CKII: Therefore I am against thee

Behold, therefore I am against thee, and against thy rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene even unto the border of Ethiopia.

- Ezekiel 29:10

Now that Crusader Kings III is here, I guess I'd better finish what I'm doing in the previous one! When we left off last time, the Abbasid empire fairly dominated the Crusader Kings II map. Soon enough, that would change. The Muslim expansion into Francia had riled up the Catholics so much that they invented crusades, and soon enough, they launched their most ambitious one yet: a crusade for Egypt.

They tried this several times in real life and it never worked out at all. To be honest, I didn't really expect this to turn out a smashing success either, but at least it would distract the Abbasids and maybe let us profit. As we did.

I was pleasantly surprised when we managed to grab some land off the Muhallabids; and frankly shocked when the Crusade succeeded.

The Muhallabids never recovered from the loss of Egypt, and their empire went the way of the Abbadids.

While a Christian Egypt is a tremendously good thing for us, there is one downside: forming the empire of Abyssinia is only possible if you hold the kingdom of Egypt, and the last thing I want to do is go to war against our new Frankish friends. This is why we have the Charlemagne DLC: it lets us form a custom empire when we hold three kingdom titles. I was already King of Abyssinia and Nubia; with the Muslims in complete disarray, the third kingdom title I grabbed was Yemen.

With Crusader Egypt to the north and a scatter of independent chiefdoms to the east, the Abyssinian Empire was secure, and started expanding. Soon enough, we made inroads into Central Africa and reached the Persian Gulf.

**

And that was where I left things for quite a while, maybe for good. Like I said, Crusader Kings III is now out, so this feels like as good a time as any for some possibly closing thoughts on number II.

I talked about some of the shortcomings of the game earlier, mainly about the combat system and the lack of any meaningful diplomacy, and I stand by that. In my Ethiopian game, it's just been disappointing that I can't really have any proper interactions with the Byzantines or Crusader Egypt. It was an interesting challenge to get my realm established and fight off the Muslim holy wars, but I guess the problem becomes that once you've built up your blob, the game is no longer all that interesting. Especially since it's rare to get real opportunities to expand your realm outside of warfare, and war really boils down to the side that has more soldiers winning.

To sort of paraphrase Bilbo Baggins, though, I like this game a lot more than I think it deserves, and it's mostly because of the stories it generates. I'm never going to forget mad aunt Siobhan destroying her dynasty, or blowing up the heroic Duke of Semien in a manure explosion. So yeah, when Crusader Kings II is good, it's really good; when it's not, it's kinda boring. I've definitely enjoyed myself.