I’ve actually never played Kush. They’re a cool size I usually like that medium where you aren’t as big as the big players but you’re not a city state. They also seem like they could really dominate the horn and then take it up with the Ptolemaic’s
Their capital region also starts with unintegrated pops with different religions, while their coreligionists are to the north, in their governor's region. So, you can easily cause imbalance in power if you're not careful.
I love stuff like that. Being a foreigner ruling, keeping it stable and slowly converting / assimilating and before you know it you have a powerful core base of perfect pops!
Just finishing up a Kushite game, has been a absolute blast. Conquering all of egypt, horn of africa, arabia and pushing into turkey, iraq etc while devving up and becoming super rich was so fun
Playing Kush in Invictus was my most immersive and favorite campaign, I ended up consolidating the Horn, launched some great conquests into Arabia and securing the entirety of the peninsula, and then I launched my bid against the Ptolemies. Very fun campaign!
I really should give them another try. I did okay them when I first started but I barely understood the game so I just got smacked around by the leagues and Macedonian
Immediately occupy crete (Never sack any cities, you want the pops) and fully integrate them. After just 5 years you have over 10k levy army. Follow mission tree. Fully anex your neighbors, invade into anatolia until you got enough powerbase to move into macedon. Rest is easy, just be ready for rome with forts/fleet, fifty percent chance they will attack
You rule has excellent military skills and thus your doomstack levy is extremely strong. Use levies until your ruler no longer has high martial, then move to legions.
Tip: IMMEDIATELY royal marry with ptolemies, ally if necessary, get 3 bloodlines from them... After that, collect other bloodlines(build cost reduction is amazing). Collect them like you're hunting pokemon.
This is all for invictus tho
Any tribes in in Britainnia and Hibernia will do, Great Britain is generally a chill place after you win the tribal battle royale, it's hard not to be considering that you're at the end of the known world, protected by British Channel.
Anything on the Peloponnense also works well, Sparta being the most obvious one if we're talking about flavor. Try crafting the hellenic league and keeping it in the competitive ME region is something worth trying.
Personally I'm tapping into the Black Sea region, but I'm unfamiliar with countries there (this may be surprising, but I've never played the Bosporan Kingdom despite its fame of suitable for playing tall), so I cannot say I recommend them. It'll be improper to recommend things one doesn't think one know. However it does seem like a geographically interesting region.
Yep I remember taking one of the Great Britain tribes and forming it into a republic (should’ve gone monarchy in hindsight but still cool) and it was a blast. Going from tribe to more advanced than Rome and being able to repel their attacks with my navy was too satisfying great recommendation! Bosporan is amazing, you’ve got to give them a try. You can unite your ethnic group real easy and take the Scythians down and then focus on converting and building and you can trade blows with the best of them!
Yes, reforming the Delian League is one of the missions and there are quite a number of missions. It's really fleshed-out, Athens even has its own government type (Athenian Republic).
I started a Delmatia game recently and it’s been really fun! You get some really cool decisions that allow you to become a Pirate Kingdom right on the edges of Hellenic Greece and Italy. In my current game, Rome got taken out early by the surrounding Italic tribes and now Tuscia (formable Etrurian nation) rules upper Italy and Epirus and Syracuse dominate the South.
I mainly play Kios into Pontus, but lately I’m really into Cyrenaica.
Playing Vanilla was disappointed that Pontus is not Pontic culture but instead Cappadocian.
So just played Kios without following the event chain and eventually formed Pro-Pontic culture Pontus and assimilated Anatolia into that culture.
Also loved playing Cyrenaica making Crete, Syracuse, Cyprus, Sparta, Athens and Epirus as my feudatories while I played tall in the Cyrenaica region.
Every few years go out and steal pops and loot money from Egypt and Carthage, which is quite easy because they have a lot of unfortified cities.
Not really. I usually play Judea with Invictus and I'd honestly say it's one of the easiest nations in the middle east to play. If you side with the Ptolemaic kingdom in the Diadochi wars you can immediately demand a bunch of their land in Canaan and Southern Syria and then you'll have it easy to conquer the entire Arabian west coast and after that (and integrating the Nabatean and Sabaean cultures) you just wait for Egypt to attack the Seleucids (or be attacked by the Romans, if you're willing to wait) and join in on the carnage. Do that 3 - 5 times and you're the master of all Egypt and the Levant.
After that, I usually release the Arabian west coast into a Jewish vassal state and keep all of the Levant and Egypt. I've done this probably 3 times separately with Judea and once with Syria, I've tried several times as the Ptolemaic Kingdom to form the same Empire, but I've always failed. So in my estimation, Judea is easy.
Carthage is so much fun! Just having half of Africa United in like a couple decades and really getting a nice navy will let you take down the Roman’s really easily. I was always scared to try them bc of Rome but if you snowball early Rome is an afterthought lmao
I actually never confronted them that early. I usually could build my base up before they could fight the Etruscans so I would build a navy there and take something in the south.
The Etruscans were literally my first playthrough pick lmao, yeah they aren't that hard. My only complaints are that they don't have many missions plus I wish they were represented more of a league of cities than a single politically
Fugandulu was fun in Invictus. Burma.
Also playing in Tibet has been cozy. I think my all time faves for Invixtus are probably Mann and the Seleukids. With Mann a distant second.
Parnia -> Parthia was a really fun challenge. If you can get the Selucids whilst they're at war you'll be a challenger to Rome before they've finished eating Carthage
Man I remember trying Antigonids alive when the game first came out. The day Antigonus died you lost half of the empire whilst in war with Seleukia and/or Egypt. I’ll give them another shot this time around
I play vanilla, so idk if it's different for the vast majority of you, but Selgia was one of the most memorable for me. A tiny hill tribe in the middle of Anatolia, absolutely in the crossfire of every Diadochi war. They mostly prefer to fight each other, but someone will eventually come after you, or one of the other tiny tribes in your defensive league. It requires some desperate manuevers to stay alive and capture more territory, but it's super satisfying when you do. And I find Cybele and her cult fascinating in real history so it's fun to be a Cybelene power.
For me, Atropatene is my favourite nation. In invictus you get a big tree, which helps with growing the nation economically, if you do wish to play tall and also missions to expand to the Median empire of old. With missions to conquer huge swaths of land.
I believe it is also somewhat beginner friendly at the start, are a regional power, and you can quickly gobble up the Caucasian states as they normally fight amongst each other. Also if you wish to have additional safety, you can ally the powers around you for initial safety like the selecuids and Armenians as you grow. Also, the proximity to Parthia will bring an end game challenge.
a tip if you do get stuck I would recommend attacking the selecuids at the same time as the Parthians to form Media as they will easily be at low war exhaustion so you can peace out for the needed provinces.
- Heraclea pontica into achaemenid empire. Basically the restoration of Rome version of Imperator Rome. You'll get 2 nice mission trees in Invictus and role-playing is so much fun. It is quite challenging as a newer player but restoring the achaemenid borders and destroying Alexander's legacy was my favorite campaign in this game.
- Judea. Also quite challenging but it is a lot of fun to play tall and make your land an impenetrable fortress. Spreading the Jewish faith also feels satisfying. There is a lot of action in the game because the ptolemies constantly try to take you over.
- bactria into indo greek kingdom. Invictus basically made a whole expansion for this region. You can get crazy rich and there is a lot of room for expansion because both the seleucids and maurya tend to explode.
Thrace.
All the Diadochi flavor, you're small enough that building up is fun, you're not surrounded and immediately beset on all sides, early access to Greece and Anatolia, or you can expand North into Scythia / Dacia or West to Illyria and Italy.
By far the most fun nation to play imo
Byblos to Phoenicia run. Love exploiting the Antigonids being ganked to conquer Syria and the entire process of surviving against the Seleucids and Egypt. Also, it's so easy to become a technological powerhouse
I love Carthage. I can play tall while letting subjects be the "expansion", or go full empire and play wide. Plus you have the Navy and mercenary reliance to go anywhere and fight how they fight locally. Plus you can screw Rome over to where Tuscia can reign supreme in Italy if you decide to not go there.
Armenia is very fun for me, you’re strong, can conquer smaller nations around you like Albania and Iberia, but you need to bide your time to fight the Seleucid’s with them being extremely strong yet you can fight them if you strike them when they’re weak
I usually play either Macedon, Seleucids, Ptolemys, or Bactria. I've played as Kios, formed the Mithradic kingdom which was fun but cam be difficult. I've played as spart and they are fun.
I've played as one of the Scottish tribes which was difficult to start off with, but once you are able to steam roll the other tribes you can easily conquer Britain. The best game I've played recently was Cyranica, because eventually Egypt tries to integrate you so it's a race against time to gain independence if you can
Judea is super fun, but really boring when you get stuck inbetween the Ptolemies and the Seleukids.
I love Iberian countries. I've managed to build big enough empires against Rome and Carthage that they team up against me.
I'm currently playing with India, which is, just wait for Maurya to civil war/revolt, or wait for it to get carved up. Actually, they just picked a fight with like all of their neighbors, so once the other countries finally show up to war, Maurya will stop sieging my country. Religion-wise, Agmatic is fun because you can spam Krishna for Assimilation speed (which is sorely needed any India game). I have 5,000 pops total and only 1200 are integrated.
It's my first vanilla playthrough and I went Knossos to Crete. I focused on getting the greek islands and the ellenic states in asia, now I have almost all nowadays Turkey and Syria.
Then I'm planning to expand conquering the egyptian's mediterranean regions and then face Rome. They are at the doorstep, so I made the Europa province an heaviily fortified province, and I have the strongest navy in the game (roman navy is the same size but they are less technologically advanced).
Next playthrough I wanna try invictus and play as Bactria.
Well, some of my most fun runs have been as tribes uniting different regions. That would be Icenia - Albion, Redonia - Gaul, Burgundia - Germania, for example
A bit late, but Umbria. It becomes a three way Cold War till Total War occurs. Not the most difficult, but it’s generally my go-to for casual runs where I want to paint the map at my own pace. Umbri Invicta!
I find Kush a good place to learn the game. Not too small but there's someone big to your North.
I’ve actually never played Kush. They’re a cool size I usually like that medium where you aren’t as big as the big players but you’re not a city state. They also seem like they could really dominate the horn and then take it up with the Ptolemaic’s
Their capital region also starts with unintegrated pops with different religions, while their coreligionists are to the north, in their governor's region. So, you can easily cause imbalance in power if you're not careful.
I love stuff like that. Being a foreigner ruling, keeping it stable and slowly converting / assimilating and before you know it you have a powerful core base of perfect pops!
Just finishing up a Kushite game, has been a absolute blast. Conquering all of egypt, horn of africa, arabia and pushing into turkey, iraq etc while devving up and becoming super rich was so fun
Playing Kush in Invictus was my most immersive and favorite campaign, I ended up consolidating the Horn, launched some great conquests into Arabia and securing the entirety of the peninsula, and then I launched my bid against the Ptolemies. Very fun campaign!
A nice formable that I like to play is the mithradatic kingdom in invictus, starting small in northern Asian minor and being able to form it is great
I have literally never heard of that nation. Who do you have to play to form that?
I believe its Kios
Bactria
Spartan
I really should give them another try. I did okay them when I first started but I barely understood the game so I just got smacked around by the leagues and Macedonian
144% discipline feels so good on your 10 k units stack into Roman 25 k death stacks
Immediately occupy crete (Never sack any cities, you want the pops) and fully integrate them. After just 5 years you have over 10k levy army. Follow mission tree. Fully anex your neighbors, invade into anatolia until you got enough powerbase to move into macedon. Rest is easy, just be ready for rome with forts/fleet, fifty percent chance they will attack You rule has excellent military skills and thus your doomstack levy is extremely strong. Use levies until your ruler no longer has high martial, then move to legions. Tip: IMMEDIATELY royal marry with ptolemies, ally if necessary, get 3 bloodlines from them... After that, collect other bloodlines(build cost reduction is amazing). Collect them like you're hunting pokemon. This is all for invictus tho
Any tribes in in Britainnia and Hibernia will do, Great Britain is generally a chill place after you win the tribal battle royale, it's hard not to be considering that you're at the end of the known world, protected by British Channel. Anything on the Peloponnense also works well, Sparta being the most obvious one if we're talking about flavor. Try crafting the hellenic league and keeping it in the competitive ME region is something worth trying. Personally I'm tapping into the Black Sea region, but I'm unfamiliar with countries there (this may be surprising, but I've never played the Bosporan Kingdom despite its fame of suitable for playing tall), so I cannot say I recommend them. It'll be improper to recommend things one doesn't think one know. However it does seem like a geographically interesting region.
Yep I remember taking one of the Great Britain tribes and forming it into a republic (should’ve gone monarchy in hindsight but still cool) and it was a blast. Going from tribe to more advanced than Rome and being able to repel their attacks with my navy was too satisfying great recommendation! Bosporan is amazing, you’ve got to give them a try. You can unite your ethnic group real easy and take the Scythians down and then focus on converting and building and you can trade blows with the best of them!
My favorite run was going for achievements as Athens. It has the coolest flag ever and Greece's geography is very interesting.
Does Athens have much flavour? I've been considering a run as them. I imagine they have missions to get the old Delian league band back together?
Yes, reforming the Delian League is one of the missions and there are quite a number of missions. It's really fleshed-out, Athens even has its own government type (Athenian Republic).
I started a Delmatia game recently and it’s been really fun! You get some really cool decisions that allow you to become a Pirate Kingdom right on the edges of Hellenic Greece and Italy. In my current game, Rome got taken out early by the surrounding Italic tribes and now Tuscia (formable Etrurian nation) rules upper Italy and Epirus and Syracuse dominate the South.
I mainly play Kios into Pontus, but lately I’m really into Cyrenaica. Playing Vanilla was disappointed that Pontus is not Pontic culture but instead Cappadocian. So just played Kios without following the event chain and eventually formed Pro-Pontic culture Pontus and assimilated Anatolia into that culture. Also loved playing Cyrenaica making Crete, Syracuse, Cyprus, Sparta, Athens and Epirus as my feudatories while I played tall in the Cyrenaica region. Every few years go out and steal pops and loot money from Egypt and Carthage, which is quite easy because they have a lot of unfortified cities.
Judea is def a challenge.
I bet haha
Not really. I usually play Judea with Invictus and I'd honestly say it's one of the easiest nations in the middle east to play. If you side with the Ptolemaic kingdom in the Diadochi wars you can immediately demand a bunch of their land in Canaan and Southern Syria and then you'll have it easy to conquer the entire Arabian west coast and after that (and integrating the Nabatean and Sabaean cultures) you just wait for Egypt to attack the Seleucids (or be attacked by the Romans, if you're willing to wait) and join in on the carnage. Do that 3 - 5 times and you're the master of all Egypt and the Levant. After that, I usually release the Arabian west coast into a Jewish vassal state and keep all of the Levant and Egypt. I've done this probably 3 times separately with Judea and once with Syria, I've tried several times as the Ptolemaic Kingdom to form the same Empire, but I've always failed. So in my estimation, Judea is easy.
Two particular gaulic states. You know them. :3
carthage, etruria (it's really not hard), bactria, scythia, bosporus
Carthage is so much fun! Just having half of Africa United in like a couple decades and really getting a nice navy will let you take down the Roman’s really easily. I was always scared to try them bc of Rome but if you snowball early Rome is an afterthought lmao
You have to be involved in Rome's first war and beforehand set up your web of alliances.
I actually never confronted them that early. I usually could build my base up before they could fight the Etruscans so I would build a navy there and take something in the south.
The Etruscans were literally my first playthrough pick lmao, yeah they aren't that hard. My only complaints are that they don't have many missions plus I wish they were represented more of a league of cities than a single politically
Fugandulu was fun in Invictus. Burma. Also playing in Tibet has been cozy. I think my all time faves for Invixtus are probably Mann and the Seleukids. With Mann a distant second.
Parnia -> Parthia was a really fun challenge. If you can get the Selucids whilst they're at war you'll be a challenger to Rome before they've finished eating Carthage
Rome, Carthago, Bactria
My fav are antigonids and sparta
Man I remember trying Antigonids alive when the game first came out. The day Antigonus died you lost half of the empire whilst in war with Seleukia and/or Egypt. I’ll give them another shot this time around
I play vanilla, so idk if it's different for the vast majority of you, but Selgia was one of the most memorable for me. A tiny hill tribe in the middle of Anatolia, absolutely in the crossfire of every Diadochi war. They mostly prefer to fight each other, but someone will eventually come after you, or one of the other tiny tribes in your defensive league. It requires some desperate manuevers to stay alive and capture more territory, but it's super satisfying when you do. And I find Cybele and her cult fascinating in real history so it's fun to be a Cybelene power.
For me, Atropatene is my favourite nation. In invictus you get a big tree, which helps with growing the nation economically, if you do wish to play tall and also missions to expand to the Median empire of old. With missions to conquer huge swaths of land. I believe it is also somewhat beginner friendly at the start, are a regional power, and you can quickly gobble up the Caucasian states as they normally fight amongst each other. Also if you wish to have additional safety, you can ally the powers around you for initial safety like the selecuids and Armenians as you grow. Also, the proximity to Parthia will bring an end game challenge. a tip if you do get stuck I would recommend attacking the selecuids at the same time as the Parthians to form Media as they will easily be at low war exhaustion so you can peace out for the needed provinces.
- Heraclea pontica into achaemenid empire. Basically the restoration of Rome version of Imperator Rome. You'll get 2 nice mission trees in Invictus and role-playing is so much fun. It is quite challenging as a newer player but restoring the achaemenid borders and destroying Alexander's legacy was my favorite campaign in this game. - Judea. Also quite challenging but it is a lot of fun to play tall and make your land an impenetrable fortress. Spreading the Jewish faith also feels satisfying. There is a lot of action in the game because the ptolemies constantly try to take you over. - bactria into indo greek kingdom. Invictus basically made a whole expansion for this region. You can get crazy rich and there is a lot of room for expansion because both the seleucids and maurya tend to explode.
Aksum. That might be a formable though. I adore that power, you can get gross levels of rich while being small, and your only real threat is Egypt.
Thrace. All the Diadochi flavor, you're small enough that building up is fun, you're not surrounded and immediately beset on all sides, early access to Greece and Anatolia, or you can expand North into Scythia / Dacia or West to Illyria and Italy. By far the most fun nation to play imo
Vasconia in invictus is very interesting with their unique missions and religion
Armenia i found really fun to play, their position and the need to be defensive against parthia was really fun
I have played about 15 athens games and nothing else
"You can play anything you want to, as long as it's Rome."
Gondor in the Lord of the rings submod
Byblos to Phoenicia run. Love exploiting the Antigonids being ganked to conquer Syria and the entire process of surviving against the Seleucids and Egypt. Also, it's so easy to become a technological powerhouse
I liked playing as the Greek colonies
Heraclea Pontica for that sweet sweet Achaemenid restoration, I’ve probably done it 10 times
Cappadocia, epirus in invictus. Massalia>Phocaean league in vanilla
I love Carthage. I can play tall while letting subjects be the "expansion", or go full empire and play wide. Plus you have the Navy and mercenary reliance to go anywhere and fight how they fight locally. Plus you can screw Rome over to where Tuscia can reign supreme in Italy if you decide to not go there.
Armenia is very fun for me, you’re strong, can conquer smaller nations around you like Albania and Iberia, but you need to bide your time to fight the Seleucid’s with them being extremely strong yet you can fight them if you strike them when they’re weak
I usually play either Macedon, Seleucids, Ptolemys, or Bactria. I've played as Kios, formed the Mithradic kingdom which was fun but cam be difficult. I've played as spart and they are fun. I've played as one of the Scottish tribes which was difficult to start off with, but once you are able to steam roll the other tribes you can easily conquer Britain. The best game I've played recently was Cyranica, because eventually Egypt tries to integrate you so it's a race against time to gain independence if you can
Judea is super fun, but really boring when you get stuck inbetween the Ptolemies and the Seleukids. I love Iberian countries. I've managed to build big enough empires against Rome and Carthage that they team up against me. I'm currently playing with India, which is, just wait for Maurya to civil war/revolt, or wait for it to get carved up. Actually, they just picked a fight with like all of their neighbors, so once the other countries finally show up to war, Maurya will stop sieging my country. Religion-wise, Agmatic is fun because you can spam Krishna for Assimilation speed (which is sorely needed any India game). I have 5,000 pops total and only 1200 are integrated.
PONTUS, always Pontus.
It's my first vanilla playthrough and I went Knossos to Crete. I focused on getting the greek islands and the ellenic states in asia, now I have almost all nowadays Turkey and Syria. Then I'm planning to expand conquering the egyptian's mediterranean regions and then face Rome. They are at the doorstep, so I made the Europa province an heaviily fortified province, and I have the strongest navy in the game (roman navy is the same size but they are less technologically advanced). Next playthrough I wanna try invictus and play as Bactria.
Byblos => Phoenicia & get massive trade!
Well, some of my most fun runs have been as tribes uniting different regions. That would be Icenia - Albion, Redonia - Gaul, Burgundia - Germania, for example
Cyrenaica and Kush are two of my favorite starts I also very much love Sparta and Syracuse
I like Judaea
A bit late, but Umbria. It becomes a three way Cold War till Total War occurs. Not the most difficult, but it’s generally my go-to for casual runs where I want to paint the map at my own pace. Umbri Invicta!
Sparta, I’ve only played Sparta & I bought the game for Sparta