Is anyone else still playing this game? I feel like bitching some, so here it goes.
I've been playing with HIP mod lately, trying something new. I was thinking of playing an indian religion, but didn't want to start in India because of how ugly their portraits are compared to anyone else in HIP. So I decided to bring indian religions to Europe instead. Started as that buddhist nomad south-west of the mongols, just after the 4th crusade. More powerful nomads to the north and west, muslim blobs to the south, and 90% of my military actually comes from my muslim vassal dukes just itching to get rid of me. Oh, and less than 10 years before mongols start rolling everything in their path.
I gathered what military and gold I could and just started punching straight to the west as fast as I could while everything behind me turned blue. Mongols in HIP are fucking scary. They get a special invasion CB that they immediately declare on everyone holding any land in a de jure kingdom, all at once. That way they can pick off an entire kingdom in one go, no matter how fractured it is. And they spam it constantly so that they are at war all the time. And it has only 3 years treaty, so once it's passed I could expect a new war in a matter of months, regardless of their opinion of me, or if they had troops in my lands (or indeed, on top of my capital). Because they are cheating bastards.
But the biggest problems are their event troops. 100k of zero maintenance, attrition free, reinforcing (though slowly) murder stack. It's pretty fucking insane. I've seen them park that thing in the middle of snow-covered mountains in winter with no effect. It brakes my immersion so fucking badly - what the fuck do they eat there? I suppose men could be eating horses, but what do the horses eat, men? I guess higher supply limit makes sense for them in the steppes, but in the fucking mountains where the owner of the county can't have 1/5 of that force without them starting to die?
It took me 30 years to fight my way 5000 km to Greece where I destroyed the Latin empire and settled my people, with mongols on my back and pushing me every step of the way. Even now they are my neighbours, though they have been strangely inactive for the past few years, so maybe they have reached their kill limit for now. They hold pretty much everything west of me though (except for India, because fuck India). Seen them have a couple of truly massive rebellions, where 4/5 of the blob joined in, only to be easily crushed by the event troops.
But it turns out that playing indian religions in Europe isn't that hot after all. I even took Byzantine empire using my usual religion shenanigans with the eventual goal of restoring the Roman empire under a jain ruler. Yeah, not going to happen even if the mongols fall apart. First, forgot to take jain (and hindu) courtiers with me when I left and now I can't get any (and can they even raise jain / hindu kids in my nomad court?) so I can't convert. Second, nobody outside of my realm wants to even touch my kids without a stick, let alone marry them. I got a hot princess and a county (hell, make that a duchy) for some lucky landless noble? No takers. And finally, it turns out a lot of things that should be tied to title or culture (I converted to greek after settling) are tied instead to religion. The classic two-headed eagle CoA got turned into a randomly chosen indian one - two cows. Had to edit save game to turn into two-headed swan (probably). Hey, at least it's a bird. No imperial reconquest cb for me (it's a HIP thing). Also, no Byzantine honorary titles. And the born in purple mechanics conflicts with the heir designation, so I can't use one of the main reasons I am playing an indian religion in the first place.
Ah fuck it, I'm pretty much burned out on this game anyway. Not worth it in the end. It does show how isolated the whole indian part of the game is from the actual core of the game is though.