[Tricon]

If you have the latest patch installed, you can (and probably should) start with more provinces. 5 or 6 will usually give your home castle more income to work with. Also be advised that the starting army for many nations is pitifully weak compared to emidiate neighbours (indies) Their strength depends heavily on the independant strenght setting (duh!). If you have proplems with them reduce their setting.
(They're usually no problem if you have a supercombatant as pretender, but if you go for rainbow it is no shame to build up your army a bit, before teaching those infidels.)