>>16044812
Diplomacy in vanilla is kind of fucked no matter what and applying the fix is a bother.
Playing vanilla Med2 will be good for you to get acquainted with how the game works, so just do that.
Get Stainless Steel later on when you feel like you've mastered/exhausted the base game.
SS plays very differently and is somewhat more difficult, and can be particularly brutal if you're not careful due to slow replenishment rates and mounting upkeep costs.
You actually need to plan your shit or else you'll end up in a very ungrateful situation like >>16046141 did where you have massive armies and are spread too thin.
Also, diplomacy in SS has fixes and improvements, so it works somewhat compared to vanilla.
>>16046151
He's almost 1k in debt, has conquered nothing but poor regions and has a massive frontier.
I don't think he can recruit at all.
>>16045107
Cheapest garrison unit and good bait for cavalry charges early game when no good missile troops are available and whoever has 2 units of mailed knights on the field wins.