What has been the most misplaced faction you've seen?

I was playing a Late Byz GA game and, after securing my borders by smashing the Turks and Egyptians, I went after the Russians, because they accumulate GA points like dung collects flies. And I had to show them that their proper Orthodox ruler lives in Constantinople :). I began to acquire the steps from the rebels ( the Mongols had packed it in), and then went after Muscovy and Kiev. The Russians fell back, but instead of attacking me, they kept campaigning to the West. Encouraged, I kept up the pressure and took their core provinces one by one. By the time their last ruler died their easternmost province was Prussia, and their westernmost was Burgundy. To top it off, they reappeared around 1440 in Saxony! This amazing journey makes me wonder: has anyone else seen some crazy non-historical faction migrations?

Well, yes. I had HRE appearing in Palestine and Arabia. I have seen French and English stuck on Malta. I have also seen France conquer the entire British Isles.

Yes Italians in Roman Empire

Italians re-emergin in Sweden had me giggling for weeks...

Let see now... Mongols in Danmark, Sicilian empire in Asia Minor, HRE in Arabia, French trapped in Scotland by the British, Danes in Spain.

Then I had one campaign were the HRE took England, but the English didn't bother thanks to thier empire in Russia.

All of the above empires didn't have provinces in any normal place. Two of them (HRE first example, and the Danes) lost those province thanks to me.

I had the eqyptian faction retern once in Russia.

I had the Italians appearing in Moscovy once and the HRE in Cordoba.

Well, because of Crusades, I often see the Catholic factions (Spain, England, France, less often HRE or Italy) reappearing in the Middle East or North Africa.

In my latest game, the English had been driven out of Britain by revolts, the French and the Spanish, and were in control of most of Spain (Portugal always revolts); after I wiped them out there, they reappeared a few years later in Livonia. Apparently they had done a Crusade there once, held it for a year or two, and then were driven out.

How about this..............
playing as Itlanians, The Gosh dangit POPE, every 5 years with a bigger army every time and spread to a new province everytime, like the last time he even reapeared in Rome, Sicily, Naples, the Papist states, VENICE, Corsica and Genoese. I WANT TO MOD THE POPE OUT. Does anyone know how to do this.

It can be done (well, sort of: there's a way to send him to Sahara, where he can do nothing; no move, no build, no army). Check out threads in the Dungeon forum.

In MTW/VI, if a faction has "been" in a province, it can respawn in that province, later. I guess the theory being: each move is 1 year; even if the faction's army (or Crusade or Jihad) moves on the next year, some soldiers or hangers-on will remain in the province, making, e.g. an English enclave in Antioch, a Polish enclave in Wessex, or other seemingly weird places.

In my most recent campaign as Denmark, the Spanish, having been pushed out of Iberia by the Almohads, are sitting on my Novgorod (I've expanded all the way into the Baltic and am allied to the Spanish, so I pulled a joint attack on Novgorod with them,this is how I figured out where they are at, as all my longships encircling the Iberian coast have spotted nothing but Almos anf Frenchys) border in Muscovy, Volga-Bulgaria and Khazar

Once saw the Aragonese in Palestine defending Jerusalem against a Turkish onslaught.

I was the French and had a pretty good trade network set up from the coasts of Iberia all the way to Constantinople and the black sea. There were four major powers in Europe at the time: Myself with all of Modern day France plus Most of Italy (minus Rome), The English with the British Isles and a strong foothold in Germany, Aragon with Iberia all of north Africa stopping at Sinai, and finally The Polish with the other half of Germany, Hungary and Constantinople.

The only power in the East was the Turks, who owned all of Asia Minor and everything from Sinai to Khazar. Well The Ai thought it would be funny to crusade against the Turks and disrupt the nice peace we all had going, well in about 1292 they did and were able to take Palestine a few years later.

The Turks were clearly angry as they started massing troops in the provinces that bordered Palestine, and suddenly i saw a golden opportunity, Aragon had rushed a lot of it's troops south and into Africa to fight it's new war and their borders with me were nigh unguarded...so about 10 turns later i invaded.

Didn't stop until they had lost all of Iberia, even though they had a good shipping network, my navy took care of them with ease and their armies that I encountered were no match for me. After I launched a seaborne invasion of Morocco they suffered a civil war and their king became isolated in Palestine, surrounded on all sides by Turks and rebels.

Both myself and the Turks cleaned up what was left of the rebel forces until there were no more left to destroy. The aragonese King got locked up in Jerusalem and suffered heavy losses each turn by both invasions from the land (Turks) and invasions from the sea (me).

I have to give credit to that king, even though he got cut off from everything he managed to last 7 years before he was taken down.

I have seen the Italians and the Byzantines swap most of their lands including Venice and Constaniople.

i've had the byz in germany b4

Almohads in Mercia.

almohads in finland...

Yeah, I had the Hungarians all the way into Western Europe. Just like the AI usually is, though, they had themselves spread out thin and I destroyed their empire with some quick attacks in a matter of two or three turns.

Russians in Malta! Never knew why.