best faction to turtle with?

[PBI]

Can you Crusade against (Catholic) European rebels? I thought the Pope only allowed crusades against non-Catholics.

[FactionHeir]

You can crusade against any rebels as long as those provinces are known to the game as valid crusade targets.

[Shahed]

I think the most fun I've had turtling is with Scotland (owning the isles). Nice small elite army, with the occasional foray into the mainland to loot some wine, beer, chocolates and other goodies for morale.

[Zaleukos]

Denmark, Scotland, and England are prime turtling factions. Either faction can conquer the British isles + Scandinavia for an extremely defensible base (and if you only have the British isles any invader will accept peace proposals due to the lack of land border). While these arent cavalry specialists I find both English and Danish cavalry perfectly adequate. Both can recruit cavalry from cities (Demi Lancers and War Clerics), English knights have charge and Armour, and the Danes get Chivalric knights. You can also opt for Templars/hospitallers in the cities. So it should be perfectly possible to play these guys as cavalry factions.

Otherwise Portugal/Spain/The Moors are good for turtling. The Pyrenees can easily be blocked from Northern invaders and you will mostly be left alone in Africa as long as you dont take Tunis (and even if you do it is easy to buy off invaders since the invaders wont have a land border against you.

Regarding Cavalry: Of the catholic factions only Scotland, Milan, and Venice are really disadvantaged in Cavalry, and they can all make up for it with Templars/Hospitallers. At any rate the only difference between Catholics is in the top tier Cavalry where English/Portuguese knights have slightly worse melee stats and the French and Germans have super heavies, and this is IMHO not very significant. The main asset for heavy cavalry is the charge value, and Chiv/Gothic/English/Noble/Lancers/Polish knights/Polish retainers/ ALL have the same charge value.

EDIT: I guess you can play the moors as a light cavalry faction (Arab Cavalry tends to die off quickly but is plentiful and available early) and they will also get Christian guards late in the game (more or less equivalent to western Knights).

[G^2]

Sicily is also an option to turtle with. As long as you stay away form Corsica, Sardinia, and Durazzo, no one should really bother you. Since your in the middle of the Mediterranean, you can establish good trade routes and you can buy Bolougue form the HRE. The key is to make an alliance with the pope and keep your relations with him perfect, then if you do get attacked, that faction gets ex-communicated. If you get bored, Tunis and North Africa are easy targets to expand too.

As for calvary, Sicily has the powerful Norman Knights and if you expand into Tunis, Knights Hosplitar and Templar.

[Zaleukos]

Yeah I forgot Sicily. Buy Bologna and give it to the pope, take Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers, Marrakesh, Timbuktu and Arguin and noone will bother you, save the odd landing outside Tunis (which resemble Caernarvon in that some stupid faction that doesnt have any business there still likes to land there). Merchants in Tumbuktu and Arguin will help an already strong economy even further.

The only question is where to make Castle troops. Palermo is better as a city, and Tunis is also an excellent city. Maybe Algiers, but it is a few extra turns away from everything... I'd probably keep Palermo a castle in this scenario as the location is very central.

[Archpedant]

Any faction at any level of difficulty can be played turtle if you put enough thought into it .

To avoid attacks:

a) always strongly garrison settlements (if you are playing defensively you don't need a field army or navy so this is not that difficult to afford)

b) ally with everyone

c) never attack anyone and offer peace every move if you are attacked

d) build forts garrisoned by peasants at every choke point an invader has to cross (as England I built seven in two rows just south of the Scottish border and was never attacked even at VH/VH).

e) keep the Pope happy

f) convert most castles to cities, build economic structures and use money to hire mercenaries that can be easily disbanded after a crisis has passed - rather than waste money and time building military structures that will recruit inferior troops anyway.

Also note that many factions can field powerful cavalry from top level marksman ranges - the Milanese and HRE for instance get mounted crossbows which combined with some knights can be an unbeatable combination.

In this respect the English get rather shafted as historically they should have mounted longbows but for some reason these are given to the French instead (whether longbows were ever actually used from horseback is another question - most commentators say its impossible but the Japanese certainly used 5-foot long long bows while mounted)