MTW DEADLY SINS

[caravel]

A fine thread indeed and agreed with all the above as that's pretty much exactly how I play the game.

I would add:

5. Dismounts
The AI cannot dismount his Chivalric Knights to CFK so the player doing this is something of an exploit. The player can check what he's up against, shuffle his reinforcements around and then dismount as necessary. The AI does not have the option to dismount it's units. The FFK and CFK the solution is a bit of modding to make them available in the main campaign and the removal of all dismounts. I've seen some mods that use dismounts to change one unit type to another before battle (the dismounts function does exactly this so with a bit of simple modding you can dismount peasants to spearmen if you wish), this is pointless simply because the AI cannot make use of it. The player should simply never use dismounts to ensure a fair battle.

6. Jihad spamming
The player can direct Jihads as a lethal weapon and influence exploit at the enemy. Simply build as many jihad markers as you can. Invade a province, let it rebel and then launch all of your jihads at it. The result is maximum influence for your faction leader and a huge army that you can select the cream of the units from (Nizaris etc) and disband (#4) the rest. Because crusades don't allow for multiples they are really not the same kind of exploit. Jihads really should have been unique as with crusades. If you want a fair and challenging game, limit yourself to only one Jihad and only build it when it's needed.

7. The Inquisition
The AI doesn't usually train ten Grand Inquisitors and send them around and about burning everyone elses royalty. Need I say more? The player should limit himself to 1 GInq and 2 Inq at any one time. I myself have modded out GInqs and made Inqs papacy only. This way you actually always come up against them rather than deploy them yourself.