Most overall weak faction?

[PureFodder]

Well, if someone's the strongest someone has to be the weakest.

My temptation is to say the Byzantines. Firstly they're one of the two Orthodox factions, so no Jihads or Crusades and you will pretty much always have to convert everyone to your religion when you conquor a settlement.
Expansion West will annoy the Pope and going East gets you in range of the Invasions. Crusading armies on their way to the holy lands will come trudging through your lands. In the late period they lack any decent cannons, any guns and have no anti-armour ranged fire. No really high quality spears as well.

What do you think?

[pevergreen]

Ill go with my Current Campaign (Italian Portugal)

Denmark.

They are getting crushed by the HRE.

Coincidently its the first time the HRE hasnt been smashed.
However, on Average, HRE AI is the worst.

[Musashi]

Scotland. No particularly brilliant archers, no cavalry worth mentioning. Great pikes and shock troops, but without either cool archers or good cav to back them up...

Oh, and they suck in the gunpowder age too. At least Byzantium can just go all cav...

I only go by unit lineup, strategic position is kind of irrelevant (IMHO).

[danfda]

^^^
Agreed completely.

Yeah, no gunpowder hurts...

[Darth Nihilus]

My vote would go to scotland.

[Cos3]

IMO, Scotland should have been an extremely powerful rebel faction, with time released full stacks of rebel scots that would make occupying the place difficult and require plenty of manpower. Which would have been historically accurate.

[Armenia_Byzantium]

Its true that with the byzantines, religion matters, but not as serious as the effect of the mongol invasion, i have had a very bad experience playing as the byzatines during my previous campaign when i had mongols invading every every eastern settlement, mongols have very experienced units and they are quite dangorous, that is the main concern of every eastern faction i suppose

Well, if someone's the strongest someone has to be the weakest.

My temptation is to say the Byzantines. Firstly they're one of the two Orthodox factions, so no Jihads or Crusades and you will pretty much always have to convert everyone to your religion when you conquor a settlement.
Expansion West will annoy the Pope and going East gets you in range of the Invasions. Crusading armies on their way to the holy lands will come trudging through your lands. In the late period they lack any decent cannons, any guns and have no anti-armour ranged fire. No really high quality spears as well.

What do you think?

[uibalex]

Whenever i play as a Central European faction it gets tough after 40-50 turns as i normally get attacked by HRE. France is normally wiped out quite early for some reason. Saying Scotland is weak yes perhaps but aslong as you deafeat or ally with England it's easy.

[Malkut]

Scotland's weakness depends entirely on their first three turns. They need to get York and Dublin early, possibly Wales, too. If England gets them both, they won't have any economy early on. Their only choices will be to try to bash their way into England, who can afford the losses and come back for more, or attack the rebels in the north of France, thus dividing their forces, and possibly losing a good deal of them to the English Navy.

[Musashi]

@carl: A horse archer army will crush a Scottish army. Particularly a heavy horse archer army like Byzantium or Russia. An Iberian jav-cav army will also be devastating.

What you're missing is that a spear/missile army can actually defeat you, even though your infantry can crush theirs... GOOD missile units (Armor piercing long range archers like longbows, good crossbow troops, etc) will do more damage than you think to your beloved heavy armored lobster men. All the spearmen have to do is hold them for more than a few seconds and they'll likely be routed or destroyed.

A ruthless commander will keep firing on you even after your infantry is engaged, because generally speaking they'll kill 10 men from your troops for every 1 friendly fire casualty.

Against a faction that can field credible heavy infantry (Venice, HRE, plus Russia and Byzantium after 2h fixes) or Portugal with their Aventuros, you won't have a prayer of success because they have infantry that can actually stand against yours in head on shock combat, and uber armor piercing missile troops that can shred your troops before and during the engagement.

[FrauGloer]

To join in on the Scotland discussion: I like the scots a lot. Their infantry is outstanding, as has been said before, and not only do they fight well, they also look bloody amazing, too (i.e. Highland Nobles with upped armour).

Their initial cavalry may be weak, and not being able to train anything better than FKs in most castles does suck a bit, but this can be (partially) remedied by the Order Knights. They may be quite hard to train in sufficient numbers but if you can manage to get a guild house in a castle close to the front (wherever that may be), there shouldn't be that much of a problem anymore. Retraining them may be difficult, but in that case, I just keep some units in reserve to cycle through while the depleted unit returns the next suitable castle.

And the fact is, almost any army can/will probably be defeated by an all-Horse-Archer army, that problem isn't exclusive to the Scots!

To detemine the "winner" of the "Most overall weak faction Award 2007" , I would include the survivability of the faction to the equation: Scotland, while their unit roster may be 'weaker' (more limited) than others', has an amazingly secure starting position - even with increased naval invasions. Once you push the English of the Isles, you have a secure base of operations. The HRE, on the other hand, may have a great unit roster, but their starting position is extremely disadvantagious. Beset from all sides, by a multitude of enemies, it is very hard to secure a base of operations. This, IMO makes them "weak". In all my campaigns (except when I was the HRE, of course), the HRE loses big time, despite all their amazing units. In none, except for my English campaign, were the Scots ever wiped out.

And, lets face it, would anyone play this game if all the factions played the same? I know I wouldn't...

[SnowlyWhite]

Overall(grand campaign wise, vh/vh) - I'd say either HRE(4 fronts, meh... worst planted then those it's hard - they have undoubtedly a good roster, but you're right in the middle of the road for everyone) if you don't manage to trash 2 things fast(probably danes and venice) or russia(another decent roster, I personally quite like it, but the economy is horrid for a long time and probably you'll get a mongol invasion before you're prepared for it - leaving aside it might actually come in your lands, instead of bagdad or alikes).

Scotland definitelly does ok, as you can trash england's english provinces in 5 turns(or was it 6?) which opens up for a good econ. in north sea(given the fact the ai never does landings), Byzantium... Vardariotai(that unit is just gross(7 cata, 1 crummy general, rest Vardariotai - ~7-10% loss against a full stack of mongols) plus the fact you can trash the turks in under 7 turns(their family will be in the western 2 provinces, and, with abit of care you can kill all of them in 1 combat).

Roster wise(single player mostly)... dunno, I'd say Scotland; or anything with poor cav./archery.
The point in this game is not to win the battle(that you do anyway), but to win it with the fewest losses possible in order to conquer fast. If you play with a hard faction - orthodox or islam(playing catholic is just too easy... gimme a break, that pope has perfect relations with you if you give him ~800/turn... it's just ridiculous, you ignore his asking to stop - he won't excomunicate you since your relations are perfect, you give him another 2-3k, and bam, you're again back to perfect relations...) you'll notice that from turn 100 to 150, everything is timed so that you really need to be careful with your losses. Mongols come, when you're done with them, plague comes and kills your income just when you needed most, that is before the timurid invasion. Ended with byzantium in under 150 turns a grand campaign, but the last 50 turns were abit tough(vh/vh).
That's where the ha shines - you win, you redo your units, send 3-4 units back to retrain(those that you used to fill the numbers of the other units in your stack), and you're good to go again. Leaving aside that, lack of good HA is a huge drawback because, even against human opponents, and it's still tough to catch a fast moving HA. Against computer, which acts instantly... The ai might be poor strategically, but definitelly has a better reaction time than any human and doesn't need to rely on skirmish. Leaving aside that catching them with your already badly shot at light cavalry would result only in losing to them in melee. Your border horsies might catch the Vardariotai after I've shot them 3-4 times, but then what? You have ~25 men left, and you'll just lose in melee(and don't tell me the uber infantry managed to keep after the horsies, in order to take advantage of the pinning:p)

[Carl]

Some good points their although I’d like to raise a few points:

First Border Cav are the second best light cav I’ve been able to find for a western European faction in the files or game to date (although I haven’t had much experience with many of them). If Scotland are weak against Horse archers then so is every other Western European faction. So either the game is viciously imbalanced or in fact it's balanced and Scotland will do as well as everyone else, (i.e., they have an even chance). Based on some of what I’ve heard and my own experiences with Jinites it's probably a case of IMBA.

The point about archers is a good one, but you have to remember that long range volleys WON'T kill very many, yes I’m sure 1 unit of mine at that range, but they aren’t going to have 1 unit of archers for every unit of infantry I have and still have an infantry force capable of finishing the remnants off. If they come in close they either have to bring supporting units with them (which my infantry battle line can chase off), or suffer a cav charge with no support. To close to that range they will also have to sustain archer fire from my own NHA, they aren’t great archers and they won't get more than a single point blank volley in before the enemy starts shooting back, but they will do a fair bit of damage themselves.

To summarise the archer point:

The enemy has 3 choices.

1. He can sit at long range with his archers protected by his infantry. I probably can't charge him with my cav, but he also is going to struggle to kill large portions of my army like this without having most of his army as archers.

2. He can send his archers up close to me without supporting infantry. they're easy meat for my Border Horse at this point.

3. He can send his archers up close with infantry support at which point I can engage his Infantry with my infantry and send my border horse into the archers then.

None of these solutions are perfect. Do it well and react well and you'll beat them senseless. Get anything wrong or don't react just right and you'll be beaten senseless instead..

The claim on infantry superiority is totally false once you fix Pikemen and the shield Bugs. Noble Pikemen will even beat DEK with an animation fix and no doctored stats with about 50% losses to the Pikemen. In addition, DEK have beaten every other non-pike infantry I’ve thrown at them with only Vargarian Guard and some fixed Sword & Shield units giving any stiff challenge.

I haven’t done more extensive playing with Noble Pikemen, (haven't got them in the campaign yet), but I intend to, just to see if I can find anything that can beat them head on. As I honestly don't believe anything can beat them, (elephants and better Pikemen aside anyway).

I'm not trying to say Scotland are easy to win with, but a mostly melee based infantry heavy force is not at a disadvantage IMHO, IF the infantry is good enough. NHA, Noble Swordsmen and Noble Pikemen really are that good IMO. Most 2-Handers, (even the fixed one), are pretty poor against fixed Pike and fixed Sword & Shield units, it's worth remembering that as fixing them shifts the whole dynamic around.

Pikes can decimate other infantry now, Swordsmen can beat 2-Handers, Cav Hate Spears, and JHI/Fixed Bills are no longer so OTT.

Don't get me wrong, I’m not saying Scotland are easy to play as, they require a distinctly different style of play to use compared to other armies. Just because of their defensive nature and lack or really strong cav and missile units. I'm not going to disagree with Russia giving them a hard time, the combination of HA, and combined Missile Melee unit will really challenge Scotland as it's effectively the Scots own army with the Pike component replaced with better Cav/HA.

I'm also not saying they are not below average in terms of power. But saying they are useless and stand littlie chance against anyone else is just wrong IMO. They also don't deserve the weakest faction title IMO, their isn't really a faction that does, (that I’ve played as anyway), as all of them have strong points and weak points. Some are a bit more powerful, and some a bit weaker, but you can't really say either way who’s best as it depends who’s fighting who and the army compositions as to where the advantage lies.

And the fact is, almost any army can/will probably be defeated by an all-Horse-Archer army, that problem isn't exclusive to the Scots!

Looks like my educated geuss early on in this post was right...

[hoetje]

I think there shoud be a poll in this thread?