What is the Hardest faction in the game

So yeah, I've been wondering, what is the hardest faction to play for overall in the game in your opinion. By that i mean the campaighn game

In my opinion it is the HRE. Purely because of their position. Also Im never fond of starting with lots of regions. It confuses my starting game. Have to point out that Im choosing from the initially unlocked factions not the unlockable ones.

Not sure. Scotland needs gunners, badly! even Just Arquebueisers (sp?), HRE starts out in a bad area, Poland does too. Byzantines rapidly die out and the Danes have it tough, being sandwhiched between Poland, HRE and later Russia. Egypt is hard as soon as the Horde hits and Crusading armies are everywhere.

HRE (surrounded position) and Turkey (poor starting position and of course the allmighty Mongol armies) are the hardest. Danes are not that hard since Stockholm is one of the most lucrative cities and Scandinavia is easy to protect.

@Gambie : plus the Danish generals all have a chance to be good traders a birth, boosting trade some more :)

The Russians are pretty hard... They get the Polish (who are superior early on) right in the face very early, have superlarge regions so they must plan things out very, very thoroughly cause they can't react fast, and on top of that they are strapped for cash for a long time. And then, when they're not anymore, the Mongols come :sweatdrop:

The Egyptians seem also hard on paper (never played them) : cash but crummy units, and getting to face the Turks and the Crusaders, if not both.

This question is quite simple when you take everything into consideration.

Jihad and crusader factions can exploit the extra movement and extra income and this makes all of them relatively easy factions to play. Further, the catholic factions get income and useful missions from the pope.

That leaves Byzantium and Russia. Russia gets a very large area to control, very low income at start of campaign and the effect of the Mongols.

From the catholic factions it would be (in order) Hungary, Poland, HRE

Byzantium has some really powerful units early in the game, and a near-inpenetrable fortress (Constantinople). The problems they face are Crusades, which easily avoided if you pay a "tithe" to the Pope in Rome (why cant there be an Anti-Pope for Orthodox factions?), Constantinople is a primary target for the Mongols, and that their effectiveness drops to almost nil once everyone else gets gunpowder. Not the hardest faction if you blitzkrieg the map.

Scotland, while lacking in gunpowder, has early pikemen and the best position in the game. Once you kick out the English, the entire islands of the UK and Ireland are now yours. The AI is barely able to make amphibious assaults, giving you a fortress without walls. The fact that Venice will most likely beat you to any Crusade objective is not all that good, however.

My vote? The Turks or Russians. Poor early units, and extreme proximity to the Mongols and Tiramids. For the Turks, buiilding up Georgia is vital to keeping the Mongols out of Turkey. For Russia, the land is so spread out that the Mongols will eventually find their way to your capital. Russia is also in close proximity to Poland and Hungary.

I have played as the Scottish and Byzantine and the Byzantine are extremely hard compared to the Scots. With Scotland I felt I could last forever with the control of the British Isles. With the Byzantines I am constantly fighting Timurids, Russians, and Turks, and the rapidly expanding English, have just become my neighbors in Greece. They control all of Europe except Spain and Rome and have about 6 full stacks at my border in Thessolonica.

I finished for Scots on VH/VH - very easy. Then I played for Russians on VH, harder then Scots and more interesting, very good units.
Then I red about that HRE is very hard. So I tryed them and found that they are very very easy. All u need for them is just destroy Dutch, Venice, Milan as fast as possible. I did it in 20 turnes. I had diplomat at papal states to make papa happy by giving him small presents each turn. So I avoided excomunication. So after 30 turnes I had huge kindom, with huge income, several expirienced full stack armies, and new age units ready for war.

I started war with pol and french after ( i married hungarian princess, so no problems with them), after 10 turnes I almost destroyed Pol, and was succesfully kicking frenches asses. My kingdom was so big, I undesrstood that I will finish game in 20 - 30 turnes at max. So I stoped its boring.

This game is TOO EASY unfortunately :( Ai very stupid.

Only chalange I had playing Russians against Mongols. Mongols very tough on VH\VH. Fighting them is really hard, I even lost several armies in somwhat equl battles. I was really surprised.

You ask about Orthodox anti-popes. I assume there aren't any because historically there would be no such thing. The nearest Orthodox equivelent to the Pope would be a Patriarch, each one controling a geographical region. The Patriarch of Constantinople is the head Patriarch, but he is more like a first among equals than a Pope. Also, since his base was Constantinople, he was generally pretty much under the Byzantine Emperor's thumb. There was no independent papacy running, or trying to run, the Orthodox church.

I have played over half of the factions, and the hardest one that I have played with was the Byzantines by far. I haven't played as the HRE yet, so I'm sure that won't be easy at all. The easiest campaign was with France, because I just blitzed like crazy and had like 12 settlements in like 3 turns.