After climbing my stairs up from freelancing over to gathering troops for an army etc. and being a merc for various factions for a couple of months, I finally joined the Irish. We of course were at war with England and this war should last on for the next 21 months, but this I didn't know back then. In the war with the English we first conquered Dublin and Wexford castle. Then Scotland and Norway declared war and made peace around 4-5 times over a period of several years. So the Irish conquered Bjorgn, Skafangr and Mann from Norway and Glasgow and Dingwall Castle from Scotland. Meanwhile I had been on four crusades where I helped the Regnum Hierosolymitanum to conquer all of the Mamluks and even Sirt and Tripoli from the Hafsids which we later lost to the Sicilians. In some on/off wars with the Ilkhanate we conquered the fortresses of Ragga and Edessa and later on Iconium from the HRE who had been crusading against Ilkhanate.
Then back again in Ireland, still at war with England. The English received a major strike from the French while I was on a crusade, where they conquered all the southern fortresses, Dover castle, Lewes castle, etc. But still the English weren't interested in making peace with Ireland, so the Irish conquered Bristol, Chester, Pembroke castle, Beeston castle and that other castle I can't remember anymore. York as well as Edingburgh castle had been conquered by the Scots in the meantime (with a little help from the player). Not until the English were brought down to just London and Clare castle would they enter a truce, after almost 2 years of constant war.
After having peace for the first time while being with the Irish I decided to go unto another crusade, the fifth, in which Hierosolymitanum conquered Nesebar, Tarnovo and Philipopolis (destroyed Balgartsko Tsarovo) as well as Janina from Romania. Then back again to Ireland as the French had invaded our lands. There I conquered all the castles in the south (Dover, Lewes, etc) which used to belong to the French, jumped over the channel and sacked Boulogne, Rouen and Paris after which the French sued for peace as the HRE was knocking on the French war door. Then Ireland as well as Hierosolymitanum had a major period of thriving and peace. At this point which I considered to be midgame (~800 game days) I owned the villages Ennis, Hereford, Lincoln, Kiswa, Ma'an and Suqul, the castles Ennis castle, Beni Suef and Ragga, the towns of Dublin, Chester, Tarnovo, Alexandria and Damietta (fief inefficiency set to childish). And at that point I left Ireland and gave up all my fiefs which had the consequence that Ireland now was the biggest state on the map, stretching from of course Ireland to Beni Suef in the Mamluk lands.
As I legally owned fiefs from 4 different cultures, I had already assembled the companions of these and further decided to create a kingdom with 16 of my companions as lords for which I needed the rest of them - the Lituanian/Rus companions. Regnum Litus & Halych as well as the smaller factions in that region aren't existant anymore, almost all of the region has been conquered by Sweden, Denmark, Altan Ordyn Uls and partly Poland, just the Teutonic Order is resisting them at this point in time with 2 cities remaining. So, as I was factionless and in order to get my companions I attacked a Swedish caravan in order to be able to besiege and conquer the town of Vilnius from where I then got the last remaining 6 companions (revenge for the time when I was a merc for Teutonic Order and the Swedes kicked my ass). I put the town's garrison to minimum and left the region, of course the Swedish conquered Vilnius back but finally lost the city to the Mongols. I didn't stay in Vilnius and create my kingdom there because I had to balance an old bill (not the weapon) with the Sicilians - earlier in the game they conquered Barca and Sirt from Hierosolymitanum on which I lost the village Suqul. Thus I attacked one of their caravans and after that I attacked the faction itself. Today, at around day 1100 in game, I have my own kingdom with 16 companions as lords, owning almost all of the Italian peninsula and Tunis, Kairwan, Dar-Sidi al *something*, Bougie, El-Krib from the Hafsids and Zagreb, Pula and Birdir or whatever from Hungaria as well as Bonifacio from the small island to the West of Italy - all in all 11 towns, 11 castles and 33 villages of which I own 6 towns. To conquer Rome and its aftermath was the hardest thing I've encountered so far.
From here on I will either continue to conquer the map until it get's repetitive and boring, then quit the game. Or I will at some point in time decide to again join a weak faction in order to boost them and either live there as a lord or maybe again leave in order to merc around, join another faction or even create a 2nd kingdom somewhere else. I have no ambition to conquer the whole map, it is too repetitive and boring. The most I had conquered was around 80% of the map, but I had no fun at all with this game during the latter part because everything was just about getting troops, train them, attack, conquer - rinse and repeat. I mostly enjoy making some aggravating changes to the world map/politics and then watching how the (remaining) factions cope with the situations.
