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.
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:
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)
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...
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!
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:
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...
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:
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!
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--
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:
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...
...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!
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.
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:
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)
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...
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!
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:
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...
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:
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!
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--
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:
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...
...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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