Destroying the French is a must, it's unholy or perverse or something if you don't!

Personally I like to take all the French lands in Europe giving me a border in the south of Aquitaine & Toulouse. With a little poaching from the HRE I have an eastern border of Toulouse, Burgundy, Lorraine & Friesland. Scotland and Ireland are always stomped on and very satisfyingly too, leaving me nice & secure with only 5 regions needing border defences, then I go for my trade, troop & chokepoint regions: Navarre, Switzerland, Sweden, Venice, Morroco, Egypt, Tripoli, Antioch, Syria, Edesa, Armenia, Constantinople, Khazar and all the Mediterranean islands. Sometimes I try to provoke rebellions & then grab the regions from rebels, other times I happily kick off a war, especially against the Egyptians and Turks since I try to keep the Pope happy by smiting the infidels.

I tend to heavily fortify & defend Burgundy & Syria since they're landlocked & thus I can't reinforce them instantly, with Syria acting as the reinforcements base for the similarly landlocked border regions of Armenia & Edesa which are otherwise lightly defended, and Burgundy doing the same for Switzerland & Lorraine. With a few relief forces scattered around the map to cover the various coastal regions I only need to keep a tripwire force in each border region when I feel like trying to tempt invasions for a little fun.

I've occasionally used arbs plus Longbows as you mentioned, King Edward, but I just can't help considering them un-English, so I prefer Longbows only.