Despised...

[Martok]

Yeah agreed. Last HRE game I did, I never had a single alliance in the entire game! And believe me I tried. Everyone hated me, and everyone attacked me. It was an unusual game to say the least.

Really? For an HRE game, that seems pretty par for the course. I concur with ajaxfetish that they're even worse than the Byzantines. For the life of me, I do not understand how they're rated at only "Moderate" difficulty; personally, I think they're one of the hardest factions in the game!

[Roark]

The difficulty stated in the campaign selection screen is just plain WRONG. Defending the Holy Roman Empire can sometimes be like guarding a pile of sugar from a swarm of insects.

They're probably the hardest faction to play as overall, except for maybe Poland, who have poorer lands, but just as many aggressive neighbours... I never really got the hang of Poland's economy...

[Deus ret.]

Honestly when playing as Poland I never had more than a glimpse of the problem one faces with the HRE. Firstly, what there is in Polish provinces is more compact and thus more easily defendable, thus not an amorphous land block stretching from Denmark to the Mediterranean sea; secondly, your empire won't crumble after the loss of one or two provinces (which as Poland is much less likely to happen anyway), and lastly IMHO the rather moderate number of neighbours who are likely to attack the Polish can be dealt with quite easily (compared to the HRE nightmare of an...six-front war?). In my current HRE campaign each and every faction I encountered attacked me, either with troops or with their navy, and each time I decently crippled or vanquished one of these annoying jerks the next one behind him turned up it's 1150 now and despite keeping my expansion to an absolute minimum (I play GA...not the best faction for this) it was necessary to conquer Scandinavia, Italia and a good portion of France just to ensure short to mid-term survival.
The only tricky thing with Poland indeed is the economy, but I tend to go after Lithuania and the Baltic area rather than expanding into the HRE on a large scale so sea trade is not entirely impossible. You'll likely have to take out the Danes, though, to get the florin rolling.

[naut]

If your all up for a challange try playing as Bulgaria in the XL mod. You need darn good diplomacy to survive!

[Deus ret.]

or the generous help of the byzantines :P

btw do they have decent unit roster? never tried them in XL and now I've switched to MedMod.

[naut]

or the generous help of the byzantines :P

btw do they have decent unit roster? never tried them in XL and now I've switched to MedMod.

Their unit roster isn't bad, its got the standard UM, XB, HA, etc. Then its "unique" units are Bulgarian - Brigands, Cavalry, Heavy Infantry, and they also get Boyars.