Aside from French troops being superior on all fronts, I'm talking about the faction descriptions:

English: superb longbowmen, strong infantry, poor variety of cavalry.

French: best cavalry in West, good infantry in late period, weak infantry in early period

These are such misleading statements about their troop types. The only accurate description is of the French and English cavalry. As the French player, you don't ever need crusader knights in order to field dominant cavalry troops. For the English, I'd even take the Norse War cleric over the pitiful English Knight.

French armored sergeants are excellent early period infantry. With a decent general they almost never rout and they hold their own against cavalry and other infantry - even dismounted knights in my experience. Ordinary sergeant spearmen are also very fine troops to fill out your ranks with and they only have a few less armor points when fully upgraded.

What do the English have in the early period? Levy spearmen. And Billmen. That's it. Oh, and the French have Voulgiers. I'd like to watch a single Voulgier soldier fight a Billman. They'd both rout.

Late period troops? Both get dismounted English/Noble Knights with poleaxes which are supposed to be powerful offensive troops, but neither seem to outperform Dismounted Feudal Knights. Speaking of which, Armored Swordsmen are just a slightly cheaper version of Dismounted Chivalric Knights. When it comes to battle tactics, Dismounted Feudal Knights do a perfectly good job despite having one less armor point. So the sword infantry of both sides are about equal. Yes, the English have Heavy Billmen but they end up losing as many men as they're able to kill.

What about archers? The English have the feared Retinue Longbowmen who have their famous bodkin armor piercing arrow that.. erm... is one point weaker than the armor piercing arrow of the Scots Guard. The English longbowmen have a slight advantage in defense against enemy archers, where the Scots Guard have melee strength approaching Feudal Knights, and eleven morale points, where longbowmen only have five. Longbowmen are practically peasants with strong hands to string a bow and weak bladders for when that fails.

I also forgot to mention Aventuriers with their effective volley damage, nine points of morale and good melee strength. I think both these units make up for the lack of sharpened stakes, don't you?

England really got the short end of the stick when it comes to their so-called advantages. Are there any mods out there to rectify this?