Fun and uncommon nations to play as?

[Rabble159]

Meaning stuff that people might not know about. Everybody knows that Muscowy-->Russia is fun or Holland-->Netherlands is fun, but what about less common nations?

There's a country on an island northwest of the main continent, the southern part of the island has a nation called... Engerland? Maybe? It's pretty fun, you get to form a united kingdom and stuff.

(Okay fine, I don't have any real suggestions)

[Magnive]

I had some fun playing as Riga, and then taking the imperial provinces in the baltic from TO... Even though that has the side effect of having 20-ish infamy, so you have to not conquer anything for a while after that :P

[Magnive]

I would not call Granada uncommon, but I most certainly agree that they are fun to play as

[ytg]

Navarra is a lot of fun to play as a colonial power if you begin by conquering the American natives (small army, no manpower, no forts = fun) but will become very boring after you finish converting building forts/converting provinces. However once you grow to a sizable empire it will quickly become very boring, especially if colonizing is the only thing you (can) do.

Knights is also fun but again gets boring after you get momentum.

Venice, Genoa, and even the Hansa have a lot of options but also have restrictions on how they can expand which will keep them interesting longer.

[Nunn45]

I find Oyo fun, make a western african empire then westernise the moment you see Europeans Glorious!

[gela1212]

Livonian Order. You need to start later than the Grand Campaign though, which is offputting to some people, I know.

[DDRJake]

Finland is so much fun it should be outlawed. Release as a vassal from Sweden on Day 1 and enjoy being in the world's second worst culture group after Basque and having land so poor that you cannt afford and army AND pay Sweden their vassalage money while Novgorod eyes you up and licks her lips. Oh, your sliders are pretty garbage too. You are western tech though, so enjoy some home advantage there.

[Junuxx]

I really enjoyed playing Sukhothai. Rarely played as far as I can tell, it's an OPM with a sickly pale purple color in SE Asia.

See if you can do better than this

[alocin]

I enjoy play as an indo-chinese state like Brunei, Pegu or Malacca. That area is always a mess and you see rarely europeans that want to ocnquer your land (even if this happens more often than you would expect).
And I find always rewarding playing as Bysantium and wipe off the turks, even if I know this is not an uncommon choice among players.

[Lord Finnish]

Ireland

[Slym]

I like going a few years in the future and playing as countries that don't exist in 1399, like stirya or that turkish minor that has an amazing shade of green. The livionan order also has the advantage of being a country that has literally no provinces of it's main culture.

[Kresaux]

Ethiopia is loads of fun, but maybe too hard. You are the only orthodox around with many off-religion provinces, have only one visible neighbour at the start who you should vassalize (not annex). You have to deal with those tribal revolts which is hard with subsaharan tech and only few forts. Your government forces you to go to war all the time, and if you do, muslims overrun you with their superior tech.

[Iwanow]

Lithuania. As they may seem to be strong, they DO fight with GOLDEN horde, and start in PU with poland. Which makes them in pretty bad position, as they will just have to fight the horde, but not gain land until the war is won, so they can break the PU with poland. And if they do, the problem is that they are not realy in the best situation anyway, and can be attacked from many sides(propable is attack from muscowy, then from teutonic order, then possibly from novgorod and tver, so you may end up fighting all your neigbours at once, then, after end of 5 year truce, also be at war with golden horde - so you are not in the best situation on the 1399 starting date). So while lithuanian economy is strong, and they got quite good forcelimit, they need some good gaming early.

[Pacius Ferox]

I played as Mutapa once. I thought I might conquer some lands and form an African Empire, but it got boring as my army was chasing the enemy's sole African Spearmen unit across many provinces. And the biggest turn off was to discover that the next tech level will be discovered in 1914 (yes, nineteen fourteen).

[Premu]

Currently I'm playing as Switzerland - once you're big enough and have enough vasalls, you can get in a nice position. I even managed to create a few colonies in the caribean.

The bonus for Switzerland is that you have pretty nice sliders (expect centralisation) and a great government form at the start of the game. And you don't need to worry about crappy leaders or regency councils.

[Magnive]

I once dissolved HRE in 1450 as Switzerland, was pretty funny

[Slym]

The annoying thing about Switzerland is that they changed it from 2 provinces with base taxes of 7 and 9 producing iron into like 6 that all have base taxes of like 4 and produce wool.

[Snoopy]

Candar ---> OE

[olopi]

Currently I'm playing as Switzerland - once you're big enough and have enough vasalls, you can get in a nice position. I even managed to create a few colonies in the caribean.
The bonus for Switzerland is that you have pretty nice sliders (expect centralisation) and a great government form at the start of the game. And you don't need to worry about crappy leaders or regency councils.

Can you show a map and say how you did that?
Would like to try it myself, since I'm Swiss

[Premu]

Can you show a map and say how you did that?
Would like to try it myself, since I'm Swiss

Well, as Switzerland you get a lot of conquest and vasallisation missions - this helps lot at the beginning. And if you chose diplomatic leaders, you can get borderconflicts, too. First I took millitary NIs to be able to fight the "big boys" around me (Austria, Burgundy, Milan, Bohemia), after some time I started to concentrate myself on trading to get extra income. As I'm also fully innvoative, I'm very advanced in technology now.

I only have two cored coastal provinces, though, so I can't build a huge navy. And I definetly need the coastal buildings to raise the fleet limit.

Currently it's 1574, and my current rivals are Austria (Emperor), Castille and Great Britain (which inherited Portugal). As at the beginning only Portugal took Quest for the new world, there is still a lot of space for expansion. Currently I'm conquering Zapotec, though it is really hard to see if a province is occupied or not.

The world in 1574:

Only Switzerland and vasalls