It really depends on what you're doing with them. Many factions excel at one thing and suck at another, making this a hard rating to settle on.
Additionally, it's not really hard to make up for a weakness of a faction... in other words, playing as nord, you can get cavalry and archers elsewhere etc, while primarily recruiting your own infantry. You can avoid field battles in terrain that suits cavalry. Make bee-lines for castles and take them with shields and axes. Etc.
Based on that thought, I would consider
Rhodoks and
Sarranid the worst. Neither of them excel in any one field. (Though they come close enough, and are situated in terrain favorable enough, that I think even that is up to debate.)
In terms of grand strategy, though,
Swadians have a really poor starting position, so they're a contender for another reason.
Lastly you could divide the game into arenas: field battles and siege battles. The worst at siege are probably
Khergits... but they excel in the field for reasons of speed on the strategic map as well as cavalry use. The worst in the field? This really depends on the use of terrain and troop composition.
Nords and
Rhodoks have the disadvantage of the slower movement of infantry, which makes it much harder to choose your terrain and battles, but they make up for it by being real beefy in general (and Rhodoks in particular tend to be situated in infantry-friendly terrain) so that's debatable.
pittguy55 said:
I'm kind of a freshman with not much experience. But as far as I've experienced during my gameplay I would say Vaegir are the worst.
Just my personal opinion though.
Well, Vaegirs have the strength of having (hands down) the best archers... however, foot archers require the most tricks in the field to use effectively, so I can see how you would think that. It is a disadvantage in a way, because they're balanced by not having more easily manageable advantages. (See: Swadian cav, etc.) Once you've put in many hours in WB, I think your opinion of them will change some, though. Mix in some nord infantry with vaegir archers, and always stick the archers on a hill or just behind a river, with the infantry and a bit of cav blocking access/flanking just before the moment of contact.