Your Favorite Faction When Playing Crusader Kings II

[Longdan]

I like to move around but prefer to start in Ireland just to keep murder in the fambly.  I get to play one of my ancestors.

[Toonces]

Scotland FTW.

Scotland is just friggin' cool, man!

Norway is cool, too.   8)

[Gusington]

Should I bother with the tutorials or should I jump right in to an actual game?

[TheCommandTent]

Should I bother with the tutorials or should I jump right in to an actual game?

Probably give the tutorials a go especially if you are not familiar with the game.  They are fairly quick and give a very basic overview of the depth of the game.

[Gusington]

Cool I will do that, thanks.

[TheCommandTent]

There is also always the CK2 Wiki for help.

http://ckiiwiki.com/Crusader_Kings_II_Wiki



This video series really helped me out when I was learning the play the game there a number of videos but they cover alot of the depth of the game.

[Nefaro]

Playing as one of the Russian princes has always been fun for me.

[Gusington]

A Russian faction sounds interesting too.
Thanks for the above Tent.

[Nefaro]

A Russian faction sounds interesting too.

Most of the Rurik dukes are easy to start with since the other familial Dukes start the game allied with you.  Mixed in with some militarily strong neighboring pagan states, you can often get some fairly quick expansion in if you butter up your other Rurik brothers & cousins enough to help.  After awhile, the family bonds start breaking down as in-fighting due to family claims on each other start breaking down the family friendships.  The Cumans also tend to attempt expanding at the expense of the Rus about that time. 

There tends to be more open warfare and religious conflict in the early game, playing as one of the Russian princes.

[undercovergeek]

yup, no need for cassus beli on the pagans - just smack em around and steal their land

until the pagan expansion comes out

[Martok]

Ireland is supposedly, "Newb Island."  It's where a lot of people cut their teeth. 

I fit that description to a T.  I've still not put that many hours into the game yet, but playing as an Irish count does seem to offer a gentler learning curve. 

[Toonces]

Gus,
I watched about 4 of that guy's Youtube series that Tent posted above before I started playing CK2.  Although it's a bit of an investment of time, it REALLY helps you to understand how the game works.

I would go so far as to say it's virtually impossible to play without some sort of front-end investment to figure the game out.  Take the hour or so and watch at least the first 4 pieces of his video series and you should be able to start having fun, even though you still won't understand half of what's going on.

[Gusington]

Cool, investing a few hours in exchange for 100s or 1000s of hours of good gaming is worth it to me. I should have some time tonight to watch a few of those YouTube tutorials. 

[Gusington]

Ok so I just watched the first one and it is good. It helps that the guy is funny too. Right now I am most interested in playing as Venice or similar merchant republic or a Byzantine faction. Would one of those two make my initial game difficulty go up as compared to starting a campaign in Ireland?

[Bison]

I first played Ireland because it's isolated and it helped me learn the internal politics without having to worry about being surrounded by major superpower and a myriad of smaller dukes, counts other than England.  And England really only starts to get aggressive I've found after you unit Ireland or are close to it, but by that point you're looking to pick a fight with them anyway.