hardest, easiest, most enjoyable faction

[the Awesome one]

what do u juys think is the hardest and easiest faction i say that portugal is the hardest and england is the eaisest, and my most enjoyable faction is france

[Darth Cannabis]

I'd only say porugal hardest of the western european nations, but the hardest would have to be chosen out of russia, turks or the byzantines.

Russia starts off very small (1 place) and all the nearby rebel cities are greatly spread out. This can make the inital expansion slow, and the long distances cause rebels to be a more continual pain. Furthermore being all the way east, you are most assured to end up fighting the mongols and timurads late in game.

Turks have similar issues. While starting off slightly larger, they are spread out across a mountainous dessert area, and this makes it a very tough economic start. Expanding navally is difficult due to byzantine ships, and right as you finally start to make ends meet financially, the mongols will appear. However, if you can surive all that, some of the late game Turk units are a nice reward for the hardships.

And last the byzantines, which up until a point are pretty strong (some horseback archers period to control land, and fireships to control sea), but the byzantines are the single weakest faction in game, when it comes to later arty. Byzantines only get bombards (no further cannons) and lack gunpowder infantry late game. Also the long game victory conditions involve control of both Rome and Jeureselum (or was it Antioch). So the final result is war against islamic east, and catholic west, while having less modern weaponry, which is uphill battle where the only bright side is that your veterans soldiers will be well trained from holding off crusades and jihads all the time.

As far as easiest faction or most enjoyable? I tend to lean towards those with basilisks at the end of the cannon upgrades. When you can hit 3/4 away across the battlefield,a good battle will leave a fair portion of enemy dead before in rang eof your archers, and sieges become a simple as 1, 2 ,3.

1) Blast holes in (in line if possible) thru enemy walls.
2) Blast towers in range of said holes
3) Swarm in with as many heavy infantry as can afford.

Works well with Denmark, HRE, Scotland (thou they may stop short of baskilisks, but make up for it with more armor) etc.

[Rodso]

easiest for me is england hardest would be venice as i tend be attacked by everyone around me

[5n4k3d0cToR]

All factions are easy once you have some experience under your belt imo. As for difficulty whilst starting a campaign?=Russia due to distances & Venice.

[Red Bat]

Easiest depends on how much of a risk you are willing to take with early expansions.

The HRE can more than double the size of their nation within 15 turns without going to war if you are willing to take some risks. If you manage that you will get enough of an early lead to pretty much remove most of the game's difficulty.

Otherwise I found Milan to be the easiest as they get almost all their best units from towns, which make far more money than castles. So Milan tends to have an absurdly good economy compared to every other faction. Their castle units kind of suck though, but they do end up getting pretty much every gunpowder unit, so they don't have to worry too much about late-game. They also start with the awesome Italian Spear Millitia unit.

Denmark is also pretty easy since they have a very good unit selection right from the start. However they need to take some risk with expansion early on as they only start with one territory.

Deciding the hardest faction is much easier. It's definently Scotland. They have to fight England early on, and England starts fairly powerful. They also start with very few units, only one territory, a cardinal who is too old to be useful, and one of the few rebel territories nearby is defended by powerful units. Mid-game is pretty bad for them too, as they never get good cavalry unless they attract a holy knight order (which is tough for them), and their archers are below average. They get powerful but cheap infantry units later on though, but that is pretty much all they have going for them. They don't even get gunpowder units.

Hungary and Egypt are also pretty difficult. The Byzantines have a hard late-game, but if they take out the Turks and Hungary early on, they might get enough of a lead that it won't matter.

[Improper Use]

easiest: england/scotland (Island and scotland can easily kick out england right off the bat.
Hardest: HRE/Turkey (HRE is totally surrounded and easily accessed from so many, Turfkey has two powerful neighbours and two invasions to deal with)

its all realtive to difficulty, Very Hard is has the AI throwing everything it has at you, I've seen factions destroyed because they threw all their family members at me.

ps, spain and portugal are also pretty easy, as the peninsula can be easily locked down choking the land based access routes. And in late game they both get conquistadors, some stupidly powerful melee units

[Fed]

Easiest faction for me is probably is France, not having great infantry in the beginning isn't really a problem and England (being your no.1 rival until you have a big enough army) usually can't fight against you at cost of fighting the Scotts at the same time. Plus having you sides against Spain (not having very good infantry besides javenlin), Germany (being caught in the middle and strechted to the coin into war) and Milan (being very small and usually dies from not being able to expand intime to fight against it's suroundning foes) makes you enemies usually a joke.

Hardest for me pesonally is Portugal, like Darth Cannabis said, mainly for having a small starting point and having to fight Spain (who have very similar units to you) and the never ending armies of the Moors. Then since you're Isolated makes getting money from trade income nearly impossible and not being able to build building too often since you need a large enough army to fight off Spain and the Moors.

Funnest it Scotland for me, who doesn't like using the nobles and charging at the english while yelling SCOOTLAND FOREVEER!!! or FREEEDOOOM!!!

[Improper Use]

You know early on if you hire 1 mercanary ship you can park it on the landbridge between the peninsula and africa and watch the moors stack up unable to progress.

Same witha fort but you have to fight them off.

[Yotz]

I my self so far find Portugal very fun and easy. I had one army take over all of Iberia (While Spain was busy fighting the armys of the Moors, I snuck in, kicked them off Iberia, and they peaced with me) And I have another army going around the coast making trade outposts (Such as Ireland and Wales, Brittany, and even in Russia after I got a crusade called, only downside is these outposts have to be heavly defended since they wont get more recruits if war breaks out easily)

[disconnect]

The easiest seem to be england or scotland, as they are on islands. France looks to be easy too, as they have those "terminator" (cheater) multi functional infantry units (aventurier, scots guard) that are heavy armor knights and crossbowman in same time... while for other factions these are seperate units.
However i played Hungary for the most of time (as i am a patriot :) ), where with few units of pavise crossbowmen, dismounted feudal knights, pavise spearmen (againts cavalry), 1-2 units of heavy cavalry, 1 unit of light cavalry (magyar cavalry is good because in early battle they are good on trolling infantry, and siege units, later when they ran out of arrows, can help with melee attacks, and they are fast and have good stamina), nothing can stop me, except the "unspecified error the game will exit..."

[A Disappointed Horse]

England is stupidly easy. You can just take the British Isles and then blitzkrieg France.