Tellus, what happened to England? Did Morcar revolt after a Norwegian conquest and manage to kill his brother to gain control of Northern England?
Also, that independent Brittany would drive me crazy.
=================================
I didnt pay much attention to England, but I liked the powerful York state emerging. I believe Norway won initially but left too many Saxon lords independent and they grouped under the York banner.
I actually liked it because like I said the goal was to recreate Charlemagne's empire, and he never did fully invade Britanny
Dear god, how on earth did you manage to do that as the HRE? It seems like every time I play CK2, the HRE always collapses unless players are controlling the internal duchies.
Like I wrote, I was demonstrating the excessive power of the Invasion casus belli to expand this much, and I also had a super long lived Monarch which had a +60ish Long Reign bonus at the end. That kind of glue will hold anything together. This being said Ive had zero troubles with internal issues. Are you paying attention to negative relations modifiers of your vassals? Things like too many Ducal titles, too big a Demsene, etc, will ruin any realm. Once my 90 year old Emperor died, things got fairly difficult to manage in the provinces.
I posted more CK goodness about how OP Invasion is on the forums today which I'll copy here for your enjoyment:
How I engineered a Catholic Papal Invasion CB on the Byzantine Empire
Hello! I'm Alerias [My nick over there], and you may remember me from my former "Nerf the Invasion CB" thread, where I annexed France, Iberia (leon), Poland and Hungary within the lifespan of the 1066 Holy Emperor.
This time I'm playing a game as Apulia where I've essentially unified Italy, Croatia and North Africa, and crusaded for the Holy Land. Separating my Italo-Croatian possessions and my Mid-East Empire was a beefed up Byzantine empire, stretching from Dacia to Georgia to Beirut.
Normally you can only get invasion CBs granted on countries which share the same faith. However theres no 'national faith' in CK, its all character-based, and in this case of course, based on the religion of the head of state. Therefore, I figured (correctly) that if I could produce a Catholic heir to the Byzantine throne, I could not only make him vulnerable to the Papacy (which loves me as a Crusader and "True Christian Knight") but also cause substantial havoc within the realm because surely that wouldnt go down too well with the vassals.
Came in play the third heir to the Byzantine throne, an unmarried Greek/Orthodox youth, to which I've managed to marry my most stunning princess. She moved to Constantinople and bore him a son, of course, at which point I sent my best poisoner there... oh wait, no, he was already there pilfering Byzantine tech
... and killed my son-in-law. Immediately after I invited my daughter back home, and she brought the kid along. At this point, the baby was second in line for the throne, and the Emperor was getting old. (70+)
Then, and this is the part where I think I was fairly clever, I raised the baby myself, and finally realized what all these ridiculously one sided events are good for. You surely all noticed many child-rearing events are basically "Choice A: Make him Temperate, Holy, Gregarious and the Pope falls in love with him" "Choice B: Make him Greedy, Glutonous and he wants to impregnate his sisters!". Well for once, I picked all the bad events.. cross-referencing closely with the traits of the Pope and putting a high value on everything that the Church would frown upon. Of course, in the process, the little brat became an Italian Catholic. 15 years later, the old Caesar had croaked, and the first in line for the Byzantine throne had not only crappy stats, but 6 of the 7 deadly sins.
I was planning on killing his uncle in Byzantium but I didnt even need to. At 17 years old, my little monster naturally got on the throne. Lucky break. I immediately checked what the Pope thought of him: (-86). And on the seventh day, the King of Italy had finished his work of creation, saw that it was good, and so he rested from all work.
The venerable Holy Crusader, liberator of the Holy Sepulcre, the King without sin, thus went to the little bishopric in Benevent from which the Pope ruled ever since his own father had taken the Papal states, and, with outrage on his face, told him about the monster sitting on the throne in Byzantium, and was immediately granted rights to invade 'In the name of God and the Blessed Virgin'.
The task was all the more simple considering the little prince had about 7 rebellions on his hands. Apparently Italian Catholics and Greek Orthodoxy doesn't mix too well. At that point all I needed to do was give a swift kick in the door and the whole house came crashing down (Well okay, it still took 8 years to occupy all the Empire, and then 2 hours to appoint lords to every province, but it was worth it).
Moral of the story : Invasion is still OP, but you've now learned a new trick: When the Pope likes a King too much to let you invade him, manufacture one that he wont.
And when a country is of foreign faith, it will only remain so until you raise the heir to their throne yourself..
(Notice the grandson thing, and well, the fact a Catholic gets to invade Byzantium)
This I believe was the state of things soon before the invasion of Byzantium. Notice I own the holy land. Technically, I'm an HRE vassal still at this point. (Had voluntarily joined them early on) Another thing that was especially nice is that gaining an Emperor-level title frees you from vassalship to the HRE, and since the latter had managed High Crown Authority, that was a much welcome thing. Much less of a hassle than doing an Invasion of the HRE, which is, by the way, entirely possible... even if you're still an HRE vassal!!
You know what they say... like father, like son.
Seriously I think at a minimum, asking for an Invasion should have some additional triggers; A -personal- claim on the Throne you're trying to claim, first of all. (Basically making the Papal action about 'upgrading' an existing CB rather than creating one outright), it should also probably be impossible to invade the two Empires this way. (King level max), and Piety cost should vary. 500/250 is okay for a Kingdom like Croatia I guess, but not France.
