Quote Originally Posted by ajaxfetish
It's the Holy Roman Empire. The reason I mention it is that it contains Friesland, roughly equivalent to Holland. Sometimes I think going with your national identity can make up for a lot with passion.
Indeed, I think many do just that, choose their first faction out of nationalistic sentiment. It's inspirational. I played the Danes first, as I had no clue what faction to pick and thought I might as well go with the Scandinavian one, being from those parts myself.

Still I wouldn't recommend starting out with any of the empires, neither the Byzantine or the German one. The bigger you are the more enemies you make, you might end up harried from all directions while still in the process of learning to manage provinces, build troops and leading them in battle. Disloyal generals and rebellions might also become a problem if you don't know how to deal with it. It's my advice to play at least one smaller faction on beforehand.

I agree with Spain, it's the beginners faction. Rich lands both in agriculture and trade, nice troop rooster, a healthy royal family, and best of all you have an infidel neighbour in the Almohads you can smash without suffering excommunication and - in the worst possible scenario - a crusade towards your lands (I've seen this happen even on the easy-setting).

I see England and Egypt also suggested a lot. The latter really isn't a beginners faction, as already mentioned by Martok the muslim factions require a little more finesse to succedd in battle and they are probably the most crusade-prone faction in the game. The English are a better choice, but their lands in western mainland Europe always complicate things. Most likely you'll become embroiled in war with at least two of the following factions at the same time; the French, the Germans, the Italians, the Spanish or the Aragonese. Excluding the Aragonese, I've actually managed to be attacked by all these during just a few turns time. Needless to say, I was drowned by their sheer numerical strength and ended up clinging desperately to Wessex.

The Spanish, I say. The Byzantine and German empires have great potential but only an experienced player can take full advantege of this.