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[Tarran]

Personally I find Ireland the best place to start as new player. It's like a micro-environment to test the waters, no heatherns or pagans to plague you, plus you have a clear goal of what to do after you form Ireland.

The HRE is also a decent spot in my opinion. While you'll be a vassal and at risk of the HRE getting medium-max Crown Authority, you have no risk of some big boy like, say, England, France, etc declaring war on you unless the HRE is weakened badly. The only threat to you should be other vassals, who should be roughly your own strength depending who you start as. Also, you could gain control of the HRE in it's entirety yourself since it's elective.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

I found the HRE politics very overwhelming when I started playing. It's a miasma of names, ranks, fiefs and intrigue. If you want to dive right in it's a great start but it could be very confusing. 

Ireland will find itself hard pressed to have a big boy stamp on them. Unless you really fuck up they're not going to get a valid casus belli for a very long time. Plus they'll have their own stuff to deal with.

[Mono124]

The only problem with starting as Ireland, is that when Norway OCCASIONALLY wins England, they generally duke it out with Scotland and take them over. You can't really expand past Ireland if that happens because normally France has either been taken over, or grown into a superhulk (in all my games at least) and so all the lands even medium distance from Ireland are ruled by Kingdoms that are much larger than yourself.

SUPEREDIT: I guess you COULD theoretically expand, but you would be hard pressed to do it, and it would take forever.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

I usually start to play "gamey" when that happens. Start a Holy War for the Caranies, join the crusades and win a couple of holy lands, join the inquisition for Spain, become a vassal to the HRE.

[Tarran]

I found the HRE politics very overwhelming when I started playing. It's a miasma of names, ranks, fiefs and intrigue. If you want to dive right in it's a great start but it could be very confusing. 

Ireland will find itself hard pressed to have a big boy stamp on them. Unless you really fuck up they're not going to get a valid casus belli for a very long time. Plus they'll have their own stuff to deal with.

Personally, in my latest game, I was not overwhelmed by the HRE at all. And even without using any intrigue and just conquering everyone, I managed to become very strong. Then again, I play CK2+, so it may just be a unique case.

And there's always the possibility that a big boy will stamp on Ireland. See J2 and Grimith's LP. And in my game Ireland got partially (1/2) conquered by a Scandinavian power. Sure, I don't expect it to happen too often either, but it can happen, and when it happens you'll pretty much be outmatched no matter what.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Well yeah, the nature of CKII means there's a possibility for anything. Ireland, on average, will be fairly safe however.

I found the combat AI to be rather daft in CKII, although that might be due to my experience with other Paradox games. I'm usually able to easily win the Crusades using a newly formed Ireland and a couple mercs or holy orders.
No naval combat means you can easily flee from enemies and reposition your forces extremely quickly, which the AI doesn't seem to understand. Warscore is very easy to build up and usually only takes a few provences to reach 100%

A defensive war for Ireland would be hard though.

[Lord Dullard]

In a way, being in control of an island or region with a lot of waterfront like Ireland makes expansion pretty easy now that troops don't suffer attrition at sea (when they did it was a completely different story, augh that was horrible). You can move troops in ships an order of magnitude faster than troops on land, so as long as wherever you're sending them isn't far inland, you're golden.

(For the record, I find Iberia's usually a really good invasion point for Ireland. Or Brittany, if France hasn't swallowed it.)

[Rolan7]

Grimith's LP

Oh sweet, I love his LPs.  This should answer all my questions, thanks!

[Descan]

They're actually on J2JonJeremys channel.

[Duuvian]

The Queen died of natural causes right after I made that post, naturally. Now I learn the heir broke a treaty at some point against another Catholic and all Catholics think -30 reputation less of him. I sure hope that isn't permanent or it might be civil war for Poland at some point. Luckily I was able to give away some outlying lands to my brother and cousin dukes that put me over my limit anyways so there are only three minor vassals who are in the negative at the moment of unpausing. It looked a lot worse before I did that though, I almost reloaded before I tried that.

One weird thing that happened is the new King's third son (first is heir, second I gave the Bishopric of Sacz I held for years that I was saving to remove someone from succession, third is who I'm speaking of) is set to inherit the Dukedom of Greater Poland (a very important part of Poland) despite already controlling a Barony in a Bishopric county controlled by the Papal state (Benevento). This is a problem because his liege is currently the Pope. If it's like previous situations he will take Greater Poland's duchy with him upon the death of my character. Despite this it doesn't show the Vassal inheritance leaves your realm warning for him so I don't know if he will come back to Poland after the death of my character or take Greater Poland for the Pope. I guess it won't be a problem for a long time but I have a feeling I'll have to kill the poor guy because of it eventually all because a relative of his died childless and it passed to him because his mother was somehow in the chain of succession.

EDIT: ooh, I know, I'll pass the Duchy to my first son once the current King is at a ripe old age. That way the heir will receive both Greater and Lesser Poland's dukedoms like his predecessors. If I wait until then my heir won't be hated by his peers in the interim for having too many duchies, too.

EDIT2: Actually it looks like it will be Title loss on Succession instead of Pass from Realm on Succession. This doesn't seem as bad. Also I tried revoking a local Bishopric but since the third son is a vassal of the Pope I can't grant him lands and make him a Prince-Bishop to remove him from succession like I did the second son. He's also taking about half my titled counties with him upon succession. Does this only mean they won't pass to the successor I continue as or does it mean I should get to stabbing his neck for the hefty cost of 200 gold before the Pope owns half of Poland?

EDIT3: Ahahaha, he's going to have to die now and I'll explain why. My daughter is the third son's heir for Benevento. I also have a young, shy, umarried Piast son of the brother of my character's grandfather (mother's cousin) holding a moderately strong dukedom while he is also my brother in law because my character decided to marry his mother's cousin from a different child of my character's grandfather; while my current character was controlled by the AI and I was still playing as the previous Queen. The Piast brother-in-law is the same age as my daughter so I offered my daughter to the brother-in-law for marriage and he accepted. That means once I have my son stabbed in the neck the daughter will have Benevento which will pass to the first male offspring along with whatever the brother-in-law holds. My hope is this turns the tables on the Pope and I get some of his land for once. Either that or I'll have more family stabbed to death in their sleep in a chain of fraticide over a minor barony's allegiance that won't end until someone who doesn't inherit anything important is set to inherit Benevento castle.

([at least he was maimed] go for the neck this time you damn assassins! <reload>)

EDIT4: Well, he's dead now. I actually didn't have to reload for that one as my spymaster reduced the chance of discovery to 0% and the chance of success to 47% so I got him on the first try for once. Interestingly Benevento passed to my granddaughter who was unlanded and not an heir to anything instead of to my daughter as I had planned. Now my daughter is married to her second uncle for nothing, hehe. Ah well, at least that's the end of that dark stain on my character's imaginary video game soul. It didn't turn out as bad as I feared.

EDIT5: So that same king, King Heiry II of Poland, received the title of 'the Gentle.' Why? I think because I conquered an independent count and made him my vassal. He was understandably upset at me for this and thought about -80 out of a possible -100 to 100 of me. Instead of killing or removing him from power I instead gave him a relatively cheap gift of 35ish gold for +50ish, made him my spymaster as he was the best at intrigue anyways of all my vassals and desired the position as his ambition in addition. That put him at positive and I made him the duke of the area his county was in for another +60. Then he retired from the spymaster position to take up gardening in his old age and I called him back to service which put him at +80 due to another received spymaster position bonus. Pretty cool stuff, I like this game more and more as I play it.

[Rakonas]

I found the HRE politics very overwhelming when I started playing. It's a miasma of names, ranks, fiefs and intrigue. If you want to dive right in it's a great start but it could be very confusing. 

Ireland will find itself hard pressed to have a big boy stamp on them. Unless you really fuck up they're not going to get a valid casus belli for a very long time. Plus they'll have their own stuff to deal with.

Personally, in my latest game, I was not overwhelmed by the HRE at all. And even without using any intrigue and just conquering everyone, I managed to become very strong. Then again, I play CK2+, so it may just be a unique case.

And there's always the possibility that a big boy will stamp on Ireland. See J2 and Grimith's LP. And in my game Ireland got partially (1/2) conquered by a Scandinavian power. Sure, I don't expect it to happen too often either, but it can happen, and when it happens you'll pretty much be outmatched no matter what.

I'm guessing nobody else remembers the days of CK1, where half the time Ireland would end up conquered by muslims.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

I haven't played CK1, I only hear negative things about it. If it's anything like EU3 without expansions, Ireland was a magnet for forign invasion. Too many countries have a hard-on for the rolling green hills.

[scriver]

Red-heads everywhere, and you think it's the hills people have hard-ons for?

[DemonOfWrath]

Has anyone ever had any of attractive/quick/genius inherited from a parent with the trait? I'm constantly trying to get one of them into my dynastys bloodline but after ~100 kids I've never seen it happen.

[Dutchling]

Hereditary traits are only hereditary (greater chance of kids getting it than any random person) if both parents have one.
The game doesn't make a distinction for bad/good hereditary traits though, so a genius x weak couple has better chance of strong kids than a strong x normal couple.