They also start with very few units, only one territory, a cardinal who is too old to be useful, and one of the few rebel territories nearby is defended by powerful units. They have to fight England early on, and England starts fairly powerful. However they need to take some risk with expansion early on as they only start with one territory.ĭeciding the hardest faction is much easier. They also start with the awesome Italian Spear Millitia unit.ĭenmark is also pretty easy since they have a very good unit selection right from the start. Their castle units kind of suck though, but they do end up getting pretty much every gunpowder unit, so they don't have to worry too much about late-game. So Milan tends to have an absurdly good economy compared to every other faction. Otherwise I found Milan to be the easiest as they get almost all their best units from towns, which make far more money than castles. If you manage that you will get enough of an early lead to pretty much remove most of the game's difficulty. The HRE can more than double the size of their nation within 15 turns without going to war if you are willing to take some risks. Works well with Denmark, HRE, Scotland (thou they may stop short of baskilisks, but make up for it with more armor) etc.Įasiest depends on how much of a risk you are willing to take with early expansions. When you can hit 3/4 away across the battlefield,a good battle will leave a fair portion of enemy dead before in rang eof your archers, and sieges become a simple as 1, 2 ,3.ġ) Blast holes in (in line if possible) thru enemy walls.ģ) Swarm in with as many heavy infantry as can afford. So the final result is war against islamic east, and catholic west, while having less modern weaponry, which is uphill battle where the only bright side is that your veterans soldiers will be well trained from holding off crusades and jihads all the time.Īs far as easiest faction or most enjoyable? I tend to lean towards those with basilisks at the end of the cannon upgrades. Also the long game victory conditions involve control of both Rome and Jeureselum (or was it Antioch). Byzantines only get bombards (no further cannons) and lack gunpowder infantry late game. However, if you can surive all that, some of the late game Turk units are a nice reward for the hardships.Īnd last the byzantines, which up until a point are pretty strong (some horseback archers period to control land, and fireships to control sea), but the byzantines are the single weakest faction in game, when it comes to later arty.

Expanding navally is difficult due to byzantine ships, and right as you finally start to make ends meet financially, the mongols will appear. While starting off slightly larger, they are spread out across a mountainous dessert area, and this makes it a very tough economic start. Furthermore being all the way east, you are most assured to end up fighting the mongols and timurads late in game. This can make the inital expansion slow, and the long distances cause rebels to be a more continual pain. Russia starts off very small (1 place) and all the nearby rebel cities are greatly spread out. I'd only say porugal hardest of the western european nations, but the hardest would have to be chosen out of russia, turks or the byzantines.

Rome 2 total war hardest faction