My singular encounter with Medieval II Total War was a great one: I fended off an invading French army numbering about 10,000 with, if memory serves, 500 or so Elephants-With-Freaking-Cannons.

I was the victor, and I don't blame them for retreating at all either.

God, no love for the byzantines? They're my favorite faction. This is entirely going by my experiences with them in medieval I, so I hope they haven't changed too much. Anyway, byzantium's got some great units that quite frankly are still good when everyone else was breaking out musketeers and shit. I mean, varangian guards are probably the best heavy infantry in the game and their trebizond archers also double as light infantry (won quite a few battles because of that actually). Their kataphracts were somewhat less impressive for me, but I tend not to use my cavalry for much more than killing archers and chasing routers so take that how you will.


Anyway:
1.Byzantines
2.Denmark
3.Spain

You'd think so, but you'd be wrong. The whole Cav>Inf thing is mostly true, but you throw enough Venetian Heavy Infantry at something and it'll die, horses or no. They're basically like Dismounted Knights but cheaper, faster to produce, and with more armour. And they come in big groups. They're kinda late game though.

and that is mostly false. The only reason Cav>Inf is if the infantry fail their morale and start to rout. Both historically, and in game if an infantry formation can keep it's morale together they win at least 75% of the time.

In game any Heavy Cavalry unit that hits an infantry unit from anywhere saps their morale, except spearmen. And if it's from behind you can kiss that infantry unit goodbye, even if they do have spears.

Err, okay but if you hit a block of spearmen from behind with a group of infantry you can kiss them goodbye too so I'm not sure what you're getting at.

I'm saying that yes, if their morale stayed up they could win, but it doesn't stay up if they're being charged at by a whole bunch of cavalry.

Is that really a case of Cav>Inf though or is that more of a your ass got outplayed?

In Rome: Total Realism, I've consistently defeated thousands upon thousands of spearmen in defending Constantinople (or its Roman-era equivalent, I forgot what it was called) simply by flanking with a few kataphract units. Armenia kicks serious ass with that strategy, and the Macedonians fall by the tens of thousands. Since then, I consistently prefer factions with strong cavalry units. For that reason alone, I expect you all will choose an infantry-heavy kingdom for me to rule.

I'm keeping voting open approximately 24 more hours before I begin the first Chapter.

Maybe, because there are so many kingdoms, you should have two rounds. Top 3 from this vote move on to round two, then the top kingdom from 2 is the one we play.