Which faction(s) do you play as?

[Spongie]

You can also make the Papacy playable if you wish by changing the FT_MINOR to FT_MAJOR.

Whoa, what effect does that have on excommunications and crusades?


(I've only played as the English as this is my first MTW game, so I haven't voted so as not to skew the results.)

[caravel]

Whoa, what effect does that have on excommunications and crusades?

Well the important thing to remember is that MTW has two enitities for this purpose: The Pope and Papacy faction. The former is the crusade authorising, warning delivering annoyance. The latter is the actual faction that works like any other faction except that it can continually reappear, cannot be wiped out through assassination of the leader and cannot produce heirs. The Papacy faction is also under the protection of the Pope.

When playing as the Papacy you have no control over the Pope only the Papacy faction. This means that you cannot authorise or call for crusades nor issue warnings to other catholic factions.

[PBI]

I moved on to RTW a while ago, but I recently dusted off my copy of MTW and played an Early campaign as the Almohads. I found it a very rewarding challenge trying to muster an army to fight the Mongols out of only light infantry, archers and light cavalry.

But my all time longest and best campaign was as the Italians, mostly because the Byzantines expanded and built up an empire almost as large as mine covering all of Eastern Europe, setting the game up for a huge late-game showdown.

The factions in the later games don't seem to do this, it's a shame.

[caravel]

The reason that this doesn't happen in later games such RTW is because the AI does not cope with the campaign game very well and diplomacy in general is very volatile. Generally only the highly overpowered / fantasy factions such as the Roman factions, Britannia, Egypt and maybe Pontus will expand significantly. The STW/MTW map enpowers the AI to do just as well as the player due to it's simplistic design.

[putts]

Just modded up to XL on Friday.

Now, I need to add the Lithuanians to my list. That faction is really fun.
I love having Boyars for my Royal Guard. Of course, you have to deal with fighting them too because Kievans and Novgorods have them as well and one of those two is likely to be your first conquest but the AI doesn't seem to be able to wield them as well as I do so that's all good for me :P