Your favourite countries to play with?

[Tufto]

I forgot to add Venice and Genoa- fighting a desperate battle against the Horde for control of Azow is plenty of fun, if a fairly forgone conclusion .

[Iwanow]

To the muscowy and riga, add :

Poland (well not only because i am pole, mainly because you can PU bohemia and hungary early, and conquer and vassalize TO, then just start building up your power in russia, and start vassalizing HRE electors, to become HRE and move HRE capital to warsaw, then start PU'ing everyone in HRE, while in the meantime conquer the russian heretics, and colonize golden horde, and screw up Ottomans, and go go go, crushading poland...). So simply cause poland is in position to conquer the world, aspecialy due it being in great position to westernize. In MP it also can pretty much own the game if played well (like screwing up ottomans and russia as much as possible, and making austria not possible of taking bohemia or just making a deal with it - "I take bohemia, and leave you alive, and you be happy").

[Emperor Hans]

Manchu is also a fun one, especially with 3 delicious decisions.
Take over Ming and become China instead of them.
Then use your cannon-fodder to make up for bad tech whilst you swarm the Europeans with endless soldiers and beat the Russians in the 'Rush for Berlin'
Only bad thing here is the Golden Horde/Kazakh, hard to get through their as Attrition shreds you apart, if your border is with the Kazakh provinces, make sure you get a blitz in the beginning, a stalemate there is a death sentence.

[Pacius Ferox]

I've had Sweden games more than any other countries. Portugal also seemed nice, especially when the age of discoveries start. And also, any of those small German kingdoms make a good and challenging "conquest by diplomacy" game.

[marat271]

God, I'm gonna get so much flack for saying this, but I really enjoy playing Castille and France. There I said it... Please don't kill me

[ChinpoUK]

I enjoy playing as Ming, Scotland forming a Scottish lead Great Britain and Byzantium reforging the Roman Empire.

[Pacius Ferox]

God, I'm gonna get so much flack for saying this, but I really enjoy playing Castille and France. There I said it... Please don't kill me

No... even if I just lost my small (10K army) German kingdom to them. I thought Austria would back me up but no, they weren't the current HRE.

[foriavik]

Safavid Persia- 1501 As a one province state you start being at war with ottomans- Kinda Byzantine empire

[Lord Finnish]

Byzantium forever!

I have alway had an unhealthy obsession with "vestigial" nations, Byzantium is in my top 3 of all history.
Since EU2 I've played BYZ over and over again and never quite get bored of it. I am rolling a new game with Death and Taxes and by 1590 I have united all Mediterraean except Spain and southern France. I always have two house rules as BYZ: 1) No expansion over historical borders and 2) the one and only goal is to paint that sea purple. Destruction of Islam in the Old World is another noble goal.

[Cerinier]

Castille/ Spain since EU1
I like to colonize the new world and enjoy the colonialwars
with England or France.

And since EU3 I also like to play the Ottoman Empire or
Teutonic Order -> Prussia.

[Lord Finnish]

enjoy the colonialwars

I wish I could say that
I hate them.

[marat271]

I once had world war 1 in 1659 as the Aztec, kinda cool actually, Me, Hindustan and some other minors, vs Castille and Great Britain + some more minors, After some fighting in the new world and fighting in India, I took the fight to Africa, and then setting a foothold in Castille, and after I took that, it was a full fledged invasion of GB. Great fun.

Kinda fun actually, so yea, I quite enjoy the American minors Just something feels great about destroying the European overlords who want your gold... You won't get my shiny gold, nor my brown coffee... Yuck, actually I hate coffee, why don't I live in India, I much prefer tea

Well, I'm off to establish colonies in India so I can get some of those precious golden, ehh green leaves...

[Sinroth]

Savoy -> Italy is really fun and also pretty challenging.

Aragon can be fun/challenging as well, but it's a bit easier with the 1453 start date because they have Sicily.

[Pistachio101]

The Aragon game I've been playing has been very fun. Its normal difficulty but lucky nations is on so I've had a fully formed France to my north since about 1500 and it took a long time for me to break Castille. My aim now is to conquer India. I might do a culture switch to Hindustan if possible :S.

[marat271]

The Aragon game I've been playing has been very fun. Its normal difficulty but lucky nations is on so I've had a fully formed France to my north since about 1500 and it took a long time for me to break Castille. My aim now is to conquer India. I might do a culture switch to Hindustan if possible :S.

How do you switch culture?

[Pistachio101]

Once you have a dominant culture that is not your primary culture. You move your capital to a dominant culture province and then you get a culture switch decision. This is only what I've been told, this game would be my first time attempting it. If I'm wrong in any way then please tell me how to do it correctly

[Kresaux]

Not sure about how dominant that new culture has to be. For example I played GH to Mughals game, moved capital to Delhi. Culture shift decision became avaliable although Tatar culture was still dominant (over 50%), and that particular Indian culture was a small minority.

[Valiant_Hogers]

I love playing almost any minor!

[Pistachio101]

Not sure about how dominant that new culture has to be. For example I played GH to Mughals game, moved capital to Delhi. Culture shift decision became avaliable although Tatar culture was still dominant (over 50%), and that particular Indian culture was a small minority.

Oh well, I guess that means I won't have to sell as many of my catalan provinces to vassals

[puredragon222]

For fun, I added in a mod of New Zealand in 1399 which was in the special 'kiwi' tech group, with 1000% research efficiency. That was a fun game.