Quote Originally Posted by HaroldVonBraver
The Holy Roman Empire. You start in the middle of Europe. A very fun faction to start with. I'm having a blast playing with them now.
You know, I would have agreed had you caught me yesterday.

Germany has some of the most awesome units in the game. You get landschnekt pikemen, Zweihanders, and Gothic knights. To top it off, you have a great cannon selection, sweet accents (who could be more believable as a conquering voice?), and really great general speeches.

But you'll never get to see any of those great units until you've killed off every major power that could stand up to you, and you do it all with armored spearmen, merc crossbows, and mailed knights. When Venice isn't chewing on Vienna, Milan wants a piece of you, the Danes are knocking on Hamburg, the Poles are eying prague, and the French want a crack at Stauffen... Not to mention Norman knights knocking on your southern Italian doorstep. By the time you can actually sit back and tech up for those awesome units, every faction in Europe is suffering from anything to extinction or a severe nose bleed, so you get to pick off the remnants of whatever these shells can throw at you.

If I had to pick a "best" faction, I'd either swing Russian or French. The french get a great infantry line-up later on, with great cavalry. The Russians get all the options in the world for expansion, and units like Dismounted Dvors and Bedirche Axemen.

Danes? Crap axemen that get outclassed fast, no archers to speak of.

English? Overrated archers that can't hold a candle to top tier crossbowmen, no anti-cav unit, and one usable type of melee infantry.

Spain? No usable infantry until way later in the game. Their javelin troops have decent stats, but are useless against cavalry.

Venice? Same problem as HRE. Once you deal the nosebleed to byz, HRE and milan want a piece of you. Then Sicily gets cocky.

Hungary? No usable infantry compared to neighbors.

Poland? See hungary.

A muslim nation? Sure, if you want to be full of cavalry that can't do the one thing cavalry are really good at in MTW2... charge.