You could go like a pseudo ironman route. Start an ironman game, then if you reach a point where you might have a difficult decision (eg: war) or change in capital, or just try anything out/experiment without ruining a decent run, then grab the save files and copy to desktop. Otherwise, there’s no harm really in non-ironman so long as you can accept that given the length of a single game (20 hours plus) there will be definite road blocks in your way.
Personally, I always play ironman. One key reason is that riding out the bad runs brings some great moments. In one game where I started as the Wessex petty kingdom in the old gods start, I had my genius character die prematurely, having just taken up the crown and held for a few years. The genius trait is one of the most sought after in the game thanks to +5 to all stats, and he was godly in my opinion, the one who would force the Vikings to kneel before me. Instead I was greeted with an event, the outcome was his death, my reaction was one of “nooooo!!!” and rulership went over to an “ugly” trait, low stat ruler who seemingly lived forever. Yet he was one of the most successful characters in that game managing to acquire a number of English titles and developing his demesne beneath him.
The game giveth, the game taketh away.
One window useful to look at if involved in a kingdom (ie: anything bigger than Ireland) is the realm window. It is on the right hand side of the character window, just below the family tree. That gives a good breakdown of the levy size of everyone in the realm the character belongs to. It is worth tracking that, especially if some vassals start to look powerful. I do suggest starting as a Duke. Learn ways to acquire titles in your duchy from your counts, or look to expand by acquring a neighbouring duchy. The jump to becoming King means there’s a lot more work involved, and the realm window gives an insight to that. As a Duke, keeping Counts happy is easy enough, managing lands in the duchy is straight forward, especially if you have no Counts under you. But a Kingdom is a whole other story, watching Dukes that threaten to blob, viable threats to your crown. And that’s just from within, not to mention the external problems.
What I don’t like about Ireland is that there is one Duchy from the start (assuming 1066 start date). Everyone else is a count, so it becomes a matter of getting claims on lands one province at a time. Then there’s the matter of forming the Kingdom of Ireland which is fairly easy to keep thanks to the restricted power the Dukes have. The reason being that most duchies in Ireland are two or three provinces.
Edit: And it would be criminal if you didn’t create your own family - Dolvich and name the first character Ivan :p
