What's the easiest/best faction to control?

[danobnano]

What is the easiest and Best faction to control?

I found Sicily the easiest!

I've completed the long campaign, and a short.

What are your suggestions?

[rvg]

Byzantines.

Non-stop Vardariotai spam == guaranteed victory.

Lack of gunpowder is a non-issue when everyone is dead long before gunpowder is discovered.

[Quickening]

Scotland for being in a corner of the world. England for the same reason. Spain has a nice starting position and can gain a decent empire fairly easily and Russia have loads of rebel territory to take from the off and are also in a corner of the map.
I feel that any faction that starts in the middle of the map and is thus surrounded, is naturally harder to play. Im surprised therefore that Sicily was your choice.

[phunkbot]

i have a lot of playing to do, but so far i'd say England, not least because all of the resources are away from you and so merchant cash is coming in buckets

[Agent Smith]

Honestly, I'd argue that the Moors is very, very easy. At the very start of the game you can call a jihad and raise a huge army, making conquest of Spain and Portugal a breeze. In Africa there is near boundless riches for your merchants. There is a huge amount of space between Tripoli and the Egyptian lands, and present day Spain is easily defended.

Money + Jihad + Easy defense = Easy riding through the campaign.

[Omisan]

England. 100% safe starting position and overall very simple battle strategy involving mostly longbows and infantry. The perfect campaign for a new player.

[Memnoch]

Honestly, I'd argue that the Moors is very, very easy. At the very start of the game you can call a jihad and raise a huge army, making conquest of Spain and Portugal a breeze. In Africa there is near boundless riches for your merchants. There is a huge amount of space between Tripoli and the Egyptian lands, and present day Spain is easily defended.

Money + Jihad + Easy defense = Easy riding through the campaign.

I'd be inclined to agree with the Moors - if you rush Spain and Portugal early, and try to control the Iberian peninsula, and also take North Africa from Arguin and Marrakesh through to Tunis (and Timbuktu), you have a defendable corner of the map you can operate from.

But where I'm having problems as the Moors is because I (foolishly) decided to answer a call to jihad early to take Baghdad (I'm roleplaying and felt it my obligation to help my Muslim brothers in the East). I thought there was no way I would get there first, but amazingly I did - I ended up taking Antioch and Adana (and later Damascus because my Council of Nobles asked me to) as well as Baghdad.

So now I'm in a difficult position - I have territories that are as far from each other as can be. My capital is Cordoba, but my larger cities are all in the East - Antioch, Baghdad and Damascus. All three of them are now seething with rebellion and dissent, because they're so far from my capital. I have full 20-stack garrisons in each city (which is bleeding my treasury) and I still have public order rates of 70-80% (blue and sometimes red faces). I even moved my capital to Tunis (as close to the middle of the map as possible) but it had a huge negative effect on my finances - I had drops in all my Iberian cities.

I think maybe I expanded too fast...

[HoreTore]

HRE for a blitzer. You can double your provinces in the first 5 turns taking Metz, Bern, Hamburg, Magdeburg, Prague and mabe Stettin, Antwerp and Dijon. After that, you can pump out armies noone can match and finish the campaign in about 30 turns.

Milan are also very easy.

[IPoseTheQuestionYouReturnTheAnswer]

If you take your time and are very careful, then I would tend to agree with the HRE, at least for raw potential. They are definitely a bulldozer faction - in my campaign, it's 1200 and I already control 71 regions. Expand fast in every direction and answer all crusades and carve out your own little kingdom of heaven and you've got everything going for you.

[Atalus]

HRE if you have some luck. England is a no brainer. Scotland Can be too if you thrash the English quickly.

Danes are pretty easy if you like that kind of warfare

[Frederick_I_Barbarossa]

My two nominations:
England
Portugal

[anders]

scotland- crush the english opressors quickly, then advance trough europe at the push of pike, with the north sea guarding your rear. pretty much any faction with a free rear is easy to play.

[_Tristan_]

I would go for scotland - 2 advantages : situated in a map corner, thus more easily defended and lots of good quality troops from the start...

The second would be either the moors (no Pope or excomm : so no limitation on conquest) or the danes...

I don't know how you could find Sicily one of the easiest...

I have to concede that almost all factions are fairly easy (the AI problem) but Italian ones in spite of fielding low-cost/ low-upkeep units have quite difficult starting positions with few rebel settlements to sack in the beginning and warmongering neighbours to contend with...

[microbus]

What i do is play milan get all my units onto a boat and send them to rome and well kill the pope and take rome giving you lots of res, but also lots of enemies.

[Agent Smith]

I'd be inclined to agree with the Moors - if you rush Spain and Portugal early, and try to control the Iberian peninsula, and also take North Africa from Arguin and Marrakesh through to Tunis (and Timbuktu), you have a defendable corner of the map you can operate from.

But where I'm having problems as the Moors is because I (foolishly) decided to answer a call to jihad early to take Baghdad (I'm roleplaying and felt it my obligation to help my Muslim brothers in the East). I thought there was no way I would get there first, but amazingly I did - I ended up taking Antioch and Adana (and later Damascus because my Council of Nobles asked me to) as well as Baghdad.

So now I'm in a difficult position - I have territories that are as far from each other as can be. My capital is Cordoba, but my larger cities are all in the East - Antioch, Baghdad and Damascus. All three of them are now seething with rebellion and dissent, because they're so far from my capital. I have full 20-stack garrisons in each city (which is bleeding my treasury) and I still have public order rates of 70-80% (blue and sometimes red faces). I even moved my capital to Tunis (as close to the middle of the map as possible) but it had a huge negative effect on my finances - I had drops in all my Iberian cities.

I think maybe I expanded too fast...

Hehe. I never ran into that problem. That's because I took complete control of the jihad process. You can call a jihad on turn 1. After that, check your Imam every other turn or so until you can call another one. Continue doing that, and your Muslim friends in the east will never get to call their own jihads while your jihads are all in the west around Spain and Portugal, which are too far away for the Egyptians and Turks to make a difference.

[danobnano]

lol.
thanks for all your suggestions!

i have decided to start a campaign as Denmark!

[John_Longarrow]

To toss in my 2¢ worth, I'd say go Scotland. You will need to fight for about the first 10 turns to get rid of the English, but after that you can do what you please for about as long as you want.

The biggest advantage Scotland has is they don't have any continental entanglements until they wish them. So long as you stay to the islands, you won't be attacked. This lets you build up what ever you wish before you go for mainland territory.

Hey, 80 turns without being attacked says it works.