Played around with Ironman mode finally. Started in 867 as Harald Fairhair, Jarl of Ostlandet. 100 years later, I'm a Viking Emperor of a Norse Scandinavia.
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Now my next goal is to raise a Viking storm and retake Zeeland and Braunschweig in the name of Odin, so that Norse's religious authority goes up enough for me to start unconverting Danish lands. My overall goal is to retain a united Norse Pagan empire and export it into EU4 as the Fylkirate. Maybe add Britain to my lands while I'm at it. And prevent Russia from ever becoming a power (already took Novgorod), and Ruthenia is still a pagan powerhouse.
Fylkirate Achieved! In the year 1001. Now to spread the runes of Odin to all of Europe before the Mongols arrive....
Sigh. Setbacks and more setbacks. Was kicking ass in North-Central Europe, completely dismembering the fledgling German kingdom and turning it heavily Norse in a short amount of time. Then fucking Pope John Paul calls for a crusade for the Germans. I figure I'm in for a tough fight, but nothing I can't handle if I can isolate and crush the royal armies before they can combine. France, Scotland, England, Italy, Navarra, Aquitaine, Bohemia...they can only field about 8-12K soldiers each at most, and the Fylkirate can field around 25K. (More if Norway will stop going into revolt every six months).
Kinda forgot about the Knights Hospitaller. Who for the last 20 years, have controlled the southern 2/3 of Iberia. Cue a pair of 30K doomstacks of Knights crashing into my berserkers and turning the Rhine red.
Tried to use attrition to wear them down and regroup in Sjaelland for a counter-attack but then the Teutonic Knights (who have controlled Frisia for years after putting down a Fratricelli king there) hit me with another 12K. So I wound up surrendering to the Pope and ceding my lovely Odin-worshipping Germans, who wound up going to France -- which is now starting to resemble Le Blob Bleu of old.
Decided to turn my ambitions elsewhere and cut a swath through Lothian and Northumberland, forging a Norse "buffer zone" between the Scots and Anglo-Saxons. Scotland fielded a considerable contingent in the German Crusade of 1038-1040 (at this point, Scotland is more advanced than England because it's stayed largely intact while England has been ripped asunder by cycles of unification and revolt), and I want to take them out of the picture before Thor's wrath comes back to Germany. This proceeded well, adding Lancaster, Kent and Albany to a growing Norse presence in Britain. Then my Fylkir dies and his son (already King of Sweden) inherits. Shortly thereafter, my brother (now King of Denmark) challenged me for the Fylkirate and I unwisely stood my ground. More than half the empire is in revolt, and they've got some HUGE stacks already in the field. Think I might have to surrender and bide my time to marry and assassinate my way back into the imperial throne.
Goddamn gavelkind...