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[Loud Whispers]

I'm tempted to play as eternal Serbia. Just be Serbia and try to exist unchanged forever.

[Reudh]

It is rather amusing deposing the pope from Rome just to put him back in Rome immediately afterwards for 1k piety. If I get my Prince-Bishop to control Rome can I make him the new Pope?

I think only if you make him an anti-pope first.

Question: What if you control Rome, give it to a bishop, and then make him an anti-pope immediately? Before it has a chance to be given to the Pope-y pope?

Is such a thing even possible? _aliens

I had one pope have a bastard child, who was an antipope in Rome. Now, the only way to get rid of him is to declare war on the Papacy to remove their antipope... but that involves declaring war on the Papacy.

[Paul]

Well that sucked. Found a very annoying bug (or at least a very poor feature if it's intended). Playing as Venice in the Old Gods start I had managed to get almost all of the trade posts around Italy under my control, and was raking in the money. Had all the posts fully upgraded, and was beating the other merchant republics in the area. Genoa was the only one left standing, and it was pretty beaten down because I was stealing its posts after it had broke free from its king.

Then the king of Italy and Lotharingia at the time vassalized Genoa, within a few years Genoa made a faction and revolted with the help of all the other Italians, and like magic suddenly my entire trade empire went *POOF* with no way to defend against it.

Apparently if another merchant republic "controls" the land (as it suddenly does as the new leader of the revolt) your existing trade posts simply go poof.

The king of Lotharingia won shortly and retook control of all the revolting lands, but the tens of thousands of gold worth of trade posts and upgrades still went poof. I still own the cities that I had taken along the coast, but absolutely none of the trade posts (which I had invested all my money into) are left. If it had come down to a war, I had previously beat the entire Lotharingia/Italy kingdom over a single city that they were trying to take back - so I could have easily defended my posts. But they just disappeared.

[Descan]

Is it ironman? If not, go to console, and type "cash" or perhaps "money"

You'll get a couple thousand to rebuild all that crap.

Or, go and reload.

[Sheb]

And submit a bug report, that definitely not working as intended.

On a side note, an easy way to get the "Go from count to Emperor in one character" is to create a count character in an empire, then create a faction and revolt against your liege. You'll be leader of the revolt, which is an Emperor-level title.

[dennislp3]

Pft that is the weak way! I remember starting as a count in italy, getting voted up to king, using bloodlines to claim france, and strategically merging them to form an empire

[Culise]

Indeed.  In 1066, one can start as a vassal instead of a member of House Jimenez and expand outward without taking advantage of the seniority/assassination tactic.  I still have fond memories of Queen Sophia I and the Reconquista.  ^_^

[PanH]

Dunno, I didn't have any difficulties when I played Navarre. The hard thing was to keep up with Asturia which was capturing muslim lands faster than I was.
Once you wound the Ummayad, they're never back up. As a player, it's easy to wound them once, and then it's all about getting the spoils faster than other christians.

[umiman]

Playing in Christian Spain means being an island surrounded by shark-infested waters. After all, there's only one connection into Europe and that connection sucks balls with massive mountains slowing down movement. Armies from sea take months to arrive and will never be in time to help you. All the Christian nations are weak and fractured while the Muslims lick their jaws in hungry anticipation with their amazing CBs and united front.

It's a brilliant test of strength and one of the more challenging starts in the game. I think the other difficult ones are Russian and Jewish.

Spain is pretty manageable if you can assassinate your relatives or use Seniority succession to consolidate it quickly.  Once that's done, it's a matter of holy wars in northern Africa, either against rebels or Islamic heresies.  There's also the option of fabricating claims in Ireland and taking over Ireland one piece at a time, since it's always so fragmented.  In games I play, France tends to break into pieces so that's sometimes a possibility.

Sicily is much harder.  There's the Holy Roman Empire to the north and Muslims to the south.  There's no easy way to expand.

If you start at stamford bridge, yes. Much simpler. Charlamagne and The Old Gods? Not so much. In that it's most of the Spanish Peninsula being Muslim, and you being a little holdout in the north.

I forgot that people still start at 1066.

[EnigmaticHat]

Dunno, I didn't have any difficulties when I played Navarre. The hard thing was to keep up with Asturia which was capturing muslim lands faster than I was.
Once you wound the Ummayad, they're never back up. As a player, it's easy to wound them once, and then it's all about getting the spoils faster than other christians.

A WHILLLLLLLLLLE ago (long before Old Gods) I played a Navarre game with the requirement I would set up Cognatic succession.

Everything went peachey except that the Muslims overwhelmed Iberian christians who actually had a chance of fighting back.  I gained like seven additional provinces but most of them had the recently conquered maluses and my levies and coffers were drained from fighting.  I just kinda stopped playing in frustration, I mean what are you going to do to 30,000 Muslims earlygame as Navarre.  I think Genoa was hogging the Holy Orders for no reason too.

This was back when it was really common for the AI Muslims to conquer Iberia and then invade Aquitaine.

[Loud Whispers]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

MISTAKES WERE MADE
GOD DAMMIT MAN
OF ALL THE LADIES
YOU PICKED YOUR COUSIN?


Also started the eternal Serbia run. Started as a count within a duchy, declared independence; fought and defeated the Bavarians through despot mode and mercenaries and absorbed my former liege. Became a vassal of Bavaria, created an independence faction within Bavaria and began engineering a Serbian exit from Bavaria that would also end up with the Byzantine Empire's two Serbian counties ending up in my hands. Three wars later, the Kingdom of Serbia forms, the Kingdom of Bavaria has recovered all of its lost lands minus Wallachia and Serbia. Right now the Byzantine Empire and Bavaria are both trying to take over Serbia to use against one another. Serbia currently has no allies and has enemies in the Venetians (who tried to stop Serbia from rising), the Swiss Mercenaries (who were hired by Serbia and frequently also assassinated by Serbia), Bavaria (caused two wars of independence, allowed a massive pagan invasion of Bavaria by raiding Bavarian occupied territories, assassinated some Bavarian Lionheart King, invaded Bavaria, got invaded by Bavaria), the Byzantine Empire (they see Serbia as a de jure vassal and Serbia has attacked the Byzantine Empire whilst its troops were in the East fighting the Abbasid, Cypriots and Georgians), the Maygar pagans (Serbia is invading them and using them as a tool to hurt Bavaria), Croatia (Croatia is neurotic), Slovenia (allied with Catholic Croatia) and mighty Lotharingan Empire in the West (Lotharinga has absorbed the Kingdom of Italy. It is large).

I'm still deciding as to whether it's keeping in the spirit of things to make Serbia's borders be strictly eternal - i.e. absolutely no offensive wars except where to reclaim lost Serbian clay, or to make offensive wars acceptable if dynastic/puppet rulers are installed and given independence afterwards so Serbia's borders remain constant nevertheless. Either way Serbia is surrounded on three fronts by far superior powers and two of them have visions of conquering Serbia and have de jure CBs. If the Byzantines or Bavarians manage to commit their entire armies to invading Serbia it will all be over. At the same time if the Byzantines fall then the Abbasid will only be faced with Bavaria and Serbia to continue Westward expansion and I don't doubt that they'll choose the path of least resistance. A very careful balance must be maintained.

[MDFification]

This is clearly not a proper Serbian run; you have yet to remove the kebab.

[Wiles]

Also, are the AI's levies still broken and refuse to go down, or was that fixed?

Still broken. Saw a dev post on the forums saying it may be fixed this week but no promises.

[chaoticag]

Hmm, tough to say. The go to for learning mechanics tends to be forming the kingdom of Ireland. For a war and pagan focused experience, there's always the magyars in the old gods start. Alternatively, play with people that you know if they have the game.

Maybe try a merchant republic too? They tend to be less expansion focused, but they also have quite a few tricks up their sleeves. You can also play as someone not the leige, such asone of the english duchies.

[EnigmaticHat]

King of Poland in 1066 start is nice, all the benefits of being an independent king with few of the dangers typically associated with it (so long as the Pagans stay weak, heh heh).

Just remember that your troops will die of attrition if you enter a pagan province without military organization 4.  It can be acceptable, just try to minimize your losses by going after 1-3 province counts you know you can beat quickly.  Also try to get a marriage alliance with the HRE or some other major power, that way people will think twice about attacking you even if your levies are drained.

Another thing you could do is go back to Old Gods start and pick the biggest independent ruler in whichever Scandinavian kingdom you want to rule.  Pick the "Become a King" ambition and go to town; hopefully you'll end up with a nice kingdom, if not I believe you'll end up a vassal.  I'm not sure if its an easy start but it'll be a fun little trial by fire.  Simple and understandable, at least.