Favourite start date

[Dodge]

Just wondering what everyone's favourite era to start their campaign is.

Mine is the earliest as I like to build my empire and armies from scratch. However I was also wondering as England how many turns in do I get to recruit longbowmen and the like?

I play 6.1 RC/RR compilation.

[Sir Walter]

Just wondering what everyone's favourite era to start their campaign is.

Mine is the earliest as I like to build my empire and armies from scratch. However I was also wondering as England how many turns in do I get to recruit longbowmen and the like?

I play 6.1 RC/RR compilation.

Without RR/RC, on 6.1 you can get them by 1150 if you have a Practice Range With, I'm not sure. Back on main topic, I like early era because I hate guns and I don't like some other Late Era stuff (like Mongols with no impetus) too.

[bɑne]

About 70% of my campaigns start(ed) in the early era and the rest was mainly due to factions not beeing available in early campaign starts.

[Anaatti]

Early Era, but now im playing 1450 campaing too, pretty intresting one (RR/RC 6.2)

[prima legio]

Early era,sometime i started in late era only to play with teutonic order.

[Strategos Alexandros]

Late era, because I hate kwarezmian expansion drift and taking over stupid rebel cities.

[cuo]

Haven't played the late era campaign in three years of non stop playing SS. Everything's said.

[Ichon]

Almost always late era... having so many rebel cities in early era makes expansion too easy unless I just sit and do nothing several turns as well the first 30 turns with spear militia armies gets boring. Only things I like about early era is developing an empire and controling how cities develop and that Byz and Mongols act more historically.

Late era is more interesting as conflict with other factions occurs more quickly and Mongol invasion starts right away so if you are playing close to them you have to plan for that right away as well unit variety right from the first battle.

I actually only have played very few campaigns to gunpowder units so I don't have much love or hate for them. Even in late era start it takes over 100 turns before you see many gunpowder units.

[Gogolometro]

One year ago only late and 1370-1450. Now I just love to play with crappy spears and general. I even add the teutonic order in early to forget about late.

[Lord Lancelot]

Early is the best i think. Then you can start from small Country and rise them to Poverfull Empire of Great armyes and in great cityes .

[Trinity]

I prefer Early era starts, but I have a few 1450 campaigns for the gunpowder units.

[Mega Tortas de Bodemloze]

From this to

As the OP says, early, cuz I like building from scratch...

[Fomalhaut]

Early for me

[Gogolometro]

From african huts to transilvanian castles?

[Kaledon]

For the longest time, I pretty much only played Early Era. However, I have recently started playing Late Era almost exclusively, due to some of the issues I have with the Early Era campaign. I find that the early era campaign tends to lead to my empire becoming extremely powerful before some of the early major events, such as the mongol invasion, even occur. Having 9 stacks on my eastern border just waiting for the mongols as the Turks makes the Mongol Invasion quite a bit less scary. As well, the early era units get stale after a while, particularly as a Western European nation. At least with most other factions you can use horse archers ^_^. Some of the problems I encounter in the early era games would likely be less of an issue if I were better at just building up my settlements and playing passively, but even in my Venice game where I tried to be more passive I ended up as the top nation before the 40th turn, and I had crushed the Fatimids long before the mongols appeared.

Which forces me to mention one of my major issues. Due to my aggressive playstyle, I almost always end up crippling various factions, which makes the game a bit less interesting as a lot of factions get destroyed before they get their more interesting units. All in all I find Early Era a bit too easy. Late Era isn't necessarily difficult either, but at least you aren't fighting a few thousand spear militia with one or two other units appearing occasionally, which forces you to vary your tactics a bit more.

[Kaledon]

For the longest time, I pretty much only played Early Era. However, I have recently started playing Late Era almost exclusively, due to some of the issues I have with the Early Era campaign. I find that the early era campaign tends to lead to my empire becoming extremely powerful before some of the early major events, such as the mongol invasion, even occur. Having 9 stacks on my eastern border just waiting for the mongols as the Turks makes the Mongol Invasion quite a bit less scary. As well, the early era units get stale after a while, particularly as a Western European nation. At least with most other factions you can use horse archers ^_^. Some of the problems I encounter in the early era games would likely be less of an issue if I were better at just building up my settlements and playing passively, but even in my Venice game where I tried to be more passive I ended up as the top nation before the 40th turn, and I had crushed the Fatimids long before the mongols appeared.

Which forces me to mention one of my major issues. Due to my aggressive playstyle, I almost always end up crippling various factions, which makes the game a bit less interesting as a lot of factions get destroyed before they get their more interesting units. All in all I find Early Era a bit too easy. Late Era isn't necessarily difficult either, but at least you aren't fighting a few thousand spear militia with one or two other units appearing occasionally, which forces you to vary your tactics a bit more.

Of course, I play RR/RC which means that there will be discrepancies between my experiences and that of a person who plays SS6.2 without it. However, I played quite a bit of SS before trying RR/RC and had the same issues with the early era campaign.