I do not kid when saying this, without using cheats to give yourself a pretty pile of gold/income from cities, it's 'lol Dark Souls is easy peasy' level hard, because at least in Dark Souls you don't have to spend IRL days grinding off sacking bandits silly just so you can sell items for more than a hundred gold apiece. Now to start there will be a couple of admissions. Spacebattles, I doth give thee 1257 AD, The Spacebattler's Lets Play: God Damn Heathens Gitofmylawn Edition

There is no peace amongst the realm of men, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting heathens. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark past there is only war. Forget peace and brotherhood, for so much has been forgotten since the fall of Rome. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold tens of thousands. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from infidels, heretics, pagans - and worse. Their comrades in arms are legion: the armies of the Holy Roman Empire and countless Frankish armies, the ever vigilant Teutonics and the priests of the Papacy to name only a few. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Crusaders, the Warrior-Monks, mighty Knights of Christendom. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted realms. Mighty fleets cross the torrential sea of the Mediterranean, the only route between the continents, their way lit by the Stars, the manifestation of God's will. Yet even in his waning state, the Pope continues his vigilance. He is the Lord of all Christendom for whom a hundred souls are pledged a day, so Christianity may never die. He is an ailing man speaking the holy word that echoes back to the Roman Empire.

He is the Master of the Flock by the will of God, and master of a million souls by divine right. For more than ten centuries a Pope has sat immobile on the Throne of Catholicism.

Mount and blade 1257 ad