Doomed Nations and events question

[Dragassa]

I have been playing what I call the doomed nations lately in the AGCEEP version of FTG,
my questions are:
1) Is there a way to play as the Teutonic Order, Byzantines, Golden Horde, Timurids, and Granada and see them survive the game?
2) Would changing the "Events" button in the game to either -normal, random, or historical affect the ability to survive as the above
mentioned nations?

 

[Samorim]

All can survive, if you have the skills to do it. They're particularly difficult to play and you need a very good management of your resources in the first decades to survive. With the exception of the Timurids possibly. They are destroyed via events, which makes your task almost impossible. By changing events to random, with luck you can escape this conclusion with the Timurids, so this will help. And the others as well, of course.

 

[MichaelM]

I've seen all of those survive as AI countries -- not often, but on occasion -- so it stands to reason that a reasonably good human player could do it also. I've personally done it as Byzantium and Granada, although I admit having to reload a few times.

 

[Toio]

I have been playing what I call the doomed nations lately in the AGCEEP version of FTG,
my questions are:
1) Is there a way to play as the Teutonic Order, Byzantines, Golden Horde, Timurids, and Granada and see them survive the game?
2) Would changing the "Events" button in the game to either -normal, random, or historical affect the ability to survive as the above
mentioned nations?

The easiest to play of the doomed european states is ARAGON , IIRC it has events after its REAL HISTOICAL annexation in 1516. With smart play you can destroy Castile, align with France and Venice and take the lions share of the Italian peninsula

 

[unmerged(181850)]

Some of those countries actually have a lot of advantages and can be fun to play, although like MichaelM said you might save/reload or retry a couple of times. Luck really helps. Aragon, Granada, and Teutonic Order all have pretty good cores/cultures: if you're lucky as the Teutonic Order and Poland gets too distracted to declare war on Prussia really early, you can diploannex them and be in a pretty good position relative to the other german states to dominate germany (and the whole baltic).

As mentioned above, Aragon is in a pretty good position too: you can choose to inherit naples and get those cores, and stay on pretty even footing with Castile and eventually dominate Iberia and Italy. You can keep Italian as a culture if you don't become Spain: you'll miss out on a lot of explorers and conquistadors, although Aragon still gets a few, and a lot of cores but also the really nasty Bankruptcy events. I like to keep Castile/Spain around as a rump state/vassal into the 1500s for the conversions and culture change in Granada/Gibraltar.

I've never had a whole lot of luck with Granada (I've been able to survive and overtake Iberia, but I usually fall pretty far behind France), but there's a lot of potential: good cores and cultures, lots of room to expand into Iberia and the whole Arab world, and Latin tech.

I would say these countries are some of the most fun to play though, you have a lot of opportunity without having it all handed to you.

 

[asgeirpe]

I've played as Granada a few times with sucess. One of the ways you can win with Granada is by optaining a alliance with Spain very early. Then you start a war everey 10 year until you have conquered most of North Africa. Then you can turn on Spain or Portugal. Not to conquer all but maybe steal some of their maps hidden away in their capital. With early expansion and luck I also won with the Knights of Saint John.