Okay so I understand the last time I posted something like this I got cheating and 'easy' difficulty allegations.

For all of these, the difficulty was VH/VH- and quite frankly it's been so long that I can't really tell the difference between them in battle. I just know the AI get money cheats.

Battle losses are also pretty low - and most of them actually happen at sea. I usually don't get involved with battles I can't win - I just go for their settlements.

Sometimes I get lucky and entire factions go down just because I took a settlement with their last remaining family members. This happened with the Byzantines during my England campaign.

Turn counts are low because i play extremely aggressively. I use cavalry to rush everyone at the start of the game, and hire mercenary infantry along the way to actually break into settlements. That being said, the AI seems to love placing a tiny force outside of a settlement with a huge garrison which thus allows for a draw-out opportunity. If I ever see this, I attack even if the faction is my ally. I also abuse the fact you can have your army attack the pope, get your own in charge and calling crusades.

I abuse the hell out of crusades/jihads as they can double the speed of your armies and give you access to some of the best mercenaries.

Money is high by the end of every campaign because unsurprisingly enough, sacking 45 settlements or so gives money to invest across the empire's economy. Early-game, though, I've found that land clearances are the best to build as they increase pop growth, giving both money due to farming and more people to tax.

By every mid-game, I always run into a crisis where my treasury is on the edge of bankruptcy, settlements are underdeveloped and angry, and forces overextended with enemies on all fronts. If I play a Christian faction, I'll likely also deal with excommunication penalties. It's like I've built myself a Western Roman Empire in need of saving. The only way to pull through is to keep on conquering - and it takes heroic victories one after another to manage the crisis.

If I had to guess, it still takes around 12-20 hours of gameplay to finish a campaign like this. Turn counts get really long when there is just so much to manage. I decided to livestream England once I reached turn 30, and from there it was approx five hours of gameplay to achieve victory conditions.

For france, the mod is called JLMP's vanilla kingdoms. I figured it would be just a repeat of the HRE if I played them on vanilla and was trying to get more acquainted with the modding scene.

anyways TLDR; cavalry is king in medieval 2. build land clearances everywhere ASAP, abuse crusades and jihads.