looking for challenging faction-advice please

[Sloty]

Hi!
Played a campaign with England till turn 120 or so,but it was just too easy.
Now i am looking for a faction that is not too easy,but it should be manageable.
Please give me some advice on how to play that faction too,
Early era campaign.
Non-christian factions preffered.

[Gogolometro]

Early era non cristian are all easy. Sounds wierd, but that is true. All non cristian have great cavalry, armored generals, big empires and a lot of force in early. Maybe Lithuania, but still in early they manage too well. Even crusaded.
I imagine you love steel and hate gunpowder. For that I recommend you byzantines in late. Or Cumans in late. Persia will be a bad joke to ask to play them if you not intend to leave Asia.
So who can be in early? All muslims are empires, big empires in early. All have better units than most cristians. All have better cavalry. All have good income. So no challange.
A good thing to do is to play with some restriction. Dont use spys assasins, dont atack, always defend, be chilvarious and pious, join crusade if you ask to do so. Like that try Aragon. They can be a hard choice in early. Very bad spear. Need to think very different than England. Or try a colonial war with Genova, conquer steppes.
Migrate with Cumans to Italy, HRE to Egypt.
Let say what I play and why I play. I look the rooster, and pick the cooler faction. Who look wonderfull. Who have nice units and a lot of variety. I give a try. To see how and were. Than will find is hard to recruit something, is not available that unit a lot of time, things like that. Than I make an objective and a time frame. An I love to develop the kingdom. Hope it helps.

[ShadowKiller2000]

Lithuania would be the biggest challenge, you start our poor, small and vulnerable to crusades.

[Sloty]

Okay,thanks!
What about the Byzantines?
I think they have very good,varied and good looking troops,good economy at the start,but they are surrounded by potential enemies.
Also you need a lot of priest for new conquered settlements not rioting.

Or is there any other faction which plays totally different from England?

[Smokey Bacon]

Crusader states are a good challenge.

Any faction except scotland, france and germany are pretty different to england; the further the faction is from western europe the more different it is.

[DasKommissar]

England is by far the easiest faction to play as, and the most popular nation to first play as because of its familiarity and simple strategy. England along with Norway/Denmark are some of the easiest campaigns for me at least. You have really only one opponent to face in the beginning the Scottish ofc and besides them you rarely overall see enough naval invasions to warrant serious threats throughout your game. Lithuania as said above is one of the toughest factions to play as. Poor starting position in terms of military, economics and diplomacy. You have the constant chance of being invaded by the surrounding catholic nations and made even worse one the Teutonic Knights appear. And just as like playing a muslim faction you have the chance of being crusaded. Vilinus being on of the most common early crusade targets in my games besides Cairo for some reason. Besides Lithuania, playing as the Crusader states can be a real challenging on harder difficulties also. I really also like playing as Venice, combination of building a trade empire while trying to take on the Hungarians, Romans, Germans and other Italians can lead to some difficult situations

The Roman Empire is a bit of double edged sword so to say... Strongest starting position in terms of territory and economy really with a great varied military. Your biggest threats will usually be the Turks and Hungarians. And as you said you need to pump out orthodox priest, even alot of your own starting regions barely have a majority orthodox. People love playing the Roman Empire because the experience or rebuilding this great exotic empire that offers a stark contrast to western powers. It tends to be clumped up with people of more experience to play since there can be a lot of things to handle, but of course with SS especially what difficulty you play at along with using BGR or not can really effect things.

Overall I have to say look to factions with difficult opponents and positions. Usually the more nations you border the more enemies you can potentially have, but you really learn form experience, try out a faction you may not normally play as such as the more eastern nations.

[barcamartin]

Most nations with a lot of neighbours should prove decently challenging using Gracul's AI, and VH/VH. I think, anyway.

[RollingWave]

in terms of early i think crusader states is much more difficult than Lithuania, Lithuania start out with just a wooden castle but unless you attack the Poles right off the bat it's unlikely you'll get crusaded against you. and you have a wooping 8+ rebel provinces in you immediate vicinity, most of which you should reach before anyone else (even on VH/VH I took 6 of them before anyone began attacking me). not to meantion a very VERY useful early roster (lithu cav + baltic spear should basically solve anything before large amount of heavy stuff begin to show up). also, as ironic as it sounds, pagan temples are simply more useful than churchs and mosques better boosts, and gain some useful complimentary units early on as well. Dievas guard is basically a 80% knights hospitallar that can be build anywhere without the hassals of a guild .

Though on the higher settings the true problem with Lithuania is that even if you grow large, there's the risk that one of the Muslim faction will get so big so quickly that they'll beat you to the goal line, and due to you position you can basically do nothing about it. which is the current dilema facing my lithu campaign I have 16 province about 100 turns in on VH/VH savage, and destroyed the Danes completely, which means that baltic is almost my inner sea . the Poles were devastated by both the Novogods and HRE, and amusingly they're a vassal to no less than two other factions. I'm still in a epic struggle against the Novogods, but the real problem is that the Moors are already close to the 40 province mark. and I can't do jack about it.


Crusader states early on high setting is indeed really tough. made worse by the fact that you start with no castle, and require a pretty significant build up in castles to access most of your useful complimentary units.

[chris7ian]

Here is a challenge for you. Take England, on turn one gift all settlements except for Caen to Scotland. Then see if you could relive William the Conqueror, and take the Duchy of Normandy to the Kingdom of England. Aslo you could give London, Winchester, Exeter and Nottingham to the HRE and York to Scotland to make it a little more harder.

[Mannehan]

Here is a challenge for you. Take England, on turn one gift all settlements except for Caen to Scotland. Then see if you could relive William the Conqueror, and take the Duchy of Normandy to the Kingdom of England. Aslo you could give London, Winchester, Exeter and Nottingham to the HRE and York to Scotland to make it a little more harder.

Whoa that's a really cool idea. I might try that some day.

[Ichon]

Here is a challenge for you. Take England, on turn one gift all settlements except for Caen to Scotland. Then see if you could relive William the Conqueror, and take the Duchy of Normandy to the Kingdom of England. Aslo you could give London, Winchester, Exeter and Nottingham to the HRE and York to Scotland to make it a little more harder.

Wow... you just made me want to play England. I think I'll give some east coast to Norway, south coast to Denmark, and the west and north to Scotland. Try to do it without any longbows either until controlling most of south England.

[chris7ian]

Wow... you just made me want to play England. I think I'll give some east coast to Norway, south coast to Denmark, and the west and north to Scotland. Try to do it without any longbows either until controlling most of south England.

Your welcome.

Also if you are an Anglo-phile and want a challenging English campaign try the Kingdoms Grand Campaign Mod. There you have Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland, and Norway in the Isles from turn one. You lose the eastern / muslim feel, but not every aspect of this timeframe can be perfectly captured in one mod. Soul Firez's submod HHB is a great addition to Dave Scareface's excellent mod.

[For England Men]

I would say you can put the factions into categories and play one from each category to avoid similiar campaigns.
CAT1: England, Scotland, Norway, Denmark = all very similar to each other
CAT2: france, hre
CAT2: Byzantines = empire building
CAT3: Turks, Kwarz, moors and Fatimids
CAT4: crusader states
CAT5: Aragon, portugal and leon
CAT6: genoa, venice and sicily
CAT7: cuman, rus, nov, poland, hungary
CAT8: lithuania

[Smokey Bacon]

I'd say that is pretty much right. Maybe grouping them up like that is a good way to consider what factions need more things to make them feel unique.

[Tears of Destiny]

I would say you can put the factions into categories and play one from each category to avoid similiar campaigns.
CAT1: England, Scotland, Norway, Denmark = all very similar to each other
CAT2: france, hre
CAT2: Byzantines = empire building
CAT3: Turks, Kwarz, moors and Fatimids
CAT4: crusader states
CAT5: Aragon, portugal and leon
CAT6: genoa, venice and sicily
CAT7: cuman, rus, nov, poland, hungary
CAT8: lithuania

You forgot the secret category of CAT9: Ima da freaking pope! Prone to crashes, and the catholic nations butchering each other constantly.

Also, no love for the Mongolians?! WHat about the Teutonics?! Jerk.

[Gogolometro]

TO are the godlike. So who wanna be nice looking faction, good cavalry and infantry will always choose TO.

[newt]

I would say you can put the factions into categories and play one from each category to avoid similiar campaigns.
CAT1: England, Scotland, Norway, Denmark = all very similar to each other
CAT2: france, hre
CAT2: Byzantines = empire building
CAT3: Turks, Kwarz, moors and Fatimids
CAT4: crusader states
CAT5: Aragon, portugal and leon
CAT6: genoa, venice and sicily
CAT7: cuman, rus, nov, poland, hungary
CAT8: lithuania

Maybe cat1 campaigns play out similar, but the factions are way different battle wise (except Norway and Denmark)

[Tan Zhi Han]

Play Scotland, Portugal, or Hungary. Make NO alliances. Good luck. ^_^

[TheBard]

I actually lost with Aragon on H campaign, VH battles, Savage AI. I have quite a few house rules, and I don't use Crusades as a chance to randomly attack neighbors (in fact, I never ask for Crusades on my neighbors). I'm now playing with Portugal, which is also very hard, but a bit more manageable so far.

[agc28]

play late campaign and choose crusader states. gift all of your land to the Mongols. then declare war simultaneously on the Mongols, the Fatimids, the Turks, and the Kwarezmians. Attack Mongol stacks in the field. (no siege battles). use only levy archers for combat. no priests are allowed.

also, try to lose a few battles at first so your leader and heir both get negative bonus to command and authority.