Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 38: 1350-1360: The End of The Middle Ages

I increased Orthodox heretic spawn rate, as there was just far too few and still a lot of game to go. It's really hard to mod this, as CK2 heretics aren't linear - they either don't exist, or there's a death spiral of religion into clusterfuck of heresies.

Lollards finally won majority over Catholics, but it's a 5-way race. Soon Catholics came ahead as primary, then Lollard again. It will probably keep flipping for very long time. Being primary is the worst, as counties flip from primary to random heresy (except when neighbouring existing heresy, they prefer that one). AI can't really stop the heretic death spiral.

After victory over Song China, it was time to demobilize, and to release Bengal and Bulgaria as sovereign kingdoms. I don't want any king tier vassals.

I still have a lot of heretic vassals.

King of Germany and Franconia, who lost Germany a while back, just recreated it. I need another plan for that guy.

My sister empress of China declared war to make Pope a tributary state of China - who was already my tributary. I guess Pope has some cities in India, but it's still weird.
Chinese armies took forever, but they ended up winning, making Pope a tributary, and messing up my font placement. Oh well, I can live with it.

Then she magically flipped Pisa from my tributary to Chinese tributary. OK, this is annoying, but still totally my fault.

At this point I've been thinking what I want to do with this campaign. There's 84 more years to go in CK2, but really not much to do. And then in EU4 it's not going to be a terribly interesting game.

Maybe surviving as Orthodox German China with 0% religious unity could be entertaining, but I'd probably stabilize in 20 years tops, and then there would be nothing left to do.

I thought about making myself HRE, and making Protestant Reformation spawn against Orthodox, but that would probably be really easy as well.

Interestingly there's now new fanmade CK2 to EU4 converter, with some extra fancy features. Unfortunately it hard crashes when I start converted game in EU4.

I was fun while it lasted. Here are some maps.

The New Rome would cover the whole map if I didn't release parts as independent countries every now and then

There's a bit of Surprise Buddhism challenging Orthodoxy, but I could wipe it all out in a few wars if I really wanted

Mongol culture spread like crazy due to special nomad mechanics (pasture provinces convert to owner culture automatically, so brief Mongol Empire had lasting cultural impact)

German culture definitely spread to Provence, Italy, Finland, and a few other places, but it doesn't really look that special. In CK2 characters far too easily flip to local culture, so there are Habsburgs of every local kind. I don't hate the concept, but it's not tuned properly.

Even non-Imperial lands are mostly Habsburgs

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 37: 1342-1350: Kaiserin Berta and Celestial Empress Beatrix

There's still a century to go, and my todo list is short:

• destabilize any remaining strong countries like especially Rus and Germany
• either integrate or release any king-tier vassals
• put Habsburg on the Chinese throne
• take revenge on king of Armenia for murdering my niece
• border cleanup

China plan was fairly long term, so I started raising new retinue, something that I stopped bothering with after defeating Aztecs and Mongols.

And that was Kaiser Waltheof's last act, as he soon after died, succeeded by his daughter Berta, married to his nephew Teodosije of Bulgaria.

I couldn't find any way to cleanly revoke my mother's 4 kingdom tier titles, so I just took -120 opinion penalty for 5 years with all vassals, and up to -160 for 10 years for destroying those titles on top of that, but that only with affected vassals.

With vassals plotting my demise, I finally managed to get a CB to abolish Empire of Rus, and I attacked them. It didn't change a huge deal, as 3-kingdom of Vladimir/Chernigov/Novgorod was majority of its territory, but it's progress.

After that I had a grand tournament where my vassals could bash each other's skulls, and hopefully remove some malcontents from the world of the living.

Then it was Germany's turn. This was a quick victory, and also completely useless, as king of Germany had second title as king of Franconia, so all I did was renamed that place.

I needed some safe area to launch invasion of China from, so I conquered Bengal for one of my kinsman. So much for integrating all vassal kings. I moved my 84k strong retinue there. It's cheap and effective units - 38k pikemen, 38k archers, 8k heavies. Cavalry, elepants, and such nonsense are really overcosted in current patch.

I still wanted to wait for vassal relations to get a bit better.

But then, in February 1349, I started the greatest war yet - Invasion of China. I had a total of 380k of troops vs theirs 190k - with 75% levy reinforcement penalty, as all those extras were sent to invade China proper.

The decision where the war will be was totally up to them - I sent my spymaster to get some visibility. They spawned in Jiuquan at Northern top of the Silk Road and instead of ramming their way through to Bengal as I expected, they followed along the Silk Road and then through the Steppes heading towards Europe. I wasn't sure if they aren't bluffing, so I had to split my armies.

Then some rebellion happened in France, forcing me to leave even more troops behind. Suddenly my 2:1 advantage all evaporated - and my troops were sitting there eating winter attrition.

The first battle only happened June 1350 when my troops tried to stop Chinese invasion crossing Volga.

After losing a few crossing attempts, Chinese backup plan was to cross Volga further North, then run head first into my troops on hills while crossing Don.

By December 1350 after 5 failed crossing attempts, and with only a third of Chinese forces dead they just gave up.

With loss of Western Protectorate, my troops in China managed to overrun it, and my sister Beatrix became Shizu von Habsburg of the newly proclaimed Tang Empire.

Meanwhile, one of my vassals got Petra for me. Too bad this isn't Civ5, so it's not that kind of amazing. Catholics and Lollards are almost evenly matched, and considering how it's been going, Lollard will likely become the main branch of Western Christianity.

War for China took place on Volga and Don crossings

Habsburg China!

After their overflowing rebels destroyed Habsburg Britannia, it's much deserved payback

I plan to getrid of Bengal and clean up the borders a bit

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 36: 1328-1342: Catholicism in Crisis

Orthodox Habsburg ruling line in Georgia was about to end, with it falling to some Turkish Jains. I wasn't going to allow that, so I organized invasion of Georgia, and distributed its lands among my kinsmen.

My son and heir Leopold died of severe stress, leaving my wife as my powerful vassal. I had 4 vassal kings:

• distant kinsman Dietmar of Anatolia
• nephew Teodosije of Bulgaria (including lands of Hungary)
• wife Gulisa of Epirus, Croatia, Serbia, and Sardinia-Corsica
• granddaughter Safiya of titular Carinthia, ruling OPM in our ancestral seat of Basel, and somehow big chunk of Southern Georgia

Vassals took some convincing, but I managed to take over and abolish Carinthia and Anatolia, properly integrating them into the Empire of New Rome.

I got challenged to a duel by my marshal, and I foolishly accepted, ending up seriously wounded, but I got better.

Catholics were being completely wrecked by heretics from all sides, falling down to 0% moral authority. I increased heresy rate, and left them on high for a while as nothing seemed to be happening, but I didn't expect that.

Basically as soon as Catholic moral authority started falling from its near permanent 100%, that resulted in more heretics, resulting in more moral authority loss, until it got completely crushed. Oh well, I toned down heresy rate, maybe they'll recover, maybe they won't.

And it wasn't just that - I did my best to undermine every Catholic country, then Zhao and Song troops invaded Britannia.

The world showing all my vassals as own countries. Catholic Northern Europe, formerly stable Britannia and a few big kingdoms, is in total chaos.

Kanem-Bornu, formerly most of Sub-Saharan Africa, went into Catholic-Monophysite-Fraticelli 3-way civil war.

Catholicism got so wrecked it has good chance of losing its primary status within its branch to the Lollards. Currently of 699 Catholic-branch provinces, there's 315 Catholics, 196 Lollards, 92 Waldensians, 52 Fraticelli, and 44 Cathar

Orthodox also has higher heresy spawn rate, but they get suppressed as they happen. Of 654 Orthodox-branch proinces, only 4 are heretics.

Maybe I should give Buddhists some heresies so they join in the fun? It's 263 really stable provinces

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 35: 1322-1328: Zhou Invasion of Habsburg Britannia

The Pope decided to declare Crusade for Khazaria. That sort of makes sense as that's the last Sunni state and quite big, it's also basically one big pasture very difficult to hold for any feudal lord.

Song China won another civil war, but remnants fled West and atttacked Britannia and specifically its Indian holdings. Britannia was suffering under so many heretic rebellions, it couldn't properly defend its Indian holdings.

Zhou Empire was declared over Britain, Scandinavia, and half of India, overthrowing my Habsburg kinsman. I couldn't tolerate that, and fortunately I had some favors with the Song, so it wasn't too much effort to convince them to finish the job and crush their rebels.

I had a lot of troops doing nothing, so I decided to help. And since it was really long way for Chinese troops to get there, I ended up doing all the fighting while China only provided the best CB in game.

Zhou Empire has really pretty color

For all I know it would fall apart in no time due to religious and cultural issues with its vassals

The aftermath in Europe

Zhou Emperor now demoted to a duke controls a good chunk of Scandinavia

The only remnants of Habsburg rule outside New Rome are Georgia and OPM Kavlevan is Estonia - both with non-dynastic heirs

Plenty of non-dynastic relatives though, like my nephew rules Germany, my cousin Castille

The aftermath in India

Maharastra is still Habsburg, as are Orissa, Bengal, and a few of the newly independent duchies

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 34: 1307-1322: Roman Balkans

My wife got a hand cancer at age of 17, and prompt amputation saved her life. She refused to ally me, and she got a huge revolt against her rule going.

The only good thing she managed to do is give birth to little Beatrix. Who somehow managed to get baptised by Satan? I think it's a bug, as far as I can tell, she got baptised by the Pope, and neither me nor my wife nor the Pope has any connection with Satanists.

She later had a second child Leopold, and then Wulfhilde. I gave Leopold an OPM titutar kingdom so if she gets overthrown he'd be my vassal, but that was taking forever. In the end it worked - Leopold is a vassal 5-king.

My nephew duke of Moesia conquered himself pretty much the whole Hungary. Some other vassals conquered chunks of Egypt, Arabia, and Germany. I've been expanding like crazy by doing totally nothing.

Empire of Kanem-Bornu went from Catholic to having a Monophysite heir related to Monophysite Nubian royal family. I tried to help them a bit to speed things up but it didn't work.

Empire of Britannia has an Orthodox heir now, so if they go Orthodox that would be the end of biggest Catholic empire.

Unfortunately Georgia had a non-Habsburg heir. I got husband of the queen killed hoping she's remarry matrilineally, but the went for a regular marriage with a Jain king of Punjab and Rajputana. At least the heir is still a Georgian Orthodox baby from her first marriage.

I started building Great Library in Palermo - that's 9th great wonder in the empire.

There's nowhere near as many heretics as I expected, so maybe I should change the settings again? Occasionally heretic rebellion wins, but then it gets overran by holy wars from every direction.

This is really baffling. Is the Pope Satan? Is that war Catholic baptism looks like?

Blood of Alexander gives my extended family kingdom level CBs

If it continues at this rate until 1444, I'll conquer the world without declaring a single war

I already released huge swaths of land as temporary tributaries

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 33: 1298-1307: Kaiser Waltheof and fall of the Holy Land

Emperor Asclettin didn't have long to live.

He sent emperor of China second Emerald Tablet for another 5000 Chinese mana. That's enough to request a third invasion at some point.

In his last days, his great-granddaugher's Georgia just fell apart - presumably due to an ultimatum from independence faction. Her Indian kingdoms of Bihar and Gondwara, as well ans possessions in Persia and Mesopotamia all seceded, leaving her with just parts of Georgia proper, and nothing in her other 6 kingdoms.

He died at age of 68. Or was it 74. It's hard to tell due to Fountain of Youth. He was soon declared a saint, for a total of 5 bloodlines.

The empire was then taken over by his 5th son Waltheof, emperor of New Rome and king of Jerusalem. At 11/24/17/10/10 Waltheof is sure to focus on military victory.

Waltheof was publicly Orthodox but secretly Catholic - as apparently half the realm, who converted when asked by emperor Asclettin, but kept their Catholic ways in private.

True to his key strengths, Waltheof declared ten wars before his father was even properly buried - including war to abolish Empire of Holy Land, and to make Pope pay him tribute.

That really infurated all Catholics, who rushed to defend Pope's money. It was a surprisingly difficult war, but Pope gave up at half the required warscore.
War to abolish Empire of Holy Land was a lot easier - emperor got reduced to just king of Arabia, and his non-de-jure vassals got freed.

I divorced by lowborn wife, and betrothed Gulisa, second daughter of queen of Epirus, Serbia, Croatia, and Sardinia-Corsica. A few strange coincidences later she found herself a queen of all that.

If her lands are added to my realm it will really clean up the borders. And of course even after we got married, Gulisa would not agree to an alliange because political concerns. Oh well.

I hoped all this would get Catholic moral authority below 100%, but that plan failed, it's still over 125%

At least this gets everyone except Britannia below crazy dev level for EU4 converter

I'm going to be the HRE, so it doesn't matter terribly much how much land I have

There are three religions - Catholic, Orthodox, and Buddhist

Rumors that any other religions exist are obviously false

I modded a lot higher heretic spawn rate, and there's some, but with Catholic and Orthodox at over 100% authority, and Buddhist not having any possible heretics they're not getting far. I guess they'll wait for 1500s.

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 32: 1290-1298: Invasion of Jerusalem

Due to some weird dynastic coincidence, one of my counts inherited Aztec Empire, which respawned as a Greek Orthodox OPM on Anatolian coast.

As heirs of Alexander the Great, me and my descendants have once in a lifetime Invasion CB for a whole kingdom. My grandson king of Georgia already burned that to challenge 4 counties in Trebizond from Hungary.

I spent so much prestige and money on this bloodline, it would be a shame if all my descendants always burned it like that. So invasion of Jerusalem it is! And since I'm going to take all occupied counties I might just as well take Antioch and Alexandria in this war.

The war had some battles, but it was mostly an enormous carpet siege which might be a portend of things to come. I took all of Jerusalem, all of Syria, and 2/3 of Egypt. That got me two more great works - Great Lighthouse of Alexandria, and Pyramids of Giza, but Pyramids are inactive due to culture mismatch.

I setup patriarch of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria with a duchy each. Damietta as a merchant republic. The rest went to various relatives, about a duchy each.

My son's kingdom of Bihar and Gondwana wouldn't last, he got overthrown, and his heir - king Gotthard of Georgia took over as a king, getting him to 7 kingdom titles. He died of an infected would while fighting and his 1 year old daughter, Serhilda von Habsburg, took over as ruler of 4th largest realm in the known world.

In grand Habsburg tradition I divorced my aging wife Baia, former queen of Georgia, and married emira Lanhjin, widow of my grandson Gotthard, and mother of queen Serhilda. This way I could ally my great-granddaughter Serhilda and prevent her vassals from overthrowing her.

My other son king of Orissa got himself into a vassal war, so I had to help him.

Should I even be giving them kingdoms? A duchy or two is about the most they seem capable of handling.

Empire of Tibet conquered its way all the way past Delhi, and seemed like it would pose a serious danger to my children's kingdoms in India, so I asked Chinese Emperor to do something about it. I didn't assist in Chinese Invasion of Tibet. China had no trouble achieving their goal, and Tibet got shattered into a hundred pieces.

1293 Invention of a Carpet Siege

New Rome really looks like Roman borders. Plus Iceland.

Tibet looked really scary, fortunately China is always happy to invade Tibet

Tibetan landscape just after Chinese invasion.

It will gradually coalesce back into a few big countries, hopefully nothing that big.

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 31: 1288-1290: New Habsburg World Order

I inherited 5-kingdom of Bengal from my brother, and the question was what to do with it. I really didn't want to hold to it, so I could either give it to one son, or divide it between many.
There was no neat way to go full division, so I divided it in 3.

I also had title of kingdom of Bulgaria by accident.

Both my trueborn sons are dead, and my trueborn daughter Elysande is a concibine of the Chinese Emperor.
My trueborn grandson miracle son Gotthard is my primary heir.

I legitimized all my bastards that I know of, and they all got their share.

For my bastard sons:

• Armand - count of Angouleme (and he's really not happy about getting the least)
• Radolf - duke of Opsikion
• Waltheof - duke of Abydos
• Otto - duke of Samos
• Oswyn - vassal king of Bulgaria, married to his strongest vassal duchess of Moesia
• Cuthberht - tributary king of Orissa
• Ferdinand - tributary king of Bihar and Gondwana
• Song - tributary king of Begal and Kamarupa

And for my bastards daughters:

• Ying - wife of king of Germany and Franconia
• Wilhtburh - wife of king of Maharastra
• Mabel - vassal countess of Pitten, wife of heir to vassal duchy of Blois

My wife Baia the Nice somehow managed to piss off all her vassals and faced revolt against 54k troops with just 3k loyal to her.
I think I helped her enough. She got overthrown and our grandon Gotthard is now king of Georgia, Daylam, Armenia, Iraq, and Al-Jazira - half of these territories he even actually holds.

This means currently Habsburgs hold 2 empires, 14 kigdoms, 24 duchies, and however many counties. Our close relatives are basically the whole ruling class of the Christian world.
Will this last until 1444? It's still very long time to go.

My research into my bloodline confirms that I'm descended from Alexander the Great, and so are my sons. And now I'm looking into the secret of immortality.

Meanwhile the 7th Crusade conquered Sindh, setting up a Croatian king there.

The Scholars agree that I'm descendant of Alexander the Great

Meanwhile my wife shows that non-Habsburgs shouldn't be put in charge of anything

New World order in India

I thought that crusade for Maharastra is a longshot and it would probably fall apart. Instead we have Catholic Sindh, and half of India under 3 of my sons (Bihar/Gondwana, Orissa, Kamarupa/Bengal) and my cousin's son (Britannia/Maharastra/Telingana).

Dynastic map is halfway towards World Conquest

A shame half of Georgia was lost to a succession accident

Buddhist U-Tsang is ruled by descendants of past Venician doge, who went native long ago

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 30: 1279-1288: British and Roman India

Normalcy was returning quickly after Wuhan Flu passed. All the bastards born during lockdown orgies needed marriages to arrange, vassals and peasants had to be converted to the true faith, borders needed to be cleaned up, buildings needed to be erected, and so on.

One of my vassals duke of Raetia conquered himself basically the whole Finland, briefly held by infidel invaders, so I crowned him a king of Finland and released him as independent on condition of paying me tribute for the rest of my life.
It created many gaps in my realm, but they'll fill in with time.

I did the same to a Kurdish duke of Khozistan in Persian Gulf, which somehow ended up as my vassal in some inexplicably way. And to count of Lower Don. That leaves my weirdest remote possession as half of Iceland, owned by merchant republic of Amalfi.

Once glorious Habsburg kingdom of Scotland/Ireland, reduced to just Ireland after Britannia got created, now completely collapsed, and my family only holds county of Dublin there.

Then I noticed that my kinsman king of Maharastra was second in line to British Empire. The accident happened and mi very distant cousin Dieter, descendant of one of the crusades, became emperor of Britannia and king of Maharastra and Telingana. He's Catholic, but nobody's perfect.

Not even a year later, my brother's line ruling over Bengal, Orissa, Gondwana, Bihar, and Kamarupa went extinct, and I inherited it. I didn't even notice it - but his both children were my vassals and died of Wuhan Flu, and he died of depression and cancer a while later.
I'll need to figure out what to do with all that land.

The Pope called 7th crusade to be against Hindu Sindh. With whole might of Britannia next door they'll probably do just fine even though it's the first time I'm not participating.

I have a chance to prove that I'm a descendant of Alexander the Great. My scholars are working on tracking the true genealogy.

Two greatest realms in the world are both held by Habsburgs, and 5th somewhat patched up Georgia in held by my wife

I really don't want to hold lands that far, so I'll setup junior branch of the family there somehow.

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 29: 1271-1279: The Wuhan Flu

A horrible plague came from China - the Wuhan Flu! It was spreading thorugh the Silk Road through Persia to Egypt and Constantinople and into Europe.

My wife queen of Georgia got Wuhan Flu, but survived, but both our legitimate sons died of it. This unfortunately meant that succession plan for the great realm of Geogia failed - and even worse my next few heirs were non-dynastic nieces!
That might have been the worst RNG of the campaign so far.

I had to quickly legitimize my bastard son Armand, and started seduced every good looking woman at the court, getting a lot of new bastard sons and daughters.

Then a miracle happened, and my oldest son's wife bore a posthumous son, a miracle baby, heir to both New Rome and Georgia. God Wills It!
Gotthard was also for a while 3rd in line to kingdom of Germany, but that was a bit much, and dynastic reshuffle in Germany ended that.

Inexplicably, my wife's biggest vassal inherited kingdoms of Serbia, Croatia, Epirus, and Sardinia/Corsica, costing her half her realm.
So much for this great RNG. Some heathen rebels broke away from Georgia.

My lover and vassal queen Irmeltrud of Anatolia died of the Wuhan Flu, as did her husband, who sort of hated me for some inexplicable reason.

Wuhan Flu inexplicably missed the India, and only got to the Steppes after circling through all of Europe.

For very long time Rome resisted, but it eventually got it. My demesne in Provence resisted even longer, and it ended up as one of the last places in Europe to get the Wuhan Flu.

We isolated ourselves in the castle, with orgies and witch trials, and such good fun. By the time we left the castle, the world was somewhat depopulated, but largely the same, and it will likely recover fully in a decade or two.

Meanwhile elsewhere, my kinsman's Crusader Finland fell to pagan event horde, so he's now only a king of remote Lapland.

Habsburg line who used to rule Poland/Estonia got reduced to just duchy of Estonia as both titles got destroyed by wars.

My kinswoman queen of Thuringia got reduced to an OPM, and then lost that last province to a peasant revolt.

What's left of our dynastic holdings is just 1 Habsburg emperor - me - and 5 Habsburg kings - Maharastra, Bengal, Ireland, Lapland, and my vassal Anatolia.

Lollards managed to break free from Empire of the Holy Land and setup a duchy of Kerman. It did not last long, but another Lollard rebellion spawned duchy of Meissen.
Heretics and rebels are definitely more of a force, but the feudal system is still largely holding on.

The most damaged by passing of the plague was definitely my wife's kingdom of Georgia - reduced from one of five strongest kingdom to shattered remnant of its former self by vassal inheritance.
Then again, maybe it would have happened anyway, that vassal was member of Croatian royal family, and 4rd in line, and people ahead of him died of cancer, Wuhan Flu, and severe stress respectively, so it wasn't that much of longshot.

At first it seemed that we might completely avoid the Wuhan Flu

Unfortunately my both legitimate sons got themselves duchies on Anatolian coast, and were completely unprepared when the Wuhan Flu came for them

Unfortunately it eventually reached Provence but with some social distancing, nobody died in the castle. Except for the witches we burned. People do strange things in long term lockdown.

Much more understandably there was a baby boom during the lockdown

My grandson, the Miracle Baby, born after 

Unfortunately Georgia he was supposed to inherit lies in ruins, and it's not clear that my wife Baia the Nice will be able to even hold on to all the pieces. Rulers called "the Nice" tend not to do well in this cruel world.

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 28: 1263-1271: Nice Clean Borders

I got my distant cousin Irmeltrud the Unchaste rule over Anatolia, and she became my vassal.

Then after some weird vassal claim shenanigans I got a vassal Jewish king of Bulgaria and a random Sunni duchess. I'm not mass revoking Catholics, but that's definitely going too far.

As a result my borders are finally quite nice, and my sons all have some land to rule.

Catholic unity started breaking down, with emperor of Britannia setting up his own alternative Pope. That brings their moral authority from about 170% to about 120%, so a few more antipopes and maybe they'll be in some real trouble?

Timurids ended their miserable existence. They will not be missed.

Song dynasty got overthrown in China by Zhao dynasty. This is supposed to reset my Chinese mana, but it didn't. Is this a known bug?

And together with this news, some horrible new disease erupted in China and is spreading towards us through the Silk Road. It already reached Georgia, so soon it will cross our borders. I'm sure it's all just hype and everything will be perfectly fine.

I'll ban all international flights just in case. I've heard some crazy scholar in the Hermetic Society made a prototype flying machine, that's definitely too dangerous in those times. What if it bring the disease. What if it flies too close to the Sun, and falls down on someone's head? Just crazy.

With my font being over my tributaries, New Rome looks so nice

My family's Orthodox Bengal and Catholic Maharastra are doing shockingly well

My other family kingdoms of Finland, Estonia, Ireland, and OPM Thuringia are not doing so well.

I don't expect too much damage from the Chinese disease. It could mess up succession, but no realm seems too fragile, most royal families are just too big at this point. A Habsburg is 4th in line to Brittania, and a non-Habsburg 3rd in line to Georgia, but I don't expect it to be that deadly.

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 27: 1261-1263: Emperor Asclettin

It took only one more revolt, and after crushing 6 revolts in a row, Georgia finally had a moment of rest. Other realms don't seem to be quite as badly affected, but rebels definitely ramped up a bit.

I had far too much money for my own good so I kept building new Great Works in spite of rapidly increasing cost based on how many I already have:

• Love Gardens in Provence
• Great Harbor in Nice
• Hagia Sophia in in Constantinople
• Great University in Venaissin
• Royal Palace in Forcalquier

Last few years of Hugo's reign were spent trying to convince his dukes to convert to Orthodox Christianity and cleaning up the borders slightly.

Hugo died at age of 59 - or whatever his real age was, Fountain of Youth messes it up a bit - to be succeeded by his oldest surviving son Asclettin.

Asclettin is a 11/24/10/10/3 Occitan Brilliant Strategist, who thinks of war and not much else.

His wife Baia queen ofg Georgia, Daylam, Armenia, and Al-Jazira is arguably the best catch in the world, and they already have two boys together, as well as a daughter who travelled to Song China for whichever reason to marry into Song imperial family.

His heir Uc is due to likely inherit the greatest realm since Roman Empire, stretching from Frisia to Khorasan, with some gaps.

Asclettin is a legitimized bastard himself, and continuing glorious tradition, also already has one bastard son.

Asclettin and Baia are together ruling over an enormous empire, inhabited largely by rebellious infidels

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 26: 1255-1261: Orthodox Emperor

It's exactly halfway through the campaign, and it desperately needs some modding.

CK2 starts really unstable, but by the time it reaches late game, all the factors that made it unstable are gone:

• unlanded characters like rebels always use tech 0, so even if they had good numbers (and they don't), they'll never manage to siege anything down, and will slowly die to attrition
• adventurers get rarer and their max size is capped at 30k, they're also at tech 0, so they turn from serious danger to minor nuisance
• scripted invasions like Aztecs, Mongols, and Timurids (and a few more from before 1066) already happened
• tech, artifacts, and buildings gives crazy bonuses to vassal happiness
• tech, artifacts, and laws give lieges huge advantage over their vassals
• unstable tribals are replaced by stable feudals
• without gavelkind realms stay fairly stable, at most one king gets overthrown and his family member takes over
• the world gets religiously (and to lesser degree culturally) unified

I don't want to revert what was done, and bring second wave of the Aztecs or such. Everyone got where they got fair and square. I also don't want to manually intervene every decade or so, as then that's not much of a game. I'd have made these changes in advance, except I don't play CK2 all that often.

However moving forward the following will changes:

• more frequent random hordes
• stronger random rebels (still at tech 0, but bigger nuisance)
• stronger adventurers
• vassals very unhappy about laws that give liege too much power
• heresies start and spread much more often

And speaking of some good chaos, I expelled two Holy Orders from my lands, and we openly adopted Orthodox faith - including my son king Karlmann of Bengal who just won the crusade.

I didn't do any mass revocation nonsense, I just tried to diplomatically convince various vassals to convert.

Due to her father's mysterious demise, my son's wife Baia became queen of Georgia, Dailam, Armenia, and Al-Jazira. She soon faced 2 Sunni, 2 Paulician, and 1 Peasant uprisings in 6 years, and I had to help her deal with that. Maybe she's not that representative, she's ruling over unusually religiously and culturally diverse lands, for comparison I have zero non-Christian provinces.

What I did is not supposed to increase the frequency, just double their strength? I'll have to see how it goes.

Also Song China went full civil war mode - and I didn't touch any of that, just an interesting coincidence.

Orthodox faith has serious heresy problem, Catholics not yet, as they have really high moral authority, but we'll see how long that lasts
Indian faiths have no heresies, so my changes affect them the least

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 25: 1239-1255: Empire of the New Rome

I went secretly Orthodox, and had some conversations with friends about religion. At first there were very few of us, but it soon got out of control, and more and more people were secretly Orthodox, and quite often someone would get found out and get in trouble.

I created Empire of New Rome, abolishing 5 of my kingdoms into one - and while at it, also made succession in New Rome absolute cognatic primogeniture.

My vassals had silly ideas - one of them proclaimed himself a king of Thuringia, and since that was a disconnected exclave, and he was a distant relative, I just told him he can be independent king if he so wishes.

Some random Frenchman proclaimed himself a king of Swabia, and that was definitely too much. I revoked it and destroyed this title, even it really annoyed many vassals.

My kinsman king of Anatolia went Jewish for some reason. I think it must have been through a secret society, there's no other way the whole realm would convert at once like that. It didn't work out for him, he got overthrown, and his son and heir was a good Catholic.

Well, I might disagree with the Pope on the nature of the Holy Spirit, but we agreed that Bengal is a great place to export excess relatives to.

The funny thing is that there was actually a Catholic claimant to kingdom of Bengal, as it was briefly Catholic, and somehow claims survived many generations lates - she was a really old Danish woman. And then she had an accident just before the 6th Crusade started. I guess God did not Will her to become the Queen of Bengal.

I used the usual - show up before anyone else strategy to get 99% participation score, so my third son got kingdom of Bengal. By oldest died of cancer at age of 33 during the crusade, so my second will be my heir. My fourth bastard son died of rabbies. This is not going well.

It might be time to go open with our Orthodox faith. The world has been too stable.

Timurids are on brink of extinction

Leftovers of Mongols Empire, renamed Borjigin, are just happy taking tribute from everyone in their tiny corner of the map

The world is split between Catholic West and Buddhist East, and it's time to add the third option.

That brief Jewish Anatolia, that sure was brave.

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 24: 1230-1239: Constantinople

On inheritance I had to finish a few wars, including weird vassalization war against some duke in Persian Gulf - looks like my vassal duke of Amalfi traded all the way to India, and took a city there, and things got out of hand. So now I border the Timurids.

Unlike previous kings of Arles who were mostly members of the Hermetic Society, I joined The Great Trade League.

I fell in love with a Greek princess, so I got for her duchy of Thrace - unfortunately without Constantinople at first. A lot of love adventures later, and I found myself ruling in Constantinople, and seriously entertaining secretly converting to her faith.

It's time for Imperial crown, just difficult to decide on Empire of What. Options are:

• Francia - would only have 3/5 de jure kingdoms, feels boring
• Latin Empire - 0/5 de jure kingdoms, doesn't grand special bloodline if I create it this way, I'd need to crusade against Byzantium to get it
• some custom Empire - instant 5/5 de jure kingdoms
• Byzantium - I'd need to flip Greek, conquer 3 duchies in the area, and it would change to their weird succession system with no way out
• HRE - I'd need to somehow become king of Germany, which is wrong way, and would have terrible succession system. If I wanted to be the HRE, I could have simply bribed the electors a century ago.

It's also nearly halfway through the first game, so it's a good idea to consider what kind of EU4 conversion I want. I'll probably flip religion as Catholic-only world is fairly boring, then keep expanding and turn my eventual blob into some kind of HRE, except modded to make unification harder.

I don't necessarily have to reach 1444 before conversion, I could stop sometime before that and fill in the narrative gap with however I want the conversion to go.

Meanwhile, the rest of my family:

• Norwegian king of England conquered Scotland and proclaimed himself emperor of Britannia, so my former double-king is now just a single-king of Ireland
• Crusader Finland went on a conquering spree and is now a triple-queen of Crusader Finland, regular Finland, and Lapland
• Anatolia is fairly stable
• Queen of Estonia/Poland somehow lost Poland so she's a single-queen now
• my brother Gotthard, king of Maharastra, is bullying all Indians like he wants to conquer all of India by himself. And I was wondering if he'll even survive until next crusade

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 23: 1226-1230: Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire

I had 3 kingdom titles, and my oldest son and heir 2 more after his late mother. With 5 kingdoms there's no reason not to just get himself crowned Emperor.

Our family also had 2 double kings and 3 single-kings. In Christian countries we didn't rule, we were extensively intermarried with nobility. So if anyone deserved to be the Emperor of the Christian world, it is a Habsburg.

There are just two problems - Kaiser of the Holy Roman Empire, and Emperor of the Holy Land. Kaiser is a far greater problem, as the HRE is not even a real country - it's collection of realms, including 2 double-kingdoms, and 2 regular kingdoms, and they should be free.
And even more annoyingly the Kaiser claims some land that's rightfully part of my realm.

Given all those issues, it's time to abolish the HRE, by force. Recognizing my leadership role in Christianity, 8 Christian kings joined by cause.

That was the most embarassing performance I've seen. Kaiser's armies were scattered all over his vast realm, and before they even showed up, Kaiser's armies in Germany were crushed, and demesne and many other settlements occupied, and the Kaiser surrendered without even fighting to the end.

I had one more son to handle - I gave Filibert a county, unfortunately he then died of pneumonia.

As Love Gardens of Provence got finished, I started building my second Great Work - Great Harbor of Nice.

My alliance with Georgia ended due to two unfortunately deaths, but Georgia was completely unconcerned by that, and attacked Timurids in a Holy War. That's ballsy. She completely wrecked the Timurids. So all those wars where I helped Georgia survive, paid off.

And so at age of 58. Or 62. There are conflicting theories about that, king Adam died.

His successor is king Hugh of Arles, France, Aquitaine, Sicily, and Africa. 12/21/12/17/13.

Scotland, Poland, Anatolia, Crusader Kingdoms, and (offscreen Maharastra) are other Habsburg realms

Scotland mostly did it by itself - I only gave them about 2/3 of de jure Scotland, after that they wer on their own. Anatolia and Maharanstra are doing very well for themselves as well.

Poland and Crusader Finland, not so much.

Hugh is for sure going to be an Emperor of something, I'm just not sure of what. There are so many options like Francia, some new title, Latin Empire, or maybe even restore Eastern Rome?

I'm not in a huge rush

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 22: 1219-1226: Fifth Crusade for India

I have 4 surviving sons:

• Hugh, king of Sicily and Africa
• Alois, duke of Toulouse, used to be married to duchess of Franconia, but she died, and now he remarried a total nobody
• Gotthard, landless, married to duchess of Lisboa
• Filibert, landless, married to a Georgian princess third in succession

I need to arrange some land for the younger two, and the best way to get that land is a nice crusade.

I asked the Pope to do something ambitious, and invade the biggest realm in India. And as before, I started gathering troops 200 days before the crusade, and it was not soon enough.
I had a bit over 50% participation, and my son became king of Maharastra.

I got a second bloodline - Crusader Blood of King Adam, for "single handedly bringing victory to the Christians in several Crusades", with +5 Christian opinion and some other minor bonuses. Nice!

And so we had 7 king tier rulers of Habsburg dynasty:

• me - Arles/France/Aquitaine
• son Hugh - Sicily/Africa
• nephew Hans - Polnad/Estonia
• son-in-law Wolfram - Scotland/Ireland, under HRE
• really remote relative Helene - Crusader Finland from 3rd crusade, under HRE
• closer relative Matthias - Anatolia from 4th crusade
• son Gotthard - Maharastra from 5th crusade

I'll need to find something for Filibert now. And let's hope Gotthard can defend himself there. I first wanted to get him Persia, which was surrounded from two sides by Christian powers, but went for a more risky option instead.

My councillors called a favor to vote for execution committee, so I had to reverse it. That took bribing the men and seducing the women, but it worked.

In the Provence Love Gardens there's a Fountain of Youth now - whoever drinks from it ages 20% more slowly.

I had severe chest pains and stress for a while, so I expected to die anytime, but after a few years it passed, and I'm back in good health. And there's something I really need to do.

Nearly the whole India challenged our crusading armies, and they had so many elephants, but in the end the result was clear

A much bigger question is - can my son survive there for 30 years without any alliances until the next Crusade is organized?

Timurids got some sort of realm - it would be vast if I didn't intervene, but it's still respectable

Best case scenario they fight the Hindus so the Hindus are too busy to fight my son

Worst case scenario, they turn back towards Georgia, but their power level is not too much higher, so they'd probably win but with severe losses

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 21: 1210-1219: Timurid Invasion

Just a year after fall of the Aztecs, a new horde emerged, led by Timur the Lame - 29 year old Buddhist Mongol, 12/29/14/16/15. This one was at least feudal, with agnatic gavelkind.
He can have all of India for all I care, as long as he doesn't cross into Georgia or Mesopotamia, I don't plan on getting involved.

Of course as soon as I said that, Timur decided to invade Georgia. That's not only a Christian realm, for their weird kind of Christianity, two of my younger sons are married to Georgian princesses.

In a great battle of Alamut, they attacked me into mountains, and we both reinforced with basically our whole armies. Their 54k vs my 52k, and they lost half their army, while mine was still standing. I love how decisive CK2 battles can be - in EU4 one battle against the Ottomans means nothing, here it can break a country for generations.

With Georgia defended, we finally had some peace. And some time to engage in petty vassal politics. I passed law fully legalizing women holding land - something that was historically on questionable legal grounds, but we cannot judge someone too harshly just because the God punished him by only giving him daughters.

Timurids still had decent army, and bullied their neighbours, but they had no potential to become an overwhelming threat.

And now is the time for the 5th crusade. I thought we'd go against the Aztecs or the Mongols or the Timurids, but they're all defanged.

I'm conflicted between asking for Persia or for Maharastra. I even have a spare son who just turned 16 who might be a good king of some place real far away.

That's the shortest lived major horde as they picked a war with my ally almost right away

Also this game would be so much different if I didn't have Suez Canal and navigable rivers on

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 20: 1201-1210: Fall of the Aztecs

Amazingly the Mongol khagan got instant massive revolts - 45k minor clan rising, 30k Persian liberation, and some tiny Tengri, Suomenusko, Sunni, and peasant revolts. All the other nomad clans started instantly fighting each other. Wonderful. By the time they sort it out it might be 1444.

On my way home my troops joined another fight against the Aztecs. After that Aztecs got into embargo war with republic of Amalfi - feel free to win this one, if that's what the mightly empire from another continent got reduced to, I'm OK with that.

My wife queen of Sicily attacked king of Africa for her second title. That's some casual feudal war for a change. My wife tragically died of depression soon after, leaving our son Hugo in charge of both. Unfortunately it happened too unexpectedly, and I never arranged any marriage alliances for Hugo, so he'll pick some random lowborn wench.

I found alliances for my other children, but couldn't find anything for myself, so I took a genius daughter of a minor baron.

A big Berber Catholic liberation rebellion erupted against the Aztecs. Unfortunately not only nobody can help them, everyone's automatically hostile against liberation rebellions. And the way CK2 works, rebels always have 0 tech, so they're in year 700, while everyone else is in year 1200. This is especially bad for sieging.

They were stuck at +60% to +80% warscore, but getting nowhere, so I did my best, and raided the Aztecs to disrupt their attempts at fighting the rebellion. Sadly the rebels sacked Fes and killed some of my distant family - 4 boys.

While the rebellion was losing steam, Aztecs were so weakened by it, by their previous wars, by rebellious vassals, by my raiding, that when sultan of Andalusia declared religious liberation war on them, they had nothing to defend themselves with. I joined the sultan, and now there's a new Catholic ruler in Maghreb. The Sunset Invasion is over.

All the threats to Christianity fall, as if God willed it.

Meanwhile, Teutonic Order attacked some high chieftess of Frozen Wasteland, and they somehow lost. Probably to the winter. It doesn't matter, missionary activity is going well, and Lithuania and Finland both converted.

At one point there was even Finnish Revolt by some Hindu Finnish vassal. How did that happen? No idea.

The Aztecs have been thrown into the Great Sea

The Mongols are still everywhere, just busy fighting each other - there's 21 independent Mongol hordes, in addition to all other kinds of hordes

Catholics are doing really well.

Mongols went Buddhist, so that's the second greatest religion by area.

Hindu, Orthodox, and Sunni are very far behind.

It's going to be annoying on conversion as best EU4 religions (Orthodox, Coptic) are worst CK2 religions.

Habsburg Megacampaign: Part 19: 1199-1201: Fall of the Mongols

The Mongols after 47 years of lollygagging finally declared a real war, invading U-Tsang, Buddhist monastic feudal state, the strongest of their neighbours.
At this point they had 86k event troops, and 36k of other troops vs U-Tsang's 36k, and Mongol troops are much stronger horse archers and other cavalry, so outcome of that was never in doubt.

Mongols came out of this with minimal losses.

Well, I have a plan. Emerald Tablet - one of the most desired artifacts of the known world. It's a high price, but it was enough to convince Emperor of China to send troops to shatter the Mongol Empire.
The Mongols invaded Song China same time they invaded our world, half a century ago. It was time for a double revenge.

I definitely did not stand aside, and contributed full might of my army as well. The main fighting was in the Far East. landed around Volga and Caspian Sea, but I could be no more than a minor nuisance.

The nuisance plan worked, and Mongols sent a third of their armies to face me. I fought them in a glorious battle of Kangly, where 38k of my troops fought 26k of theirs, and we even killed slightly more.

The Mongols really couldn't handle this - with some armies fighting me, some armies fighting China, and even more armies wandering between us confusing by what they should do.

The Mongol empire got crushed. The former Mongol khagan still has an enormous army, 28k including 61k event troops, far stronger than any single civilized realm, and will likely start gathering back the clans as soon as Chinese and Christian armies leave. Hopefully he and various nomad clans will spend another 50 years fighting each other before they try to challenge the civilized world!

And hilariously I found another Emerald Tablet just a year later, so it ended up costing me very little. Well, about 2000 for that search expedition, which only had modest chance of succeeding, but still. So by the time the Mongols reunite, I have decent chance of pulling it off again.

Time to go home and join another war with the Aztecs.

Meanwhile the Shia Assassins got destroyed. Ghaznavid realm somehow shattered into 5 pieces while I wasn't paying any attention. After fall of both Caliphates these were the last centers of Muslim power. What's left now is just a chain of weak realms from Syria to West India, and some minor hordes.

The main fighting was in the East between Mongols and China

China had horrible loss ratio, and kept losing battles, but they inflicted pain on the Mongols as well

I don't think they'd win without my help

The second front, with some of my troops caught unawares, and suffering huge losses.

The Mongols could definitely defeat me or force me back onto the boats with what just arrived, but after losing battle of Kangly they ran away to face China instead.

In addition to warscore from occupations and battle of Kangly, I cost them a third of their troops which weren't there to fight China, letting China win.

With Mongols and (no idea how) Ghaznavids shattered, the East looks so fragmented

Still no idea what happened to the Ghaznavids, its sultan still holds 5 crowns, so was it enormous independence faction?

It's all going just great