Who's your favorite minor power?

[LegioScythia]

The Danes they have one of the best starting positions they also have pretty strong units in the Early era

[naut]

Bohemia, Scotland or Armenia.

[_Aetius_]

I've played as Sicily (Vanilla and XL), Aragon, Bohemia (XL) and the Danes. I've had success with them all, but the Danes and Sicilians have brilliant starting positions, the Sicilians especially. Money is always tight early on for small factions, but the Danes and Sicilians can make up for that very quickly, the Bohemians unfortunately struggle to get off their feet financially, whilst Aragon faces similar problems.

The thing is Bohemia has no trade, taking Pomerania and Prussia (very decent provinces) and holding them is hard work since you have to build these provinces up from near scratch which costs alot of money early on. Even then growth tends to be stunted as you have to spend big on your armies, more so than a normal faction of this size would, just to defend your territory and vast frontiers, nevermind expanding much. Aragons situation isnt as bad, tax revenue in Spain is always good, but trade can be a problem, silk can get you alot of money, however many provinces in Italy, southern France and Spain have silk already so you cannot trade with them effectively. Therefore you must expand your fleet further east, which is enormously costly. Conquering more than simply Valencia and Navarre will obviously provide you with more, but Spain is abit unpredictable, nobody knows who is going to dominate the peninsula and when England and France will involve themselves.

Sicilys position is excellent, an island in MTW is a fortress if you have a fleet, Sicily is also very very rich, southern Italy to provides steady income and a springboard for further expansion. The Danes in vanilla have a great time, Sweden and Norway are easily conquered, once a fleet can be developed (slowly due to cash) trade will grow, thankfully most factions seem to ignore the Danes. You also have a unique early unit roster that is invaluable to your starting progress. The only problem with the Danes is that they are like the Turks and HRE, prone to civil war at anytime, the larger you get the more likely civil war becomes in my experience. Every single time i've played as the Danes i've had a civil war just when my empire ihas expanded.

[macsen rufus]

In XL, I really liked playing Armenia. Bear In mind that in vanilla people get wary of playing as Turks because they are stuck between Byzantium and Egypt... well the Armenians are stuck between Byzantium, Egypt and Turks! Three neighbours, all of whom could crush you soon as look at you.

In the end I decided to go for the Egyptians first, took Antioch and built up from there whilst trying to keep the peace with the other two. Cash flow at the beginning is very poor so Antioch was a must. Orthodox means no Pope problems too (apart from the odd crusade passing through...)

The AP bonus of the Armenian infantry was really useful, as they had the ability to swamp and defeat kataphraktoi (Arm Inf come in handy 100-man units). Obviously you also get AHC.

Was a tough start, but soon ended up with very powerful armies and good generals

In PMTW I've really enjoyed the Crimean Khanate, with mostly horse-archer armies, until some cossack lands have been conquered, starting with just Levidia and Crimea. Again, the Ottomans are a major neighbour, and also the Russians of some flavour, both quite big.

Scots in PMTW and in XL also provide an interesting variant on the "British but not English" theme

[Jxrc]

I have played as Aragon, Denmark and Sicily.

The only one that is really challenging is Aragon. Once you've taken Navarre, Toulouse and Valencia you've got to garrison all provinces to avoid an attack by the Elmos, the HRE, England and Spain. Moreover your only trading provinces are difficult to develop cause with such garrisons it is difficult to spare any cash to build a fleet ... If you are very agressive and overextend without having built ships you can end up with the Italian on your doorstep ... Really a tough game and it does not get better in High or Late. Got so stuck once in my 4 spanih provinces that I sent a crusade to take Livonia, built one ship, cross to Sweden and Norway and started my own danish game without Viking and Huscarls.

Danes and sicilian are far easier because you do not need to defend against any faction early (Papacy north or HRE south will not attack you unless you leave the provinces defended by one unit of peasant). You can get an insane amount of cash without trouble and then chose whom you wanna hit (the superpower to reduce it or the crippled factions.

[Kavhan Isbul]

Inspired by thsi topic, yesterday night I was finally able to get the Serbs in medMod off to a good start. The key was to wait, instead of attacking as quickly as possible. I know the general rule is to rush with a small, one-province faction, but if you do it with the Serbs im MedMod you simply get crushed by the Hungarians and the Byzantines (and occasionally the Sicilians, if you live that long, meaning until the mid 1090s). So I spent the first decade in peace, built a silver mine and a port, then a warf and finally a single galley to guard me from the Sicilians, Venetians and Genoese, and by that time the Hungarians were in war with the HRE and the Byzantines in war with the Seljuks. It took me half a century and a bunch of humiliating defeats against Byzantines small armies with simply unbeatable katanks and variangians, until I was able to get a decent kingdom, comprising of Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Panonia (in MedMod Hunary is divided into Panonia and Transdanubia) and Wallachia, and my situation is still precarious. However, this feels realistic, as my expansion is only limited, slow and after every province I conquer it takes me almost a decade to secure it. Also, it was perhaps much more historically accurate for a small faction to be cautious about getting into wars with larger and more powerful neighbors, and expand only when presented with a great opportunity. It was nice to see that you can beat overwhelming odds with patience for once, and not necessarily rushing and relying on the AIs inaptness on the battlefield.