Just Got the Game, Looking for Interesting Starts plus Some General Advice

[InsidiousMage]

Picked up the game since it was on sale and looked through the recommended starts and was wondering what other starts were interesting. Also, any general advice for getting started would be helpful, like what techs are generally good in the early game and so on.

 

[olivenkranz]

Egypt is rather chill
Starting inventions depend on start. Get Theater and Temple for bigger nations, assault tree can be useful for smaller nations.

 

[DukeLeto42]

First things first, here is a recent "beginner seeking advice" thread I recommend. Now, on to your specifics...

Egypt is a good start if you want to just see what the game's about for a bit. It's also a nation with the Diadochi Wars system, so you can also go absolutely ham with it (I can pull off eating basically all of the Antigonids, Thrace, and Macedon before the war ends).

Some other suggestions (in no particular order):

• Rome. It is Imperator: Rome, after all, and they get a lot of free CBs.
• Carthage. As the big Roman antagonist, they also have a lot more attention paid to them, and a lot of feudatories to help them along.
• Pritannian minors. All the British Isles tribes have the same general goal - to unite the islands. Since nobody fields much of a fleet across the Channel, it's a nice constrained space for a tribal experience with a formable at the end. If you succeed, you can expand into the morass that is Gaul and steel yourself to face the glory of Rome.
• Kush's -10% build cost means you'll get to build a lot, which is fun, but you do eventually have to deal with Egypt on your border

Tech-wise, a look at how I view priorities organized by tree:

• Military: unlocking the foundry and getting cohorts are goals. Honestly, I don't spend a lot in this - by the time you are falling behind in investment here, hopefully you're big and scary enough that it doesn't matter
• Civic: those reduced build costs really add up, as do small boosts to productivity. The trade-heavy tree can really pile up boosts in your capitol province - good for a small nation in particular
• Oratory: reducing AE means more ability to expand. Take all the reductions you can get. "Winning Land by the Spear" can be spectacularly valuable... and also very tedious. More diplo rep, PI, and the like can also do a lot for you
• Religious: stacking conversion boosts can get conversion moving fast, helping to stabilize large and diverse realms. There's also a lot of other notable boosts hidden in the tree.

 

[Herennius]

Initial tech choices and a possible tendency that the civic tree rules the early game were discussed quite extensive here:

Civic Inventions Tree Preference

Every time I start a run when I look at the inventions tree I always choose the civic one for the trade, assimilation, promotion and other bonuses. It is something related to my playstyle? Have you found yourself loving one tree also?

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Ducky251]

A few good starts -

Egypt - large, no one will mess with you, solid economy, largest cultures already integrated...just don’t think a war to defend your one province in Greece will be easy!

Bactria - large, rare trade goods (silk, gems), vassal of Seleukid empire (which means civil wars are disabled!) but it is easy to break away from them, have Persian ideas already unlocked so tons of cavalry buffs.

Rome - easiest at the start as have 4 vassals, a bonus to levy size and a very, very productive population...but you will be hated by everyone.

Kush - Homogenous nation so no negatives from culture or religion at the start. East to defend as your kingdom is just the Nile. Can easily expand north if you wait for Egypt to attack Antigonids/Seleukids.

Armenia - large, economy is decent but population density is generally quite low. Atropatene next door can be killed in one war for 400 more pops, but Seleucid s will attack if not careful...also Armenia has a religion (Khaldic) that only appears in Armenia, so if you want a bit more of a challenge, give them a go! Also they have great cavalry

Techs - if a large nation, I would grab the first oratory tech that makes characters +2 happiness with you, and then throw all the rest in to the religious tree going down the left to make cultures happier, and focus on religious until you get down to the ones that speed up conversion (there is also a juicy buff of 2.5% levy size too!!)

If a small nation that needs to win wars very quickly (Sparta, Epirus...), put all techs in siege...all of them. You need to siege fast to avoid being steamrolled.

 

[Nostalgium]

Armenia - large, economy is decent but population density is generally quite low. Atropatene next door can be killed in one war for 400 more pops, but Seleucid s will attack if not careful...also Armenia has a religion (Khaldic) that only appears in Armenia, so if you want a bit more of a challenge, give them a go! Also they have great cavalry

Throwing my voice in with Armenia, my favourite boys. They have a moderately challenging start, where you have to diplomatically placate a larger nation to avoid death and improve the quality of your pops to increase techs, but the reward is a country with a lot of interesting options and ways to go. Your big enemy for most of the game will be the Seleukids, and they can form Persia for that sweet late-game rivalry with Rome, and Maurya. They also sit on a crossroads between many cultures and religions, so you get to play around a lot with those mechanics.

Another start I enjoy from the above post is Bactria. You start as a Satrapy of Seleukos, but you are a powerful and wealthy nation in your own right; your betrayal, when it comes, will hurt them a lot. Especially if you time it with something like the Strife disaster that can fire for them, or wars with the Diadochi. Their natural path of conquest is to go into India and form the Indo-Greek Kingdom, which is an interesting route and lets you kick Maurya's teeth in, which always brings me joy due to how many attrition-riddled slogfests I've had with them in the Gedrosian Desert while playing Armenia.

Other than those two in particular, as people say, Rome, Egypt and Carthage for a casual start, and British tribes for learning the Tribal mechanics. The latter in particular also have very clear goals where you progressively unite and civilize your nation, and reward you with a potentially very early Empire rank once you form Albion. Who also has a very nice colour and an OK flag, which is a huge plus. Britain is overall one of my favourite tribal starts.

 

[Surimi]

Are you looking for starts with a lot of unique flavour, or starts which are in interesting or cool positions?

Some of my personal favourites.

Bactria - Bactria is a medium sized nation that has a lot of flavour but for some reason isn't recommended. It's also potentially very, very strong. It's already been mentioned, so I'll leave it at that, but it's well worth a playthrough and there are so many directions you can go with it.

Judea - Judea can be extremely difficult if you play aggressively, and even if you don't it really benefits from having a pretty good understanding of the game's systems, but there are some amazing youtube guides out there and you will learn a huge amount from the experience even if it goes badly. It's a really unique way to play because you generally want to remain a tributary of one of the bigger nations around you and have them protect you while you build up your economy. I:R is the only game I can think of where it's possible to expand purely through espionage, and learning to playing Judea will open up so many possibilities and really get you using game systems you might not otherwise think about.

Also, Judaism OP.

Brigantia - Brigantia is, I would say, the easiest start in Britannia. You start out fairly big, can expand north or south and have a heritage that boosts light infantry (really powerful for barbarian tribes). You get two formable nations, Brigantia and later Albion, and while your lands are very underdeveloped you get to build them up and plop down cities and just really figure out how the economy works. Also, Britannia is quite difficult to invade, so once you're bigger than the other tribes you're going to be pretty safe for most of the game.

Gymnaesia - The ultimate one state minor, in my opinion. You have a really safe starting location with good lands, and you have a lot of choices. You can just focus on peacefully building up an economy and pushing pop growth, or you can go full migratory tribe and become the vikings of the Mediterranean, raiding the crap out of everyone with your roving boat hordes. Obviously, I'm a bit biased in favour of the latter (even though it might be a bit difficult for someone totally new to the game). But even the peaceful game can teach you a lot and you can become deceptively strong.

The tiny tibes in Sardinia can be an interesting alternative here, since they're in a similar position with a bit more room to expand and a cool formable nation as a reward. I wouldn't recommend it as much for a new player though as you have to deal with Carthage and possibly Rome later on.

Praesos - Praesos is a tiny city state in Crete with a unique heritage. It's not the easiest start, but if you manage diplomacy well and are aggressive early on things shouldn't be too challenging either. If you can unite Crete, you get a formable nation and a really good island position (have you figured out that I like islands). Although you can't go full viking like the tribal nations above, Greeks have a really cool military tradition which lets your navies perform slave raids, stealing pops from coastal settlements. Since you're close to a lot of very populated lands, the amount you can steal really adds up over time and you can make Crete quite developed.