Best Start and Nation to get how things work?
- Thread starter BlackJimmy
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Depends on what you want to do.
Ottomans are always a good starting nation, lot's of people around you can beat up without too many threats.
Castile if you wanna go colonial/exploration.
Ottomans are always a good starting nation, lot's of people around you can beat up without too many threats.
Castile if you wanna go colonial/exploration.
Pick someone you like for some reason and roll with it. There are lots of ways to learn and each start is a reasonably unique perspective. The tutorial nation, Castille, is a good choice, but so is virtually anybody if you're just mucking about to understand the interface. Once you have learned it, just avoid Central/South America because your options are limited there and fighting Europeans with them is extremely challenging at first. Africa is a bit rough too, but less so and has more politics than Central/South America (South America has none until Europe knocks, and they don't usually play nice).
France and the Ottomans are, very easy.
Austria is easy if you want to play the diplo game.
Castile & Portugal are a good choice if you want to play the extremely boring colonization of the New World game.
Austria is easy if you want to play the diplo game.
Castile & Portugal are a good choice if you want to play the extremely boring colonization of the New World game.
Castille can do a lot more than just colonize, while colonizing. They're a legit WC contender...though probably a bit less than France/England/Ottomans and maybe Austria.
Although for a rookie, something easy like colonizing + poking natives in war is much less of a learning curve than beating France early and making them your vassal.
Castille is the best placed nation to do anything you'd like to mess around with. You have one of the larger militaries in Europe, you're very likely to get a PU with Aragon, you're close enough to the HRE to meas around with it but far enough that you can mostly ignore it if you want, you can easily vassalize Navarra, you have a bug navy, you're in a great position for international trade and colonization, you have infidels next door. You'll learn a bit of everything except playing as a non-western power.
Burgundy isn't a good choice for a new player to the EU IV series in my opinion. They could be a third or fourth game but in order to learn the basics you really don't want France attacking you.
Not France - as powerful as it is/becomes, it has a somewhat tricky start for new players.
Portugal and Ottomans are great choices. Castille is in one sense the best - strong, fairly easy nation where you can do some colonization AND conquest (Portugal good for the former, Ottomans good for the latter). BUT if you want to play for a couple of centuries (as opposed to just a few decades to get the hang of it), there's a pretty good chance you're going to get rolf stomped by France at some point (if you're a newer player).
Portugal and Ottomans are great choices. Castille is in one sense the best - strong, fairly easy nation where you can do some colonization AND conquest (Portugal good for the former, Ottomans good for the latter). BUT if you want to play for a couple of centuries (as opposed to just a few decades to get the hang of it), there's a pretty good chance you're going to get rolf stomped by France at some point (if you're a newer player).
As Burgundy, it's much better to core-snipe England and then use Castille to hit France first
.I had little trouble winning that fight at the start of the game, but it is definitely not something for a new player to try unless they want to put in some hard-core trial/error save scum training to see what they can get way with doing.
Castille and the Ottomans are probably the easiest overall to learn with, but I ended up going with a bit of a dark horse choice. Admittedly I had already played EU3 a lot so I knew the basics, but I still needed to learn all the new stuff like Monarch Points and Idea Groups, limits on diplomacy, etc. So this may or may not be a good idea for a total beginner. But I went with one of my EU3 faves - Malaysia. Er, Malaya. My reasoning:
1) They're effectively the Portugal/Netherlands of the Pacific, so you can learn naval warfare, land battles, trade, and colonization all at the same time.
2) The nations that can form Malaya are all the only Sunnis in a land of Buddhists, Confucians, Shinto, and Hindus, so you can learn how to either holy war or play the diplomacy game to keep the non-Muslims off your back.
3) The nations that can form Malaya all hate each other at the start so you can learn about Rivaly without too many super-powers wanting your land (see 4), and you can learn warfare, vassalization, and annexing in your quest to unify and form Malaya, and the main people that you'll get the larger Aggressive Expansion penalties with are going to be the ones you're going to war with anyways, so it's easy to keep them in truces when you're not at war with them, so even if they form coalitions it won't help much.
4) The closest thing to a super-power that actually cares about Malaya at the start is Ayyuthaya, and they usually have they own issues to deal with on the mainland early on. By the time they do turn they're attention to you, you should already have either formed Malaya, or at least have most of the land controlled or vassalized. And Ayyuthaya is no match for a unified Malaya. By the time the Japanese turn their attention to you you'll be on equal footing power-wise, and could probably easily blockade them and crush their fleet if necessary, rendering them helpless. In my experience (admittedly I didn't go into late game), Ming rarely cares about you for a looooong time.
5) You start off in the Chinese tech group, and since Malaya is a prime colonizer you can put yourself in a position to be near enough to the West to westernization without risking them attacking your heartland.
6) About 50 - 70% of the provinces you'll be focused on colonizing all count as part of Asia, so you get full tax. And spices and chinaware are valuable trade goods even for Eastern powers, and with your access to Australia and Africa you can get a decent amount of gold provinces if you want them.
Of course, the drawbacks are that many Europeans have missions to take your land, the Chinese tech group is pretty bad, and being the only local Muslim power means that you're going to be without allies or Royal Marriages outside of vassals for several decades, until you can extend your territory west far enough to lessen the distance penalties with the main Muslim powers. At least in the case of the Europeans, if you can Westernize early enough and take Naval/Quality ideas you should be able to field a navy large enough to stop them from being able to do anything to you outside of Africa.
edit: Just realized I forget to talk about the countries themselves. Makassar is the smallest, and frankly worst choice. It's the best choice for a first vassal though, even though it doesn't count towards the territory needed to form Malaya. Malacca has the trade node, but it's the second smallest, and adjacent to Ayyuttayah and Aceh. If your navies bigger you can block the straits to stop Aceh in their tracks, but you're still in a risky position. Aceh has the most land and easy access to Malacca if your navy can beat theirs. Not sure how they are on Manpower, but they have a decent base tax. Brunei though has the best base tax (I think) and the only way to reach it is by water. Crush everyone's navy and you're safe, and even if they do land they'll take landing penalties. You'll have to have transports to fight back of course. But I think it's the best choice of the four.
1) They're effectively the Portugal/Netherlands of the Pacific, so you can learn naval warfare, land battles, trade, and colonization all at the same time.
2) The nations that can form Malaya are all the only Sunnis in a land of Buddhists, Confucians, Shinto, and Hindus, so you can learn how to either holy war or play the diplomacy game to keep the non-Muslims off your back.
3) The nations that can form Malaya all hate each other at the start so you can learn about Rivaly without too many super-powers wanting your land (see 4), and you can learn warfare, vassalization, and annexing in your quest to unify and form Malaya, and the main people that you'll get the larger Aggressive Expansion penalties with are going to be the ones you're going to war with anyways, so it's easy to keep them in truces when you're not at war with them, so even if they form coalitions it won't help much.
4) The closest thing to a super-power that actually cares about Malaya at the start is Ayyuthaya, and they usually have they own issues to deal with on the mainland early on. By the time they do turn they're attention to you, you should already have either formed Malaya, or at least have most of the land controlled or vassalized. And Ayyuthaya is no match for a unified Malaya. By the time the Japanese turn their attention to you you'll be on equal footing power-wise, and could probably easily blockade them and crush their fleet if necessary, rendering them helpless. In my experience (admittedly I didn't go into late game), Ming rarely cares about you for a looooong time.
5) You start off in the Chinese tech group, and since Malaya is a prime colonizer you can put yourself in a position to be near enough to the West to westernization without risking them attacking your heartland.
6) About 50 - 70% of the provinces you'll be focused on colonizing all count as part of Asia, so you get full tax. And spices and chinaware are valuable trade goods even for Eastern powers, and with your access to Australia and Africa you can get a decent amount of gold provinces if you want them.
Of course, the drawbacks are that many Europeans have missions to take your land, the Chinese tech group is pretty bad, and being the only local Muslim power means that you're going to be without allies or Royal Marriages outside of vassals for several decades, until you can extend your territory west far enough to lessen the distance penalties with the main Muslim powers. At least in the case of the Europeans, if you can Westernize early enough and take Naval/Quality ideas you should be able to field a navy large enough to stop them from being able to do anything to you outside of Africa.
edit: Just realized I forget to talk about the countries themselves. Makassar is the smallest, and frankly worst choice. It's the best choice for a first vassal though, even though it doesn't count towards the territory needed to form Malaya. Malacca has the trade node, but it's the second smallest, and adjacent to Ayyuttayah and Aceh. If your navies bigger you can block the straits to stop Aceh in their tracks, but you're still in a risky position. Aceh has the most land and easy access to Malacca if your navy can beat theirs. Not sure how they are on Manpower, but they have a decent base tax. Brunei though has the best base tax (I think) and the only way to reach it is by water. Crush everyone's navy and you're safe, and even if they do land they'll take landing penalties. You'll have to have transports to fight back of course. But I think it's the best choice of the four.
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I would say Denmark is probably the easiest country to start with. You're pretty powerful, no current wars, don't have to sweat HRE mechanics or colonization, but you have the option to do both if you wanted... you just have to keep Sweden and Norway happy.
I used to say +1 to Castile to threads like this... but now I kind of changed my mind. Choose a nation based on the affinity and familiarity, so that you actually care about what the nation you're playing. I recommended Castile to a friend of mine who just gave the game a try and he couldn't get into learning all the game mechanisms and playing a very uninteresting nation he personally never cared about his whole life - at least not at the same time. He learned better by trial and error with Brandenburg because he wanted to go Prussian. He's not German, but he learned the language and had stayed in Berlin for a while, and he got over the initial learning phase because he could identify himself with the character - that is, the nation that he's playing as.
So my recommendation comes in negatives. Don't play a nation (even if you have feelings for it) if you know from history it was continuously oppressed and conquered by stronger neighbors. This rules out the likes of Granada, Byzantium, Albania, or any of the African, South/Mesoamerican nations.
And if you have several nations in mind, then go with the biggest one that you know to be historically the most powerful. Once you've played a decent portion of the campaign (you don't need to go all the way to 1821, a lot of us don't) then you'd have some better ideas - like swapping over to the biggest rivals in your first campaign and see how you do better or worse compared to that AI rival, for example.
So my recommendation comes in negatives. Don't play a nation (even if you have feelings for it) if you know from history it was continuously oppressed and conquered by stronger neighbors. This rules out the likes of Granada, Byzantium, Albania, or any of the African, South/Mesoamerican nations.
And if you have several nations in mind, then go with the biggest one that you know to be historically the most powerful. Once you've played a decent portion of the campaign (you don't need to go all the way to 1821, a lot of us don't) then you'd have some better ideas - like swapping over to the biggest rivals in your first campaign and see how you do better or worse compared to that AI rival, for example.
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Yeah, it's not so easy mode as in EUIII, but Burgundy is still powerhouse with lots of potential
Wanna go to colonizing? Wanna get the HRownE? Or maybe just replase the France? Or Netherlands? Be a puppet-master? Any way you wish