Least Played / Hardest Countries

[Varning]

Kind of a silly question, but we all know that every couple of weeks a thread pops up about "What country should I start as?". Well I was wondering, what do you suppose is the country people NEVER play as? Either because its really difficult or just plain obscure.

County of Tmutarakan? Pretty far out there, in fact "tmutarakan" means the middle of nowhere in Russian, apparently.

County of Napoli? More centralized, but in 1066 the Normans have it out for you, wrong religion and a claim. Pretty sure you can't survive this one without cheating or QUICKLY running away to Sicily/Africa.

What about the Byzantine dukes and count out on islands in the Aegean? To get anywhere to fight you need to pay money, probably discourages most people.

Well what is it? One of those isles in the North Sea? A minor Russian count? Something else?

 

[Mrdie]

Isn't Corfu a County in 1066? I can't recall anyone playing as them.

 

[unmerged(75851)]

County of Iceland would HAVE to be the absolute hardest.

You start as a count, with dirtpoor land that'll barely pay jack and lengthy times to get tech, AND you have to spend a fortune to send troops anywhere. That could not possibly be an easy game. (note- I think you start as a count. Even if you're a duke, that's not much of an improvement for Iceland)

Some say Nubia's the toughest but, if you can be sly and take over Alexandria with allies then you should be safe as Nubia.

 

[Yakman]

well, iceland's easy enough, but it is probably boring as all heck.

 

[unmerged(80455)]

In vanilla, the Count of Cornwall is fairly hard, and mostly boring. It's the county I learned to play the game with still.

 

[ulmont]

Some say Nubia's the toughest but, if you can be sly and take over Alexandria with allies then you should be safe as Nubia.

Start as a Nubian count, then?

 

[Varning]

Isn't Iceland a Republic in 1066? Pretty sure it is in TASS at least. But yeah, if it was a county the costs to get anywhere would be pretty huge. Funnily enough though it always seems like the ai conquers Iceland as someone else. I never even try, but then again the ai can't run out of money.

I tried a Count of Cornwall game in Veld's Before the Conquest Scenario but never got very far with it.

There aren't any Nubian counts, all three province are in the King of Nubia's demesne. And I KNOW a lot of people have played as Nubia, there's even an aar about it.

 

[chowbeng]

Georgia is pretty tough too, it can get ugly fast.

 

[unmerged(75851)]

Actually, maybe Nubia is the toughest. It has dirt-poor provinces, few troops and a large, wealthy (and hostile) neighbor. From what I've read it gets played a lot, probably because of it's precarious position.

Ironically, in real life it was much more difficult for the Muslims to conquer Nubia than it is in the game, took hundreds of years.

 

[jordarkelf]

Any of the eastern-most Byzantine counts: if the Turk doesn't steamroller you, your fellow Christians will.

Count of Faeroa: you're piss-poor, need to sea travel to get anywhere.

Irish count ("king") of Mide: all your neighbours are more powerful than you, except the Ulster ones.

 

[TempestDK]

DVIP:

County of Capua ... being preyed upon by larger neighbour. I think you might actually get excommunicated faitly early on, and the all of Italy will grab a claim on you.

County of Chester & Shrewsbury (I think it is) ... saxon count that always seems to be eaten by the English King.

Any Byzantine count in eastern Asia Minor. The turks are coming!!

County of Lübeck ... unless you pledge to Denmark or Germany, you'll have a really short game.

Duchy of Porto ... the Berbers are coming for you.

Nubia is not too hard actually. Yes, you will be beset upon by every Kingdom in North Africa except Egypt (for some reason). But you beat up the first army that comes along, and then settle peace by paying off the aggressor. Later when Egypt falls apart, you can pick off nice juicy provinces like Cairo and maybe even Alexandria.

 

[Auvar]

I played Corfu once in DVIP and did rather well. Of course, that's because I placed my heir as a fosterling in Venice and somehow accidentally managed to inherit the entire republic as a kingdom. I went on to be an Italian Orthodox western roman emperor ruling from Rome and allied to Byzantium, but then again everything's easy when you've got the Venetia regiment to call on. I'm still not really sure how it happened.

I'd say Lübeck isn't terribly hard. You have to have an early strategy of some kind to deal with Krutoj and his pagan buddies, but Lübeck itself is a good province with plenty of opportunity to expand down the Baltic coastline. I've noticed that if you pledge to Denmark, you almost always get awarded with the title of Duke of Holstein as soon as the King has enough money to create it.

The hardest games are definitely poor, isolated provinces, because it's hard to pick off even a single rogue county when no county on the map earns less than you do. Corfu is a good example, but there are plenty of low-value provinces out there with few prospects. An especially bad one is Oland (assuming you've modded the game to play pagans), which in DVIP - IIRC - starts as a rock-bottom income province ruled by a mediocre pagan count who is the vassal of the Christian king of Sweden. Better hope you get that conversion event fast...

 

[Snaake]

I assume you mean Åland... doesn't Sweden have elective law in 1066 at least, so it's at least theoretically possible to get some better titles. Of course, the pagan thing is a bit of a problem.

Anyway, the point is no matter how dirt poor you are, inheritance is always possible. Back in the first couple of games of CK I played, i'd always try to get a daughter and marry him off to the young King of France, then hope/pray/selectively assassinate people so my grandson would inherit the throne under semisalic primogeniture. This is possible with England while still in the 11th century, too. It does take away the challenge of those hard island (or other) counties though, and basically just turns them into an inheritance minigame.

About Venice: heh, i'll have to try a game sometime where I try to have dynasty members become rulers of republics / knightly orders by sending them to be fostered there, that's not the first time i've heard of someone's heir inheriting one of those slightly more hard-to-get titles.

(In my current game, the Kingdom of Hammadid and Zirid's rulers converted to catholicism. Unfortunately due to a tactical blunder on my part, they ended up steamrolled by the Seljuks, instead of me getting their titles. Later, another muslim King became a catholic too, started with Z, can't remember the name. That title I do have )

 

[TempestDK]

Anyway, the point is no matter how dirt poor you are, inheritance is always possible. Back in the first couple of games of CK I played, i'd always try to get a daughter and marry him off to the young King of France, then hope/pray/selectively assassinate people so my grandson would inherit the throne under semisalic primogeniture. This is possible with England while still in the 11th century, too. It does take away the challenge of those hard island (or other) counties though, and basically just turns them into an inheritance minigame.

That doesn't work ... the son of your daughter will not be of your dynasty, unless you share dynasty with the french king.

For inheritance to work, you would need to marry your son to the oldest daughter of an heir-less ruler ... then your grandson would inherit ... and eventually inherit your realm too.

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

For catholics Capua is one of the hardest, you are always excommunicated at the start of the scenario and your neighbout the duke of Apulia already has a claim on your title.

Poor counties like Faereyar and so on aren't really harder then other 1-province counties IMHO. You just need to have patience and luck with marriages/inheritance. I played Faereyar once and I ended the game when I was king of Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

 

[Yakman]

Actually, maybe Nubia is the toughest. It has dirt-poor provinces, few troops and a large, wealthy (and hostile) neighbor. From what I've read it gets played a lot, probably because of it's precarious position.

Ironically, in real life it was much more difficult for the Muslims to conquer Nubia than it is in the game, took hundreds of years.

it took a long time historically largely because of the sheer size of the territory--Sudan is a HUGE place.

it's important to note that CK doesn't model the whole of Nubia, just the northernmost bits.

 

[saskganesh]

really poor counties are really just a waiting game for 20-40 (or more) years. you are slowly building improvements, trying to boost income, trying to breed a large family (your best asset ) and taking advantage of random events.

 

[Yakman]

i wouldn't even argue that they are a waiting game.

it's more a game of stealing sieges with your count from your liege's marshall... particularly in the pagan/mohammedan lands... if you can do that, you can build a small empire in hopefully better territory.

 

[Auvar]

I assume you mean Åland... doesn't Sweden have elective law in 1066 at least, so it's at least theoretically possible to get some better titles. Of course, the pagan thing is a bit of a problem.

Oops, you're absolutely right. But now that I think of it, the pagan thing might actually help you in some sense - it means you can declare war on any Christian country you like, and I'm betting Sweden will come to your aid anyway. The key would be managing to get control of and finish the siege before Sweden makes peace, the normal difficulty for any vassal trying to wage a war of conquest. Of course, if you ever DID inherit the crown of Sweden while still pagan... yikes.

About Venice: heh, i'll have to try a game sometime where I try to have dynasty members become rulers of republics / knightly orders by sending them to be fostered there, that's not the first time i've heard of someone's heir inheriting one of those slightly more hard-to-get titles.

It definitely works, as long as the target has nobody in their court with really high martial scores AND the target's leader dies just before your kid comes home. Like most quests for the perfect inheritance, it either works perfectly (rarely) or requires a good spymaster and a whole bunch of assassinations (more likely). They're easier to get than non-republic, non-recreatable king level titles, anyway, because at least you don't have to wait for an event. I think the only such title I've ever managed to obtain was a promotion to King of Cuman playing as the Jewish Duke of Khazars.

 

[Snaake]

That doesn't work ...
For inheritance to work, you would need to marry your son to the oldest daughter of an heir-less ruler ... then your grandson would inherit ... and eventually inherit your realm too.

You are in fact absolutely right. The above description is the correct way to go (and which I did indeed use a lot of effort on in my first few CK games). I just got it the wrong way around when writing my previous post. The point is, inheriting large kingdoms is quite possible by the time of your 3rd or 4th ruler at the latest.