And the actual rating should be ?

[Jxrc]

I think the evaluation given at the beginning of each campaign is quite misleading. I almost only play GA early. Feel free to share your toughts.

Early (GA)
Almohads: don't know never used them
Aragon: very hard
Byzance: dead easy
Denmark: fairly easy
Egypt: easy
England: easy
France : moderate
German : hard for 50 turns - easy afterwards
Hungarian: don't know never used them
Italy: easy
Poland : moderate
Sicilian : hard in GA
Spanish: easy
Turks : moderate

[o_loompah_the_delayer]

Almo - very easy
Aragon - dont know dont have VI
Byz - boring
Denmark - can be tricky, depends on how you start
Egypt- boring
England - easy
France - can be tricky
HRE - can be tricky
Italy - easy
Poland - hard, need quite a bit of luck
Spain - eacy
Turks - easy

[FoundationII]

I believe I can win on both glorious achivements on any difficulty rating
The most important things are the initial provinces, they can't have enemies on all sides.
You can win against the AI easily if you only have 1 border to defend (for example, I crushed the Bysantines with the turks in hardest within 15 years, I could have beaten the rest of Europe easily within 150 years, but the Egyptians tought they should stab me in the back what made the conquering about 100 years longer)
So:
-Almo are easy
-Aragon is hard
-Byzantines moderate(his good economy and influence makes up for the borders)
-Denmark is easy(if you lose Denmark you can forget a quick domination)
-Egypt easy (same as above: Egypt is vulnerable)
-England is easy
-France is hard
-HRE hard (easy revolts+is easily attacked by 2 or more sides)
-Italy easy in MTW, hard in VI (I heard the Pope wants to expand in VI, never saw it tough)
-Poland is hard
-Spain is easy
-Turks are hard (unless the Egyptians make a good ally)

[Ironside]

It would be fun to se this one for different timelines.
I could add one
French late = moderate (had a four front war very early, and only one was started by me).

[hoom]

The only time I tried the Italians was with VI & I got spanked by the Poop.
He'd attack my (lightly garrisoned for economy reasons) rear borders, then when I counter attacked & got rid of him, he'd reappear with more & more troops http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif

I guess what you need to do is give him a spanking but leave him a small depleted army so he can't expand or be a risk...

Byzantines get in difficulty late when taking on the advanced later units unless you have managed to build up a decent reserve of Varangian Guards.

[FoundationII]

Why can't you build Varangian Guard in late?

[econ21]

Most factions are not that hard if you "rush" the AI early when they just have peasants etc. On early, France can be united within a decade and then becomes like a stronger England. Alternatively, most factions can become very powerful if you play a slower game but max out trade. I find the game is only really fun if you try to roleplay it or go for GAs [exception: for some reason I find vanilla campaigns are great fun when played PBM as in the "who wants to be king of..." threads here at the org]

Of the ones I have tried, I would say Poland is the hardest. There you have to rush - sitting stagnant will get you wiped out - but doing so is rather tense.

I really like HRE on early - definitely harder than England (my other favourite). With early versions of the WesMod, HRE was even more tense.

PS: VG are not available late as historically they were not. In the game it is a nice additional way of building in the relative decline of Byzantium as time passes (the declining relative strength of kats, Biz infantry etc are others).