How to dismantle big neighbor empires?

[Azrael]

Hello guys, I'm playing an Ironman Run with the Kingdom of Serbia as a kind of a meme run, initial plan was to unite the Kingdoms of Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria (which I achieved and reachieved by now after a period of weakness) under one ruler and then form a new "Empire of Greater Serbia" or something like that (didn't achieve that yet).
In the middle of the run I also decided to go for some southern italian posessions.
To complete the meme, I also turned Orthodox Christian, which wasn't bad for a while.

Problem is, I'm somewhat stuck now.
In the West is the big white blob, the HRE with around 40K Troops overall, it also conquered roughly half of Croatia, while I didn't control it along with huge parts of Europe. In the east is a sunni empire, that also conquered the majority of Anatolia in a Dschihad from the Byzantines, also around 40K Troops.
In the South is another Sunni Empire having all of North Africa, around 18K Troops.
I myself got around 10-11K Troops.

And as if that wasn't enough, the Catholics decided to do the 4th Crusade aka "We sack Byzantium" a few hundred years earlier and completely dismantled the Byzantine Empire, ramming the Orthodox Church into the ground, seemingly stuck at 0% Moral Authority now.
I reconquered Byzantium now, revoked the Title of the Catholic Bishop there and gave it back to the Patriarch of Constantinople.

Heresies blop up accompanied by a rebellion now and then in my Triple Kingdom and now, as intermediate goal, I decided to help the orthodox church as good as I can, trying to reconquer the holy sites I can.

Now I've seen, that these huge Muslim Empires totally crumble, once their Sultan turns corrupt and looses in a rebellion, but that doesn't happen very often.
And the HRE is seemingly stable as nothing and expanding in the south and east, not showing any sign of instability or collapse.
The Sunnis in the South I can handle somewhat by attacking them, when they're distracted by another war.

What would you do to dismantle atleast the HRE and the Muslims in the East I described?
I tried Assassinations to get sinful characters atop the respective thrones and such, but that didn't work out that well up to now and the "Disrupt Liege - Vassal Relationship" Mission of my Chancellor seems to be very weak and instead hampers relations of meaningless liege lords and vassals and not between a king and the emperor.

Any more hints?

[SKull]

Assassinations are the main way to do it. You can also chip away at blobs when they periodically engage in civil wars. Independence wars are the best, because you can look for the emperor's army and try to defeat or weaken it for the rebels with relatively low risk. And if the rebels win they go independent and shrink the empire.

[Azrael]

Year as said, I have problems with killing of emperors, so new ones, hated for Short Reign, ascend, in the first place, probably because I'm not of their religion and stuff.

I guess, I have to turn every character high in intrigue then with intrigue focus...

Defeating the Emperors Army seems even in Civil War hard to do for me.
As said, I haven't seen a big civil war in the HRE so far, but I guess, since the majority of the 40K come from vassals, even if half of the HRE would revolt vs the Emperor, they would outnumber me 2:1, not mentioning that intervening in the civil war also turns the rebels hostile to me :D

Any hints (typical CK II question) which muslims tend to be the most corrupt ones, so I can take out the good ones?

[SKull]

Well tbh, assassinations are really a combination of intrigue and diplomacy. The higher your intrigue, the higher the plot power. But the higher the diplomacy, the more people will want to join your plot, which is really the important part when trying to off foreign rulers. If I know I'm going on an assassination binge with a ruler I usually choose seduction focus first and get the Master Seducer lifestyle trait. That way, non-gay women in the foreign court will be more likely to back my plot. And that obviously includes the vic's family members, who are sometimes conveniently also the spymaster, as is the case with Charlemagne's mother. Once I have the MS trait I then switch to either the assassination focus or one of the diplomacy ones, depending on what I need. I also think both prestige and piety play into this, at least within the same religion.

I know that I have successfully assassinated Charlemagne to stop the Frank empire from forming as a Norse, pagan ruler doing it this way. So the sky is definitely the limit. A little harder to do once the empire has formed, because people will have claims on it and keep reforming it even if it goes away. But just kill enough people and it will crumble.

[g0r3yl0v3rz]

Muslim blobs tend to implode after a bit of time. A few assassinations help too.

For HRE, don’t just focus on emperor. Also assassinate any long term dukes under him as this will reset their relation as well. So when a long term emperor is ruling, giving him new vassals that don’t like him hurts him.

[SKull]

Yup, just kill everyone until the Evil Empire goes away. I'd say nuke it from orbit, but someone might sue.

[Kayeka]

If you happen to be in diplomatic range of the Chinese Empire, you can also suck up to them until they agree to invade one realm and destroy its ruling title.

If you want to go for intrigue, you could also decide to join any of these empires, providing you with protection from the others while you plot their downfall. Start a faction for independance, and see how many people you can force to join through intrigue and favours. For bonus points, fake-convert to the ruler's religion, and recruit as many people as you can into your secret society.

Of course, this approach comes with risks of its own, but I find that, if you place your chancellor up your liege's buttocks, the risks are quite manageable.

[Sergent H]

Publicado originalmente por Kayeka:

If you happen to be in diplomatic range of the Chinese Empire, you can also suck up to them until they agree to invade one realm and destroy its ruling title.

+1

[kazaddum]

Publicado originalmente por 5FAGen-Azrael:

Hello guys, I'm playing an Ironman Run with the Kingdom of Serbia as a kind of a meme run, initial plan was to unite the Kingdoms of Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria (which I achieved and reachieved by now after a period of weakness) under one ruler and then form a new "Empire of Greater Serbia" or something like that (didn't achieve that yet).
In the middle of the run I also decided to go for some southern italian posessions.
To complete the meme, I also turned Orthodox Christian, which wasn't bad for a while.

Problem is, I'm somewhat stuck now.
In the West is the big white blob, the HRE with around 40K Troops overall, it also conquered roughly half of Croatia, while I didn't control it along with huge parts of Europe. In the east is a sunni empire, that also conquered the majority of Anatolia in a Dschihad from the Byzantines, also around 40K Troops.
In the South is another Sunni Empire having all of North Africa, around 18K Troops.
I myself got around 10-11K Troops.

And as if that wasn't enough, the Catholics decided to do the 4th Crusade aka "We sack Byzantium" a few hundred years earlier and completely dismantled the Byzantine Empire, ramming the Orthodox Church into the ground, seemingly stuck at 0% Moral Authority now.
I reconquered Byzantium now, revoked the Title of the Catholic Bishop there and gave it back to the Patriarch of Constantinople.

Heresies blop up accompanied by a rebellion now and then in my Triple Kingdom and now, as intermediate goal, I decided to help the orthodox church as good as I can, trying to reconquer the holy sites I can.

Now I've seen, that these huge Muslim Empires totally crumble, once their Sultan turns corrupt and looses in a rebellion, but that doesn't happen very often.
And the HRE is seemingly stable as nothing and expanding in the south and east, not showing any sign of instability or collapse.
The Sunnis in the South I can handle somewhat by attacking them, when they're distracted by another war.

What would you do to dismantle atleast the HRE and the Muslims in the East I described?
I tried Assassinations to get sinful characters atop the respective thrones and such, but that didn't work out that well up to now and the "Disrupt Liege - Vassal Relationship" Mission of my Chancellor seems to be very weak and instead hampers relations of meaningless liege lords and vassals and not between a king and the emperor.

Any more hints?

The Muslims are a non issue, with rising corruption, their armies weaken to the point of a joke.
They are only a problem if they can blobb, otherwise the Caliph/Sultan will have to give away lands to reduce corruption which weakens him until he gets replaced. Or he doesn't and it ends in civil war or a massive shia uprising.
You can also make use of heresies yourself. If you see that the heir of the current Caliph is a corrupt one, getting him into power bombs the moral authority.

As for the HRE:
- Murder strong Emperors
- join them, make friends and establish an independence faction
- upgrade your holdings, holding as many castles in your capital duchy as your demesne allows - the troop numbers your posted are very low. This also opens up larger retinues.
- do not waste your time expanding into italy or something, grab orthodox lands if you want to blobb.
- China is an option
- Hit them fast and hard, they need a while to organize their armies.
- get the money making running, upgrading everything in your capital duchy helps a lot, you could also found a vassal merchant republic to print even more. That way you can wage long wars and make large scale use of mercs.

[Azrael]

I make around 33-35 Wealth per Month and as said, I was hampered by a period of Weakness.
I was isolating my king and his family, when the black plague hit the world in the 950's and then he gets an event, that he meets a nun and I decided to invite her home, since I didn't know that event.
Back then it was a stable, Triple Kingdom.
Then suddenly, this nun comes and says "I'm Death, you come with me" and I decide to play chess with her for my life, even using my daughter as bet to get a better move but I only got the bad ones and the king and his daughter, the heir died.
This women, since strangely she was of my dynasty, became queen.

She was in Lucifer's Own and was a bad queen, her daughter too, now with the grand son I am where I am as described above.
I'm alrdy upping my holding as fast as possible, tons of gold flowing into these. But it pays off. When I was still tribal, I had 10K regulary, then it dropped down after the adoption of feudalism, now I'm at, with good martial stats 7-8K own troops alone, vassalls 3-4 K.

[kazaddum]

Publicado originalmente por 5FAGen-Azrael:

I make around 33-35 Wealth per Month and as said, I was hampered by a period of Weakness.
I was isolating my king and his family, when the black plague hit the world in the 950's and then he gets an event, that he meets a nun and I decided to invite her home, since I didn't know that event.
Back then it was a stable, Triple Kingdom.
Then suddenly, this nun comes and says "I'm Death, you come with me" and I decide to play chess with her for my life, even using my daughter as bet to get a better move but I only got the bad ones and the king and his daughter, the heir died.
This women, since strangely she was of my dynasty, became queen.

She was in Lucifer's Own and was a bad queen, her daughter too, now with the grand son I am where I am as described above.
I'm alrdy upping my holding as fast as possible, tons of gold flowing into these. But it pays off. When I was still tribal, I had 10K regulary, then it dropped down after the adoption of feudalism, now I'm at, with good martial stats 7-8K own troops alone, vassalls 3-4 K.

Ouch, that's a string of bad luck.

Yeah, you drop in numbers after going feudal. However your troops have a higher quality, as you can raise HI en mass.

Take your time, if you get attacked you'll have more levies because of the defensive war modifier.

[Azrael]

Don't worry, I recovered somewhat, by now I've founded my own Bloodline and my own, Serbian Empire, I took Thrace and reconquered Mt. Athos as second holy site, so the Orthodox fate is also somewhat recovering, but only slightly.
Sadly, all the Tribals, who want to mass baptize themselves, run to the catholics for it (and some of them loose to their vassals rebelling against them for it lol)
Only once I had a tribal high chief come to me for mass baptism and he even survived the transition, but in the end he ended up in the HRE somehow.

Speaking of the HRE, somehow, the Empire of Germania founded itself independent from the HRE, but it probably is even weaker than my Empire, at max it is an ally.

With the Muslims in the East, I kept murdering their Sultan until a decadent one inherited the throne (I didn't murder him of cause) bringing up the decadence of the dynasty up from 0 to 30, giving a slight malus to the demesne troops of the Sultan and his heirs, which by now sit on the throne.
Sadly, as far as I remember, only unlanded male sons can acquire the decadence trait and I keep murdering (or atleast try to murder) the sultans, but so far, not another decadent one has shown up.

By now, when I have a high martial ruler, I can muster about 10K Troops and get around 50-60 wealth per month, so things do improve.
Maybe, in another 100 years, I finally can come to the "Remove Kebab"-Part in Anatolia :D

[Fart_Gas]

Publicado originalmente por 5FAGen-Azrael:

What would you do to dismantle atleast the HRE and the Muslims in the East I described?
I tried Assassinations to get sinful characters atop the respective thrones and such, but that didn't work out that well up to now and the "Disrupt Liege - Vassal Relationship" Mission of my Chancellor seems to be very weak and instead hampers relations of meaningless liege lords and vassals and not between a king and the emperor.

Any more hints?

Do you have the Jade Dragon DLC? If so, if you have 5000 grace with the Chinese Emperor, you can Request Invasion of the HRE. If the HRE loses, it will get forcibly splintered.

[Azrael]

I have all DLC's, so also Jade Dragon, but I'm outside the Diplo Range of the Chinese.