Part LXVII (1317-1325)
.png){kind=avatar}
Part LXVII (1317-1325)
Year 1317
======================
After somewhat longer break we come back to freezing Siberia. Between parts I did another land census (as it was around 100 years since last one) so I will present it later. Also did realize that due to regency we were unable to wear all our artifacts so we got a little more of stats (thanks to equipping armor, weapon and also Silk Robe for diplomacy). After recent civil war we really want to chill out for a bit. Ideally spent 5 years on prosperity ambition. To get that I would need to cancel Emperor's Arnaz "Make a Friend" ambition. Before doing that let's try one more thing. We can invite hermetic member we were swaying in recent years (but failed to befriend so far) to stargazing as a last effort. After that no matter what happens we hop onto prosperity ambition. We also arrange marriage between Emperor's sister - Princess Litava and heir to City of Lysva in Perm county (fixing another lowborn). This way both of Arnaz sister will be located in capital county. On top of usual court education maintenance we have to invite more skilled Jewish stewards from abroad (as we only have our chancellor left). We get 2 (31 and 36 years old) but we also nab a 18 Stewardship Bodpa (that will accept demand for conversion).
As month passes to February we have quite a few things going. We are still in the middle of construction of laboratory from the end of last part and are trying to fix Qazan Minor Viceroy with assassination. We lose some ingredients due to one event chain step and decide to start "Writing a theorem paper" for that extra +2 Learning. Soon another assassination fires and fails to deliver again. On 22nd of February rather chunky Uyghur nomad band arrives in Ob county. There is 3083 of them right now but their max is 6860! So I raise my levies from Osha and Tura counties nearby in case they rapidly replenish and our 3.000 silkroad retinues are not enough. My worries soon prove correct as nomads get back over 300 men each month.
Had few spare Viceroy candidates so I was happy to offload them from my court to make is smaller
With March our Stargazing is well underway (we get bad weather but miss on that 5% chance for Depressed). Halfway through the month Qazan Minor Viceroy is perfectly removed thus we can fix administration somewhat more. With that we can move onto 2 unskilled Mayors to be fixed next. Stargazing continues and... works! We get a friend and fullfil our ambition (meaning +1 Diplomacy and +2 Diplomacy/+5 General opinion for 5 years due to "Popular" modifier). Wondering if we could keep stacking that ambition (if we somehow got rid of our friend). He is 6 years older and it isn't a priority but maybe some time later? For now we pick this "See the Realm Prosper" ambition. So all according to plan. The timeline works exactly in the way that should allow us to partake in Crusade. Not sure I want to - next Crusade might be extra difficult. Meaning if we commit then costs most likely will outweight the benefits.
Yay. First success with it and nicely timed. We still failed to produce any technology points so far with that.
Meanwhile our troops march to meet Nomads. Thanks to Ob county having already fort level of 6, Nomads have to painfully slow siege it out (-2.9% defender morale per tick). Allowing us all the time in the world to gather troops. My only issue right now is that due to recent vicious infighting among Komis we are down on commanders. Right now we have only 4 out of 8 commanders in office. The average age of them is... 50 years old. Who remains?:
- Chichayka - age 68, Martial 23, Brilliant Strategist, Siege Leader, Defender, Strategist,
- Teodoro Nieddu - Italian age 50, Martial 25, Brilliant Strategist, Aggresive Leader, Light Infantry Leader, Strong, Shrewd, Infirm (!),
- Schochynava - age 49, Martial 21, Brilliant Strategist, Heavy Infantry Leader, Harelip (!),
- Azra-Va - Italian age 42, Martial 22, Brilliant Strategist, Organiser, Cruel, Patient,
So as you can see we have good support commanders for moving around and sieges but not really someone really great for winning field battles right now. We will have to make do with what we have though. So Chichayka in the small holding left wing, Shochnava in center and Teodoro Nieddu on the right is best bet.
Battle goes well yet we still lose another commander. Some bad luck lately.
Our strategy paid off, as enemy stacked their right flank the most but gave it under defensive commander thus Chichayka while losing was really delaying them tremendously, giving time for other fronts, who were progressing in our favor much more rapidly. Both center and enemy left routed before melee that lasted single day cause enemy get himself terribly countered (probably charge vs at least 1 Pike tacctic) losing 1200 men in single day. Sadly before that, Teodoro Nieddu after routing his opponents got himself killed in pursuit :/... Meaning down to 3/8 commanders we are.
Meanwhile on 28th of June we fixed City of Cukataw and we also got critical success in building laboratory. To be honest I never seen it so it is a first for me. Will have to check later, if it helps anyhow with Invention event chains beside giving us even more +3 Learning. We also get approved on our theorem, meaning we just increasing Learning by +5 to land on 29 personal Learning (from which technology is generated).
Wow. Critical success is nice on young ruler that will benefit from it potentially a lot.
This year keeps on giving, as soon one of recently invited Ashkenazis gets converted. Don't marry him off yet as I want to have some replacement on my hands. Soon we get note from Hermetic Society that due to death of recent society Leader they decided to make Emperor Arnaz take his mantle. Meaning we just freely advanced from rank 3 to rank 4 (Magus) ahead of schedule and without having to spent 2.000 esoteric knowledge. Well... Nice!
By the end of September our Jurchen Master Engineer builds fireworks guild in Kudymkar (+10% Levy Size, +25% Garrison Size and +1 Mil. Tech. Points income) and extra hidden +6 prosperity points there (Kudymkar is right now at 1 out of 3 max prosperity levels so it will help). Our retinues also gathered in Udmurts so I could re-assign them once more. Don't think we need force in Burtasy anymore so I just garrison them in Perm-Tynea-Udmurts to prevent any ambitious raiders from appearing there.
Till the end of year few more things happen - we inherit Yenisey county in Mongolia to give it away to another higher stewardship character there (to culture convert) and then we lose our Italian Court Tutor (at 55 years of age - he also without my knowledge got possessed and probably left Monastic Society as he had Satanist garbs on his final portrait). I have spare Italian woman with good traits and attributes but first we need to buy favor from her and then murder her weak husband. Luckily we get also opportunity to end our rivalry with one of elderly city mayors (age 68) that was preventing us from getting any taxes. Second Askhenazi converts to Orthodoxy due to efforts of our Court Physician.
Year 1318
======================
We have educational problems right now that we are working on. For now no Monastic ward bonuses till we resolve the issue with lacking Court Tutor. Can deal with 12+ years old and some marriages. For that purpose we spend 600 piety on generating Holy Men to get Genius. At least he has 27 Learning and is Lustful too. We marry him to some unremarkable Italian 16 years old girl to just keep populating the court. As I was keeping 20+ Learning characters to have replacements for Viceroys, our Court once again grow to 90 characters though :/...
Our plot goes through in February. We succeed without getting caught red handed thus we have no problems. We cash in our previously acquired favor and have new Court Tutor. She should do for at least 20 years. For now I have to check if game re-assign all kids in court to her care.
She has even nicer set of traits than her predecessor - Diligent, Patient but also Ambitious and Gregarious. She will be able to grant either Diligent or Patient through intervention too so we really are getting bunch of options on her.
Luckily for me, game did most of heavy lifting with micromanagment for me. So right now we can proceed smoothly. Spotted also that Duke of Vasyugan (one of the last remaining feudal Dukes) has really short succession line to his title. So we start murdering through to fix it too. With that most of the year should be quite peaceful.
As we assassinate it turns out that upon his death he spread around bunch of claims that the game didn't inform us about. So we will have a longer list of targets to get through. As we are up to date with Mayors we have nothing else to do so we embark on this journey. Sadly our rival Mayor refused our attempt at reconcilation so we still have this old stubborn Mayor not paying us our dues.
By Autumn we get another hermetic mission that we decline and currency minting Business focus (that we just push through with safe option: +100 prestige, -100 gold). Was thinking about getting Greedy and Deceitful but didn't decide on it. Good call on my part as I forgot we already have Greedy. Lately discovered that this Minting event works in synergy with Tower construction event - by getting Greedy you can employ much cheaper "architect" to decrease the costs from 600% annual income to less than annual income (for our pursposes - if you get Quarry modifier for 100 years it might be more). Problem being that Street Architect has only 2/3 chances of success when saving Leaning Tower we want. Also think I interpreted this event wrongly and I still need Business focus 10 years after the tower is built for chance of Tower leaning event firing (it has weight... So it isn't guaranteed and maybe needs this Focus). We will check it out on this ruler anyway. Still it is painful as getting to that Architect lifestyle isn't quick anyway - we are realistically looking at around 10 years anyway. So adding another decade makes this a 20 years endevaour (which is quite a cost) compared to simple Scholarship "Observatory" event chain for same prosperity increasing Lifestyle trait in just 5 years.
In November our rival Mayor finally dies, so we can get to fixing his son (which is a mess with just 3 stewardship). Game presents us opportunity of choosing between 45% chance for Honest or Deceitful. This will be our 5th trait. Prefer more diplomacy over Intrigue but would be fine with missing trait too. Yet we get that Honest, bumping our vassal limit to 38/40.
Before end of year the hospital kitchen in Tynea burns down. We can not repair it and suffer increased revolt risk or pay for all necessary renovations to maybe get Kind. We go with 3rd option paying only for necessary costs due to having Greedy trait. Then we get update from the East that Western Protectorate subjugated biggest Indian Kingdom. So they are up to no good again.
Expansionist China be expanding. It broke beak Tibet down over the last few decades.
Year 1319
======================
Not much court maintenance is to be made. We do mark another potential Italian commander in the making though. Noticed that my latest marriage of Emperor's sister was messed up and we have the groom in the court. He is still heir to the city so we will see how it goes. Might be ok.
By March we fix issue with son of our old and now dead rival. Everything proceeds smoothly and our Jew is placed there. With that our income almost reaches 5.000 gold and remember that we are still eating some terrible opinion penalties from revocations after civil war. We get another China update - this time from Empire itself:
Maybe they won't hold onto India for long. Would work for me as I want to attack one of their Protectorates to create bigger southern Komi realm in the future.
Before end of month we also inherit Kazakh Viceroyalty. Can't say I'm happy with getting it back after just 3 years since I handed it over. We appoint another married couple there at least (making more room in our Imperial court). Business focus fires with... Gardener lifestyle event chain. We decline it (if we did it we would not be able to get Architect trait).
Takes up to July for something out of note to happen - one of our distant Cousins organises invasion for Permo-Siberian empire! Well we will try to get rid of her with assassination (derailing my work on Vasyugan) but this is not sure thing to rely on. We also try to invite her to our own court to make assassination a certain thing
Well some of my alliances with foreign realms backfire. Annoying!
August is unlucky as on 1st day 2 disease outbreaks happen in Cumania - Camp Fever (-40% income) in Buqtirma and Smallpox (-25% income) in Qarazhyra.
Month later disease spreads (good investment in those hospitals "Am I right?") but our Adventurer cousin accepts invitation to our court. We excommunicate her and then ponder. Assassination risk giving us kinslayer trait. So maybe let's try imprisoning her with help of Marshal (+25% chance). We succeed at 80% chance and throw her into Oubliette. But this doesn't make "Invasion" alarm go away. Can't execute her (cause Kinslayer). In meantime we go to drink from fountain of Youth to de-age our character from 26 to 24 years.
Then it kept getting from bad to worse. Every attempt we got, we were discovered without firing the assassination. We finally got it in December and... of course we got revealed. So now we got that "Familial Kinslayer" >.>. Don't think there was much else I could do - the timing would mess with our prosperity ambition, if it fired despite her being already locked in our dungeon. So with that we are down to 39 vassal limit. Also spotted that our newest city in Tynea (Fedorki) somehow ended up under Daylam Persia =.=...
Well this ensures that we are more tied to those +Diplomacy +General Opinion books :/... Dammit.
Year 1320
======================
Damn. That is such a bummer. Well we continue our work - now onto fixing one of 2 mayors that broke down last year and we do get some nicer results of our breeding program in capital. Sadly both Smallpox and Camp Fever spread more...
So far no prosperity dropped I think... Still not happy for this happening.
As month pass the epidemy keeps spreading >.>... Seems like we are right on track for another few big disease outbreaks in Empire this century as well. Game also give us another Adventurer threat to keep us on our feet - this time from Mongolia itself. Ehhh... Which basically makes dealing with previous one wasted. Oh no - wait. It will happen after our prosperity ambition. So we are safe. Still I would rather spend my energy as a player on something else. Game pisses me off more as we get Gardener event chain for 2nd time. Declined it already last year and now we get it again? Thought that declining will eliminate it from event pool but now I stand corrected. This time it seems we are onto Gardening events instead of other Business options. Good think I didn't decided to overstack on demense/vassals to lower our income so far. We would just throw our money out of the window
Probably should have prohibited foreign wars to make sure we can't be targetted for lands outside our desired borders. Oh well. Now we have those fools to deal with.
Across current month we first inherit Minor Viceroyalty of Ishim and then Turgay. Well... Not sure why they do keep on dying so quickly to natural causes :V... Wanted some of them to die 5 years after but not like 2-3 years after appointing them. We also eliminate few more Dukes of Vasyugan but it gets us nowhere. The titles only start accumulating on other claimants... Maybe in the end once we exhaust all possible inheritors we will get it? This would allow us to fix several multi county vassals at once. But will take some dedication as probably we are looking into 20+ Assassinations to exhaust all claimants.
In May Emperor Dergun of the Suomi dies and his 2 year old son Sampo takes over. Both of them are Finish but the Heir King of Vladimir is Komi. It was such a bizairre decision of them to convert to culture of one of their demense provinces (with capital before ascending from vassal to overlord) as there isn't many such provinces anyway. What's more the only Finnish vassal is Cathar (Catholic Heresy) so he won't help them anyway. Yet it enables all indepedence factions to fire and probably stops conversion to Komi culture of many provinces we ourself had made sure to replace local aristocracy.
Given that nothing happens this is good place to look into another Land Census surveyed before this part:
Progress is visible if compared to previous one. Still we have some uphill battle ahead.
Since last census we got 3 more cities (95->98) and overall wealth within all our provinces went from 10.404 to 12.404. So it's not bad but will definetely start slowing down as time progresses cause we just simply don't have enough holdings within to keep on getting ahead. Part of it also comes from slowly building up Prosperity across empire with newly built Hospitals (we went from just lvl 3 in capital duchy to lvl 4 empire wide). Despite many epidemics we went by almost half of prosperity level from 1.56 to 1.99. Probably won't prioritize higher hospital levels (next upgrade would cost around 180 thousand gold for another +20% Disease Resistance) cause the monetary gain from it won't be as big and we have other higher priority list on "To Buy List". Lastly on topic of Technology thanks to having built those Libraries in Hospitals quickly after last census we at least have some +Research Spread Speed modifiers everywhere. Not included in that list are many single province counts Stewards that are tirelessly working on "Spread Economic Technology" as it varies too much to be kept track of. Still the technology spread progresses as much as technological breakthroughs - between 6 to 8 levels in each category. Some time in the future we will add another +25% Research Spread Speed building in Hospitals Empire wide to help but that's it. Not much more we can do empire wide beside switching which province we held personally to feed tech faster to far away corners of Permo-Siberia. Right now we can see that Mari Duchy is struggling yet we are holding adjecent county in Veliky-Ustug to help. Hoping that Cumania and Siberia will catch up more as they were far more behind but have better average research spread pace. Beside all my complaining this is quite something - currently our empire is basically having 5+ levels (out of 8) in each technology inside category. That's a lot of things to unlock in holdings and quite some % modifiers for levies we acquire (as well as retinue limits for our brave vassals and remember that we are right now inheriting Minor Viceroys Retinues). Of course tech isn't evenly spread and things like Construction is ahead of things like Trade Practises or some Military categories.
Year 1321
======================
Year starts with news about 3rd disease outbreak this time in capital itself. We have Measles (-10% income). As they say when it rains - it pours. All of those epidemics will seriously affect our vassal income. With our annual income in the thousand it is really highlighted as each epidemy shaves off hundred of gold from the tab. Made me realize that our prosperity ambition reward is probably lost cause those Epidemics wipe out all prosperity progress towards next level. Making in hindsight (20/20 as always) dealing with Arnaz cousin totally worthless cause we weren't going to benefit from Prosperity ambition anyway. We just got that timer ticking for second run for prosperity some 30 years in the future.
At this time I took a break from playing as I was starting to get tilted. Which would make me play in more forceful way that would be not good. Worked out that we can deal with Kinslaying trait through converting to Islam or staying as Catholic for quite some time (as Pope can forgive us). Not too keen on fighting Aztecs for absolution of Arnaz sins though - I'm more into "just giving up on Rome's Pontiff".
Did delayed court maintenance. Number of kids hovers around 21 still. Did kick out quite a few courtiers so our court got smaller (down to 71 characters). We also found one Female Khazarian Commander (with Brave and Heavy Infantry Leader) for now. Did some invites after, which I had to seclude our court due to epidemy in capital. Soon our elderly cancer suffering muslim wife arrives. We marry her for some not unsubstantial monetary gain (around 2.000+ gold) but due to being secluded we can't secretly convert to her faith to get rid of Kinslayer trait. Meanwhile diseases ravage our empire:
Two Counties already got depopulated. It seems quite black&white system - county either depopulates all towards minor depopulation or doesn't lose prosperity levels at all. Also didn't know single county can have 2 epidemics at the same time. That's a -65% income modifier from province D:
Next weeks are spent on helping infected courtiers giving our experienced Court Physician something to excel at. Both Camp Fever and Slow Fever stop spreading but Measle keep expanding month by month. By June it's affecting 4 southern counties in duchy of Perm + 4 surrounding counties belonging to vassals. So far our 25% Disease Resistance (after substracting penalty for max prosperity - 20%) was doing little. We also finally timed out on penalty to vassal opinion from our unlawful revocations (-75 opinion). We still have 2 duchies too many but we will deal with it after prosperity ambition is fulfilled allowing us to revoke again stress free. One of our southern newer vassals did something constructive and conquered county from Byzantine Empire rebels in the Emba Steppe. Nice. Would love to widen this critical bridge between west and east of future 2nd sister Komi empire lands.
With August we get sick as well. Well maybe this modifier "Taking it easy" will finally pay for itself. We lose Mayor in Blagovescen but his son is Quick and has 11 Stewardship. Willing to gamble on him so we marry him off to Genius courtier (23 stewardship) and problem is solved with chance of creating future capable offspring. We start preparing for treatment as also Mayor of Cucataw dies. Some marriages are instantly made. We have to appoint our Eunuch as new Steward. Soon he reports discovering secret tunnels again. Not this event chain :V... Great timing. We are sick so our Personal Combat Score is low. Don't want to take Craven though =.=.
We get mild case of Measle and successful treatment so we overall have +1 Health from whole situation. We continue with this event chain and then decide to imprison one of our courtiers (one of older women we had to be married off) that get's discovered while exploring tunnels under castle. We also inherit county of Sakmara (lone Jain province in Bashkiria duchy that no vassal so far managed to convert). As November is about to begin I spot that both Camp Fever and Slow Fever start to disappear.
Within first week of November Bogomilist Karluk county of Syganak does get converted to Orthodoxy. Finally. Even better as next in line is 17 year old with 15 stewardship (optimal number for culture conversion from adjecent source counties) and his father is in our less hospitable dungeons. We could even kill him right now but let's hope he manages to die on his own so there are no hard feeling with his heir.
Till end of year it is "absolute cinema" as secret tunnels event chains continues despite me imprisoning that courtier. We get the same fight as previously and I don't feel too great about Emperor's Arnaz chances. Not sure what are the weights but our sick character doesn't seem to be man for the job from what game presents me in event windows. That said he proves himself to be man of the hour. We succeed and get +1 Martial on top of Cynical (our 6 trait not counting Illness). Whew! That was nerve wrecking!
That's one way to kill boredoms during sickness I guess.
Year 1322
======================
We do assign educators but can't kick out few more courtiers that turned out mediocre due to isolation. Damn those pandemics are annoying. We do quite quickly acquire the nickname on our Emperor and it is much better than "the Mule" I was expecting:
Quite quick to call him that after just a decade of ruling but ok x] The same nickname as his grandfather (who was brawny and fat to be frank so it fitted more). Bizairre that this is the first nickname that get's doubled among played characters. Usually it isn't so great in my playthroughs. Probably mostly due to all the prestige.
Takes up to March to finally finish prosperity ambition. Sadly we still have Measles ravaging our core demense and some remnants of other diseases east of Ural mountains. With that we have no ambition to take. Also in 3 more months Mr Adventurer arrives >.>. Before that we inherit Minor Viceroyalty of Baskhkiria. So have to re-assign it again.
More troops from thin air! It's annoying as it is for county we don't even want to keep as it was conquered by our vassals.
Our freshly assigned Count of Jain Sakmara died in record time >.>. So we have to assign another high stewardship character and those are in short supply. Something is lately going really bad when so many characters living only 3 years after getting title. Perhaps "Invite Holy Man" decision is generating characters with lower that average health? Troops are raised and moved towards our holdings in Tura and Osha. Personal levies will suffice to crush those Uyghur's fools. Not upsetting vassals for future revocations also will come in handy.
This will take quite some time as we need to march troops all the way from Perm to Mongolia. So for meantime invaders can just rampage through our not developed castles (and some tribes too) in this God forsaken lands. Our Emperor do recovers from Measles but we are still suffering -9 diplomacy from Seclusion+Kinslayer trait, which somewhat affects our income (well that is quite a combination).
As I haven't prepared the enemies had free hand so far. They didn't go straight for provinces we care for so it's ok.
With start od December Measles starts wearing off but I don't rejoin the world yet. We will have to soon but let's wait a little more for it to vanish more. We still have time before we need to assign commanders. Winter gets severe but luckily as enemy hordes enter our real borders they are stopped thanks to level 6 fortifications present in even our less technologically advanced lands in north-eastern Cumania. Would be ugly if they could just ruin prosperity there due to me not raising troops ahead of time.
Year 1323
======================
Few more bad courtiers are thrown out at the start of year and we try to manage our armies winter's quarters but fail as sudden change of weather kills 7.000 of our personal levies =.=. We start writing another Theorem for Hermetic society and working on 2 bad Mayors and some courtier to kill. As we finally rejoin the outside world it's time to deal with that Kinslaying trait. I quickly navigate through secret faith conversions to Zikri and back and voila. Sadly at the time I missed that getting rid of it this way means also losing Coronation perk (must check in the future but I don't think this carries to Islam characters). So it wasn't free but still it is better to have more diplomacy to not eat penalties on vassal tax (which in our case is tremendously high) rather than have more +General Opinion. Probably could get it fixed during Crusade but the MTTH isn't short and last time we got it it was more of a lucky roll.
As we are about to start fighting invaders they finally arrive into North-Eastern Cumania/Siberia. Will be some intense fighting for next half a year.
On 21st of March we excommunicate new tripple count of Magnitaya (our next assassination target). This helps getting people eager to help us in this endevaour. It's not like we are using those Excommunications on anything else atm.
Fast forwarding to 11th June - Our Ecclesiarch and Court Physician dies. We do have replacements on hand. We do arrange for marriage between Arnaz sister (Nyumina Permyakid) and heir to Poyaid Shahdom. This Orthodox Afghan realm located in south-eastern Persia can help us with over 20.000 troops in case of us needing it to deal with Aztecs. They are also actively conquering Arabian penninsula so it's a good match. What impresses me about this AI is how tirelessly it works on replacing freshly acquired provinces with their culture characters.
Month later - 9th July and our Italian Court tutor gets murdered >.> Ouch. That's was uncalled for. Our courtiers got to no good and it catches me totally by suprise. I don't have any replacement on hand and she was quite a character. Once again whenever I find myself occupied with fighting, civil-internal matters of realms start falling apart.
We finally get to fight first of invading armies as their warscore reached 85%. They broke their host into 3 parts so we have 3:1 advantage in numbers at least initially. What's worse as you can see on screenshot below, they don't even have proper nomadic army but feudal mix:
First engagments goes easily. Not sure why lately AI stopped reinforcing it's armies. Maybe the distance in Siberia is just too big?
This battle is rather satysfying as we are killing over 200 enemies in pursuit. So we do quite a damage on them and then have to rapidly evacuate due to overstacking there. We move to relieve county of Katun in duchy of Ob next and should arrive with some time to spare. Remnants of defeated enemy army instead of vanishing - retreats towards Mongolia.
Before end of August we fix Mayor of Cukataw and move onto other city that needs fixing (the one within Perm county with our sister located there). We decide to strike an alliance with Afghans. We catch another Uyghur army in September:
Another battle and another victory altough with more losses due to them countering our center
Another fight with cheeky nomads goes somewhat poorly. We do enter melee and got countered losing 1200 then 1000 men on first 2 days in center but also delete 4500 enemies on 2nd day due to other flanks countering their tactic. So with just those two engagments we killed half of invading force. We don't have time to rest - we move onto another 8.000 army after reshuffling troops to even the morale of devastated center. So we force march our troops under Azra-Ava but +42% movement speed isn't enough and due to beggining of Winter in October we do lose another 1.000 men. Ouch. Almost 10.000 of our personal levies lost so far in this war.
Now that I think about it - Mongolia feudalising really shot itself in the foot. They have the worst tech so pound for pound their levies are the worst. This also includes event troops of invaders (cause they have associated starting province).
At this point we have them beaten. Still the warscore balances around 0% as they have bunch of counties in Mongolia occupied and still 9.000 troops to their name. We can't get anymore from battles so will have to slowly recapture holdings. But not before winter, which will prolong this whole ordeal. We also get an interesting Quick traited Mayor taking over one city set in education of whom we helped previously. He is married to 22 stewardship courtier and we cross fingers for him to overcome Measle. Will probably be the best steward with 15 in attribute and +11 from spouse. Resulting in some monsterous bonus income
Year 1324
======================
World is developing while we are occupied with busy work. Cathar England reemerged and is balancing control over the British Isles with Catholic Eire. Aztecs slowly eat Western Europe (right now attacking Orthodox Bohemia, who were out attacking Pomerania). Thought they would do better but the remnants of Catholics are bravely banding together in Barcelona and Bavaria. We have quite badass Hispanic Empress that despite all odds stacked against her managed to pull together remaining Empire and due to high Martial is barely avoiding further losses (and if for example they lose duchy of Sevillia then whole Hispanic Empire disintegrates due to exclave rules into 3 parts). Greek Empire of Carpathia disintegrated due to exclave rules into Emperor inside Anatolia, big Croatian king in the west and Persian Shah (that owns vassal in our city in Tynea!) in the east. We count on Daylam losing ownership of city of Fedorki soonish as their leader is 66 years old. Holy Roman Empire succumbed to Cathar Milan but at least Egypt keeps going under quite long line of Catholic Sultanas. Armenia losses to remainind Muslim Hasan Sultanate around Baghdad but at least Orthodox Afghans to the east are getting stronger. India suffers revolt against Chinese (who also have revolt inside China). The most scary development is ongoing Byzantine Empire collapse. After losing 1/3 of their holdings due to Empire of Carpathia secession now they seem to be on the way to lose remaining 1/2 holdings in another Civil war. One of their revolts for example claimed Caspian Steppe from them - giving us opportunity to invade those Paulician heretics and with little luck push border between our spheres of influence between Georgia and Alania. One of the reasons I don't push for any marriage alliance with Greeks - cause bloody Greeks as always are maximally unstable.
Blobs are present but map develops with them still breaking apart.
Back in Perm I arrange for another (3rd this part) Italian court tutor. Not gonna lie - underhanded move from my subjects. We haven't utilized previous court tutor nearly enough. Managed to find replacement but it is more for now and should be on the lookout for new young character to take over this duty. The same with Commanders (3/8 atm...). We continue our war by siegeing back lost holdings, as county of Ob is bravely losing only 4.6% of morale every 12 days while our other crews in winter have 20%+ pace of progress on retaking lost lands.
Domestic issues. As you can see Uyghurs mustered remaining warriors into single force and try to capture another province while winter is still present.
Unlucky for us on 1st of May Consumption breaks out in Ashli county (Duchy of Bolgharia) =.=... Well... That's 4th Epidemy within last few years. Lets see how far does it spread (-25% income modifier). So far I don't see much difference with that extra 20% Disease Resistance. Emperor Arnaz does succesfully summons Divine Being and earns himself a +3 diplomacy for next 5 years. We also arrange for another battle against remaining invaders (that suffered 2 bad siege events thus lost almost 2.000 men).
Now that I think about it battle between those models aren't common across playthroughs
Invading Leader didn't bother commanding much and paid price for it. This would be much tougher if he used his nice commanding stats (+40% Heavy Infantry, +50% Morale Damage and +30% Morale Defence). After brief battle he is reduced to 3.500 warriors and we move onto anoter set of occupied provinces to start taking them back. We get business event in August but not the one we were waiting for - Craftsmen guild in Pilva (that has whooping 1 city so nothing exciting to get more from that type of holding).
Catholicism is kind of lost right now with huge Aztec Nahua empire in the heart of western Europe. Any kingdoms taken back will just get absorbed again.
In September we get called in to war against Uyghur/Pecheneg Kingdom of Transoxiana for Balkh by our Afghan allies. Happy to join as they are winning. Other side does get help from Greek Duke of Khorasan but still our allies prevail for now (40% warscore and won ugly battle attacking into mountains). Empire sends 6.000 of retinues to start siegeing Transoxiana capitals from our side. This is somewhat less of a hassle cause this might reduce number of altaic culture province thus characters meaning less raiding parties and adventurer's hosts to deal with. They will also be asked to help us with Daylam as sadly we didn't get our city of Fedorki back. Oh ye - Crusade for Italy (against Milan) also fires but I'm not interested - too small of an undertaking. Probably even if we supported Catholicism again it won't have enough time to grow through Crusades to matter for us in the long run. As we were moving into our Monoglian lands, we encountered enemies on their last stand in Mountains of Abakan county.
Enemies can't catch a break. They get trounced even with big terrain advantage and 2 narrow flanks. Meaning their army quality is so inferior that all that matters little against our Finno-Ugric Heavy Infantry.
We humilate them again but even with 1.000 men remaining they refuse any sort of Peace. That's foolhardy. Just eats up valuable time and gold we have to pay them. Think it might also disable some events :/... We also get province conversion getting rid of that Jain island inside our Orthodox borders and allowing local count to start rolling on culture conversion chances. The more culture conversion we get - the more stable future 3rd Komi Empire will be.
Year 1325
======================
January brings unexpected quick conclusion to Bagha's invasion - we manage to assault both remaining counties (very weak fort) and thus enforce our demands and before month is halfway over we imprison this cheeky Uyghur to swiftly execute him by burning on stake. Then after our troops move over we can declare more wars. For starters we need to extract city from Daylam. Turns out... They have 3 of our cities. Meaning they took over one of our multicity mayors and then they fractured =.=. Not happy to fight them 3 times to take back what was ours. Daamn. Remember that we don't want to siege the city province itself (it is ours) so we will have to capture everything else in those not exactly small realms. We also proceed with war on Byzantine Empire for last county of Itil (on our side of Volga; turns out navigable rivers count as sea regions for exclave rules so it won't secede), against Paulician heretics in Caspian steppe, lastly 3 different nomadic realms within Kingdom of Khazaria (cleanup). Together - 7 wars including ally's one. Something worth raising our troops for. Most of them will be over quickly as close half the targets have single holding. Still we will encounter joint Persian-Pecheneg opposition (Daylam+Transoxiana kingdoms).
Time to fix plenty of border gore. Eradicating more Altaic culture provinces in the long run and creating another Komi realm in the process to the south. Also further Jurchen instability.
Initial months offer us chain of defeats as some of the nomadic enemies jump straight onto our vassal levies trying to gather in our rallying points. One war (for county in duchy of Bandja) also gets invalidated as our Viceroy there died. He was holding the claim. Well damn. We will figure it out later with just our retinues. For time being we organize western theather of war and win against 2 armies (heretics and nomads) there and start siegeing 3 counties. In the east last county in Syr-dara duchy gives us a lot of grief as they hunt our small armies and kill around 3-4.000 of Permo-Siberian armies. Takes time to organize around 15.000 strong host to chase them off and finally give them battle in October. Before that in June we got Gardener event chain offered for the 3rd time T^T... Also several Mayors broke just after war was declared :/... Have to evacuate our 6.000 retinues from Transoxiana after capturing top holdings (including their capital) as huge 19.000 strong Persian army of Daylam moves towards us (taking attrition in the process). That's somewhat a problem cause I gathered 18.500 men there as I wasn't expecting them to straight move towards us. If those 15.000 men from battle with Nomads below make it in time it should be ok. One more note - we are down to 1/8 commanders so I make some hasty appointments.
Time for revenge. Probably should prepared for those nomads better but time was of essence.
We win handily but there is little time to reinforce against Persians. We will have to do with what we have. Clicked on "automatically appoint commanders" to get anyone to command. Discovered that we haven't lost our previous 2 commanders - those slackers just left the military while still alive. The AI appointed them again =3"... Weirdly this battle happens first against some smaller army and then all of them roll straight into melee =.=
What Magic is this? Have no idea what happened that we rolled straight into melee on 2nd-3rd day of battle with really bad melee tactics, while AI was on some good tactic selection. Initially we got slaughtered (our center got countered by their center big time) but our reinforcements arrived in time. That Narrow flank allowed us to turn everything around and by end we killed slightly more of them that they killed us. During that time we also took over county of Atyrau and enforced demands so 1 war down, 5 more to go. But this will have to wait for next part, as we run out of time.
