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Personally I would not recommend Liu Bei, since he is limited to a single army in the early game, which makes for a tough start if you get into a two-front war. In case you own some DLC, I would also recommend to play the 190 (base game) start. Some players seem to default to the 182 start, but I would recommend against it.
Avoid Liu Bei early on, they're highly reliant on hero. Their starting position is terrible (you're easy prey for both yuan shao and cao cao), and unless you can use just the three brothers to beat huang shao you'll be broke. Once you get over that though, Liu Bei will steamroll.
It'll also teach you how to take advantage of the Redeployment mechanic which is super important for Cao Cao since you may end up being attacked in multiple places along your borders and won't be able to reinforce strategic cities in time without using it.
Liu Bei however starts with quality and highly loyal generals (The sworn brothers) and the Yellow Turbans around him are easy pickings because no one likes them. Being at war with them also give a diplomacy boost to other factions. Dong Zhuo is also never a concern and being at war with him also boosts relations with most other warlords. Kong Rong also starts off as a very easy warlord to trade and ally with and is a very good trade partner and easy to vassalize later in the game.
Plus if you follow the story you are granted all of Tao Qian and enter a war with Cao Cao which is a good thing to knock Cao Cao out of the game as early as possible.
Easily the hardest starts for me where the two bandits, avoid those and you should be good if you've played a TW game before.
Sun Jian's Merc units are insane since you can basically instantly teleport entire retinues across the entire map at a moments notice and Cao Cao lets you be flexible with managing diplomacy and his special building is great for taking heavy casulties (they can only be built in specific commandaries!)
However for both of them (Cao Cao especially) you will be surrounded by enemies as you even expand a little bit so keep an eye on relations!
Just have fun, if a campaign doesn't work out you can always start over and you'll always be learning something new in this game anyway.
This assumes 190 start, according to personal opinion from VH/L Records-mode runs and going off others' suggestions in this thread:
- Cao Cao: great for vets of Total War, not that great for starters unlike people say (and certainly not after his rework) (again, personal opinion).
Difficult starting location for a multitude of reasons including:
Lack of income based provinces (let's be honest, peasantry isn't worth the investment and everyone knows that);
Reliance on gaming tax collectors to farm rebellions for cash/items and selling food early on (the former being a trick even many vets aren't comfortable with);
Lots of militarily strong opponents all around that do like to team up, form massive coalitions and backstab you eventually (Tao Qian, Liu Chong + Liu Dai (individually weak (mostly Dai) but they always pair up), Yuan Shu (debatable but he likes the sneaky backstabs), Yuan Shao, even Kong Rong sometimes likes to join in and have a laugh; South of the Yangtze they're likelly to join forces aswell if you expand that way);
Midgame usually devolves into a stalemate of trying to abuse his faction mechanics and imperial favor to break up coalitions and single out oponents given that he generally has no friends to fall back on in case of all out war unless you form vassals through administrators. In anycase it's a big and time consuming gamble.
None of these concepts are particularly newplayer-friendly: Abusing intricate faction mechanics, knowing and successfully using diplomacy quirks, dealing with imperial favor, forming vassals (let alone through administrators), knowing how the court system works in order to create those administrators in the first place... that's a lot to ask out of a new player, on top of everything else.
It's not exactly the hardest start ever but I would not dare claim that it's easy or the easiest.
- Gongsun Zan is deceptivelly difficult.
He starts off backed to a corner but he soon may find himself in a lot of trouble both economy-wise and diplomacy-wise.
You're going to be dealing with the dilema(s) surrounding Liu Yu, Han Fu and Yuan Shao... one way or the other you'll end up facing vast armies pretty soon into the campaign when you barelly have any income to sustain your first stack, especially if you keep the cavalry units. Basically his strength relies on cavalry that you can't even use without cripling your meager starting economy.
Soon enough you'll also have Gongsun Du knocking over your backdoor when you least expect, at least he loves to do it in my playthroughs.
In light of all this it isn't uncommon to end up falling back on a friendly Zhang Yan and rellying on him to distract and support you indirectly against Yuan Shao, but he's on the other side of the region and expanding through Liu Yu's territory leaves you vulnerable to flanks so if you screw up somewhere you're on your own to recover from that.
The north of the Yellow River overall isn't a great region in terms of income outside Taiyuan and Hedong, usually controlled by Dong Zhuo and Zheng Jiang; That's a long distance away given what you have to face before getting there as Gongsun Zan.
Easiest way of dealing with the poor starting economy would be to invade Gongsun Du (after taking both Han settlements) from the start and hoping Yuan Shao doesn't decide to send a naval force for the backstab later on which will put you right back where you started, defending the choke at Youbeiping commandery while watching your backside slowly getting taken over... but I don't like playing off chances and hopes.
All in all, this is about the only start where I can comfortably say that if you screw up somewhere in the opening turns there's no coming back from it, at least in Records mode; You just don't have the strategic means to make due with.
- Liu Biao was unironically the easiest (and first) campaign I've played through in this game (only once though), shortly followed by Sun Jian, Shi Xie and only then Liu Bei.
I'd argue that it (Liu Biao's) incentivizes the player to want to learn a lot of important mechanics in this game without it feeling stingy in case you mess up somewhere.
You don't need territories for yourself when you can gift them away to vassals and have them pay their tributes as if the territories were yours.
I see people often saying that it feels bad to not be able to expand in a Total War game but the thing is you can expand as Liu Biao just fine, it's just that you'll probably end up wanting to gift those lands to vassals afterwards; In eithercase it's a win-win as you don't have to deal with corruption too much and corruption is a big hurdle for new players.
He generally has good relations with Han factions so it's easy to secure deals and even get others to cooperate (vassalize) willingly.
Sun Jian to the south can be easily made peace with or just be ignored alltogether; Yuan Shu is usually bothered with either being passive or triggering everyone at once so he's never really a threat and the only big nearby trouble at the start is He Yi that you're incentivized to wipe out in the opening turns anyway.
Other than that you're free to pummel nearby Nanman factions and Gong Du without a diplomatic hit... or if you're feeling feisty then take the Han settlements to the west and bring the fight to Dong Zhuo as the vanguard.
That's about it. I just don't see the same thing people see about Cao Cao and Gongsun Zan. Could be the fact that I play records?, no clue.
1) his early enemies are event coded. You can choose to have a war with Liu Yu and Han Fu early on or not. You get a full grasp of the diplomacy system dealing with them and Yuan Shao (tho he shouldnt become aggressive till you expand to your south).
2) the northern factions AI will basically wait for you to take over Gongsun Du, but not for too long. So you learn when to recall your troops and pick your fights.
3) peasantry, industry and farm focused provinces are close to you and very easy to get. you get to learn the importance and difference between them.
4) white horse raiders. They're very forgiving and cheap. imo the best unit in the game. you can even win the campaign only using them.
5) Yuan Shao is pretty much your final boss and once you take him out+the bandits and develop the north, you should already be a duke and have no real threats. You can chill out watching the central plains chaos or capture the emperor.