Best faction under AI control?

[Brave]

The best factions will be the best under auto-resolve, this is what the ai uses to determine battle outcomes?

[Martok]

The Egyptians/Fatamids nearly always do well in my campaigns, dominating the eastern half of the map more often than not. The Byzantines, Spanish, and French are also usually pretty strong (although the Byz have a tendency to shrink and collapse later on under pressure from the Eggies). I've seen the Almos, Sicilians, and Novgorod get pretty big as well, depending on the circumstances.

[Youngie]

The Papacy by a country mile. Its the only faction that can keep on recurring no matter what. The fact they can also push other AI christian factions against you shows the power of this geographically small but powerful nemesis at best.

[caravel]

All factions use the same AI, the difference is mainly down to starting positions and potential for income, including trade income. The Byzantine, Spanish and Egyptians have the best potential income to start with in the early era and are all in fairly strong starting positions. The unpredictable ones are the French, Almohads and Sicilians. Those are the factions that can suddenly get luck and take half of the map before you even realise it.

[Heidrek]

In VI the Vikings by a good margin, then the Saxons. In the regular campaign, the French seem to routinely be the power to beat.

I recently found out why I feared Huscarles so much. I figured it was just because I was new to the game before, then I fought a single battle that scared the crap out of me. I outnumbered and out gunned the enemy by a healthy margin.

Vikings attacked with a half strength Viking Landsmen, 2 units of Pesants, 2 units of Viking Thralls, and a single unit of Huscarles (the King, a 3* general).

Against them I had 2 units of Horsemen, 1 Spearmen, 1 Armoured Spearmen, another half strength AS, 2 Kerns, 2 Bonnachts and 1.5 units of Gallowglasses. Like Lambs to the slaughter I though and rubbed my hands together, anticipating the victory to come. Things got better when he sent his Huscarles off by themselves and sent his pesants, thralls and Landsmen into the teeth of my forces. They were quickly dispatched and routed. I made sure I kept a unit of Bonnachts and Kerns with full javelins for the Huscarles when the arrived.

The Huscrales arrived and literally tore me apart. I pelted them with Jav's, pinned them with the spears and proceeded to flanked them, charged them with Horsemen, Bonnacts and Gallowglasses from all sides and they STILL slaughtered me. The routed my entire army basically by themselves.

I watched in horror as my gallowglasses charged in from the flanks, and promptly started falling over dead! The spears collapsed and ran despie holding high ground. Armoured Spearmen arrived to reengage them and give my troops a chance to rally and hit the flanks again, but in moments they were down to 80 men, then 70, then 60 while the strike infantry finally arrived only to bounced off the Huscarles! The AS crumbled and fled - in desperation my Kerns general led a charge against the exposed viking flank. Soon the general was fleeing as well, and the Huscarles were still on 16 men.

huscarles mean business. Doesn't matter what you field against them, they will go through it. The only way I've found to deal with them effectively is to Javelin them to death. The image of my gallowglasses charging into the flank, and soon after fleeing for their lives will haunt me forever.

[Martok]

Yeah, Huscarles are definitely overpowered in the vanilla game. They're among a number of units whose stats will probably be overhauled in the Pocket Mod -- they need to be nerfed to at least a degree.

[Jxrc]

Usually in a campaign, the most successful AI managed factions are (early period):

- French (smash England and the HRE);
- Spanish (smash Elmos and Aragon);
- Byz (smash Turks and go wild in the steppes);
- Egypt (smash Turks).

For IA battles between Byz and Egyptians, my experience is that the outcome is greatly influenced by whether or not the Byz are able to ship troops across the Blakc Sea. If they can, they usually do well. I greatly prefer the Egyptians to be successful cause I kind of find them easier to beat than the Byz who can get almost unstoppable once they have grabbed the steppes and the entire Middle East

Of course, it all depends on which faction is managed by the player. If yiou select the Turks, one can hope that the Byz and Egyptians will not do too well ...