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And we're back! I keep thinking "this will be the penultimate entry" when I write these, and well, I'm at 1421, and once again thinking this will be the penultimate entry...but we'll see, eh? Here's:

Part 5: Greece the Unstoppable

Chapter 14: Queen Takes Duke

So, as we last left off, Basilissa Kyra II, now the 'Glorious', had cemented her place in history by defeating the combined might of Catholicism. After this, a nice period of peace followed, in which we would discover that the Empress was apparently "glorious" in the bedroom, too.

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So...yeah, I had no idea this was a possibility! The "how do you want to do it" option came up, and I figured, given the laws/nature of this realm, naturally the woman is going to take charge here...and she rode the poor bastard to death! Oh well. The depression this gave her wore off completely of her own accord about two days later, so evidently she wasn't that upset about it, either.

To celebrate our victory in the Crusade, we put the finishing touches on the statue of our founder:

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The only real difficulty I had during this period was with my vassal queens--at this point there were two, Sicily and Greece. They kept inheriting land, fabricating claims, and doing holy wars--mostly on the Byzantines. That last one was a double-edged sword, because that territory is under my control if they win, but it's also theirs, making them even more powerful vassals...my eventual way of dealing with this was to wait until they delegated some land outside their de jure territory to someone else, wait a little longer to make sure the lines of succession weren't intertwined, then retract the vassalage of the duchy or whatever, which Imperial Administration (that I implemented ages ago) thankfully makes a less painful process. And only once did this cause a revolt! I'd later use the re-organised territory to create yet more vassal kingdoms, but we'll get to that.

In any case, at least they weren't my lower-tier vassals, whose specialty seems to be losing holy wars (just declare county conquests! The whole enemy religion won't get involved that way!). Makes me have to work really hard at keeping our moral authority up.

And speaking of religion...

Chapter 15: My God Can Beat Up Your God

In the time period around the end of the reign of Kyra 'the Glorious' (who hung on a long time even after becoming incapable from old age), and the beginning of her daughter Georgia's reign, both the realm and religion were doing well! (Here's images of the total borders of Greece, the total spread of Hellenism, and the state of it)

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l6lZq4W5VDYn-AMbpwon7j5FhJR6I4iLG96tE19pO3FAxhN0RfsMvXm9NhPVw6yljnMhX3-rGUXCAMQ87NUThRsNDKcLglwAYmHzHME-w_jaTdXHqajag_r98uRc0VK3BPgJ7lFO



WQUE4A2HpNlyUmOlWZ1QZCeYOeSfPxgxmD3d0EhmjluvDnAUcVq3-URbyAs9svIt3uFOtMURtyTdi1tCFoxbdTXi8epDz9OaHKGipVRI2vpOSAnjNH0kDMq_Nu04FDrZP3XXfHfG



As in, hovering around first or second in the world for moral authority (somehow, no matter how many times I kick their asses, Catholicism always seems to rise back too 100 authority...), and top 5 for size! If you're wondering who number 1 for size is, well...

nnJXcaKLb6l_t3AsH3hKh46RG7dXtJIkIPp0560N7qOSUA4TKNTLuzgpMnTGohRSeL1ot2_apBon83FASRWJtYV5ntauuqOimzMVCO7ojQzAqTyihiKOB6V8NTX0du8_6whiLy6-


Impressive. I can only imagine the Mongols picking it up seriously helped them. Though the Timurids, who are starting to pick up steam again, are Hindu, so we'll see how that goes. And in sharp contrast to Orthodoxy, which has been pretty much completely replaced by the Monotheilite heresy.

But Hellenism is still doing well! So well, people are asking me if they can get in on it!

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Which was a really exciting thing to me. And it got Georgia a distinctive name of her own, 'the Educator', which would inform how I played her later on. (I do admit she looks quite like her mother, but the cool face scar at least helps set her apart in that regard.)


The realm continues to prosper, and here's a most welcome sight after all the time I've spent building this place up:

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As an aside, I also got the Robin Hood event, or the "Merry Men of Rome" as they were called here, which was fun. Seems there's a variety of endings you can get to that story--I ended up befriending the thieves, and after officiating the wedding of Robin and Marion, made them both my commanders. Thought it would be sweet to have them fighting together commanding flanks of the same army. (Until Marion died in battle. Oh well. Robin seems fine, as of now he's still one of my best commanders.)

And I'd need good commanders, because the turn of the century rolled around, and not long after they became able to, the Papacy declared another crusade on me. Not unexpected, but when they didn't immediately do it after the cooldown ended, I got hopeful they might be too scared, or decide to target it elsewhere. No such luck. And my Aztec armies were greatly reduced after last time, and still no allies I could call... (The Queen of the Suomi whose realm I'd converted declined to form an alliance due to mysterious "political concerns", despite being half a continent away.)

So yes, the actual battles themselves were much tougher than last time, as I had far less overwhelming numbers of troops to call on (although I'd of course been doing everything I could to improve my actual demesne, vassal and retinue troop counts to make up for the lost event companies, and would continue to after this). But at least I had a plan from the beginning--I immediately hired a couple mercenary bands and made a beeline for the Pope's two bishoprics. As before, the Spanish one was easy to take, but the German one had the protection of the Holy Roman Empire, and I kept being thrown off it. Eventually, I managed to capture it, and the warscore went up to...somewhere in the 80s. Huh.

So back to battling in earnest, and by consolidating my forces and manoeuvring carefully, I managed to win those last few major battles, and finally, finally...

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Two for two.


Chapter 16: Get Schooled


With the Christian world trounced for a second time, it was time for another period of peace, prosperity, and celebration. And ineed, all of those things would happen! First thing I did was start building a Great Temple (of Olympus) in Constantinople to celebrate my victory. I figured that would be a pretty good screw-you to Christendom, Constantinople having been the historical seat of the Christianised version of the Roman Empire. That still hasn't finished construction, but we're getting there.

I finished the reorganisation of the empire:

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This is very helpful, as

1. The fact that I don't have so many kingdom titles means there'll be less factions because there aren't as many reasons for factions to form, to demand such-and-such succession type in so-and-so kingdom.

2. Each of these queens is replacing a whole bunch of duke/count-tier vassals, and having less vassals also means less factions!

So I went from constantly frantically stamping out factions as dozens spring up at a time to a much more leisurely state where the number of factions ranges between a small handful and none at all. And for such a large empire!

But besides all that, the image of all the queens of the realm kneeling in fealty to the empress is just a splendid one. And speaking of splendour!

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It may be as small as kingdoms can get, but we're really starting to become engraved in history here.

Oh yes, and this image here is just a quick follow-up to my earlier point about enatic-cognatic merchant republics--

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As you can see, the game lists her as a Duchess (notification to the right), but considers her a Doge (main message).

Anyway! I did give the Pontifex of Alexandria some grief when I ended up retracting a de jure vassal because I discovered one was both Christian and had a very worrying line of succession, with multiple barons in the HRE halfway down it. So I revoked both her counties, gave the one that was de jure Alexandria's back to that Pontifex to calm her down a bit (once I'd put a newly-raised vassal in the count slot, just so said priestess wouldn't get too much power), and still had one other county up in Croatia that I didn't have anything important to do with but wouldn't fit in my demesne. So I thought, why not vassalise the Myrmidons? So, I granted them the county, which made them independent, but of course they now readily agreed to vassalisation. So that's cool! I like that. (I think some expansion adds a decision to directly vassalise them without the multi-step process, but this seemed to work fine, and now their 'hire' button has become 'raise' in the military screen, which is much cheaper, and seems to be in addition to the regular levy I can raise from them. Very nice.)

One thing that's extremely funny to me is how the Byzantine Empire's borders have gone so far north:

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It's like they're running away from me after getting kicked out of Greece! And if you played it as a timelapse, I guess that's exactly what it would look like. This does now make us neighbours with the Timurids, though, so that's another new powerful player to keep in mind.

But enough of wars and borders, let's take our nickname of 'the Educator' seriously! Let's do some science!

I figure that with everything going smoothly, it'd be characterful to switch over to the Scholarship focus. Way, way back in the days of Heinrich the Strange, I did the 'weird things' path of this, so this time I went for stellar movement. And lo and behold, Georgia discovers that the sun is the centre of the solar system. How enlightened, even if the priests aren't so happy about it. I also decide that, as my most prosperous and mighty counties, and spaced out nicely around my empire, I'm considering Rome, Constantinople and Alexandria my 'three capitals', and thus Alexandria needs a Great Work of its own! And what more fitting to put there than a library? Furthering the quest of bringing greater knowledge to the realm, as well. So, we're working on that.

Hey, I wonder how effective all this education has been? If I send my Mystikos (Spymaster) out to study someone's technology, who's more advanced than us...

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...no-one. Literally no-one in the entire world is more technologically advanced than we are. Marvellous. Civilisation, thy name is Greece.

And that brings us up to the present, in 1421! In another twelve years, the Catholics will be able to have one final go at a Crusade before the game ends, and as my Aztec troops have been reduced to 15,000 out of 180,000, we shall have to see if I've built my own forces and defences up sufficiently to fight most of Europe one more time (I'm currently hovering around 120,000 total). And then the last 15-20 years after that should be plain sailing. Probably. It's Crusader Kings 2, anything could happen.

See you next time! I want to say "for the finale", but I keep thinking that, so...probably for the finale!
 
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Well, of course the heart of civilization is Hellenic. As it should be. Georgia leads by example here.

I wonder what the Aztec veterans returning home report. "We're answering to an Hellenic empress over there. No sacrifices, instead we are ruled by women."
And then they proceed to declare everyone barbarians and form their own europeanised elite. If they aren't sacrificed before :p.
 
It is fun to think about! I do like to imagine that, between those many thousands of soldiers and the quite numerous Aztec nobles/courtiers that ended up married into my dynasty or holding lands (leading to quite a few people with Nahua-looking portraits, regardless of their listed culture, to this day), that there's a pretty sizeable settled Aztec population in the realm. Us pagans gotta stick together. (Maybe the goats we cut open for divining purposes every time we go to war are close enough to their sacrifices for them...)
 
Hellenism is making important progress.
 
Well. It is done. Here we go:

Part 6: Grand Finale



Chapter 17: The Final Boss of Europe

So, Georgia the Educator was getting on a bit, but luckily her heir was an excellent choice, well educated and perfectly suited to rule next, until she got involved in a local war in the corner of the empire she'd been given to govern (since she was the second daughter, having a title bumped her up in Open succession) and got slain in battle. Oops.

This left me with my eldest daughter, another Kyra, who seemed to have a pretty dedicated butch thing going on. Stayed devoted to the shaved-head/steel-helmet look even when she was neither a commander nor leading armies, flatly refusing to put on a Countess hat instead.

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Frankly, I'm a little disappointed she didn't keep it even when she became empress, but I guess that was a crown too shiny to resist.

The reign of Kyra III started off pretty well, digging up an old treasure on the construction site of my new Great Library of Alexandria, and slinging a spare titular kingdom title I had lying around at one of my merchant republics because I just thought it'd be neat to see a gold border on them, I guess.

upload_2019-5-27_13-9-4.png


Well, that and now they get to be more, uh, serene.

But of course, I knew that during her reign would also be the final crusade of the game. Once 1433 rolled around, the cooldown would be over, and I was still sitting on places the Catholics regarded as theirs, and indeed, just a couple years after that timer ticked over, they declared a second Crusade for Ravenna.

This one, I won't lie, was the hardest. Coming in this close to the end, it really was like a 'final boss fight' to this playthrough. There were moments I really thought my armies would be completely overwhelmed, and I would have nothing left to fight with, but I just barely managed to regroup and turn the tide. So many troops were being called in on both sides there were almost no mercenaries left available on the hire screen by the end--the world's supply of warriors was getting used up!


But battle by gruelling battle, we threw the Christians out of our lands one final time, and thus, at last...

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The age of the Crusades draws to a close with one final reminder that the Hellens will not yield so easily.


After that came 14 years of celebration and peace...well, mostly. Pretty soon after, I tried retracting some vassals to shuffle around my empire and make the internal borders more balanced, and ended up having to fight a revolt consisting of the two most powerful queens in my realm. But to be honest, after the crusade, it didn't feel quite as daunting as it otherwise would. And when immediately after that a minor Emir declared a claim war on me it just felt laughable. Like...really, my man?


But after all that it was plain sailing. I sent my Magistros (Chancellor) to Tuscany to improve relations with one of my doges, and he somehow ended up improving relations with the Holy Roman Emperor.

upload_2019-5-27_12-35-36.png


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Not sure what the Kaiser was doing there. On holiday? Or maybe having 29-30 Diplomacy like this guy did gives you the ability to teleport around the world...


The Myrmidons elected a lady for the first time and I found out what the feminine of "Megastrategos" is, pretty badass.


-n7fIvCcYXYgHj2NWD50xHHL-irZcdqxY_rbvgW71lS6QyK4ienZKXHMiMQWJ0f-PHqUau_sDkS1LttNsum1uY9gUBc-hJgD8O6DBFg-lKn3sN75chSXcvqGiSTx5cizzYyZzHUe


My vassals kept doing some little wars of their own, and became pretty fearsome in the process:

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And on the very last in-game day, a little bit of crowning glory:

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My de jure territory is now the entirety of Italy and all its surrounding islands!

And thus ends the tale of the new Empire of Greece. This world's history would no doubt take many more spectacular twists and turns, but until such time as I get into EU4 and make a blood sacrifice to the save converter to make it work, this is where our glimpse into it must come to a close.




Chapter 18: Greece Forever

So, here's the world as of the start of the 1450s and the end of the medieval period:


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tBu_mTWbd35sZdAqZHLVYgy13VxRdUiFHNo8Gq2T967sTZ69j8Pj702hRRWcRikQGla4Nn95M4q1L9vNpLTNdyrZibgho7Vs_GONfCZdEYOJc-Tf7C0KxEuiWI4Bw4n1uR-PlH4F


Greece has become a fairly stable nation after retaking the old Hellenic homelands; there remains a strong Shia empire occupying northern Africa and most of Saudi Arabia as there has for centuries, even as its name changes--although the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem remains surprisingly strong, surrounded by provinces owned by the HRE, which continues to be a powerhouse despite being pushed out of Italy. The kingdom of Italy itself survives, albeit more or less in exile. Spain is almost entirely Sunni, although there's some cultural cross-pollination there; a few white Muslim kings and Christian Andalusian sultans exist around the borders. The Timurids have ended up as the dominant lasting Mongol power, bringing Hinduism west, but it's Buddhism that's the real winner, spreading across all of Asia and even to the tribes of north-eastern Europe (though a Hellenic enclave survives in Finland, very resistant to conversion even when their king or queen is of a different faith). The Byzantines, once claimants to the legacy of Rome, have been pushed far out of their homelands, retreating north, with the Monothelite heresy crushing and replacing traditional Orthodoxy in the process. And that's not even getting to the radically-altered first contact between Europe and the Americas (barring the Norse expeditions, come to think of it).

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Here's my final treasury (I don't have Monks & Mystics, so I can't just rack up artefacts at will). I'm not quite sure where my meteoric sword came from, to be honest with you, but I'll take it! We're a centre of learning and science here.

You can see my heir down there--she managed to become a Brilliant Strategist. I usually went for stewardship educations for my heirs, to hold on to a large demesne for control of the empire, but with the final crusade passed I figured I could just get her married to someone with his stewardship and, if Kyra III happened to die during the last few years of the game, I could ascend as her daughter Kyra IV, and due to having a martial education, create the Hellenic warrior lodge, the Olympian Champions. Didn't end up happening, but I'm sure when she eventually got her turn to rule she did just that, for the self-betterment of all the people of the realm.

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3rd in the world in moral authority, and 5th in size. I still don't know how Catholicism kept bouncing back after I kept kicking them out, and holding one of their holy sites at that. (As you can see, Buddhism was huge, but very low in authority--so a sort of 'religion of the common people', I suppose.)

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The bloodline with the most descendants! It was pretty fun, occasionally finding a Salian in a far-off realm, an African baron or somesuch, carrying the blood of Theodora despite us having basically nothing else in common. (This screen may be a little odd due to me only getting Holy Fury partway through the game, so it only started generating bloodlines partway through--Timur's was the first to show up, I believe)

Similarly odd might be the Great Works of the world due to HF activating partway through, so the world started with none and then they were built during the game...

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But regardless, I think that's a pretty impressive amount of them I own.

And now we truly come to the end.

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Let us remember Heinrich, Heinrich, Hermann, Winfrida, Christopher, Karlotte, Emma, Christophoros, Theodora, Theodora, Kyra, Giacinta, Kyra, Georgia, and Kyra (and Kyra). Under them, this game, my first full playthrough of Crusader Kings 2, which started with the intent to 'just mess around', became something magnificent. I founded my own empire. I tricked the HRE into doing a holy war for the wrong religion. I revived a dead religion. I absorbed the Aztecs. I defeated three crusades. And I ended it all outscoring every single historical medieval dynasty.

Thank you very much for reading. Perhaps someday I'll try writing this up in a more fictionalised style like the more professional AARs around here, or theorising on where this world's history would have gone from here, or even finding out myself by booting up EU4, but for now, this really is:

~The End~
 

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It's been a fun ride :).

Also nice to see how your inbred queen of Georgia (may there be a connection to the previous empress? Hm...) managed to earn herself the epithet of "Bloodaxe".
 
Greece is well placed to triumph in the following centuries, but it will not be easy surrounded by political and religious foes. Even so, no doubt this age will be well remembered in days hence.
 
Thank you both!

It's been a fun ride :).

Also nice to see how your inbred queen of Georgia (may there be a connection to the previous empress? Hm...) managed to earn herself the epithet of "Bloodaxe".

Ah, yes! I'd forgotten how that happened, but you made me remember! Her highly-skilled predecessor won most of a holy war and then died, and this less-than-impressive successor was shunted onto the throne just in time to declare victory and become famous for it. So it goes.

There's been some fun weird succession stuff all game, really--often a minor holding somewhere would run out of legitimate women to inherit only be able to find some distant courtier who was an Old Hellenic heretic, which made her switch it to agnatic and shunt a local man into the title next, who was inevitably reformed Hellenic himself, causing him to switch it back to enatic...it was just fun seeing both versions' succession laws causing it to pass to the other.
 
Nicely done! :D Definitely let us know about your future forays into AARland, if any.

But after all that it was plain sailing. I sent my Magistros (Chancellor) to Tuscany to improve relations with one of my doges, and he somehow ended up improving relations with the Holy Roman Emperor.

If you look closely at the map, you can see that the Holy Roman Emperor still controls a barony in the Tuscan monarch's capital. That's probably why.
 
Nicely done! :D Definitely let us know about your future forays into AARland, if any.



If you look closely at the map, you can see that the Holy Roman Emperor still controls a barony in the Tuscan monarch's capital. That's probably why.

I will do! I've got a few things in mind I want to try next (a Germanic tribe in the 700s, the precarious 1200s Jerusalem start, some kind of Jewish playthrough, something in India), and though I'm sure with plenty of them I'll just want to play the game without writing about it, surely eventually one will spark my imagination enough to want to share it.

And oooh, you're right about that barony. I'd always used that as a convenient first thing to besiege when fighting the HRE while still gathering my forces, but it never occurred to me that it might be controlled by the Kaiser directly. Though maybe that was just this latest one--what with the nature of the elective system, the rulers's direct holdings and capital would always move around from successor to successor.
 
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This was a great journey. Thanks!
 
Minor update: Just found this on the wiki--

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I guess that's what must have happened the first time they almost crusaded me and then didn't. Great fun imagining the crusader armies cresting the mountains into Italy and finding...oh, wow, that is a whole lot more pagans than we were expecting! On second thoughts, let's all go home and call it a day. And then all the kings and dukes having to sheepishly explain this to the very displeased Pope...