Am i just very very lucky, or just so skilled in this game, (yeah, sure, in my dreams.. :D) because i have found most of the factions you have been talking about here rather easy.
Originally posted by YourLordandConqueror
Poland happens to be difficult as well, as it's opportunities for free expansion have been curtailed. It's helped though by the splitting of "Poland" into greater and lesser.
I have only played the polish with the unmodded version of MTW:VI, but it was actually pretty easy. I started in early, and im currently in year 1270 or near that. I have conquered most of the Baltic coast provinces, all hungarian provinces, tha Balcans, excluding Greece and Constantinople, Kiev and a couple of steppe provinces. My western border lies on the line Austria-Bavaria-Frieseland, and my neighbor there is the overgrown Spanish kingdom.
The war against them is going rather well, although they have a strong army on my borders. The Golden Horde wasn't even a challenge, the only province bordering them was Kiev, and every invasion to that province ended up with a bridgebattle, which gave me a huge advantage and my halberdies + Steppe heavy cavalry +arbalesters raped those poor Horde-guys in every single battle. So now i have two nearly full stacks of halberdies with 8 valour and a nine star general with several moraleboosting virtues guarding my eastern border.(i killed the GH-khan in a battle, so it has been quite peacefull since then. Oh, except that they reappeared a couple of years ago.. ) I haven't touched that campaing for a while since i installed the XL-mod, but i think i'll get back on it sooner or later.

Originally posted by YourLordandConqueror
Irish and Scots can be VERY difficult if only becuase they are forced to make war with the English if they want ot expand. The Irish are unique though in that to become a power they must have a very good navy, compared to the Scots who can at leats force thier way south.
Irish are a peace of cake, just make one or two ships, pump out some Gael Ghaedils,(or something like that, you know what i mean..) bribe Wales and attack the rest of england. i kicked the english out of the island in just a couple of years only using Gaels and some miscellaneous troops (in one battle, i killed over 2000 englishmen with five or six units of Gaels and one Fianna Eirea-something and one unit of RK's. i lost about 40 men ) and when i conquered Normandy and Franconia my financial troubles vanished quickly. I started to make Sherwood foresters in mercia, and now my low-supportcost-elite-army is hacking it's way through the Holy Roman Empire.