Crusader Kings 2 comes out next month.

[Dinner]

The Mongols are extremely hard to beat. They just have all sorts of bonuses, lots of advanced military techs, and they can magically produce an ungodly horde of men at the drop of a hat.

[Proteus_MST]

CK 2 and its expansions are sold for 75% less at Steam as part of its Summer Sale at the moment.
The best opportunity to buy the game (and/or expansions).
(Tooks the chance to buy it as well ... but didn´t have the opportunity to looks at more than the several Tutorials for the game ...
sounds like I´ll like it).

Has anyone tried to play as part of the Byzantine Empire (emperor or lesser ranking noble) yet?
(after all, it seems like the chance to prevent the weakening of the byzantine empire and subsequent conquest of Constantinople from happening )

[onodera]

Byz is easy mode. Its only problem is its incompetent rulers, and with you ruling the place it can *****slap the Muslims with ease. Especially since you can revoke titles with impunity now.

[Proteus_MST]

Byz is easy mode. Its only problem is its incompetent rulers, and with you ruling the place it can *****slap the Muslims with ease. Especially since you can revoke titles with impunity now.

That´s good to know.
I have a similar observation regarding the HRE (decided to start my first game in the small county of Kleve, not too far from where I live )
My first 2 counts were men of war who often rode at the tip of their army and were summoned to be Marshals at the court of our Liege lord, so I got first hand experience of the large wars taking place within the HRE as well as in northern africa, gaining lots of prestige.
Well, it always seemed to me a little bit strange, how the AI took so long to assemble the tiny miny armies into larger blobs, how they weren´t eluctant to wander near larger armies with their tiny miny armies and how on the other side, their larger armies immediately would break a siege, even if it was almost totally complete, just to unite with a mini army that was in an adjacent county.
Fortunately my 3rd count was a great diplomat, who not only, upon ascension to the throne of our county, would be granted the title of a duke (the duke of Mecklenburg) but also a short while after would gather the votes of a huge majority of electors, to become the successor of the ruling romanorum Imperator.
A title that would finally would given to him near the end of his life (he was incapacitated by a blow to his head [I suspect an assassination attempt by his heir and/or his heirs wife] forcing his wife to rule in his stead and died in coma several months later). Fortunately he was able to arrange that his heir would be the next Imperator (who then had all hands to do in order to quell the numerous uprisings by italian nobles) and it seems like the next generation of my dynasty will be Emperor again.

I have to say that I am a little bit surprised by the rapid ascension.
Would have guessedthat itwould take ~200 years to rise in ranks and get the first chance to become emperor. Not the <50 years that it finally took

[Dinner]

Byz is easy mode. Its only problem is its incompetent rulers, and with you ruling the place it can *****slap the Muslims with ease. Especially since you can revoke titles with impunity now.

Yeah, it's not to hard though the endless revolts do bore me to tears.