Starts I Recommend in AGOT for CK3 

I like restoring house rayne and taking out the lanisters

If you want to play as a custom house and are looking for a good place to start without disrupting the lore, I recommend Dunstonbury in the Reach. It was the old holding of house Manderly before they fled to the North. Afterwards, it was one of the holdings of house Peake before they had it taken from them for supporting the Blackfyres. There's no lore on Dunstonbury after that so you can fit right in if you start there. The path to forming the Dutchy there is also very simple and easy. You can pretty quickly become one of the more influential houses in the Reach there.

Can’t wait until Essos is playable and I can spend hours taking trips to Valyria in hopes of finding Brightroar 😂

For the Iron Islands, you can restore House Hoare (the original holders of Harrenhal) with one of the houses there. Very cool run.

I personally like house Redwine because they start with all farmland and it's easily defendable. They snowball really hard and easily get the best development within the first 10 years of the game.

I'm honestly a little surprised you didn't even mention house Frey. They're by far the most powerful duchy in the Riverlands, with their special building at the Twins giving a huge boost to levies and gold. The mountain of kids, grandkids, and great grandkids also lets you not only create functionally infinite alliances with whoever you want, but get your dynasty members on seats. With Walder's high intrigue, you can easily kill Gyles Rosby, his wife, and yours to get Freys ruling Rosby. Another easy pickup is marrying one of your kids to Falyse Stokeworth (AI will always accept patrilineal) and having kids of your dynasty inherit after her.

Never forget house Forrester of Ironrath

Went for reviving House Harroway because of their badass sigil, starting as a count in the bay of crabs. One thing that was really cool was that the iron throne collapsed entirely after the civil war, leading to the kingdoms becoming independent high kingdoms once more. Made Harroway Tower near Lord Harroway's Town the capital again instead of Harrenhall, played the marriage game and eventually became king of the riverlands through political cunning, without any warfare

In Dorne, restoring House Yronwood to the title of kings could be good

House Osgrey. In my playthrough as Hightowers they (Osgreys) managed to marry all Weber heirs so they got most of duchy land. I've decided to let that slide so they created their own rightful duchy.

Smth interesting to do in Dorne is starting as Doran Martell, then you give Oberyn, your brother, and one of my fav. characters from the books, and the show, a title, and just switch to his character. The way I did it, and would surely do it again, is to use my crazy scheeming stats to kill historical-canonical rivals like Tiwyin and The Mountain, infiltrating the Iron Throne court and of course making my daughter Nymeria Sand a legitimized bastard so she can be my heir and take over Dorne for the "Bastards of Dorne". It was a crazy run and I highly recommend it.

Glad you brought up house Royce for the vale! I've been playing them and loving it. You stat right next to Gull Town, which is a very powerful seat but owned by a relatively weak house, so you can take it by force very quickly, giving you an early start with TWO powerful seats. Also, with the buildings Runestone starts with, it's crazy good for the winged knights. When stationed there they have over 500 attack. Absolutely ludicrous. It helps that the Royces are also just a super cool house thematically

"the riverlands, everyones favorite place to burn" rlly got me lmao

I’ve always loved Jason Mallister as a character. I have a whole AU lore document written on my iPad about “my version” of the character. Jason Mallister, his seat of power, Sigil, and backstory is just so damn cool

I’ve never read the books or watched the show before playing this mod. These recommendations are a pretty informative and a big help.

Another interesting one in Dorne would be house Yronwood. They are stony dornishmen as well, and they have a historic rivalry with the Martels. When the Rhoynar arrived and established themselves, the Yronwoods were the dominant petty kings in Dorne, and after being subdued, they remained the second strongest house, and also kept quite the grudge, participating in rebellions from then on and so fourth. They are also situated in the Dornish Marches, the border with the Stormlands, so there's also possibility for action there

At this start date baristan has a prowess of 43. Aurther Dayne is 42 at only age 23 😮. Had he survived the ware he would’ve been the known as greatest knight ever

You have such a smooth voice. Great video, could listen forever.

Playing as house Weber was my favorite! They start out very small and have one of the best sigils. By the time I got to the end date I sat the iron throne and had Dynasty members and all the important castles.

I recommend starting as a Greenborn culture in Flints Fingers nuckle. A county called Waterstone. I played Tall and raided the weakest wildlings for a couple extra bucks, blackmailing and extoring vassals as I grew. My goal was to develop the land and with all the wood farms and guildhalls we were able to complete our goals and after T5ing every main structure I started changing my buildings from development to military and each building cost like 32 gold haha

I played like 300 hours of the CK2 GoT mod. Starting on Skagos is a really good challenge for long-time players. House Dayne is fun if you want to role-play the knight thing and raise kids to be King's Guard or Swords of the Morning. Idk if its in this one too, but playing as the sole heir of a dead house if really fun. House Reyne has a event chain that let's you overthrow the Lannisters. House Hoare and Durandon are also fun choices for this. What makes the CK2 mod so great is Essos. Essos is insanely rich with possibilities. Ik this mod had a big update recently so look forward to that

There's count of House of Salt iirc on iron isles. They are cadet branch of house Hoare who ruled Iron Isles and Riverlands before Aegon's conquest so you can try and restore their glory

The cadet branch of House Royce are lords of the Gates of the Moon, at the base of the Eyrie. The Bloody Gate was in the Moon Mountains, led by Brynden Tully at start of ASOIAF. Otherwise great channel & thank you!!

Speaking of house Manderly, one challenging and cool playthrough could be restoring them to their ancestral lands in the Reach. Just because of the enormous distance, it would be a very challenging task, not to mention having to fight powerful houses in the Reach

leanor velaryon rode seasmoke and leana rode vhagar. So they weren (briefly) dragonriders

I made a custom house on crackclaw point to united the clawmen for the first time! Started out at Dyre Den and conquered all claw lands west and south of us, then the iron throne grant me the vassalage of the rest of the houses.

I like playing as a King to an Emporer. I also like to create new Kingdoms but dislike disrupting balance so one spot I often choose is Oldtown or the Arbor. My ultimate goal is cutting the Reach in half without taking the entire coast or too much land. Usually taking Highgarden is the way to remane dominant without taking everything.

If you are playing in a time period in which House Darklyn is around I recommend them, big dog house in the crownlands with a cool sigil.

15:35 I don't think the castle walks around, I believe it is a wooden (or at least not stone and mortar) fortification build on a crannog, or artificial island, that is likely able to float through the swamplands.

Ironically my first CK3 AGOT play through was starting at Harrenhal and I took a large portion of the Riverlands, as far west as the Bracken lands and as far west as Maidenpool and up to the bloody gate. I fought the Tullys for independence and won and became a Paramount. All this was done on my first character which was the biggest chad of any character I’ve ever had on CK3 lol

Nerd Note, but around a half dozen Velarions were dragon riders. I won't spoil HotD for those who haven't read Fire and Blood, so I'll be vague. While not a Dragonlord family, because of their wealth and traditional silver gold hair and purple eyes, the Targs married them several times. Especially during the dance when there were more dragons than Targaryens, house Velarion had a couple riders.

Been listening to dunk and egg, and now going to start a house webber playthrough. Try and take back coldmoat and maybe go for the reach from there.

House Peake is also recommended. Starts off with one County and can easily form a high lordship. Lore wise, House Peake has a good play through to restoring greatness of their house since they descended from Garth Greenhand. Peake also has alot of history in large events such as the Blackfyre Rebellion and the Dance of Dragons siding with the losers on both. Things to do are 1. Overthrow Tyrells since most houses of the reach don't view Tyrells as legitimate and other houses have much better claims. 2. Bring back Prestige to House Peake after losing their holdings after multiple failed blackfyre rebellions and uprisings. 3.Continue the feud with Manderlys and take their home in the North as well. 4. If Targs win, seek revenge on the Targs since King Daeron II taking their land. Like playing as House Peake so much that I did 2 playthroughs and running constant murder schemes on the Manderlys for the House Feud bonuses.

I always go targ restoration usually as king aerys bastard and start as a young child

I enjoy playing as house oldflowers and restoring them back to house gardener when taking the reach back

I wish they’d just flush out mechanics of Westeros and leave essos, except for maybe events pertaining to a Targaryen invasion or interactions with the iron bank. Essos to me just adds unnecessary lag and dilutes the core Westeros experience

So in a nutshell, the second minor houses of each paramountcy, boltens, Mailsters, ryykke, crakehall, Hightower’s & Yronwoods?

Ah yes, good old Ed Stark, Lord of Winterhell.

The Velayrons were dragon riders. They lost there dragons in the Dance like the Targaeryans did.

One house I HAD to play was House Forrester, mainly bc I played Telltale's GoT...

I tried to play this mod...but as soon I clicked for "play any ruler" my pc went sky rocket :/ It's that normal? I got 32 gb ram, 3070 rtx and 3700x amd. The base game gave me no problem whatsoever! I had no problem playing way heavier games than ck3 but this mod is weird. Someone knows how to help or have experienced the same issue?

The most fun I’ve had so far is trying to become the King Beyond the Wall and being Rhaegar (I imprisoned Aerys and got Tywin to become my ally. Robert didn’t stand a chance 😄)

I'm waiting for the step stones to be added to play as the veleryons. The waves will crash upon the stones, and with it comes fire&blood. I'm not sure if I should play as true blooded veleryons or auranne waters

house salt would be cool. may restore house hoare with them and claim whole riverlands. with the latest upgrade though, in-game, starting character had a cool beard and armor like a dwarven warrior but with 1.9.2 it's gone. and with the 1.9 patch all unimportant characters are bald :)

would love to see a video breaking down the 282 vs 284 start and what possibilities exist

you can pin the map with the middle wheel and move the screen that way instead of moving the mouse to the edges everytime. It kinda made me drowsy and couldnt finish the video :(

Ive not once played as anything but a new house and it’s the best. It takes forever but it’s the best.

Playing House Reed with shattered world is CHAOS

the Manderleys are really fun but also a bit OP, you can easily make 30+ gold per turn

Mine isnt giving me the option to play as a minor house, im not sure whats wrong

I get he's from a major house and what not but you cant forget Stannis in Dragonstone when on the other start date

How do you play as one of the smaller houses?!?! I downloaded the game and mod and all I see is being one of the great houses!!

You were right in every regard. Playing as the Tarths are incredibly enjoyable, just don't know how to make Brienne a knight.

Why is it that the Targaryen house sigil, looks so weird in this mod?

no need for a hook, just modify contract, give more levies (levies are next to useless anyway) and take war sanctions.

i really like house darke

Recently I used console commands to set up the seven separate kingdoms again

forrester bro, forrester

Any update on this game ?

Did you replace the Blackwoods woth Brackens or am I having a Mandela effect?

Starting as house osgrey for me

essos is not in the game?

I WANNA WATCH A CLEGANE PLAYTHROUGH

Nooo. The Three Eyed Raven is a Targaryen ;)

small remark: the Velaryons were indeed dragon riders, there were a handful of them in the main AGOT storyline wo did ride dragons also, it is lore accurate for some of the Westerlands minor houses to possess Valyrian steel weapons, as they are rich families, and this infuriates good old Tywin even more

Valaryon's were 1000% dragon riders.

My first ever game was as dorne. Off the bat you side with the loyalists and lose so you get sent to the wall. So you play as the guys daughter. I had her marry and seduce king Robert after first having kids in another marriage and they sadly died. Had all of my kids be of his dynasty but the kids of my dynasty would have a relation boost with the king which was great. Eventually married off Jon Snow to one of my daughters and made him a landed lord in dorne. He died of old age with a lot of kids was great fun doing all these political negotiations while controlling the kings succession in the process. Also the original king became lord commander after Mormont died so basically had my dad become lord commander while I was banging the king.

I know it's such a small and understandable thing but for some reason it makes my asshole pucker when people pronounce *both* Velaryon and Valyrian "Valerian".

Redwyne is always mine

For north i go with the fortesters just because i like their lore

Blackwood >Bracken

Blackwoods are the cringe option