Stayed up until 5:30AM on adventurer mode for the first time, 1000 hours in and this is my funnest run.
Just for some context adventurer mode and all of that just got to console so I’ve been trying my hand at it for a few days and I’m pretty proud of the peak run with one character I just had(hes 70 and still isn’t dead yet but I’m not going to finally try and consolidate and build wealth..)
His story just off the top of my head starts as a 16 year old Greek adventurer with like people to his party. Married young to a 30 y/0 with the beautiful trait (she had cancer) but gives me 3 beautiful girls before she passes…At this point when she passes provisions were insanely low and with no gold I reluctantly begin doing more criminal contracts, I heard lieges and stuff can arrest you so I’m kinda scared of pissing off the Emperor…So I go to Georgia(just formed and is already falling apart) because I figure I had a few hundred more troops then the King (700 vs 500) so I SHOULD be okay to do whatever types of contracts I want there. Eventually after stacking up gold I want to return to Constantinople because there’s been a lot of wars going on for me to get in on. (Almost run out of provisions again because I’m dumb and forgot to buy any) so at this point I meet my second and final wife around maybe age 30-40ish (she didn’t have any traits but had a 30 in diplomacy) and the goal is to befriend the Emperor and stack troops and gold until eventually I can win a sponsored invasion(I was so close to getting the Dutchy of bulgaria but the emperor literally started waging a war against the entire kingdom which I ofc reluctantly helped him with)…So after a few years and a few wars and a halted rebellion with this Emperor…idk what this guy was doing but literally all his vassals revolted against him. I ofc try to help but this time I knew from the jump that we weren’t winning this war…At this point I can’t move my camp and provisions are again getting very dangerously low(luckily I had a lot of favors to cash to keep it from tanking) so I’m thinking hey…This emperor is halfway out of the door anyways, so I just start going CRAZY on the criminal contracts stacking up gold and pissing off the emperor because I know he’s gonna get disposed anyways…He ofc does and this very old guy who already has like a +70 on me ends up becoming the emperor and I mean this guy loves me we were going fishing and everything there was a point where I could’ve married my daughter one of his kids(no point of an alliance because he’s about to die and I won’t be able to finish a war in time). But unfortunately he won’t sponsor an invasion for the Dutchy I wanted and I lost all of my prestige due to everything with the last Emperor…So with this guy being like 80+ I figure he’s going to die soon and there’ll be another emperor so I AGAIN go on a crime spree, at this point by the time he dies in the next year or so I have around 1-2K gold, and I finally have a plan. Looking down a bit I see the Duchy of Alexandria only has 2000 troops, I myself have 2000 troops and plenty of gold to buy more…So? I go to war really for the RP element and wanting to go from an adventurer to duchy over a holy site. Once the war is completed I celebrate but unfortunately my wife is like immediately murdered…and since this is my first time going from adventurer to landed I realize I have a few options now that I realize my army is too big and I’m going to go in debt if I keep it.
A) Downsize my army and hope no hostile religions I’m surrounded attack me.
B) swear fealty to the Byzantine empire..
The only problem with option B is that I was too far away to swear fealty…So I click on the Arabian Empire who I’m expecting to have like a few thousand troops, trying to see how I fair right now and how many troops I can afford to lose before I’m weak enough for them to just attack me…Only to find that they only have 400 troops and are actively engaged in a war for the entire Arabian Empire..
So…it’s either again, go with option A…Or option C now arises which is win a holy war for Syria so that way there’s nobody nearby that can face me assuming I now have enough land and wealth to support this massive 3K army I’ve managed to make as an adventurer. So I wage the war for Syria, and at first things are going well..I’m essentially trying to beat this “Emperor” (I forgot the correct term) and get Syria before he can lose and I have to fight whoever he’s losing to…I marry some of my kids off and I’m maybe fighting with roughly 7-8K troops vs just his 400, I’m basically running unposed and I’m trying to win this war as fast as possible, the capital was far away and surrounded by like 10K worth of orange troops so I decided not to go up there and just to siege what I can down near the south near Jerusalem. Eventually my progress gets to maybe like 60% before my strongest allies just get absolutely nuked by a peasant army of like 12K, I mean the army just literally marched right up and completely wiped them and there was nothing I could do about it. So now I’m fighting with maybe like a force of 5K which again is still more then enough because I’m basically unimpeded because the” emperor “only has like 400 guys…But not even like 2 minutes later he loses and I’m now fighting against an army of 8K which are now immediately on their way to me…I honestly start giving up and planning my moves for after the war, but at the same time I’m trying to outpace them thinking maybe I can still win if I take these territories faster then they can liberate them but at this point I’m genuinely considering a white peace because they’re liberating them faster then I’m conquering them and it’s only a matter of time before they come and try to wipe my army..
But I see one more Hail Mary attempt, at this point I’m close to the capital and they’re the ones further south. So I make a bolt for the capital hoping that with my +60% + capturing the capital I can either win the war outright or snipe and capture their emperor who’s there. Halfway there I think the AI catches on or something? Because they literally stop halfway liberating a castle and starts coming straight for me..My allies who didn’t exactly get the memo and follow me up there get immediately wiped and the army disappears from my screen but I ofc know where they’re coming next.
At this point I’m just waiting for them to come back into view right ontop of my army before I’m able to capture the capital and at that point I planed to pause and press white peace..But somehow some way I manage to siege the capital and capture their leader winning the war…
Easily the hardest and funnest war I’ve ever won up until this point. I then have like 20+ castles or w.e so I start giving them out to all my old adventurer group that managed to make it here with me this far just reminiscing about all the names I remember- and I even completely forgot about that random wolf boy event…the dude actually stayed and was like 35+ at that point so I gave him a few lands and it was just honestly beautiful seeing all these people who struggled and lost limbs and climbed out of the gutter with me now with castles and lands- I honestly didn’t expect to be able to do that especially on my first adventurer play through…But at this point my character still had a lot of consolidation to do, the populist faction was ready to spark up, I STILL had one regiment too many + I was like -25p in debt even after ransoming a lot of prisoners, and of course the empire I just beat still had 2500 troops and all of their allies so nothing was stopping them from wiping me once any truce was over(couldn’t get any hostages)
So I swore fealty to the Byzantine empire (what I wanted to do in the firsptlace) that way I could lower my army even more and not have to worry about anybody coming for my land, the emperor was off more then happy to have me with low taxes. Unfortunately he was in a war when the populists faction sparked up, but between me and my allies I wasn’t that worried about it + I knew if it got too dire the emperor would send troops. Unfortunately my 16 year old second son ended up dying in the war which is my characters first child death, honestly I was considering making him my heir…There’s something sad about this guy only losing both his wife and second son after becoming a lord and nobility. Nevertheless I realized I had 2 holy sites and for the death of my second son I would also get a 3rd. Now my character is 70, will not be marrying again and hopefully will consolidate enough power and money for his son to come into a stable spot….But also it’s 530AM and I hear the birds chirping so I should get some sleep before trying to finish this guys life off. The only thing I regret is that I didn’t have the money to make that adventurer book “the tales of” or w.e but I did do a legend so this guys amazing story will live on…Winning that war for the kingdom of Syria and being able to give my old adventurers titles had to be my favorite part I was genuinely reminiscing with my 60 y/o character about some of those guys I even gave a title to 17 y/o who was the son of the bodyguard who died to bandits so that I could get away…I remember I had like 0 empathy for the guy at the time but seeing that he had a kid that’s presumably just been with me this entire time, and now I was able to give him Damascus and another holding or two genuinely tugged on my heartstrings…idk who’s weirder me for typing all of this or you for reading it. (: