I use and abuse the pope for the tool he is. recruit priest and send them to non catholic areas, they achieve higher ranks that way and become cardinals, thet way you can either get one of them elected as pope or have a strong say in who gets to be pope, then the pope likes you and if you a half way thru a war with a catholic faction and he tells you to stop you can ignore him- he will just dislike you rather than the more painful and troublesome excommunication. i also abuse crusades...just like they did in history. Call a crusade on the non catholic faction or even better an excomminicated catholic faction, load up on cheap units and get your expensive knights into the crusade army- upkeep is free while on crusades, pillage and take over as many cities as you can before the crusade finishes- dont finish it too early. when the srudae stops you could be hit with a lot of expensive upkeep uniuts or useless cannon fodder unist so make sure you get those guys to go frontal on enemy spearmen during the last few battles of the crusades- mean i know but thats the way to win on Very Hard. recruit merchants and send them off to tthe far south-sub sahara or extreme east, that way the can make around 1000 gold coins a turn rather than the piddling money they can make nearer home.

mongols- face them with spearmen,archers and cannons/catapults etc, let them attack you, sit in the highest spot on the map and make them pay for attacking you, if they have loads on lancers they might break thru and beat you but if not you can just sit back and make them pay. well defended cities with loads of archers and spearmen should eb able to hold off a few mongol hordes. i have heard other peopledo something more creative, take a city far away from your other cities and then when the mongols arrive give it to them, they will go towards that city, i havent tried this yet but.

timurids? game is over by the time they appear mostly inst it?

centurian! step away from the computer! the last week before the exams can make up for the wasted 10 weeks before...well thats how i passed university anyway;) but i didnt have any good games on my pc when i was a student.