Gallienus the Mongol-slayer
This is us. I have to say we look pretty good after a shave. Probably all that nordic blood coming through (we definitely look more ancient Roman than Greek now, which is nice).
Our wife, a vendish (half western slav, half german inhabitants of Lübeck and Mecklenburg) Princess. She is awesome, an attractive genius with insane stats. Definitely hit the jackpot with this one. (and she also had a strong claim to the Vendish kingdom but we chose not to press it as we had enough land and conquering half of Poland in this timeframe would completely unbalance EUIV).
For focus we chose stewardship this time.
As we inherited a war against the insolent Khan of the Ilkhanate that was almost won already, it took just a few months for the barbarian to learn proper manners and address us in the correct fashion.
Our realm. (Roman sweden not shown)
In Germany, the Saxons had nearly completely taken over after the decline of the Karlings, who now only held parts of the southern kingdoms. Saxonia could field between 110-130k troops now, a testament to the richness of the German lands. (Seriously, in all Paradox games Germany completely goes off post 1200s and German lands become the richest per capita).
But we were not that interested in the west right now. For in the east, the last two existing muslim orders had their last two castles.
They died - like their religion - not with a bang, but with a whimper. Our Persian army of 20k smashed their combined 6k and took their castles by storm. The muslim orders ceased to exist, hanging around as a titular title passed among the very few sunnis left.
As to our focus:
"Classic Marianus".
...yeah.
Anyway, stewardship is a great focus if:
a) you got a large empire
b) you got a lot of income
Because the only real beneficial choice is always to pay for the damage yourself. Your vassals will love you then. Overall, I felt stewardship was a little worse than the family focus, which gives you great relationship benefits with your family members (great if as in this case they hold nearly all the kingdom titles). And it isn't a fun focus with interesting events (all events are of the variety described above), but it prevents rebellions among your vassals.
Speaking of vassals:
Our vassals continued their border wars against the Ilkhanate with little success.
Though they got better in making them bleed more.
Garum was now reintroduced. Clearly ancient Roman cuisine is making a comeback.
However, we slightly overate and fell ill.
"Let the varangians show you where you can shove that relic and call for a doctor."
(The church hated us but it is not like they matter now).
After we were healthy again, we apparently went on a walk through Roma.
"So wait, you just happened to miss the three dozen burly northmen standing around us carrying axes?"
We had the guard thrown into the dungeon. Clearly somebody so incompetent had great difficulty living on his own, so our assisted living home (dungeon) with the great care of our dungeon master was the right place for the idiot. Besides, if he would bully ordinary citizens buying apples he could well go and rot.
Meanwhile, remember the rich German lands? Well, some of our vassals noticed that they were disunited but very rich. I don't think I have to tell you what our vassals thought of that....
Ulm was incorporated into the realm by our vassal king of Lombardy.
Meanwhile, we decided that thanks to their great performance against the Mongols and due to their homelands being overrun by the Golden Horde...
the Alans and Pechenegs were to be given Guard status and were now permanent members of the Roman Army (in game I just kept them constantly hired and had them patrol Constantinople.)
Meanwhile, our genius hot wife decided to have some fun of her own:
Money can buy you happiness. And it can keep your spouse happy (who as mentioned above was really awesome and ensured a healthy line).
To replenish our coffers, we decided to attack the Ilkhanate again, this time taking the last part of the land route to India:
The Ilkhanate had bled so much in wars by our vassals that they only managed to assemble a decent army when we had already taken all the holdings. They promptly surrendered instead of attacking us again.
"So...you want us to pray to your holy relic when we are ill, but you yourself have fun having orgies and sodomizing the choir boys? DUNGEON".
As the Ilkhanate had not given us an opportunity to prove our mettle to our vassals, we looked for harder prey. Our vassal king of Bourgogne had a one-county de jure claim on a french county near Geneva.
We assembled the Spanish, Aquitanian, Bourgogne, Lombard and Sicilian Levies. The french theocracy in return assembled its own forces.
From
Nantua 23.06.1273 - the french catastrophe by Cardinal in exile Charles of France, London 1284:
"...the battle of Nantua - or the death of roses, as it is called in the french fashion, took place on a bright sunny day. Scarcely we could make out the Roman armies approaching. We knew that they had collected vast hosts from their Spanish, French and Italian lands and as they came into view, we saw their red banners decorated with the various unit titles. To our relief, we did not see one golden eagle, which meant that our Lord in his grace had spared us from battling the legions or Imperial Guard units. This gave a great deal of confidence, especially as we recognized the flags of the Despots of Sardinia (commanding the sicilians), Africa and Kärnten, who we knew to be fielding mostly light units...To our further relief, the Spanish light horse and pike infantry was lagging behind and had not arrived in full battle order...
....On our side, through the providence of Christ, we had arrayed the flower of the true faith, the french heavy cavalry, composed of princely and knightly retinues and their vassals. Nearly 11000 heavily-armored knights were standing by to defend the true faith against the Orthodox dogs. Though we were only half their number strong, we had faith in our knights and the knowledge that a relief army was approaching fast from the north....
...the eastern heretics opened fire with their archers and crossbowmen, causing a number of casualties among our infantry. This was to be expected, indeed we had kept our heavy cavalry in reserve and counted on the relief army to arrive and hold our lines. Christ had granted us flat terrain, on which we sprang our heavy cavalry, which in one massive charge fell upon the Sicilians and Sardinians.
It was a glorious sight to see their light skirmishers and archers running like scared hares while our heavy cavalry slaughtered them like pigs...I myself was in the front ranks and had the good luck of capturing the Sicilian standard...[/i]
http://i.imgur.com/xOb5W2t.png
...However, Christ did not smile upon us this day. For our relief army did not arrive in time - but the Spanish pike formations did, stabilizing their centre. And then the news arrived from our left flank that the German Ritter, their own heavy cavalry, had smashed into our flank. I myself tried to stabilize the left flank, but it was not to be...
...it was then that we recognized the perfidy of the trap the Easterners had sprung upon us. The Spanish light horse had been kept in reserve and not been unprepared, as we had assumed - instead, over 14k light cavalry was just waiting for the moment when our own heavy cavalry tried to retreat, having suffered grievously against the Spanish pike and German Ritter. Our heavy cavalry, encumbered by their armor, was easily overtaken and speared by their light cavalry, who kept throwing Javelins and charging with their own lances at our backs...The less said about the many brothers that ignominiously fell that day, the better, for I am still haunted by the faces of the dead even in this soggy, godforsaken place..of our 13000 knights, scarcely 5000 managed to escape.
Meanwhile, in the east, the Ilkhanate had to deal with some rebellions. The Persians managed to get free.
Our vassals respected
us paying for their misdeeds our wise rule:
Though judging all those "interesting" cases took a toll on us:
After the death of their Khan, the Ilkhanate fractured:
The power of the Mongols in the east had been broken.
Now all that was left was to clean up the various Mongol clans that had set themselves up as rulers.
(to be continued below)
