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I've been playing a nice little campaign for a couple weeks and I seem to have found myself in an unwinnable situation. I had two major back to back rebellions I had to crush with two wars from a neighbor claiming single counties (I surrendered both). after I finally took care of the rebellions I found myself facing an invasion from a bigger neighbor who somehow had a claim on my entire kingdom.

I'm just strong enough to force the guy's army out of my territory but when i try to reclaim the counties he has already seized he sends an army so large I have to disband to avoid loosing all my armed forces. I also can't afford Mercs and Holy Orders won't help because the guy is the same religion.

on top of this I have been at war for so long I lost two adult kings and am now stuck playing as a 5 year old with no allies whom everyone hate for reasons I don't understand (wrong government type after I gave away all the cities and bishoprics I had) and other factors I can't fix because I'm playing a small child.

The war score is stuck in the negative so I can;t white peace and if I surrender I lose the game. Is there a way forward or am I doomed to loose.

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    There's no shame in becoming a vassal. If anything it makes for a good story if you can eventually overthrow your conqueror.
    – Will F
    Jun 19, 2014 at 16:00

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Sounds like you're boned. There's a few things you can do.

Current situation and options

First of all, find out where is his new army coming from. Are you allowing his retreating forces to regroup, or is he hiring mercs? Find out how many armies he can still raise. You could ignore the holdings for now, and destroy his routing troups, and then crush any newly raised forces before he can doomstack.

Be prepared for a long struggle – basically, you need to use your main army to pounce on any small (or morale-deficient) enemy armies, while a minimal portion of your army liberates territory one county of the time.

Keep an eye on his cashflow, though. If he's loaded, he will probably hire mercs sooner or later, so you need to peace him out before that.

Alternative solutions

If you're lucky, you can use your chancellor to sow discontent, and spark a rebellion. This will only work, if one of his vassals are already discontent.

Assassinate that mother. It'll cost you, and it's far from guaranteed. It might fail, and he will send a counter-assassin after you, which might not be such a bad thing (more on that later).

Also check if you can have the pope excommunicate him. If he has any enemies without a CB, they might use this opportunity to make his life miserable. Likely this isn't an option for you, but it never hurts to check.

Your ruler and your relations

I don't understand why you can't work from your situation as a child – you should have the same options as a normal ruler, only with severly gimped stats and no children. If you have a cute sister, you should be able to marry her off for an alliance. Invite people to your court and force-marry them, if nescesarry.

If you get the "wrong government type" alert, that means you are ruling something you shouldn't. Go though all of your titles and county screens again. Perhaps you are the de facto ruler of a title, that does not actually exist for some reason? Unless this title gives you a load of levies, get it fixed (by creating it or giving it away).

Do you have a dynastic heir? Perhaps an adult uncle or something? You know, maybe he should be ruling instead of you. Maybe you should fall down a well. Here's some ideas on how to make that happen. This will give you more options as an adult ruler, and might even simply end the war inconcluseively due to a change of management!

Conclusion

Lastly, be prepared to accept losses. If you can have him agree to any peace terms that doesn't involve you losing the game, consider it strongly. You will have CB on any lost territory, even if you become a vassal. It sucks, but it's not the end of the world, it's just a new development to your game.

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