Despite losing multiple holy wars for one of my counties, my subsequent ritualistic and speedy murder of the next three people in line for the throne, and multiple civil wars for independence (one even won by the rebels, who were quickly reassimilated), Poland refuses to release their grip on Ruthenia without a drawn out war of mercenaries v tribals. I've decided to expand eastward into perm in the meantime; The extra territory means more money and more men in the long term, useful if Poland does the AI's new favorite tactic and goes Orthodox immediately after they start losing the Holy War. If they do, I'll be reliant on de jure and fabricated claims, since I evicted ~50% of my Lord Mayors during the Great Tyrannical Restructuring.
On that note, my pretty ducal borders are getting rekt once more, not five years later. Rostov stomped Muscovy, once more cementing the Prince Mayor of Muscovy as the prime Butt monkey for the whole of Novgorod. Since I took the territory, Moscow has been covered in a unending stream of peasant rebellions and pretenders, who take the throne and build a single improvement before being deposed by yet another commoner/Adventurer/Guy-with-a-sword/Monkey-on-a-donkey/what have you. To top it all off, the Mad King Gleb twenty years back replaced the then-chancellor, Lord Mayor of Muscovy, with the horse glitterhoof. As if to rub it in, glitterhoof admirably fabricated the claim that the Lord Mayor had been working on for decades... in a week. Truly, the butt monkeys of the republic. Well, the next chancellor, a Slovensky, unfortunately. I like to think it's glitterhoof, at least she was a proper Ilmensky.
The civilization of Bjarmia is going swimmingly; the local chiefs had taken the time to build massive stores of prestige, as evidenced by the many improvements stretching into the arctic. Once converted into proper cities, Bjarmia will join the rest of Novgorod with relative ease. The Doge will graciously provide the new mayors with a town market, funded by Ilemesky gold, and then leave them largely to their own devices. We need stores to pay for mercenaries to take the rest of Russia from the Polish.
Patrician Status:
ILEMENSKY: Rolling in gold, with a grand palace and two huge cities, and a retinue of >4000 men.
SLOVENSKY: Weakening, but still dangerous. Regularly produces old patricians that necessitate continued campaign funding. So America, much cheese. On infrastructure, not much seems to be happening. They upgrade, plot, and fail to establish real power.
OF NOVGOROD: The House of the Bastard Ilemensky survives, it's third generation having the patricians status handed from young Father to infant son. How they maintain their mansion is beyond me; Suomensuko slaves? Greek Butlers? Child Labor? One of these days I'm going to educate their patrician all wrong; it's kind of a pet project keeping them barely afloat.
IZAHAYANAVID: The House of the Unspellable name is a player mostly beyond the borders of the republic, being remarkable only in that they pick up the Slovensky slack when the Ilemenskies are under pressure. They have a large trade zone full of posts... in the Mediterranean. Quite a trip if you can't float down the Volga. Also disturbingly friendly with Suomi...
MOAR RUSO-FINNIC NAMES: The final house of the Republic is unremarkable, and I can't even remember their name. They rarely matter save politically; for whatever reason, this genetic line is extraordinarily long-lived. Of note is the 76 year old patrician they put up, with a massive prestige as well, necessitating the campaign fund to reach a historic 1055 gp. luckily, they haven't reached that prestige since, and are usually beaten or assassinated by the slovensky or the Izahayanavid. And once the of Novgorod, IIRC, which must have been embarrassing.
I'm loving playing in Russia and as a republic.
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Topic: Crusader Kings 2 is released. (Read 2008640 times)