There is some advantage regarding spies and assassins. There are assassins guilds, and thieves guild buildings. If you recruit Assassins and/or Spies from city with said building respectively, they get a Journeyman bonus (depending on if those two buildings are Master or not). Kill diplomats and lowly captains. Spies I find do better in cities or doing espionage on the captains. That's a great start. France started bribing my diplomats so I couldn't have them travel anywhere far (I killed them for turning traitor, Karma be a bitch man) and I have killed the Pope several times to earn my favor. After having a ton of churches and cathedrals built I had about 6 or 7 cardinal seats taken. The catholic church is now pretty much at my disposal.
Here is a link for all the pictures I've taken (you can see the mini map as to where the picture is located.)
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198050491059/screenshots
I set it to friends only unfortunately. If I knew Madrar's name I would invite him to look. I changed the turns to this:
Default: 1 turn = 2 years
Mod (by self): 1 turn = .5 years
Characters age half a year. So by vanilla or default you would end up with a 140 year old family member before they die. Which is... disturbing. As a result you have 800 turns for the long version of the main campaign, 400 for the short I think. Plenty of time to enjoy the game and take a slow leisurely pace.
17 settlements captured, none have ever rioted.
at least 1 priest/bishop/cardinal in settlement
at least 3 huge cathedrals
207 turns at least have passed (equivalent of 103 years or more)
Spain and Scotland have been destroyed.
Venice only has one settlement
Poland has only 2.
Cairo has been a crusade target 3 times
Jerusalem has been targeted for crusade once.
Never been in debt
Highest money to ever hold: 44k
Currently ranking in all categories.
I hope I don't sound like I'm bragging. Honestly this was at medium difficulty and I almost always play on easy so I thought I wasn't going to do well at all! France and the Holy Roman Empire have been battering at me constantly. Denmark has been waring and having peace talks with me off and on. I was at war with the Papal States once due to failed assassination.
Turkey has also been battering down Byzantium with constant Jihads. Egypt is holding up strong despite having 3 and now 4 crusades against their towns. Russia also had Poland as a client state, and is now at war with them.
... I think that's it. Milan is also having difficulties. Spain and Portugal were excommunicated many times. I was myself about 3 times with little effect (lucky all those times a crusade was already happening, so no crusade on my cities).
All in all, I'm going good so far. I have 690 turns left so I think I'm good on turns. No rush. Maybe I'll try hard next time. Though I doubt that will be a good idea
I'm just wondering what all the unrest is. I had a really good Governor and for some reason I had low ratings in the town. Odd. I got your bug too Simus, I sent in spies and they all got slaughtered by french guards