Sigh...

[Apocal]

Hey,
Try the Diplomacy mod, it makes it so there is a non-aggression pact of a minimum of 100 days before AI can declare war again (Global an modifiable).
You also have messengers so you can recruit lords without chasing them to the other end of the map.
It changed the way i play a lot.
Hope this helps!

His problem is that the campaign AI sees he is a weak faction and they want tribute, so they declare war on him. Diplomacy mod doesn't do much, if anything, to change that, as far as I could tell. They will still gangbang starter kingdoms for the money. Your choices are to fight them off, pay them off or get all your settlements conquered.

OP doesn't want to do any of those for RP reasons.

 

[Lazregamesh]

His problem is that the campaign AI sees he is a weak faction and they want tribute, so they declare war on him. Diplomacy mod doesn't do much, if anything, to change that, as far as I could tell. They will still gangbang starter kingdoms for the money. Your choices are to fight them off, pay them off or get all your settlements conquered.

OP doesn't want to do any of those for RP reasons.

The diplomacy mod would help him get some breathing room when he pays them off, a mandatory 100 days min between wars is plenty of time for him to recover and focus on 1 enemy at a time.
The messengers help recruit lords in far away lands so he is not viewed as weak anymore.
A lot of preparation is ofc logically required. It is an entire kingdom you are starting, even from a RP point of view it makes sense that the existing lords don't want anybody getting ideas about starting kingdoms without consequences.
The Diplomacy mod helps you find a different in too, you can start a faction or join a faction in your kingdom, you can demand abdication or secession.
That's why i suggested it.

 

[Spinozart1]

It isn't choosing to go the hard way at all, and people aren't giving hints.
The game is designed to be played in a linear and singular fashion - not playing that way results in the game being impossible to beat/progress;
this is not a choice; this is not an RPG.

If everyone wants the game to be improved, why are they sat justifying terrible design choices and limitations in the game that's supposed to be an RPG?

I'm not being rude, I'm just reciprocating the stubbornness that people are giving me. I've made a number of posts on these forums previously expressing that I do not want to play in the forced manner and I want to play the game for my character as my character is intended to be... people shouldn't dive in to assume that people need help when they're reporting a clear issue in the game.
There shouldn't be a scenario in which three kingdoms just randomly and almost to the very second declare war on your player kingdom when you're struggling to get off the ground - it isn't fun to play the game in its current state.

So you start your kingdom and how would you like it to be considered by AI, RPG wise?
Based on your relation with the enemy faction, you would receive an alliance proposal? Or a non-aggression pact?
Is that what you mean by RPG?
But I guess you are still ok to be targeted at least by one faction, right?

 

[Tryvenyal]

I want to play as an archer. I want to start my own kingdom.

What has anyone in here said that makes you unable to play successfully with these 2 goals?

What they say is that when you start a kingdom, your strenght will be validated by the other kingdoms and they will declare war when they find a weaker target - wheather it´s you or anyone else! They know your treasury, they know your clan count, fiefcount, partycount, total soldiers etc, same thing you can know about them actually. If you play as a knight or an archer is definatly one thing they does not care about though.

and people aren't giving hints.

The hint several players has given you is that you need to be prepered. As a ruler you need vassals. To me, that´s as mundane as that you need a missile weapon to be an archer or that you need a football to play football. Nothing restraining about that, is it? Though the game could definatly offer you more fun/less tedious/easier ways to access and get vassals. Gameplay as a ruler is far from perfect!

When are you prepered, you might ask? Am I forced to be prepered same way each time? Well.. You need to be powerfull, influencive and reactive but.. What would we want? Really? To we want any challege in the game?

How would you like it to work instead?

As always, the game's RNG is completely broken.
Three factions simultaneously declaring war on me...

This is probably due to that all AI factions evaluates new targets on a weekly tick or something simelar. If it was spread out over a week, you would likely have gotten them all after a week anyway.