My favorite personal story of all time is an epic comeback in multiplayer. Having lost my capital and being reduced to 2 commanders, a merc company and a handful of indies (my god being killed as well) i managed to crawl back and reach 2nd or 3rd place (depending on who you ask
before losing.
Back in Dom2, as what is now, Middle Era Man, i was playing a newbie game with several others players. My large force of Knights of Avalon moved into an indie province the same time as a massive force of Neifel Giants from another player (i had no recruitable scouts in any previous province i captured, a problem the whole game). He crushed my Knights almost to a man, and then moved onward, capturing all my provinces and even eventually my capital. But i still refused to give up, and took my last handful of troops, basically just a Castillion, a priest, some random assortment of barbarians, lizard warriors, a few human troops, and a merc company, and starting capturing whatever province i could hit, just to stay alive.
Fortunately he had taken Turmoil and Misfortune, so his empire was starting to fall apart from within, and his Giants had been utterly crushed, having traved south away from my lands only to die horrible deaths to Marignon flaming-arrow crossbow hordes. My capital was relatively undefended, but i feel certain that i was within one combat round of routing and losing my last chance in the game, when his Giant PD routed instead and lost the battle - giving me back my capital!
Neifelheim fell completely apart (helped a great deal by my Bards) and never seriously threatened anyone again. Although pretty badly behind i managed to get Nature Global up, started massing Vine Ogres, and at one point had become a real power again. I even used my Pretender to Fairy Trod into Marignon's backyard and trashed his economy with a scorched earth-style raid. I began pushing into several old empires and, for a brief moment, appeared to have a small but honest chance at winning the game!
Sadly my Vine Ogre hordes were customized to use against Ctis; for some reason that can only be called the "Prisoner's Delimma" logic of late game Dominions diplomacy, Marignon and I who had patched up relations to fight off Ctis, turned on me and utterly annihilated my Vine Ogres with Arch-Devil SCs. But, unable to capture my forts, he was at a stalemate. This allowed Ctis, whom i was pushing back and had even wiped his main Sage research facility, to crush both of us in the end.
Still, a pretty epic game! Newbie games are/were (imo) a bit more fun anyway, as comebacks like this are possible when players haven't got the system gamed to a T and everyone is still making mistakes.