The English, Most popular faction ?????

[King Edward]

The English are an easy Faction to play, whack france inside 5 years then slowly roll over the HRE and through spain and you hould have most the world quite quick. they are however much more fun to play if you only invade if you are attacked. the only way i stopped the french attacking me every turn was to burn all heirs and wait for the king to die to turn them all rebel.

As far as longbows or Arbs arguement goes, take both! a wall of arbs and a wall of longbows behind make mice meat of attacking armies esp if you can find a nice hill. Proper English tactics throught history - Find a Hill and make them come get you!! I destroyed a 4,500 almo army with just over 1,500 englishmen in Aragorn as i had longbows, Arbs, Billmen, CMAA, and Hobbilars. All infantry stay put on hill even when attacks are routed and use the hobbs to chase of routers. when next attack wave comes, beat them off on your hill again and unleash you hobbs to chase them away agian. repeat as required!

[Sinner]

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.