Completing the victory conditions for the kingdom of charlemagne is trickier than most factions in AoC. With your armies concentrated in the southern part of your kingdom, invasions at the south and north and rebels sprouting in your lands it's tricky to keep your war weariness under control.

war weariness is the new mechanic that forces you to avoid using attrition tactics against enemy armies. each defeat means that your kingdom runs less smoothly, and with public order being a real problem as it is, it doesn't take much defeats to land in a vicious cycle with more and more rebel armies sprouting and your troops being less and less valuable. On war weariness 10 a full stack of levies will not be able to defeat rebel armies(auto-resolve).

So the goal of early game is to end all wars as swiftly as possbile, so you can focus on constructing chapels so public order stabelizes. once that is done you can focus on getting the economy up to speed.

On the southern front you're under attack from the Duchy of aquitane and the Duchy of gascony. I recommend taking their lands as you'll be unable to broker peace with both of them and they are more easily defeated than those you'll face up north. your only 2 armies are close to this front. the armies of the duchies are easily dealt with with the combined armies of charlemagne and roland supplemented with mercs.

On the northern front you face Westphalia who already has an army within striking distance of Utrecht and angria who has an army close to frankfurt.

raise armies in Ghent and in Wurzburg. Hire mercs to get troops quickly and recruit a few levies since we're diiching the first towns they hit. 2 defeats are not hard to come back from. if you feel real confident in your defence skill you can try to defend the first towns they hit but i don't recommend it.

Westphalia will normally liberate Utrecht. giving way to the Duchy of Frisia. Once they liberate Utrecht and march their army to ghent you should have enough troops to defeat that army. Once you have defeated that army you should be able to make peace with westphalia. then move to subjugate the Duchy of Frisia. this Duchy helped me a LOT. they will help you with killing rebel scum(Duchy turn came b4 rebel turn in my playthrough - so if duchy armies are in range don't worry about having not enough strength). they will also take the brunt of future westphalian attacks.

Once angria raid Frankfurt you should be able to defeat them with the army you raised in wurzburg. if your army hasn't suffered a lot of losses you can try and capture Buraburd but i wouldn't recommend it. the place is hard to hold with the religous diffrences(pagan roots make the region impossible to convert to 90% christ - if you are going for that bonus obj don't take this region). buraburg can also be attacked from both Westphalia and angria. best leave it be early game.

you should be able to hold off any future invasions with your armies here and the armies of frisia.

On the Diplomacy front you should focus on getting as much money as possible. Every bit of gold matters in the early game. When the accept chance is "high" demand as much money as you can. Trade agreements and non-aggression pacts are most suitable for this end.

The kingdom of Carlmoman will be declared war upon eventually by the lombards or some1 else, avoid it. don't accept it. This will hurt if you aren't fully prepared to face the consequenses. as long as your nation remains at war with even 1 faction(includes seperatists) war weariness will not decrease outside of victories.

While the invasions are in some way easily dealt with, it's the rebels who are the problem. if these aren't held in check, things can spin out of control real fast. raise an army in amiens to guard it and your global trade port Boulogne. it's very important that this port and the way to your capital remains clear of all rebels. Since a lot of your income will come from trade.

if you have any leftover gold in you early turns you should invest this in chapels wherever they are needed. they spread public order and religion even to the neighboring provinces. once all the wars have been dealt with you can focus on building your regions.

The buildings in AoC greatly differ from those in the main game.

there are almost no negative effects on buildings. only the industrial buildings consume sanitation and only the region main buildings and military buildings consume food. farms give a food boost to all provinces based on the fertility level of the province they are built in so it is important to build farms everywhere you can.

the province capital main building has 3 variants. these will determine what you can build in the province capital which in turn affects the bonusses the province can give to adjacent provinces. what your adjacent provinces give will greatly affect the income of your province.

1. Religion
spreads public order and religion, unlocks buildings for sanitation and for research rate.
2. Court
unlocks buildings for corruption reduction and wealth boost
3. Trade( boosts local province only)
boosts commerce and unlocks buildings with additional wealth generation(trade stalls and goldsmith).

Garrison buildings can be very helpfull in border regions. Since the standard garrisons are pretty much a joke in terms of military strength.
Corruption becomes a real pain as your territory expands. having enough court type provinces is essential to sustaining a good income.

For politics it's important that the highest positions in your hierarchy are always filled(characters are chosen for life and almost no requirements). I use a mod to increase the influence of my faction leader so it's a bit easier to maintain loyalty. adopt the persons who have the highest positions since these will become too influential down the line. use the previous adoptee to adopt the next to avoid loyalty penalties.

there are 4 events in which you'll need to choose 1 of several options.

1. pope asking help against lombards.
this comes real early and in my playthrough i chose to support the pope. you will recieve a mission to raid the lombard capital. if you succeed you'll recieve a religion and diplomacy bonus. if you fail you'll get the reverse. a religion and diplomacy debuff. however i had neither the money nor the time to raid the lombards so i got the debuff. the debuff is not of any concern since you have 100% christ in most of your regions anyway with no local tradition for other religions.
this event may influence whether or not you get event 4 but i'm not sure

2. pagan leadership troubles
I chose to convert the leadership and you'll recieve a diplomacy buff to pagan factions and pagan influence goes down. WIN-WIN in my book. you'll get to delay invasions and reduce the paganism in your borderline provinces.

3. Carloman's Death.
this is the most important event of them all. one who can in 1 go earn your victory even if you didn't conquer more than 3 regions.
there are 4 options
1: claim his lands as yours - recieve a mission to capture the carloman capital who has been reinforced with a tier 2 full stack. on completion recieve all carloman lands.
2: support the son - diplomacy boost to carloman
3: bankroll seperatists - pay 8000 gold and recieve some carloman lands
4: do nothing - +100 public order buff for a single turn

the timing of carloman's death is random so what you choose depends on how early or how late he dies.
choose 4 if you still have trouble with rebels and want more time to construct chapels.
choose 3 if you are in the middle of restructuring and cannot get large armies to paris quickly
choose 1 if all provincial troubles are dealt with and you have at least 2 full stacks with at least 1 with onagers ready to take paris.

4. Pope asks you to escort him back to rome(charlemagne 50y/a).
if you choose to accept you'll recieve a mission to march charlemagne(who has recieved the "pope" household) to the rome region. There are no scripted suprises on this one so you can just march your army to rome without worrying. Once you have completed the mission you'll recieve the title of "holy roman emperor" and your faction will rename into holy roman empire. you'll get a faction trait that is a much better version of the "kingdom rises" trait(both remain in effect). it also reduces the amount of corruption in your provinces by 10%. a buff worth aiming for that's for sure.

unlike the main campaign the bonus objectives of each chapter each offer not only a small amount of bonus gold but also a unique and powerfull bonus to your faction and last for a limited amount(20 turns).

there are always 6 bonus ojectives. they mostly have the same format as you progress through the chapters.
there are always 2 military,2 religious and 2 civic ones.
1. military - hold a number of settlements including a number of specific ones.
grants bonus recruitment slots.
2. military - research specific technologies
grants an upkeep reduction
3. religion - build a number of a specific religious buildings
grants a reduction in construction costs for religious buildings
4. religion - get 90% christ in all provinces(changes to a format similar to 3 after 2 chapters).
grants a morale bonus when battling agianst non-christ factions
5. civic - construct a number of a specific civic building
grants a tax rate bonus
6. civic - research specific Civic technologies.
grants a corruption reduction

These bonuses get stronger as you progress to later chapters. tax rate bonus and corruption reduction become 25% on the last chapter. completing these bonus objectives can be a great boon to your faction. you should aim to complete at least 2,5&6. you can try for 4 too but 1&3 can't be completed. your imperium level rises too quickly for you to be able to hold the amout of settlements number 1 specifies and number 3 cannot be completed easily for the same reason. number 4 should be easy to do IF you didn't attack and occupy the northern territories where the regional buff "pagan roots"(gives +5 pagan influence) is active. these buffs stack on provincial level which means you have to reach an impossible amount of religious influence to reach 90% christ in these provinces. i built religious influence as much as i could in these provinces supplemented by 2 priests whose passive influence was maxed out. still couldn't get past 80% and this was when i was way past the chapters with these objectives and i had much better technology and resources.

it's hard to complete these bonusses with everything else that is going on turn by turn but they are definetly worth it.

i hope you found this guide insightfull and helps you bring the campaign to a good end. thank you for reading the guide in it's entirety. Please leave a comment about how the guide felt to you or how i should update things. i'm new somewhat to posting guides, so any critisisms or additional information you leave will help me make this guide better.