What is the hardest kingdom to play

[kwallace]

Just a question as even on hard it's getting a bit easy for me.

Generally though as soon as you hit about 4-5 provinces it's all over

[Kuno of Gersenau]

Welcome kwallace,

I would probably call Jerusalem to be the hardest kingdom to start with. You have a good protected town but you lack good units in your first Province and the province doesn't provide any piety as well.
Of course it alsodepends on the random diplomatic settings, if you are in war with Ftaimids and/or Baghdad it already gets quite difficult at the beginning.

[Dobber]

I agree, Jerusalem is pretty difficult! You might try Sicily as well!

[mammix]

for me the hardest kingdoms are biggest kingdoms- its hard to have big kingdom power, everybody can atack u while you dont have marshals, country is so big that you cant control it (i mean big from begining).
eg germany- it had sth like 25 provinces and lost it in 5 minutes. reason? everybody declared them war, they had -5 kingod power...

[kiri_hacker]

Jerusalem is quite easy actualy cause even if you are at war with fatimidies , you can simply plunder them until they give up and you can make a lot of money that way :go:

[EmperorTrotsky]

karaman.

its muslim so it deals with crusades
its near Mamelukes.
its small, lack of goods..

[kwallace]

had a game with jers and it's all over again (got 8 provinces (Thrace :D, and on main land). The thing about them is there is a certain path to take (imho) defend, fortify, trade, invade Cyprus, invade that bit of land above it as it's usually he only province left of whatever kingdom.

Taking Cyprus is important it allows decent soldiers close by.

Thanks for the help, Ill try Germany now, ive never tried starting as a big country before :D

[Xuca]

Kazan's pretty hard, too. It's far away from the coast and surrounded by countries of different religion.

[Dobber]

I have never played as a big country either, I always try to pick out a country that is one or two provinces in size, that appears to be in an underdog situation. One gane I played as Berbers. Not much to work with there as far as units, nobody really cared to trade with you either. You were pretty much left alone though being the countries surrounding you had their hands full with other threats.

[Elvain]

I think that Jerusalem is pretty hard to start with. Also generaly small countries (1 province) surrounder by big guys (Flandres in high period)

but slso to start as big kingdom is pretty hard, Several times I tried it as France and was wiped out - it is hard to get strong units soon enough to stand attacks from all sides (especially after the 2nd patch)

[Dobber]

I started as Aragon once also, and it was touchy in the beginning.

[kwallace]

I tried playing Kazhan (?) and decided to make it more difficlt by converting to Christ. Makes it really hectic, I've been in a constand state of war for the last 5 generations. Now all my generals (all via family) have deserted.....I didnt think family members would do that?

Anyways it's been fun but my front line has uber defences now and don't need generals manning them except for the sweedish armies that come at me, for some reason they are much stronger than the rest.....but they will have their day in the sun :D

[Koson]

karaman.

its muslim so it deals with crusades
its near Mamelukes.
its small, lack of goods..
I played as Karaman once and actually found it rather easy. Priority was to go as fast as possible for Anatolia and then Sinope and build Janissaries there and also ally myself with Mameluks. It wasn't easy to break the Ottomans but it was doable and once that was accomplished rest was no problem. Mamelukes stayed true to our alliance all the time (they were engrossed in other wars which kept them busy) and all the other enemies were defeated by my Janissary armies led by skilled up Marshals.

[Traveller]

For me the hardest was my game with the Golden Horde - even before the patch everybody declared war on me and nobody wanted peace. Only after I doubled my size I managed to stop at least one war. That was by far the most exciting game I've had on KoH before the patch.
So, I would guess that among the hardest would be f.e. the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the early period - Pagan, not really big and surrounded by Christians (and neighbour with one of the overpowered nations - Sweden). And they also don't have the advantage of the Mongolian horsemen I had with the Golden Horde... :wink:

[Emperor_Konstantin]

Turnovo sometimes is pretty hard - because of the random placement of resourses and features, you can restard the game 10 times to get 2 times better province.