Novgorod in Early:

I tend to play a different way to the constantinople. I actually go for the steppe provinces. I was playing expert and the byzantines had an annoying habit of attacking a province the same time I did. So they got Moldavia and later Khazar. I took Khazar later so I had a nice clean border.

I go for Moscavia on the first turn and lithuania on the second. I start building watch towers and PULL ALL MY MEN OUT, then put the taxes to very high. The subsequent rebellion is tiny and means I get some very good generals pretty quickly. It also acts as a supplementary income from knocking them back out of my territories. The vital thing when you do this is to lower taxes so that when you move your men in loyalty is above 100%, otherwise you could have a really large rebellion on your hands. Loyalty will rise steadsily (and keep building in the meantime). When they are mostly loyal garrisonthem and then move on to the other steppe provinces. Ideally have an army switching back and fore between two rebellios provinces. I tend to use the large steppe provinces for farming, the smaller ones for building. The baltic provinces are my shipbuilding and trade, and I make a beeline for Sweden, finland (and denmark if they took sweden) for the trade, huscarles and iron. Kiev and Khazar build ships from the other direction to link up trade and so i have a good idea of the balance of power in the world. By this time (1135) I'm making a 10,000 (15000-5000 upkeep)profit per year and am only at war with the idiotic polish (who didnt like me allying with the HRE so cancelled an attack on lithuania). I've been investing heavily in farming for the future trade disruption which will happen, then building up provinces for war. Novgorod as a faction also has a massive advantage in that very few buildings give some very powerful units- spearmaker nets rus spearmen and a simple fort nets you vikings and often slav infantry. I've got 5 provinces building ships so soon I'll have the African and middle eastern coast covered and revenue will get to about 20,000

My army now consists of +1 valour steppe cavalry (muscovy master horse), +1 vikings (norway), huscarles, rus spearmen, heavy steppe cavalry and, in a few more years, +1 valour boyars. Now I plan to take a few more islands, build up and wait for the golden horde. I could destroy the byzantines/turks egyptians but then the game gets a bit easy nad my favourite faction normally is the byzantines so i want to be friendly. I now have 2 6 star generals and a few 4 star ones so my borders are covered well. My number one general is also almost impossible to bribe, not that the pc ever does it but its a matter of pride.