The last we heard from the Emperor of Hispania was of an incoming jihad. I’m getting worried…
I was, too. I sure wasn’t motivated to sit in front of a hot laptop in my unairconditioned room just to get my ass whooped by the Fatimid Sultanate, that’s for sure. Here’s what we’ve got going:
June, 1245: I receive notice of a declared Jihad against Andalusia, which constitutes about a third of Hispania and about a third of my own demense, as well. So far, only the Fatimid Sultanate has joined the jihad. That’s good, really; they’ve lost all of their holdings in the Holy Land in the last few succession crises and they’re basically limited to North Africa, Egypt, and pieces of Arabia. There aren’t really any other Muslim powers that can do much; a few splintered bunches in the Holy Land, an independent Libya who haven’t yet gotten involved, and the Hazaraspid Persians, who are nearly landlocked (Beirut is their only Mediterranean holding) and Sunni anyway. I don’t really have any strong allies at the moment, either; Sicily, who are already busy losing a war of their own, and Badajoz, who won’t help me, the fools! For good or for ill, this war will be won and lost by myself and the Sultan.
July: With forces mobilized, I begin to besiege Qurtubah with the majority of my southern forces, with just a small 6,000 man tripwire force holding the Straits of Gibraltar. When I see a large force of 20,000 infidels begin to cross the Straits, I move all of my forces down from Qurtubah. Still, it’s a bare force of 6,000 men that bravely try to resist the Muslim invaders on July 11. By the 20th, enough of the reinforcements have arrived that my forces and the Jihadi army have reached rough parity, though the battle hasn’t broken yet in either direction. And on July 25, two-third of the armies of Northern Spain, backed by a core of Templar and Hospitaller Knights, land in Gibraltar, [del]retain the huge defense bonuses that my tripwire force has for being the technical defenders on a strait crossing[/del] bravely charge through the enemy camp and into the rear of the enemy lines, and win the battle solidly. Here comes the cavalry!
Early August: Now, I split off the Southern Spanish forces to deal with the scattered 4,000 or so Fatimids that are bouncing around Andalusia and Portugal, and send the rest (that is, the forces of the Dukes who I don’t like because they’re joining factions), including the Knights Templar and Hospitaller across the Straits of Gibraltar to catch the remains of the beaten Fatimid army. But what’s that? This time my soldiers will face the stiff attack penalty for crossing the Strait? Not so! Remember those ships that brought the heroic reinforcements down from Leon? They’re still there, dallying in the sea, so I quickly load up my army onto the ships and beat the Fatimid army across the sea to Cebta! My armies, [del]cynically manipulating the game mechanics to gain defender status[/del] hurridly assuming the high ground and important beach landing areas, crush the demoralized Fatimids upon their arrival.
This is going much better than I thought. Surely, my luck can’t last.
The luck can’t last. A second army, also of about 20,000 men, lands in Cadiz and moves up to face my armies in Southern Portugal. They hit Ushunubah, which has only 3,000 men besieging the Fatimid holdings there. I get an addition 3,000 men in from the neighboring province quickly, but even though my men are holding a river crossing, they still won’t win this fight. So I load up the Templars and Hospitallers from Tangier and Cebta, and get them over to Ushunubah quickly. This is another battle that we’ll be able to win solidly, thanks to careful use of the Hispanian Navy.
A couple more nasty battles, won only due to careful use of the navy to keep my largest army mobile, keep pumping up my warscore. Still, one last battle in Gibraltar, just as it looks like I’m about to lose, even with the Navy pumping in fresh troops as quickly as possible… I receive a surrender offer from the Caliph! I happily accept, and my losing army that had been about 30,000 men strong, now only 8,000 hardened survivors, escapes with their lives. Success!
When last I checked (i.e., when I died), the Fatimids were the only Sunnis worth mentioning. Still doesn’t stop them from deploying giant stacks of doom. Of course, Hispania can deploy giant stacks of doom, too. Be thankful to your father!
BTW, is Badajoz still hanging on? That war between the duchess and her vassal, has been going on for like a decade now.
It went on for another decade. I wanted to peacefully demand vassalization from them both, but the war was stuck at 95% with no Badajozian army (under the Duke, her now-adult younger brother) at all and a Cacerean army of only 900 men, which means they can’t successfully besiege anything. I went to war on a vassal’s behalf to shore up her votes in the succession with Badajoz, then vassalized the infant Countess of Cacaeres directly.
Pics or it didn’t happen!
I’ve been trying to do that. Whenever I take a screenshot, I get a view of the other windows I have open, not the game. Anyone else finding that?
What are you using to take screenshots? The default Steam key is F12, which is what I used to take my pics.
F12 adds a screnshot to the steam library if you’re using Steam. F11 adds a screenshot to the my documents/CK2 folder.** Appleciders** is probably trying to use the print screen key which might take a picture of something else than a running game, apparently.
I was using print screen. I’ll try another way later.
OK, without any more to report, here’s the State of the Empire in 1252:
By the Grace of God, the Empire of Hispania, 1252
The rest of the world. Note the crappy position of the Fatimids. You can’t see it, but they’ve declared a Jihad against those minor HRE holdings in the Holy Land, and though the HRE is probably too splintered to stop it, the Emperor has recruit about half of Christendom to help defend. I don’t know why he hasn’t asked me to help yet, but I plan to attack the Fatimids on my own shortly to try to take advantage. It’s risky, but I really, really, REALLY, want to unite all of Spain under one banner.
The Family. Yes, I have seven sons. My intended heir, Jaime, is a truly gifted politician, one of the greatest in the known world. He is, however, distinctly sub-average in every other respect. I may have to rethink succession once more sons are of age. This fool has the nerve to start a faction to put his brother Gomez on the throne of Aragon, to vote for that same (underage, I might add) brother in the elections for Aragon, and yet has a large opinion penalty with me because he desires that same Kingdom! Some people’s children, I tell you.
Dude, sometimes the AI that controls the factions is stupid as hell. Yes, lets start a plot to overthrow the woman at the top of the Wendish Empire, who just recently ran through your territory with 20,000 troops in under a week, with someone else that just got steamrolled.
Yep. Great idea.
Yeah, I’ve taken an approach to faction management based on carefully checking my “known plots” screen. Every time someone in a faction starts a plot, I imprison them. If they rebel, I crush their armies, take their castles, imprison them, and revoke a title. If they even join a plot, I insist that they remove themselves from it. If they refuse, we imprison. You can do that endlessly and never get a jot of tyranny from it.
Well, that was sudden. Just as I was pondering who my heir should be, since my third son Gomez is looking pretty good, I up and died from illness. No hint of foul play on this one. Just days after I won the Holy War for Algarve and the Caliph died of illness too, within a week of me! At least Pleonast gets to play an adult– the Caliph’s under a regent for the time being. If you can keep the factions down, you may be able to snag one of the two bare counties left in Iberia that we don’t already own.
Watch out for your stepmother, Eulalia. She’s a plotter if there ever was one. Made a great spymaster for me, but she may get in your way.
Several of your brothers are quite content, and should make solid vassals. The one to watch out for is Gomez, who got the Kingdom of Aragon away from the main line of descent due to Jaime’s weird insistence on voting for him. However, I don’t think he has any landed holdings of his own, just that
In about three days, the Count of Menorca is going to respond to a request to stop backing his plot to do something or other. Both counts of the Balaeric islands are fantastically disloyal, and you should take this opportunity to imprison him when he refuses, and hope he rebels. There’s a former Countess of Navarra with three Navarrese counties who might be dangerous, too. She’s a plotter, so keep an eye on her plots and take a county away from her when she tries it.
I embargoed the Genoese from our lands some years ago and crushed them when they objected. Once your chancellor is not busy trying to keep vassals in line, consider using him to fabricate claims on Corsica and Sardinia-- I think those are our best bets for an Italian expansion. You could also bet on a weakened Caliph, and expand down into North Africa. I did that in a previous game, and it worked really well. Holy Wars let you grab a whole Duchy at a time, and there aren’t any other Sunnis of note to join.
I’ll send the save file along presently.
That’s what I’ve taken to doing these days as well. It seems to have worked out well for me recently, but I’ve had a run of rulers that seem to get high incarceration rates.
ETA: After imprisoning them, I usually ransom them immediately afterwards. I figure that’s their fine for being a dick. If you play as Poland, Duke Wlost is a scheming dick, and when he gets a scheme up, I imprison him, excommunicate him, make him pay, then imprison him, then make him pay, and so forth.
Crap! Crap crap crap!
In my excitement, I wrote that post, quit the game, then went to e-mail the file… and remembered that I’d “quit” instead of “save and quit”! I don’t have a save when Bernardo’s still dead! I’m so sorry!
What do y’all want me to do? Send along the file I do have, where Bernardo’s 46 and ill? Keep playing, and be reckless, fight in every battle, and off myself if I get depressed*? Keep playing in a less crazy manner? I’ll leave my fate up to you.
*A real option.
I don’t know. Maybe that would be up to Pleonast to decide. Maybe you could kill yourself at the same date if you know how to do that in the game save files and if it doesn’t mess up with the game.
Copied/pasted from the Paradox forum :
[QUOTE=Fintilgin]
If you truly wish to die, you can open the savegame (its a text file)
then search for “player=yes”
and find the line that says “health” and set it to 0 or 1. You should die soon after you load the game.
[/QUOTE]
I’d say load the latest autosave, which should be a year old at most, then just keep playing until you actually die.
By the way, the Fatimids’ situation doesn’t seem that bad. From what I had read I expected them to be reduced to some chunks of territories here and there. It doesn’t seem it will be that easy to get rid of them.
ETA : England is blue??