Quote Originally Posted by TheFallenOne View Post
In my experience the fastest way to expand is religious CBs. You don't need to worry about attaining claims and on victory you get all holdings in the contested area, to be distributed as you see fit.

That's what I did in my Sieghardinger game. Work up from count to king of Germany, my Genius heir founds the HRE and conquers Zeeland and Sjaelland. Move capital to Sjaelland, convert to capital religion through decision and instantly enough religious authority to reform Norse paganism. With a bribe here and there I had enough vassal opinion to get most of them to convert right away, those who refused lost their titles one after the other. There were a few vassal's vassals who remained Christian holdouts but they never caused real trouble.

After that I could just swallow up the rest of Italy and the four separate kingdoms in France duchy by duchy until I got bored. Even casually conquered Tunis, gave the title to a son and granted him independence to lower my Threat score. He made king of Africa later all on his own.
If you win a holy war, you become leige of any rulers of your religion who got conquered. So when the ruler of Livonia converted instead of letting me conquer him and then lost a county, I got the bishop and city vassals when I re-conquered his lands.

Hmmm, I wonder how hard it is to take on the Mongols. They showed up and conquered Cumania. At the same time, I took the duchy of Crimea from Cumania. The guy I gave the duchy to died without male issue, so his cousin inherited. I kept Cumania, but lost the tribe in Livonia that I had given him to the Mongols. I currently have the Wendish empire (minus 1 or 2 counties), but my desmense is over in Pskov rather than in Krakow or Prussia where I have actually invested tech points. Any suggestions for taking on the Mongols or getting them to attack the Persians?