Day 998. All 6 factions are still as strong as they started.

TLDR - Decided on an unconventional goal this playthrough, fun reignited.

Whenever I tried conquering the map, I lose interest once half the map is mine. The early-mid game is where most of the fun for me is. After conquering half the map, battles become predictable and things just fall into place predictably.

This time I decided to roleplay as an operative of a foreign power, whose mission is to stoke the flames of civil war chaos in Calradia. Prep the realm for an eventual invasion of said foreign power. To do that, my character has been a mercenary, jumping from faction to faction, making sure no faction becomes too powerful, or too weak.

My goal is to ensure that by the end, no fief (including castles) belongs to their original factions. Extra credit if I can ensure that all the fiefs are as scattered as possible, so the Nords may have Rivacheg, Tulga and Yalen, the Vaegirs may have Praven, Shariz and Ichamur, etc.

Playing this way has been so unpredictable, and that's what makes it so interesting. The AI is pretty aggressive at reclaiming lost lands, so I usually cannot take more than two adjacent fiefs without having to defend them until one side sues for peace. Of course, those may be gone once I jump to another faction.

So far, every single faction has been both the "almost wiped out" faction and the "owning half the map" faction. I'm still far from reaching my goal, because some cities are just too dug in (500+ garrison size) for my single warband to be able to take over. What I do is just throw men at the garrison (and get captured, repeatedly) until it gets whittled down enough that the AI would siege it. Sargoth with 116 Huscarls has been pure hell. So's Jelkala with 142 sharpshooters.

Combine this with the fact that certain kingdoms just ignore each other (Nords and Sarranids, Swadia and Sarranids, Rhodoks and Vaegirs, Rhodoks and Khergits, etc), it's been a game of manipulation as I wait for that faction's enemies to steal a city belonging to their friend, and then stealing it from the enemy, which in turn now makes this faction the owner of a land formerly belonging to their friend, which gives them casus belli to declare war.

But it doesn't always happen. Then it's a game of waiting and trying it again during the next war cycle.

So fun.

Submitted August 18, 2017 at 01:15AM by NextNextNextFinish http://ift.tt/2vJ6sCz