GA campaign

ok i have done a bunch of campaigns,,, and this one i am almost done with has been insane. i was the english, started off in early, ont he hard level, which is a big step up for me since i usually play easy or normal b/c im lazy.. i started off ok, building up my techs and not really spending on the army, then the french started to really tick me off, attacking me with peasants and just knocking out my units slowly. and taking my provinces b/c the units were not very good. so i started to build up my army, and fought the french for about 300 years and finally knocked them out of the game,, then for the longest time i jsut built up trade, setting up ships up through to sweden and all the way through the Med Sea and over to constiantinople. i had a ok cash flow, not much more than the 1000 florins altogether that i usually had,,, then i staerted to build again,, a long period of it... i relized that i had no port in flanders, nor normandy. i built ports there and my god, i could nto believe it,,, my trade just took off. i now have a bank of 155,000 florins. its insane. i have so much money but i cant take over anything because the polish own half of the map ( i know i cant believe it either, i am allied with them) and the spanish own a good portion, i took over some of their lands when their king died with no heirs and the rebels occupied it but when the spanish reappeared they attacked me even though we were allies for the longest time before that and they took back the lands i conquered. i launched some crusades, but only successful in one, i was out numbered in the first one, wont he second one and the spanish took over the province i was crusading to so the crusade failed after a long time of inactivity. so right now i am doing amazing int he economic part but im 2nd to the Polish in the GA part of it. i will let you guys know how it turns out. i also started a Mercian campaign for GA and have it set to expert. its really hard, i am alaways being attack by the vikings and the saxons,, all i can get out is peasants, i have some other units like cav being made but i cant keep up with all the invasions.

You fought the french for 300 years?

I think you need to focus on being wily and building up only a few provinces. Build a keep and then a spearmakers workshop and horse breeder (spearmaker lvl2 and horse farm lvl 2) then start training loads of mounted seargants. Also build watchtowers and send emmisaries into french provinces to recon out their forces.

If they have loads of spearmen it would be good to build some spearmen of your own, so I suggest you build some forts in less important provinces and churn out a few spearmen, then put your king or a prince with a high command skill in command of this army and go invade.

You need to match their troops with yours, so you will need a unit of spearmen for every group of royal knights and spearmen they have and a unit of mounted seargants for every unit of archers, urban milita and peasants they have +1 unit of mounted seargants so you can flank them. I also suggest building masses of hobilars, they are useful early on, but mounted seargants are like hobilars +1 valour with a charge which equals that of knights so they will be your war winning unit. Set up a line of spearmen (or feudal seargants which are like spearmen +1 valour) and focus on flanking them with your mounted seargants. After you've conquerred France you should have enough experience to conquer other countries in your own way.

the french have been long gone,, my estimation was too much before ( it seemed like they were around forever), now that i look back at my game it was more like 100 years, i mostly have castles now in every province and its around 1380 now.