I started playing again the other day for the first time in a long time. At first I was having trouble deciding who to play, but then I saw that end screen note about the Babenbergers, noticed (in the course of playing the Khazars) that they existed as early as 769, and decided to see if I couldn't make them more prestigious and well-known rather than just a footnote for the "slightly better known" von Babenbergs. I started out as the Count of Worms in 769; he only lived a few years, but his primary successor ended up living until like 71, reigning for over 60 years, from something like 773 to 829. In the process, he exploited the relatively high wealth of Worms to first reunite the Babenberger patrimony (which was previously divided between himself and his brother), then forced his nominal feudal superior, the duke of Franconia, to release him from his obligations, became the Duke of Hesse, and defeated the Prince-Bishop of Mainz to obtain Mainz and Frankfurt. I was a great customer for the admittedly somewhat ahistorically early Swiss mercenaries. He then got a ceremonial title from the King of East Francia (that he kept through two generations), was consistently on the council, and ended up with a mountain of prestige (over 3000!) considering he started as a count. Starting goal: achieved! Now to become King of Germany and Emperor of Germania..
Unfortunately, his son and successor is...not the greatest. There wasn't any problem with splitting up the patrimony due to the previous duke's institution of seniority succession, but the son was a stupid cow: dull and fat, with poor stats and no good education. Oh well, I imagine he leaves the running of the duchy up to his (actually fairly good) Council while he parties and drinks (I set the Carousing focus, because it just fit). Given the excellent income my demesne produces, I've built up a massive savings reserve and am focusing on upgrading my holdings and possibly building new ones in the future. This whole generation is rather disappointing, because his sister is also dull and, IIRC, got caught cheating and received the nickname "the Unfaithful" (and then my main king--the one who reigned for 60+ years--caught her cheating again with the goldsmith he hired to make a set of Crown Jewels for the duchy...). Maybe the grandchildren...
In the wider world, Charles became known as "son of the Devil" instead of "the Great," and completely failed at invading Saxony, preventing the Umayyads from consolidating control over Spain, or forming the Empire of Francia or the Holy Roman Empire. He did, however, do what the Karlings do best and had a lot of sons after creating a lot of royal titles, so that everything got split up quite nicely and there have been several wars over who will rule what (in particular, there was a very lengthy war between East and Middle Francia on the issue). Eventually Pomerania defeated Saxony (allowing East and West Francia to pluck some portions), only to convert to Catholicism and Widukind to then revolt and kick everyone's butt with his event troops. He (somehow) managed to get control of the province of Baden and, more importantly, completely conquered Frisia for Saxony, including the province of Zeeland. So the chances of a Germanic reformation look relatively good (indeed, at the moment Germanic has a higher moral authority than Catholicism). To wrap up "what's happening in Europe," a lot of the "near" pagan realms (Pannonia, Bohemia, etc.) have undergone mass conversion, even as the Byzantine Empire has utterly imploded in the face of the Shia Caliphate's event armies, to more or less the 1081 point or lower. So that may trigger crusades relatively soon.
Farther east, I had set all of the steppe folks to "random," and apparently they all took that as an invitation: Seljuk and Sabuktigin and Genghis freaking Khan have all shown up and started wreaking havoc on the eastern side of the map. Well, mostly Genghis Khan; Seljuk started off strong but stalled out facing the still-strong Abbasids (even though the Shia Caliphate emerged in Mesopotamia), and Sabuktigin was recent enough that it's not clear how well he'll do for now. Maybe I'll do "delayed random" next time. The Palas have united most of the Bengal Empire, though not all of it. The Zoroastrian satrapies have all been annihilated, so things aren't looking good for them (I'll have to do a game as them sometime, maybe after I finish this one). All in all: it's a mess.
One question for you all: on the wiki it tends to imply that leveling up in a society is quick and easy, but I found it slow and difficult while I was playing the Khazars. It seemed that I didn't really get that much renown, and I was never really able to get past level 2 or so even on relatively long-lived characters and even when I tried to quickly address the missions the lodge leader would give you. Is this anyone else's experience? If not, how do you go about leveling up relatively quickly?
