I'd recommend Byz, despite the numerous provinces and being in the middle of various ambitious powers. You'll have lots of money to spend, and that's the name of the campaign game (i.e., learning how to spend money), you'll have high loyalty so won't need to deal with the complications of disloyalty right from the start, you'll have VERY strong troops, so you'll have success on the battlefield without too much trouble, and the troop variety will teach you about how to utilize different forces for different tasks. By all means get Viking Invasion: great additions, and the smaller scale strategy of conquering the British Isles is a relief after you've tackled the whole medieval world... I, for one, am a believer in MTW over RTW: I played RTW when it first came out, and enjoyed it, and still have it in fact, but have found that its battles aren't half as fun (except for sieges) and its campaign mode can't sustain my interest after thirty or so years of play... got repetitive for me. Anyway, the TW series is great, and MTW has been the thing for me.