[Baalz]

Nah, Kingmaker actually went as good as I could have hoped. Top of the charts in expansion, made a couple good allies (or at least friendly NAPs willing to work with me on successful looking wars) and voluntarily launched a 2 front war against opponents significantly smaller than me who I lined up theoretical support against. Both opponents initially crumbled as I overwhelmed their PD....then crushed everything I could field in every single fight against a real army despite the fact that I had more income and castles than both of them combined. In this case I'm fighting heavily blessed EA Oceana knights and MA Argatha heavy infantry bolstered by summoned statues, a Risin Oracle, and earth mages. What, in my arsenal can even scratch any of that? This is not through sneaky tactics that outmaneuvered me or even bad luck, this is just marching their basic troops straight towards me and crushing my numerically superior armies. Before commenting that I shouldn't pick a fight with people who can field things I can't kill....my other choices were to fight EA R'yleh under the water, Helheim, Mictlan or Arco on land, later Sauromatia and Neifelheim...so who exactly fields something I can kill? I suppose I could have meekly sat around and wait for research to make me even more obsolete....things certainly don't look any better as research progresses.

This is, I think a really good illustration of the points I made above. MA Oceana just doesn't have anything to fight a real army with, even with significant research done.