What countries seem hard to play but are quite easy to play?

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Kilwa. Well positioned for a trade empire, plus if you cut off the cape from Europe, you deprive European rivals of trade income. Lots of colonizable land, weak neighbors, Sunni religion.

Just finishing an Ajam to Persia game. The start is a bit fraught, but alliances with Ottomans and Aq Qoyunlu protect your back and are enthusiastic allies against the Mamelukes.
 
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Any "Ideas guy" run (800 point custom nation with only one 3 dev starting province). I have a lot of fun using super OP ideas + 6/6/6 ruler to overcome a very weak start.
 
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Denmark

Has a Special Keep vassals liberty desire low ability....that allows for you to inherit or integrate Scandinavia by 1520 without much difficulty.

Which gives you a chance to do something ahistorical like become a Colonizer while playing "Tall".
 
I'll throw in a wildcard. It doesn't exactly fit the bill, but close enough.

Navarra. I picked them because it looked like a hard spot to be in (and to some extent, it definitely is in the first 20 years or so of the game). But they get a mission to PU Aragon, which also gives Naples (not sure if this holds true still in 1.30). Wrangling these guys under control can be kind of tough, but taking a small piece of Aragonese land to let you attack someone else and expand your own development can help. If you succeed then you are suddenly going from an OPM to very powerful.

I think I attacked Aragon without the PU CB first with Castile's help and took a bunch of their land, then later went for the PU so that I wasn't a 10 dev (or whatever it is) OPM with Aragon and Naples under me.
 
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I would put the hordes up there. They can be maddening to play if you are trying to play them like other tags and as a result can be scary to try, but once you learn the horde play-style and how you can reliably beat up a MUCH larger Ming even Mongolia is stupidly powerful.

Enterring the Thunderdome as a Daimyo is another. Getting stuck in there as a subject is quite intimidating. But it is pretty straightforward to eat up a lot of Japan, ally other Daimyos, and take Kyoto. Then running immediately into Ming is always scary if they don’t collapse, but again they are eminently beatable even with a much smaller army.
 
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I don't know if Jianzhou counts as "seems hard".
I thought it would be a hard start, you aren't particularly powerful at the start of the game, there aren't any potential powerful allies nearby, expansion opportunities are meh and development is low all around.
To make matters worse, your nemesis is the strongest tag in the game by far.

And yet, i easily steamrolled Ming by the first 100 years in my first playthrough.

Certainly a very powerful tag which I clearly underestimated.
 
Inca isn't as bad as it seems. You don't have any western powers interested in your land till later because of your horrible trade node. And you get powerful bonuses.
 
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re:provence

'ally France to do all the heavy lifting'
...
Interesting, how much do you reccomend feeding France so that it doesn't annex you too fast? And do you take bordeaux/labourd to release aquitaine for when you betray France?


France can't be your long term ally, so use them hard and leave them. I recently did a Provence run with the intention of picking up a France PU, but after a few restarts it seems nigh impossible to grow large and fast enough to avoid becoming a french meal and the good relations necessary for a familial pu chance. I started by triggering the war with England and sniping everything in the North except Calais. I left the southern English holdings alone, mainly with the hope of keeping tensions between Castille/England/France exploitable.

There was no preserving the alliance for long after that, you might be able to get a quick second war out of them, but by then you need to have new powerful allies lined up.

While it is by no means an optimal run, I ended up going Provence -> Jerusalem -> France, while picking up Aragon and Hungary PUs by mid 1600s with cores and claims over just about everything one would need to complete any achievements around Our Sea. AE is horrendous, and there are still some tough nuts to crack (GB formed, Commonwealth is thicc).

20210115110946_1.jpg
 
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re:provence




France can't be your long term ally, so use them hard and leave them. I recently did a Provence run with the intention of picking up a France PU, but after a few restarts it seems nigh impossible to grow large and fast enough to avoid becoming a french meal and the good relations necessary for a familial pu chance. I started by triggering the war with England and sniping everything in the North except Calais. I left the southern English holdings alone, mainly with the hope of keeping tensions between Castille/England/France exploitable.

There was no preserving the alliance for long after that, you might be able to get a quick second war out of them, but by then you need to have new powerful allies lined up.

While it is by no means an optimal run, I ended up going Provence -> Jerusalem -> France, while picking up Aragon and Hungary PUs by mid 1600s with cores and claims over just about everything one would need to complete any achievements around Our Sea. AE is horrendous, and there are still some tough nuts to crack (GB formed, Commonwealth is thicc).

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Did you try joining the HRE? That's my plan incase the French drop the allaince. Annoyingly Brittany allied Aragon this game rather than an Irish minor so I can't beat England to annexing them all or easily vassalise Brittany but was able to get the cores on Naples by 1450
 
Did you try joining the HRE? That's my plan incase the French drop the allaince. Annoyingly Brittany allied Aragon this game rather than an Irish minor so I can't beat England to annexing them all or easily vassalise Brittany but was able to get the cores on Naples by 1450

I did join the HRE as soon as I could.

I lost HRE membership when I formed Jerusalem, as expected. I thought that since I had already added Paris to the HRE, that when I formed France I would regain membership, but instead Paris was removed also. So instead of positioning myself for emperorship, I have hopelessly crippled the empire.

Best laid plans of mice and men...
 
Byzantium. If you know the strategy to take back your ottoman cores you can win over 90% of the time. After that war you are essentially the most powerful state in the area and the Ottomans have no real way of coming back. Great missions and claims, good ideas, OP religion and with the Ottomans gone your only rival will be the Commonwealth which you can just expand in the opposite direction of.
 
Most countries in India that are bigger than an OPM but still dwarfed by the major powers qualify for this, that land is just too good. Shout out to Sirhind who seems hard because it's a vassal but is just flat out better than Delhi in every way.
 
Serbia. The gold mine in Kosovo helps you a lot economically and you have an easy early expansion path into Bosnia and Herzegovina. With alliances with Austria and Hungary beating the Ottomans early is doable.
 
Most countries in India that are bigger than an OPM but still dwarfed by the major powers qualify for this, that land is just too good. Shout out to Sirhind who seems hard because it's a vassal but is just flat out better than Delhi in every way.
Shame you have to start as dehli to get the cheevo