Noobs Guide to getting started

[Falke]

ORIGINAL: zgrssd
But too many bad guides, can make it hard to find the help you are looking for.

For programming right now you need a guide just to figure out wich guides are good enough to read.

The issue is more that the guides are incomplete. It is crucial that any guide should specify the starting settings that are used. These have a large impact in early game strategies. A T3 or T4 have very different priority for councils and buildings.
The difficulty level also has a large impact, at regular you have 20% income tax and therefore a minor negative cash flow, but at hard it is 0% and thus a major negative

[josefrees]

IMO starting a noob off with 8 councils is going to be information overload. It’s pretty overwhelming on its own looking at the leader screen or empire dashboard with no experience and no councils. It’s also going to be harder in that you have more characters to deal with, stronger factions, and generally more stuff.

Also don’t see why economic and interior have to be talked about as if they are mutually exclusive. Pick one the first turn and pick the other turn two. A couple turns with one or the other isn’t going to make or break a playthrough.

[eddieballgame]

Here is a tip I stumbled on; pay attention when assigning an 'Advisor'.
Checking your leader's 'Natural Relation Point', you will see positive & negative modifiers.
Always check to see how attaching an 'Advisor' impacts a leader.
Sometimes it can be a huge negative; while some tolerable, negativity can be offset by what the 'Advisor' brings to the table in pluses.

[JamesHunt]

Not a fan of discouraging either and every contribution is valueable but lets get real and rainbow gloves off: If you can´t get past turn 20 on Easy you shouldn´t label threads as "Getting Started Guide" as the outcome indicates that something is done very wrong, simple as that. Nobody would write a car mechanic guide when all cars repaired explode afterwards.