Arminalêthôr in Gimilkhâd's Lifetime
This was one of the harder starts/challenges I've tried. So much can go wrong, especially if you choose to stay on Anagzâyan. Gimilkhâd is pretty old, but he is a decent martial, so you can raid and fight small-scale wars with decent success.
- I betrothed Arphazêl to secure a strong alliance ASAP. Thankfully Gimilkhâd's martial tree means you can get Promising Prospects easily.
- With allies, I attacked as many raiding cultures in the Umbar area as possible to keep pressure away from Anagzâyan.
- Golden Obligations helped get quite a bit of gold out of Umbar by finding secrets early on.
- I eventually found the Meneltarma - somehow I managed to keep Gimilkhâd healthy enough to avoid old age traits until then. The hastiluder health buff plus the health line in learning helped.
- I chose sea monster hunting for the sailing voyages I did since the coastal/open water raid events are a bit too hard to succeed at.
- I made Arphazêl my heir with electives. Broke the betrothal once I conquered enough to keep me safe, kidnapped Galador (her true love :3), and married them in time to create Gimilkhâd II.
The Ar-Adûnaim are kind of a meme, but the island start should probably get a buff, ideally by making it bigger so you can have multiple holdings/rally points. Maybe 3 total, like adding a city & temple. It would scale like crazy with Arminalêthôr late game, but that doesn't really matter since by the time you can build it, you have resources enough to conquer the world. The main difficulty of the start is it shoehorns you into a very particular playstyle since there's no point in building Anagzâyan up due to constant raids. You get a huge headstart if you leave, plus now you get the option of constructing Arminalêthôr at a new location anyways. At the very least, the starting militia camp should be replaced with multiple buildings like you get when you leave.