Computer-Controlled Factions: Best and Worst?

[King Bob VI]

Hi, I've had MTW (and VI) for about 5 months, and I just joined the forums here today. Before I got MTW I was a huge Age of Empires II junkie, and I spent a lot of time at the Age of Kings Heaven forums, but I guess I'll be hangin' out here for a while now.

Anyway, whenever I'm playin the medieval campaign game, it seems like some factions with similar strengths at the beginning usually do much better than others. In my experience:

English: Get their butts kicked by France, often only surviving in Ireland or another remote province.
France: Take over England and often overrun the HRE and Spain. If there is one faction that almost always does well with the AI, it's the French.
Byz: Grow rapidly in Early but are toppled by Turks, Egypt, and the Horde.
The Horde: Get most of the steppes, and stop.
Egypt and the Almos: Often one or the other takes over a large part of the western or eastern part of the map.
HRE: Does OK, but never great. Often killed by France.
Spain: Usually beats the Alamos, and If France doesn't overrun Western Europe, they will.
Papacy: Always there, often takes what Sicily had if they attack the pope.
Turks: Usually beat up by Egypt, almost never gets very big.
Danes, Sicily, and especially Argon: Sit and do nothing, (which is understandable considering their one-province starting positions) but Sicily often does pretty good before biting off more than they can chew with the Pope or Italy.
Russia: Not much, esp. when the Horde arrives.
Poland and Hungary: Often burn each other out, if not, HR > Poles, and Byz > Hungary.

Of course, every game is dramatically different, and it often depends on who I'm playing as , but overall, I would say that the worst AI faction is Aragon, and the Best is France. Is any of this usually true when you play?

[Tricky Lady]

It's been a long while since I played MTW, but I still remember the Western side of the campaign map colouring blue and/or bright yellow, as the French and/or the Spanish dominated a large part of map. Very rarely another faction (England) became a major player.
I usually played at the Eastern side of the map, so France/Spain always went on its traditional blitzkrieg in the West. They were also the major Crusading factions who regularly paid my Byzantine/Turkish terroritories a visit. I've rarely seen HRE or English crusades.

[viermaaldomi]

Wow,your experiences are in sharp contrast with mine.Here's what happens mostly when I'm playing(I have mostly played in Early so far:I conquered 100% with all factions in Early and am now playing on High Period):
-Almohads almost always win in Spain,only once did the Spanish win(when I was playing with the Byz)
-The English win most of the time vs the French(+- 2 times out of 3)
-HRE gets attacked by everyone else and has never played a major role
-Egyptians do very well all the time
-Byz do well on Early,very bad on High
-Sic always get medium-sized before they are run over
-Turks don't often get big,but when they do,expand very quickly
-Poles and Huns never get big
-Russians always get big on High
-Aragonese attack Spanish or French in Early,attack Almos on High
-Danish invade Pomerania and move further east(however,when I recently played as the English on High,the Danish almost immediately invaded Sweden and Norway! )

I must say I don't have any Mod installed,do you?Maybe this explains the differences,otherwise different tactics do I guess.(I can't believe the Spanish lose against Almos most of the time when you play,they usually get crushed very soon)

[Budwise]

I agree with the last post. If I see a crusade while playing turks, its English plus Spanish is always out within the first hour of play.

Maybe we are all playing different starting factions?

[Budwise]

I'm going to play Danes, Watch the whole map and start from early just to see who wins what.

[King Bob VI]

No, I don't have any mods. Most of what you said is more or less the same as what I've seen, except:

-Almohads almost always win in Spain,only once did the Spanish win(when I was playing with the Byz)
-The English win most of the time vs the French(+- 2 times out of 3)

I've been playing in the east for my past 3 or so games, and the winner in that area has been France twice and Spain once (though it went back to France after a massive civil war/french reappearance.)

I guess, now that I think about it, the Spain/Almohad conflict is more like a 50/50 split.

[peacedude]

for some reason in GA mode sicily always seems to get pretty big, and the AI overall seems to be more aggresive

[Tricky Lady]

Wow,your experiences are in sharp contrast with mine.Here's what happens mostly when I'm playing(I have mostly played in Early so far:I conquered 100% with all factions in Early and am now playing on High Period):
-Almohads almost always win in Spain,only once did the Spanish win(when I was playing with the Byz)
-The English win most of the time vs the French(+- 2 times out of 3)

I believe this is the case especially in MTW 1.0 without the VI expansion installed. Last year I bought the Battle Pack but I played a long Byzantine campaign in 1.0 first (I didn't know that VI+the patch added so many really nice features ) and then the Almohads defeated the Spaniards and England ruled over France. I've never seen those two countries expanding after installing the expansion pack.

[King Bob VI]

Ah, that may be it. I have the Battle Collection too, I wonder if viermaaldomi doesn't have VI.

[viermaaldomi]

That must be it,I don't have the VI expansion installed yet (I first wanted to experience the original game,but I'm getting pretty tired of those Almohads)

[Martok]

I believe this is the case especially in MTW 1.0 without the VI expansion installed. Last year I bought the Battle Pack but I played a long Byzantine campaign in 1.0 first (I didn't know that VI+the patch added so many really nice features ) and then the Almohads defeated the Spaniards and England ruled over France. I've never seen those two countries expanding after installing the expansion pack.

I believe this has been the experience with most players who played the original MTW and then got Viking Invasion later on, myself included. With the original Medieval, there were very few games where the western half of the map wasn't dominated by the Almohads--the Caliphate's AI was not only aggressive, but it was also simply too good at taking advantage of the fact that it had the best troops in the Early period, particularly its urban militia.

On the other hand, England's troops aren't anything special in the Early perioed. This didn't matter, however, because in the original Medieval, the French AI was so weak that the English could've beat them with the proverbial one hand tied behind their back. This was the other major reason why the Almos were able to push into Western Europe so easily.

Once I installed Viking Invasion, though, I noticed that the Almohad and French AI's were essentially reversed. The French became much more aggressive (hence one of the reasons they get ex-commed so often), and the Almos generally reverted to fighting on the defensive against Spain and Aragon. With Viking Invasion installed, about the only times I see the Almos take any kind of offensive actions is that they sometimes invade Portugal (which of course is a foolhardy excercise, especially if they haven't converted the Portuguese first), or to retake a province that's been conquered by someone else. Aside from that, I never see them in an aggresive posture at all anymore.

[viermaaldomi]

I haven't got anything installed yet,but I'll install VI right away now that I know some of the improvements (however,if now the French always get very big instead of the Almohads it's not much of an improvement).

[hr.oskar]

It's interesting how variable it really is... my experience has been quite different from King Bob's for example, though mostly I've noticed sharp differences between versions. In v1.00 for instance, I remember the Spanish steamrolling the Almos every time and marching to Egypt through North Africa.

In various versions of the game I've always seen many English, French, German and Spanish crusades. I've also seen a couple Italian crusades and IFIRC a Sicilian one too (against me as the Turks).

In VI v2.00, which I play now, I mostly see the following patterns:

French - very aggressive. In early they do quite well, probably because of excellent generals, usually attack Lorraine. Seem to crusade more in High than Early.
Germans - the empire tends to fall apart in civil wars, I usually see half their territory controlled by rebels.
Hungarians - also very aggressive, usually expand east to the steppes or into Italy or Germany depending on the situation. I've almost always seen them do well.
Turks - usually strong or at least they never quite go down without a fight.
Russians - for some reason they do horribly, unlike past versions - get beaten up by the rebels. Speaking of which...
Rebels - I notice they're much stronger than in past versions. They hold on to the steppes quite fiercely, in my current game they're even threatening to destroy the Polish after completely rolling back their early expansion eastwards. Pretty scary, but an interesting change!

[PittBull260]

here's what I think about most of the factions

French-95% of the time are the strongest and richest country on the map
Alhomads-they always expand far into Europe, until they meet france or me
Egyptians-in the normal version they do well, in the XL mod they get beaten up by the crusaders
Mongols-do very well at the beggining, then stop at polland
Danes-usually expand into the eastern part, into russia and mongolia
Germany-gets beat up by everyone
England-france kills them
Byz-do good in early, but in HIgh and Late get owned badly
Russians-I usually play as them, so I don't really know how they do

thats my 2 cents