I then get jihaded by the Sunni. And of course no one wants to help me. And all my mercenary armies are too busy trying to recover from their casualties. I ragequit.

 

[Lwantssugar]

what I did was more Virtous than the above examples, as Doux of Epirious I nearly bankrupt myself to hire the mercinaries that saved the ERE from being killed off by the Fatimids. Since they invaded Greece and all of my counties and 2 ducal titles are De jure parts of Greece its somewhat in my best interest to help the Emperor out of his hard place, when the war started I had something along the lines of 3200 gold; when I was successfull and forced the Fatimids to surrender I was down to 420

 

[Traggadon]

Well, lets see: Playing as Navarra, everything's nice and shiny, I control 1/3 of Hispania, things are going well. Shia Jihad on Aragon. I'm like "WTF? That's Sunni Land. Dafuq you care?" So I cheat myself a bajillion gold, hire merc armies, and woop the caliphs ass. I go "well, I cheated, but fuck the AI." I then get jihaded by the Sunni. And of course no one wants to help me. And all my mercenary armies are too busy trying to recover from their casualties. I ragequit.

HAHAHA i felt like this so many times......

 

[LarryLeica]

Playing as ERE, I had a rather large rebel problem (pre-factions), 80% of my land has spawned a 1-2k stack of nasty rebels. Only place that hasn't are my own provinces and I can muster about 15k personal levies. So, I DoW the Seljuks and the Fatimids, who promptly march their armies all over my lands defeating all the rebels for me and taking significant casualties themselves. Once they are done and are down to a few 3-4k stacks sieging I march my 15k stack on each one in turn then white peace... Gamey, but not cheating...

 

[Kaiser Ludwig]

Mainly, bend the knee to the HRE. It's effective, and... well, KISS, you know? Less avenues for failure and all that.

 

[Ithvan]

In my game as Georgia, every time a Caliph, Shahanshah (is this correct?) or Khan gets too strong, I assassinate him.

I simply don't have the manpower to deal with any of my neighbors.

 

[HabemusZlatan]

I bribe the Pope as a Muslism ruler: No Crusades! He likes me! For the modest sum of 1000 gold every now and then!
Also does kick France's ass continuosly count?

 

[Dogia]

Arrested and Banish every Baron, Mayor and Bishop in y realm in the realm. Faced with an islamic invasion i had too judge those souls. They would end up losing their lands anyway if we lost. Why the hell had they not offered the money too begin with.

 

[unmerged(320188)]

I loaded the last safe saved game.

Oh noo my King died in battle eventhough the army was winning, reloaded save game
Oh no I should have called in the mercenaries too now my army is being crushed by the Fatimid, reloaded save game
Oh no I underestimated the Seljuks army I should have merged all my levy armies, reloaded save game
Oh no I should have settled with white peace, reloaded save game.

My current Byzantine king alone has a personal prestige of 7,000 now and he's only 32 years old. His favorite quote is all your duchies belong to me .


I know shame on me....:blush:

 

[revjor]

Once when I was playing as the King of Croatia I beat a Byzantine invasion without raising a single troop or attempting an assassination. How? I had already conquered Sicily and formed the Kingdom of Sicily. I was fighting a Sicilian independance war when then Byz declared war on me. I was pissed and panicking when the full brunt on the ByzStacks set up shop in my capitol. Then it hit me... I destroyed the title of the Kingdom of Croatia, became King of Sicily(which made sure no Duchies were lost in Croatia)The Unwinnable war mmediately ended "Inconclusivley" because the CB the Byz were using was for something nonexistant. The next day after the war I reformed the Kingdom of Croatia(and presumeably signed the peace treaty "U MAD BRO?")

It was extremely costly in gold, prestige, piety, vassal opinion and derailed my glorious plans of a Croatian reconquista but It's still probably the most satisfying accomplishment I've achieved in ck2.

EDIT: Still not sure if gamey or brilliant.

 

[revjor]

I loaded the last safe saved game.

Oh noo my King died in battle eventhough the army was winning, reloaded save game
Oh no I should have called in the mercenaries too now my army is being crushed by the Fatimid, reloaded save game
Oh no I underestimated the Seljuks army I should have merged all my levy armies, reloaded save game
Oh no I should have settled with white peace, reloaded save game.

My current Byzantine king alone has a personal prestige of 7,000 now and he's only 32 years old. His favorite quote is all your duchies belong to me .


I know shame on me....:blush:

Whatevs. That's just alternate alternate history... right?

 

[unmerged(320188)]

Whatevs. That's just alternate alternate history... right?

Hmm the physicists are saying there are parallel universes anyway

 

[Alpinia]

I just had a game as the Sunni Caliph were the Fatimids launched and invasion for Arabia, which they easily won. Fortunately I only had one Arabian province that I lost, but my son and heir was the wâli of the province and became a vassl of the Fatimids. He was still my heir, so I thought I'd get it back when my ruler died, but after a couple of months his new ruler managed to convince him to convert to Shia Islam, which excluded him from the succession, and my new heir was an imbecile... I decided to go to war and managed to scrape together 15k soldiers including to mercenary companies. I managed to defeat their first mega-stack of 18k soldiers and tried to blitz through their provinces, defeating another stack of 15k and after assaulting the last holding in a province I'm up to 94% war-score when a stack of 24k appears in the neighbouring province. I tried save-scumming to no avail and so I was forced to load up my save as the Fatimids and offer a surrender before loading up as my real ruler again to accept it.

If I hadn't done it I would have just abandoned the game right there, but the taint of cheating infested the save and I just couldn't enjoy it anymore, so I abandoned the game only a couple of years after the war anyway.