Favorite Kingdoms Factions & Why

depending on the day of the week, my favorite is

Wales - I love the longbow/spears/light cav combo. The ability to to create a well defended fire base and effectively move it around plus having quick cavalry to sortie out here and there is well suited to my play style. Seeing a unit take arrows from 672 longbowmen at .5 speed is awesome =). Plus your longbowmen have pretty dresses.

Teutonic Knights - There is just something awe inspiring about sending those ritterbros charging headlong into some poor pagans... the black and white colors, the terrifying helmets... it is everything I love about TW. Their infantry of halberd weilding halfbros, order spears, dismounted ritters can carve through just about anything. They lack in good quality missles, but that just makes it more fun to plod on into a rain of arrows knowing once you get to the enemy, arrows be damned, they will all die in a sea of blood! (roar)

Teutonic Knights - Like the above poster said, they are just darn cool. They also fit into my playing style very well, heavily infantry and calvary based, with 3 superior types of my favorite types of infantry: swords, spears, and halberds. I am especially fond of their spear units, since they have such high stats and are so readily available they tend to be the mainstay in my army, rendering enemy heavy, light and even general's calvary practically useless. They are also able to hold their own against most mid-level shield infantry. Long ranged crossbows never hurt either, and all that hefty armor makes them take reduced casualties from well, everything. I love being able to take well-defended cities/castles/fortresses/citadels in a down-and-dirty on the walls battle with their superior units. There's just something special about having the option to use overwhelming brute force.

I can't help but smile whenever I see the rows upon rows of shining plate metal with their bright white tabards shining in the sunlight.

So far, I really like... Norway, from the Britannia campaign, the Apacheans from the Americas, and Antioch from the crusades - why?

Welllll, the Norwegians get some scary infantry I quickly become enamoured with, as well as liking the overall visual style of their units. I've never played a faction that has such difficulty with cavalry either (except my following pick,but it's exempted for obvious reasons), especially early game. Sure I like huscarls, but I'd rather they had a lance, cause it can make so much difference. It's nice to really rely on your shock infantry as opposed to them being left behind by rich toffs on horses with pointy-poles-of-death, and with Gotland infantry, who wouldn't want to use that shock infantry?

The Apacheans I like because they're completely different to any play style so far. The tiny wall-less towns, the almost upkeepless armies in exchange for no armour (is it just me or does the armour-makers tipi not work?), and the stealing technology to get access to some variably frightening units just works for me. By variably frightening, I mean apachean mounted thunder braves. Used on the old-world arrivals like the french, they win battles with ease. Those horrible cavalry rushes never even get to my front lines, and despite their 1 defense, they can charge footsoldiers of all types with ease, and disappear off again, firing whilst they do so, before they retalliate. most often, they just run. against such a mass of infantry that the natives field, however, their bullets go un-noticed and don't cause sufficient damage.

And Antioch? Well, the answer is simply appearance. I really like the colours of their edessan line of troops, especially those edessan axemen and knights, and I like the axemen in general. Also, I found it an interesting, if somewhat too easy challenge, to use a conventional western force to defeat the massed horse archers of the turks. A few units of Sodeer (usually four) archers combined with any heavy cavalry tends to leave few survivors.

So far I need to say Norway. I just love their shock infantry above all their Gotland infantry. The lack of Heavy cavalry also make the campaign more difficult and enjoying.

Britannia - Norway, mostly because they're a challenge. I love the fact that my first attempt at them saw me in -10000 by 20 turns (tried to turtle). So many possibilities with them.

Americas - Apaches. I like how you have to earn your cool units.

Easily the Apaches. Pumping out an endless line of units with no worries about upkeep is just too awesome.

Second would be Scotland, but I just love Scotland.

Least favorite would probably be anything from the Teutonic Campaign. The Teutons look cool, but it just feels like "more of the same" as the grand campaign. But more reliant on spearmen and cav, to the point where infantry and archers are virtually worthless.

Aztecs in the Americas campaign. It was a hoot duking it out with the Spanish and the Mayans later in the campaign. Some cool units with some interesting battle strategies.:yes:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=91440

The Byzantines in the Crusades mod :

Breaking an enemy infantry line in the center by sending in varangians is just too awesome

Byzantines in Crusades: They feel more like (a bit more anyway) what they deserved to be in vanilla. Although it is weird to have Constantinople up there in the very north-west of the map.

Mayans in Americas, though I like the Apaches as well. I suppose their not ultimately dissimilar to the Aztecs, but they just feel indefinably righter, somehow.

Ireland in Britannia: Play a moderate-difficulty campaign until you get late-era cavalry, then laugh in your foes collective face. "Yo, Gotaland Footmen! We're over here! *BLAM*... and now we're over here, try and keep up. And yes, you're still in range. *BLAM*... and now we're behind you. Sorry. *BLAM*" etc...

Antagonist

Britannia -> Norway for the challenge and the heavy infantry units.

Crusades -> Principality of Antioch, partly cause they are french like me and because i like their knights very much.

Teutonic -> Teutonic Order cause they are damn cool visually speaking.

the oh so cool "no post but a link to a previous thread" post only works when the threads are the same.