One thing I love about Crusader Kings II is the amount of flexibility they give for the player's Grand Campaign options, enabling the player to essentially start as a anyone, whether it be an Emperor or a Count. So basically you can start off a lowly Count with a never-before heard person/dynasty (thanks Ruler Designer) and actually expand and build your Kingdom or Empire from scratch.

The Legacy of Rome DLC particularly had me vying for control over the Byzantine Empire with my new Sicily-based dynasty. From there I began restoring the Roman Empire's borders (from Augustus Caesar's reign), since a new major decision available in Legacy of Rome is to actually replace the Byzantine Empire with the true Roman Empire once you have its borders restored. Since I also recently got the Sunset Invasion DLC, I was basically trying to expand fast enough within two centuries before the Aztecs landed in Western Europe potentially starting an "end of the modern world" alternate history scenario in a game event similar to the emergence of the Golden Horde/Ilkhanate/Timurds except from the other side of the map. Not only was going to restore the Roman Empire but I'd basically be pitted against barbarians from every side just like good old ancient times.

Because I was so used to the Sicily start (was my preferred start even before the DLC) I had no trouble building up the Kingdom of Sicily, entering the Byzantine Empire and eventually having my own claim to the throne. After a brief blitz of Constantinople and friends due to a fractured Byzantine Empire (it's not very cohesive from the start) I was well on my way from restoring the Roman Empire.

Fast-forward through a lot of micromanagement, wars of expansion, multiple successful crusades and finally I've got my Roman Empire just in time to stop the invading Mongolian hordes in their tracks. The Ilkhanate in particular tried to pull a fast one with my Middle-Eastern holdings but that backfired on them hard, as their surrender request above shows.

A cool new event the Byzantine/restored Roman Empire gets for victories after a major war is a prestige-boosting opportunity in which you can dish out some gold to lavishly celebrate your victory:

This would typically be a good endgame for most people (there's not much else after successfully thwarting the Mongol hordes besides conquering the rest of the known world) but due to the impending Sunset Invasion, I wasn't done there. Considering I had both all of Spain and Britain under my belt (and was about to start a war of expansion over Scotland), I definitely faced a larger hurdle with the Aztecs. Unlike the Ilkhanate, who conquered my neighbors first at full-strength causing them to be whittled down by the time they tried encroaching on my turf, I'd be facing the Aztecs raw. That basically meant they'd be landing with a force of over 100k, kind of unprecedented compared with the wars I've dealt with up to me defeating the distilled Ilkhanate.

At this point I knew I had at least a year before they arrived. My strategy at this point was basically to raise the armies of my entire realm for the first time and concentrate them at Western Europe while leaving a huge navy in the English Channel to deal with shipping over troops in the case they were over at Britain.

Thankfully I had a good volume of armies and would be able to basically use the entire Mediterranean as a staging area for pre-deployment. At this point I had enough navies to concentrate all my Central European armies in Italy and ship them over in time for the fight. I actually would have a very small window for a counter-attack before I'd be forced to surrender to the Aztecs if they sacked enough of England (after losing a handful of counties the game surrenders you automatically for some reason, no matter how strong your remaining forces actually are).

While my war with Scotland was going well, I wasn't using as many forces up North (about 10-20k) to be able to divert and put up a fight as the Aztecs landed in Cornwall in a huge lump (~120k) and essentially they managed to grab two full counties (also cutting open the heart of one of the counts apparently; oh well -- they weren't too fond of me for conquering them first, so they did me a favor in that respect, heh) before deciding to fan out in thirds to try and subdue multiple counties simultaneously. That would be their biggest mistake, because I guess they did not anticipate one of my fleets carrying the first 60k troops of my counter-attack right on top of one of their thirds that was reduced to half the size of my force.

While I made short work of one of the Aztec army thirds (60k vs 39k gave me pretty good odds at a small cost), their remaining two-thirds attempted to merge and try to put up a formidable force but by that time I'd already landed the second batch of fresh Romans ready to shed some Aztec blood, since being Pagan was sooooo yesterday for them (as in a whole millennium yesterday!)

If I'd been too hasty with conquering Ireland I would've had a bigger mess in my hands. Thankfully for me, they weren't yet affiliated with me. The Aztecs presence in Ireland basically assured that Ireland would soon fall under Rome's wing, considering I had also just united Great Britain in conquering Scotland right on top of my first victory against the Aztecs in Cornwall and Devon, and there's no easier way to start a war than a religious one.

As much as I crushed them in England, their second landing force made short work of the fractured Irish counties (they weren't lucky enough to be united under the Roman banner yet), but that ended up being a blessing in disguise for me since it gave me the perfect excuse to land my own invasion force in Ireland and "liberate" the Irish. Hey, I'd think being under the Senate and People of Rome is a much better fate than being enslaved and living under the constant threat of becoming a sacrifice to Pagan gods!

A new feature in the Crusader King II games from the latest patches and DLC is the ability to keep a personal, standing army outside of raised levies. This essentially enables you to pre-position raised standing armies in the form of retinues and declare war from there, giving you a great head start for invasions. From the combined forces of the retinues I raised for both my invasion of Scotland and the defense of England against the Aztecs, I had a a standing army of 220,000 right in front of Ireland and could declare war at the same time thanks for that force being entirely comprised of retinues (really expensive though; fortunately I had the entire economy of the Mediterranean funding me as the restored Roman Empire).

And that was the beginning and the end of the Aztec's presence in Europe. They would've been a lot more devastating and would've also been probably there to stay if I hadn't been around with the restored Roman Empire! Their unsuccessful invasion of my borders assured that the rest of my expansions would continue unperturbed, as there would be no concentrated military force left to challenge the combined might of my ever-growing empire. It was game over for everyone who wasn't Roman.

About a century later of being the largest fighting force around having thwarted invasions from all sides while holding invasions of my own, I've conquered the known world.

Roma Victor, as they'd say.

Three DLCs (didn't talk about the first one, Sword of Islam, but know that's pretty cool too) and forty hours later (eighty total hours considering the first forty I spent earlier in the year), Crusader Kings II is my most played game of 2012. Eh, at this point I might as well say it was my Game of the Year. I'm a huge fan of strategy games and Crusader Kings II basically converted me from being big on the Total War franchise to enjoying the grander strategy behind Crusader Kings II. I'm so invested in this type of strategy game now, I actually dug up Europa Universalis 3 and found a program that converts Crusader King 2 saves to EU3 saves! Unfortunately the actual Roman Empire doesn't exist in EU3 (which is all historical starts) so I basically opted to have it ported into the Holy Roman Empire. Anyway my Roman Empire is Christian, so I guess that title would be more fitting.

To be continued?!

Porting the save over to EU3 is probably coolest but most broken thing to ever happen. At the very least, unlike my historical counterpart, my Empire is actually both Holy and Roman. Nevertheless, this broken game would probably be the dark middle chapter of my grand strategy experience. I'd at least be able to finish the fight with the Aztecs and invade them proper! That being said, I'm probably going to take a break before taking on EU3 with my broken and probably overpowered save game.