I'd never even heard of Let's Play! until fermun and I were discussing Paradox games and he linked me to some threads about the whole thing.

The general idea is to take a single-player game and do the campaign (or whatever), posting events with screenshots and commentary, trying to keep it interesting and enjoyable. My nerdiness is such that I felt a stirring in my empire-building loins and thought we could perhaps try it here.

The only game/s I'm decent enough at and also feel that it might be entertaining for those who haven't played it are the Total War games. So here we are.

I'd be up for a succession type game, a la the Dwarf Fortress thread (which buoyed my enthusiasm, since I've been reading the threads about it even though I've not so much as downloaded the game.)

So, post any interest in doing such a game here, along with a faction preference if you at all have one. I thought we could play on medium campaign/hard battle settings. Not because hard campaign isn't do-able, it certainly is, but that the AI is such that I always find 'hard' just means 'we attack you more for no fucking reason just to make it harder for you', whereas on medium the AI factions act slightly more reasonably to who is fighting who in the world. Battles need to be at least hard so they aren't all cakewalks.

For the succession part, I feel a good system would be a rota basis, doing a Leader each and just going round whoever gets in until we either win a campaign (preferences for long or short?) or we die out as a faction.

Also, for anyone who thinks of playing but is worried they might be bad at the game or anything like that; don't let that at all be a hindrance. For all I know I may have been doing the turn-based stuff awfully for years, I've never much looked at anyone else's game. Also it might make the game better in general to have a to-ing and fro-ing of in-game stature.

EDIT: Initial faction options are thus (feel free to vote on a preference, anyone):

England, France, Holy Roman Empire, Spain, Venice, Milan, Scotland, Byzantium, Moors, Portugal.

My vote is to either hold out against the spread of Islam as Byzantium, or to be the Moors and show those bastards in Iberia that they should be happy with the name Al-Andalus.

I'm in, but I do have exams coming up so you may find my leader becoming increasingly suicidal as time goes on. I have no preference for any faction in particular, I'm equally adept at fucking each one up.

Milan because fuck everybody else.

I vote Holy Roman Empire.  It's a weak faction at the start, since it has a poor economy and if you invade any of your neighbors you run the risk of being excommunicated, but it has the potential to conquer most of the world once you can make it's ridiculous exclusive units.

Yeah, I just have a newish install so I haven't unlocked most of the other factions. You get them as a starting option by being the one to eliminate them in a game.

Play-wise, be wary of your mods etc depending on what they are. Dunno how they might affect using unmodded save games (which is what we're using for simplicity's sake.)

For now I'm leaning towards Scotland. Known to people in general, difficult start position, land and sea borders, plenty of scope for ridiculous wars and politicking.

I'd be up for that as well. I'll put my weight behind Scotland because by the time you manage to overcome the English it is very difficult to get a foothold on the continent which makes European conquest that bit more rewarding.

Yeah, I'll disable my mods...That said, it still would be cool to have the fucking vikings running around. But Scotland is cool too.

In case you're curious, Jerusalem from SA did an LP of Medieval 2, and chose Scotland as well. Warning: It's a really long read.

Scotland or Denmark are my choices. Huzzah!