Difficulty of Playable Factions in RTW based on what I have seen (don't flame please)

[Encaitar]

I was under the impression that you could change some of these settings to your desire, like Campaign difficulty (similar to the MI setting) and Battle difficulty (the tricks of the AI in battles). I thought I read something like that in one of the previews as well...

Yep, there are two different difficulty settings that you can set at the start of a campaign: campaign difficulty and battle difficulty. Which is a nice idea I think.

[Silver Rusher]

Ah yes, but different difficulty settings do not mean the world at all.
Playing the Polish/Late on easy wasn't nearly as easy as Hungarians/Late on moderate. See what I mean?

[Encaitar]

Absolutely, you're talking relative difference in difficulty between factions.

I was just clearing up Soulflame's query. :)

[DisruptorX]

Is it true that almost half the total factions will not be playable? That makes me mad. In mtw, all the factions except the pope and khan were playable. If the game had forced you to be the english, french, and the like only, I wouldn't have really enjoyed it all that mcuh. Playing as the Aragonese, Danish, Sicilians and other "weak" powers and making them rule the world was half the fun.

[Soulflame]

Basically I was trying to point out that even these difficulty ratings (at least the battle and campaign difficulty) can be adjusted as well if you want. Which I think gives the idea that almost everything is playable and can be fun if you want it to be. Even the seemingly hard to play Gauls can be made easy enough for beginners to enjoy it.
So even though there are differences, these aren't set in stone.