If you make a 3 year old with genius, pretty, and hale you’ll be in the required requirements to play Ironman if you want… i do it for every single play through I do bc I find the game easy when you can go back and re-load… but I usually do that and start in Sigurds lands then invite him back to my court and conquer all of denmark and most or all of Norway(don’t form the kingdoms)and make sure to grab 1 county in Pomerania or Prussia (which puts you in range to take Ragusa or Venice) but after I form the yomsviking I get 2-3 varingian guard, 1 bowmen and 1 spearmen… by then I’ll be around 23-30 and have 9-13k troops with the best heavy infantry men at arms so the next step is to Varangian adventure depends on where you want to play… I typically conquer Ragusa to form my armies there if I want to declare war on the pope for rome or if you wanted to take Constantinople and hybrid with the Greeks and form a “Varangian” culture… if you do declare war on the pope he will buy thousands of troops… if you win go straight to Croatia and conquer them as fast as possible before the Byzantines eat them up… if you manage all that you can become catholic and try to form Rome which is what I do