Quote Originally Posted by Strike For The South View Post
Granted I only play sporadically (now not at all) but even back in my heyday I always found the HRE and Italy to be rather hard. HRE because when you are pushing into Greece with a low influence king the generals back home tend to be restless and Italy because the danged pope my how I hate that yellow....
Indeed, the HRE is just a tough campaign, period -- maybe even more so than the Turks. While I've not played as them very frequently, it's still significant that I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've managed to survive more than 20-25 years as the Germans. They definitely have the cards stacked against them in a lot of ways:

Their starting position virtually guarantees you'll be at war with multiple factions early on, and (not coincidentally) often times excommunicated as well. Their lands aren't particularly wealthy, they have no naval presence to speak of, and most of their good/unique units aren't available til the Late period.

About their only real advantage (if you can call it that) is the fact that, like the Papacy, they can't be destroyed by having their royal family killed off -- one never need worry about your faction dying without an heir. On the other hand, civil wars do tend to be much more of a threat....