now i think about lugh, your appraisal of France is correct, i forgot Flanders...and paid too much respect to the Pope. i'll have to give them a go meself one of these days! France is one of the factions the AI plays quite well, to judge from comments elsewhere about how annoying people find them.

i found the HRE to be a great challenge, with a real feeling of being barely on top of things every turn instead of sitting there pressing End Turn repeatedly while waiting for my one decent province to finish building that keep...