Good OPMs for first WC?

[cuendillar]

I'm just on the tail end of a Navarra->Spain game picking up all the Spanish achievements + forming Rome and HRE. The need to run through the Spanish mission tree and converting enough culture to Basque before forming Spain delayed me too much too get into East Asia in time. Thus, it seems not unreasonable to finally go for WC next run, but I don't know who would be easiest to start with.

Btw, personal restrictions for achievement runs:
Only OPM starts unless the achievement specifically requires a certain nation.
No no-cb delaration.
No culture flipping to exploit mechanics. (like country formations or reducing coring cost)
No religion flipping outside starting group.
No weird capital moves.

Any ideas, I'm very open to suggestions though I've been looking at a few countries myself already.

 

[Vetgirig]

Ryuku (there is a special achievment for that) or Ulm

 

[cuendillar]

Ryuku (there is a special achievment for that) or Ulm

Neither makes much sense. Ryukyu is animist, which is just bad, as well as unable to get trade companies and the only Japanese tag who can't become Shogun for infinite vassals. I'd rather do another country first to learn the ropes before diving into that. Ulm also has less going for it than other HRE nations like, say, Hamburg or Lübeck who at least have a good trade node and semi-easy access to colonization.

 

[mechanical_Critter]

You want to purposefully cripple yourself by not using half of the mechanics, then you claim that you don't want some of the harder starts? I'm not sure I understand your question.
Do you want a strong nation or a weak nation? in what respect? On the matter of strong nations that start OPM in no particular order, you have

- Oda (or another daimyo)
- Sarig Yogir or Kara Del (don't recall which one starts as an OPM)
- Hisn Kayfa
- Ramazan
- HRE OPM with Divine ideas (Aachen), HRE OPM
- Irish OPM, italian OPM (Siena)

Of course with HRE cheese and, to a lesser extent with Shogunate cheese, you will skip the challenges of a WC so it makes no sense imo to superimpose a "omegarighteous" set of rules on top of it.

You might as well pick Dahomey or a tibetan OPM, fail it and come back with a reasonable set of expectations.

 

[PhoenixG]

With those restriction I would say Ryukyu isn't a great option, you kinda want to move your capital away from Asia and religion wise it's pretty meh. Ulm's only down side is the starting location.

Dithmarschen: Good starting location. Personally I would go east and don't bother with colonization. That extra 5% morale is quite good early game. Although I want to ditch the government for a monarchy when absolutism hits.
Utrecht: Starts in one of the end node. Good for colonization route. Being a bishop you want to form Netherlands.
Desmond: Very good national idea set for expanding also good for colonization route. Early problem will be England.

 

[Wixelt]

Neither of those Steppe Nomad tags [or Hisn Kafya] are OPMs.

 

[Billy55]

Your best bet is probably an Irish minor, or an OPM in the HRE like Hamburg, Lübeck, Siena, Lucca

 

[Braan]

Ardabil worked pretty well, although I did it pre-Dharma with a capital move to Europe. As a bonus it has two Persia related achievements as well if you didn’t pick up those already.

 

[dynalon]

Neither of those Steppe Nomad tags [or Hisn Kafya] are OPMs.

Hisn Kayfa is an OPM, but Kara Del and Sarig Yogir do both start with two provinces. I think the only option to "legit" go Horde from an OPM start is to start as a OPM tribal - for example Pate or Mahafaly which start close enough to India and the Cape to keep any European fingers away from that Indian trade money.

Utrecht: Starts in one of the end node. Good for colonization route. Being a bishop you want to form Netherlands.

Utrecht starts with a second province, as well (Oversticht), which leaves East Frisia as the only OPM in the Channel.

- HRE OPM with Divine ideas (Aachen), HRE OPM

Aachen got their own (not too special) idea set. Alsace, Augsburg and Magdeburg have Divine Ideas, though.

Sorry for being an intolerable nitpicker here - I opened the game to make sure that I wouldn't tell any lies about Hisn Kayfa and I thought I might as well.

Just as a general note - starting in (preferrably central or western) Europe is a Big Deal to get the snowball rolling faster, so I'd recommend doing that. The CCCR from Divine Ideas is big, of course, although it might also be good to start coastal to have a quicker route out of Europe. If you want to pick up their respective achievement along the way, Hamburg or Lucca might be decent picks, although you'll obviously want to flip to Monarchy before Absolutism hits.

 

[iClipse]

Neither makes much sense. Ryukyu is animist, which is just bad, as well as unable to get trade companies and the only Japanese tag who can't become Shogun for infinite vassals. I'd rather do another country first to learn the ropes before diving into that. Ulm also has less going for it than other HRE nations like, say, Hamburg or Lübeck who at least have a good trade node and semi-easy access to colonization.

Ryukyu is actually one of the better OPM's. Pretty great expansionist idea set. Animist is a fantastic religion because it allows easy access to convert to any other religion. Shia, Ibadi, Hindu or Coptic come to mind. You could even go Orthodox if you wait long enough for Russia to show up. Point is that it gives options. For Ryukyu it's also very easy to move your capital. To either Australia or Africa.

Anyway, other OPM's are as mentioned before most daimyo's (Oda is particularly strong). You can form Japan, which with the new mission tree is considerably buffed. You can reach 105 absolutism without court and country, meaning you don't need to slow down to trigger that disaster

 

[atwix]

Mann. do the achievement, and wc. for the cheevo you need to kill all half the world anyways.

 

[tip001]

Ryukyu can become Shogun if you just change the government to Daimyo (sure, it gives 10 corruption but at the start it's cheap to get it to zero in 10 years).
If you limit yourself by not allowing to switch religion at least once you are just artificially make things unbearable for tags like that.

Within your rules it is best to start in Europe, coastal and (obviously) christian.
-Desmond is a very good and certain start. Just go NW asap.
-Lucca or Siena make up for a more interesting and rewarding run forming Tuscany/Italy/Rome.
-And yes, I avoid any other HRE OPM's (other than Italian) like the plague

-If you want to be creative (do something else than mainstream) I would play Denmark and release Gotland and play as. They have interesting ideas supporting expansion. CCCR, Merc cost and trade money.

 

[KaiserJohan]

Some other suggestions -

• The Knights are pretty strong with their Raiding traditions but you'd probably need to no-cb to actually get somewhere.
• Athens for getting the Ottoderps to beat up your overlord Byz, grab their stuff and secure an alliance.
• Pate and grab "The Third Way" achievement at the same time (TC's in india!)

 

[tip001]

Some other suggestions -

• The Knights are pretty strong with their Raiding traditions but you'd probably need to no-cb to actually get somewhere.
• Athens for getting the Ottoderps to beat up your overlord Byz, grab their stuff and secure an alliance.
• Pate and grab "The Third Way" achievement at the same time (TC's in india!)

Hi Kaiser. Why on Earth does Gotland not have any achievement? You can practically see Visby from Stockholm (just exaggerating). Something like "be dominant in all end nodes by just privatering" would be a nice one

 

[Ruian]

Mysore has pretty good ideas and starts with Hindu.

2 downsides though, they start with 2 provinces
start is very hard and you probably don't want that

 

[enKage]

In fact Navarra is the best OPM to WC with PUs over Aragon, Naples, France, GB, Austria and Portugal.
Other choices:
Any OPM daymio
Gujarati princedom, I don;t remember which one is OPM, but they should be able to form Rajputana
Pate can easily start early trade companies
Nepali minors
OPM tribal in India into horde
Kale and Taungu are decent and their achievements force fast expansion also Taungu has really strong ideas for WC including CCR, manpower, unrest reduction and som military buffs
Custom OPM in british islands. You can form crazy ideas and finish 80 years around the world achievement

And picking among all of this, I would choose...

Tuangu

 

[cuendillar]

You want to purposefully cripple yourself by not using half of the mechanics, then you claim that you don't want some of the harder starts? I'm not sure I understand your question.
Do you want a strong nation or a weak nation? in what respect? On the matter of strong nations that start OPM in no particular order, you have

- Oda (or another daimyo)
- Sarig Yogir or Kara Del (don't recall which one starts as an OPM)
- Hisn Kayfa
- Ramazan
- HRE OPM with Divine ideas (Aachen), HRE OPM
- Irish OPM, italian OPM (Siena)

Of course with HRE cheese and, to a lesser extent with Shogunate cheese, you will skip the challenges of a WC so it makes no sense imo to superimpose a "omegarighteous" set of rules on top of it.

You might as well pick Dahomey or a tibetan OPM, fail it and come back with a reasonable set of expectations.

The reason for the restrictions (which isn't just for this one, but for all my runs) is basically that I loved playing OPMs in EU3 and decided that I'd do only OPM starts for all achievements where it's possible to do so. It made the Russian ones so much harder... The other rules were just added on later on with a more vague "the AI doesn't do it" and it just feels wrong for Japan to have a capital in Oceania or the like. That said, the Dahomey achievement was fun. Tibet seems less so.

Mann. do the achievement, and wc. for the cheevo you need to kill all half the world anyways.

Sure, but the problem is that it's such a slow start to do it from an OPM start - I'd have to somehow conquer it off England first in order to release it as a vassal. Might be doable as an Irish minor by getting ticking warscore for occupying Pale though, so why not?

Ryukyu can become Shogun if you just change the government to Daimyo (sure, it gives 10 corruption but at the start it's cheap to get it to zero in 10 years).
If you limit yourself by not allowing to switch religion at least once you are just artificially make things unbearable for tags like that.

Within your rules it is best to start in Europe, coastal and (obviously) christian.
-Desmond is a very good and certain start. Just go NW asap.
-Lucca or Siena make up for a more interesting and rewarding run forming Tuscany/Italy/Rome.
-And yes, I avoid any other HRE OPM's (other than Italian) like the plague

-If you want to be creative (do something else than mainstream) I would play Denmark and release Gotland and play as. They have interesting ideas supporting expansion. CCCR, Merc cost and trade money.

Since I don't have the achievements for forming Italy nor Lucky Lucca, that's definitely a possibility - but how to break out of Italy? Spain blocks all incoming trade profit and Africa's out of fabrication range. Exploration 3rd to rush Cape, maybe?
Ireland is intriguing, Britain is an everpresent threat (though I got Luck of the Irish, so I know I can beat them) and for some weird reason Ireland can't form Great Britain. What's up with that anyway?

Some other suggestions -

• The Knights are pretty strong with their Raiding traditions but you'd probably need to no-cb to actually get somewhere.
• Athens for getting the Ottoderps to beat up your overlord Byz, grab their stuff and secure an alliance.
• Pate and grab "The Third Way" achievement at the same time (TC's in india!)

I hadn't even considered Athens, that's an interesting notion. Getting that support would make the start rather smooth, especially if I can get into HRE to pick up Italy. They're Lombard, right, so Italy should be a stepping stone.

I think Athens, Gilan/Ardabil (to form Mughals or maybe Persia - but Mughals in particular seems like a good WC tag), Lucca and Oda/Tokugawa seem to sail up on a shortlist. Hamburg and Ireland is also interesting though.

 

[enKage]

With Lucca you can take African route. You can either take Crete / Knights / Cypprus via attacking trade leage of Venice or just use age ability claims bordering claims and hit Tunis, mameluks, whatever.

 

[mechanical_Critter]

So if the goal is to pass the decision the AI passes, if you're consistent you should skip daimyo / shogunate strats (since AI will form Japan which nullifies the whole point) and HRE strats (since AI will not only revoke but also pass the last reform which again nullifies your progress, besides AI manages HRE in an extremely peculiar manner).

I think that you can have reasonably 3 strats open to you:
1 - go for an OPM that has Mughals formation in their eligible decisions. Ardabil suggested earlier work, it's not the easiest of starts. Personally I'd go for Hisn Kayfa which I mentioned earlier. They are extremely strong, and have an excellent set of ideas which you don't want to trade out until after you've formed the Mughals. What's more, they are eligible to reform the Mameluks, so you can go Hisn Kayfa -> Mamluks -> Mughals and have a nice powerbase before taking down Timurids making the run relatively straightforward (although I'm gonna say this: I think that belining towards india through Timurids and rushing Mughals might be stronger - but it should be harder and less reliable).
2 - go for something that has a strong formable/reformable in europe. Bar, Navarra, Riga, Siena come to mind (France, Spain, Prussia, Italy) that you will utilise to make Europe submit, and if need be you can then form the Roman Empire at some point to get the CCR to speed things up. You will get fast TCs this way, and the strong military will help in the early/midgame
3 - something else outside of europe, where you will probably struggle.

 

[Blust]

Avar. Their flag is neat and they have a unique achievement too.