u/Imperator_Maximus3

Here's my Northumbria run in the Viking Age start after throwing like 5 attempts at it.

Granted, I had mapped out a bit of a strategy taking advantage of the starting dynastic connections in 1066 but this was still a greater lead than I was expecting.

After a Rome run where I tried optimizing my opening for early game expansion, I wondered what the best opening for the Diadochi would be and if you can win the 4th Diadochi war completely as every single one. And as you can see, you can. I decided to do this in Vanilla (because the territory-by-territory occupation would be harder to accomplish than Invictus' provincial capital occupation) and on Very Hard (as a form of Luck-proofing the strategy, my logic being, if I can beat everyone else with -10% morale, while they get buffs, then it would work most times). The slides where I hover over the army morale is as a form of proof of Very Hard difficulty, though in the Antigonid one, I didn't think to do that until after I played through the run a bit, which is why there are two Macedons: Antigonid and Antipatrid. I will write the openings for all of the Diadochi in the comments for anyone interested.

I've decided to attempt a Marsia campaign in Vanilla, after wondering what the hardest country in the game might be. I figured it would likely be a vassal of Rome, so I picked Marsia and what you see here is the result. I started off by grabbing all the siege techs I could and declaring on Rome as soon as they went off to attack the Samnites. By the time they had come back to siege my capital, I had already taken both Rome and Veii. Then, I went after Etruria after getting Umbria, Sabinia and Frintania as Allies. After my truce with Rome ran out, I attacked them again and eliminated them for good.

am I supposed to keep the claims on Alexander's empire after Kassandros dies? This is vanilla BTW.

Just my luck...

What am I even paying you for?!