Originally Posted by
juanplay
I have reached turn 140 as the Roman Empire and I must say I havent had so much fun with a Medieval 2 mod since third age came out. The units and the map are both incredibly beautiful and detailed and so far the game has been stable. Regarding campaign balance (playing H/H) I must say that some factions do struggle a little. For instance bulgaria seems to have no interest in pressuring my northern borders and somehow my diplomatic relationship with them improves randomly even when I take their settlements. The same holds true for the serbians and croatians who are content to remain within their borders. The lombards in southern Italy do a better job of defending themselves but cant seem to launch any considerable offensives at all. I havent had much contact with the eastern franks so i cant say much about them, I guess that will change when push north of Rome.
On the other hand the emirates of sicily and crete do a good job of pressuring me. I was surprised to see that the arabs on crete were able to launch successful naval invasions on my islands with full and diverse armies . The sicilian muslims were also able to cross the straits of messina and attack southern Italy though their armies arent as big as those of crete. Finally the Abassids havent launched any offensives during my playtime though they were able to muster somewhat competent armies to defend their lands, even though Antioch was surprisingly easy to take after I defeated their one full army in Cicilia.
As for the steppe factions, havent had much contact with them since they are north of Bulgaria and Im just moping their last vestiges for resistance (though I must say that their army compositions are quite good with a varied mix of noble and common troops).
Finally I want to congratulate the team for their scripted events, they really make the campaign interesting and can change the course of any military offensives that the player had carefully planned. Just to give an example by turn 60 I was already taking the bulgarian settlements south of preslav and was preparing to enter into thrace when the bogomil uprising happened. That competely took me off guard and subsequent fights depleted my two armies in the area. At the same time the public order penalties of the event prevented me from establishing a foothold in the region and forced me to retreat to thessaly. Only with constant campaigning and huge amount of investment in infraestructure and garrisons was I able to hold those lands, though It took me up to turn 100 to pacify the area.