Greetings.

I managed to start in Cornwall a couple times (Don't remember if I could in Kent too.) after many New Game tries right after I had installed LotR 2.
But for some reason I can't do it again. The only thing I can think of that have changed are settings like if armies eat, advanced farming and so forth. Can one of the settings be the reason?

Oh and this is Custom Game England.

Cornwall have always been my favourite starting county so I'd really appreciate any help with this.

The starting county is random. I had noticed that certain shield/crest colors tend to influence where you begin. But, the times that I have played, if I wanted a specific county, I restarted several times.

Here is another solution, though it requires a heck of a lot of time, patience and file keeping skills. Start as any shield on your map of choice. Immediately, before making any changes in the game, save the game under whichever title desired. As the same starting county can have several different configurations, such as the Bishop in that county instead of this county, save the same map with a different title. Again, this will take some book keeping skills; you may have to make notes on paper or in a text file.

You will be limited to eight characters due to early DOS file system. My saved games look something like this, the first part being the map, the second the county:

Engyork [England map, Yorkshire]
Bricaer [Britain map, Caernarvion]

As there will be different layouts of computer players within the same map, you will have to append differentiation suffixes, such as Bricaer1, Bricaer2, Engyork1, Engyork2, etc. Make sure you note elsewhere the different nobles and their shield colours. And very important, make extra copies of these saved files to save your hard work when you accidentally overwrite a saved game. Because you will. I know I have.