If only 38 martial meant something.
It actually does.
You don't really want to take on a high martial liege with 10 fully upgraded levy building counties.
He can raise 20k of his own levy, not including vassals.
Once the +20 martial drops, I was reduced to just 12K.
While I do agree high martial liege isn't worth risking in open battles, I'd still want a high martial liege for the levy raise cap.
And when I had the -20 Diplomacy due to speaking in tongues, it never mattered a lot - except for instances where my mayors demand a tax break because factions don't revolt when your levy count is quadruple theirs not even including your retinue.
And they are all still going strong, pillaging their catholic neighbors with a great heathen army of their own.
If you don't go to war when you're in this state, you're probably going to get fucked over your vassal loyalty penalties due to possessed -20, spawn of satan -20 and assortments of other negative traits incited by lunacy.
Better to go all out and gift land to vassal while using the +20 Martial Bonus constantly to tip the balance to your side. Not to mention this is an opportunity to press Holy War claims all over your neighbor freely, something the AI can never do cause he had to rely on the fabricate game and they never broke truce. Ever.
In fact, the main reason why the Umayyad and Abbasids are so out of control is because they have the ability to wage war almost everywhere they wished. They never ran out of targets, they have big levies, and happy vassals due to piety bonus, Muslim traits and gifted lands. Decadence didn't do jack shit to stop the Umayyads from raising 40k levy in Empire of Hispania to stop ALMOST EVERY SINGLE REVOLT WHILE RAPING ALL OF SPAIN.
no hablo espanol
The whole Spain is Sunni now, Byzantine is lead by a 'Slow' 5 year old Basileus facing a Caliphate Jihad for Anatolia at 97% warscore lead by a 6 year old Caliph.
This isn't anyone's fault btw, it's just that Paradox made Muslims too damn EZ mode for the AI now for the other beliefs to compete.