Early, High or Late

[Rikdemedici]

Which ages do people find the most interesting to play? Personally, I like to start in the early peroid, i don't like starting with mixed units ie. crossbowmen in your main province, but only archers in a province with no buildings except fort and bowyer.

[rayoftoul]

Yeh I like early too, gives you the ability to customize your provinces as you see fit.

[Accounting Troll]

I usually go for early because I like developing my provinces in a long game so I get access to troops with good morale and valour and with level 4 weapons and armour.

If I feel like a real challenge, I pick one of the weaker factions in High or Late. For instance, halting the decline of the Byzantines in late is difficult because I don't have the luxury of time to build upgrades.

[Sinner]

I prefer High myself since you still have a couple of centuries to play before the game ends, allowing you some long term fun, but you still have a chance of getting to Late before you win the game or you've achieved sufficient strength that the win is a foregone conclusion.

Occasionally I play Late games just so I can go up against Gothic units, modding the AI factions to have more money & starting infrastructure to guarantee this.

[The_678]

I usually just play on Early. Probably 80-90% of the time

[NightStar]

I prefer Early or High gives you the time to enjoy a good campaign....the hardest thing though is holding back and not winning too early. I've taken to modding the game to make the computer tougher.

In my games the Danes have always been an underdog so I gave them a million bucks to play around with and VOILA!!! They were ruling half the map after 60-70 years. Then of course there was a shodown between me and the danes and in a glorious battle my trusty 9star general defeated 13.000 danes with his 1.200 men, and only 3.000 danes lived to tell the tale of that battle :knight:

[Armchair Athlete]

usually high. Still enough time to build and upgrade, but not so long that I never finish a game. Also starting in high meas less time for the AI to develop into one or two suerpowers at the expense of everyone else.

[Timur]

High era for myself. When I play Early I find that it isn't long before I'm using upper tier units whilst the computer still cranks out standard spearmen, it becomes far too easy. Correspondingly, the Late era is far too short.

[octavian]

early if def. the era that i prefer, for a number of reasons.
1)i get to start more or less from scratch
2)i like early units more for some reason
3)i for whatever reason loathe gunpowder, and try to put it off as far as possible. that said, i LOVE NTW.
4)i just do ~;P

[octavian]

High era for myself. When I play Early I find that it isn't long before I'm using upper tier units whilst the computer still cranks out standard spearmen, it becomes far too easy. Correspondingly, the Late era is far too short.

does upper tier units mean that you are playing MTW without the exspantion? in VI you have to wait for HIGH to roll around before you can start constructing high quality level units. same for Late period.

[Blodrast]

I _think_ he meant using for instance fmaa and fs, while the AI is still using um and vanilla spears...

But Timur pretty much summed it up for me, as well. Another main reason I play High is that some of the starting positions are more challenging and more interesting than in Early, and slightly less predictable: see the starting positions of the French or Byzantines, the English-French situation is more entangled than in Early, and you have the very very nice Mongol invasion in 25 years after starting the game, which is yet another factor adding to the flavor and unpredictability...especially if you're playing an Eastern faction, and the GH will actually attack you. 25 years is definitely not enough to take on the horde head on, whereas starting in Early allows you to even finish the game before they arrive...or alternatively meet them with a huge army and wipe them out in one turn (which can be nice, but where's the challenge ?)