Never played GA...

[Al Qasim Hussein]

I am finally wrapping up my HRE campaign of world conquest, and I really want to play another faction now. I've done the Almohads (pre-patch, had to delete so didn't finish) and they were fun (especially without that stupid POPE), but does anyone have a preference for GA games?

I guess I'm looking for a faction with a lot of challenge, but with the potential to become dominant with some work. Which could describe any of them I guess...oh well, ideas?

[Sandy-San]

i was thinking of starting a GA campaign sometime soon too, but as there are so many complaints about the point scoring, I don't know if it is worth it

[econ21]

I play GA in the early period but don't take too much notice of the points/scoring - just try to "roleplay" it by meeting my objectives and not planning world conquest.
I would guess the Western Catholic countries (Spain, France, England, Italy and HRE) are the most fun on GA because of the crusade objectives. You can spend the first 100 years focussing on these - it does take time - and try to be nice to your Catholic neighbours + keep the Pope onside. Other countries seem to have less interesting GA, although I'm open to correction here.
Actually HRE maybe the best - if you play defensive, you still get a lot of action plus there are some flavoursome later GA (expand East, expand to Italy etc).
England is more straightforward - the first 100 years can more or less follow history, if you stay confined in France and don't try to expand too much.

[Bob the Insane]

Quote[/b] (Simon Appleton @ Dec. 19 2002,05:14)]I play GA in the early period but don't take too much notice of the points/scoring - just try to "roleplay" it by meeting my objectives and not planning world conquest.

I do the same thing, it is fun and challenging. Becuase you are not killing or crippling other factions they develop to and it can get hard to fight them, you aslo tend to not get the to superpower syndrome as the AI factions are less likely to wipe each other out...

Try playing as a Catholic faction without fighting other catholic factions and making use of crusades to gain more land... It is pretty good.

[Leet Eriksson]

France is pretty interesting,also britian,spain and HRE.egypt is good for a muslim faction.the rest i did'nt try yet.

[rpasell]

I think what makes GA fun is coming from behind. As you get closer to the end, if there are a couple countries ahead in points, plotting ways to reduce there point scoring ability is interesting. Aiding there enemies, or causing there home provinces to rebel is always fun.

[Cooperman]

Poland on expert is fun to try get the university objective on GA within the time limit, also france gets some tough objectives like building a citadel in tripoli.
The Itallians, Danes and English all get some good trade objectives but if you want to take over the world on GA then it has to be Holy Roman Empire who have objectives to conquer italy and eastern europe.

So in short try them all, they all require different strategies to hit those objectives.

[FesterShinetop]

I am playing Poland on the hard setting at the moment and it's pretty good. But I have a question about the University: it says so you have to build a University in Poland before a certain year and points are counted (once) blablabla. Now i only saw that message once(when it first came on)... and after the first new year where points are counted it dissapeared... Is this normal? Do points still count if I build it?