Your Favorite Faction

[Vlad The Impala]

I haven't played with a lot of fractions yet, just the English and Turks, but I'm more than willing to throw in my thoughtsas well!

The English:
- Other people in the thread pretty much summed up all the pros: longbowmen, billmen, good starting position. Plus the English have the ability to become a naval/trade super power
- Cons: It's easy to wipe out the French and the Danish early on, but after that you're wedged in between the HRE and Spain, both of whom are impossible (if you ask me, it's certainly difficult) to take out without risking excommunication. The only other options are the Russians in the North or the Almohads in Africa, but that means you'll have awfully long supply lines, and you're easily cut off it the enemy navy decides to havea go at your ships

The Turks:
- Again, the pros have already been taken care of. Lots of archers, lots of mobilities, jannissaries... Egypt and the southern half of the Byzantine empire can be taken within the first 30-40 years, after that you have a stronghold with nice chokepoints in Egypt, Georgia and Constantinople. You can then safely build up your army and navy, take the islands in the Mediterranean and so on.
- Cons: No heavy infantry. No units that are equal to men-at-arms, so you'll have to deal with spears in another way. I also wish they had a unit like the Hobilar, but I guess that there's not a lot to complain about Turkish cavalry...

[Ciaran]

The HRE.
They´ve got a challenging start and a bunch of cool units, like Gothic Knights, Gothic Sergeants (though you hardly get to use them much), Swabian Swordsmen (only in early, though).
Oh, and they can´t die

[acesman]

When playing vanilla MTW/VI I like the Turks for their many mobile missile (M3) units. Plus having Saracen infantry provides either a anvil for your cavalry hammer, or a refuge for your lighter units when things don't work out. But my personal playing style is more maneuver oriented than smash them in the face, as the Catholic armies tend to play.

When playing MTW XL mod, there are so many factions that I have not tried, but the Cumans offer a special challenge, and have some interesting units. They are definitely a finesse army, lacking the economy to build a large heavy cavalry army and having no other hard-hitting units, but a fair amount of AP missile units (Cuman Warriors, Steppe Heavy Cavalry, Bashkorts).