Teutonic Campaign: Denmark

[frogbeastegg]

This topic is for the Danish faction in Kingdoms expansion's Teutonic campaign.

[Doug-Thompson]

Money is tight in the opening moves of the Dane campaign in Kingdoms, and the Holy Roman Empire is a real nuisance.

The strategy goal is very obvious. Holding Hamburg and whatever other north German provinces your council pays you to take is the first and foremost priority. You also want to take over Scandinavia — fast and on the cheap. "Cheap" and "fast" don't normally go together, so it's a nice balancing act.

Your strengths are dismounted Huscarls from castles and Norse War Clerics from your capital. Huscarls are pricey but have very low maintenance costs. War Clerics are pricey and the supply of them is very limited.

The land route from your capital to North Germany takes a wide bend to the west, to Jutland in Denmark. It's better to keep a decent fleet to shuttle war clerics to your main army on a North German coast. Huscarls can be recruited at Hamburg.

The land route to Scandinavia from your capital is much more direct.

Crippling the Holy Roman Empire in a blitz might be possible, but I haven't found the way yet.

In hindsight, I recommend wiping out Norway first. If possible, I'd skip everything else and grab the castle near the present-day location of Oslo ASAP. After that, the Norwegians are crippled with one province far to the west, at the southern tip of Norway.

So buyer beware: I haven't tried this yet. If I had my campaign to do over again, though, I'd capture that castle near Oslo, get ready to fight in north Germany and conquer the rest of Scandinavia with troops raised in Scandinavia. The money and a few units of war clerics given to you for completing missions and capturing rebel settlements in Scandinavia can make a lot of difference in north Germany. I was awarded four war clerics for completing one mission, and they single-handedly arrived by ship and relieved a siege while my main German army was taking another city.

Another thing: Scandinavia is rich in trading resources, so recruiting merchants pays off rather quickly.

[llewellyn]

denmark is an easy faction to win with, first and foremost upgrade your castles and fill up the unit quenes. then take your starting armies and head into scandinavia with them, quickly so you can get the kalmar union. the norweigan king must die to aqquire the union, after you have aqquired the union make a north baltic run all the way to polish settlements, have one full stack head directly south from hamburg conquering everything to the end of the southern part of the map.
then with your remaing forces take the HRE capital and consolidate the rest of there lands. next you can either
A. teutonic war
B. polish war
i would advise a teutonic war as you do not want to ritterbruder or halbbruder, and by taking them out you will aqquire the haneastic league.
now you have an empire with the poles in the middle. consolidate and fend off any raids, train 5 full stacks and blitz the poles with 3 of them and send the other 2 to keep the mongols occupied. by now you control most of the map and have more money then you know what to do with. train all your elite units and head north pushing thru lithuania and novogrod

[Dead Guy]

In the opening moves I chose to use small cavalry armies to lay siege to the swedish towns, one goes for kalmar and later on Visby which is a bit trickier. The other goes Goteborg and then Uppsala via skara. Using family members and some initial War Clerics it's completely possible to rout the rebels as they sally forth with bareable losses and move on, moving up peasants from halmstad and hassleholm to garrison goteborg and kalmar. You'll be in the red for a bunch of turns early on but you can hold out with your initial armies.

Meanwhile, take your initial troops from Narva with perhaps some supporters from Reval and ship them to Abo. The garrison in Abo is strong, but can be taken out when they sally with just your starting troops. Novgorod can be a threat if you do this, but they usually go for an alliance early on. Get Norse archers in Narva as soon as you can if a conflict with Novgorod arises, they kick butt against missile cavalry and can beat spearmen in melée most of the time. Also they make an excellent garrison.

In germany, go for Stralsund, Uelzen is useless and incites the krauts to attack you. Stralsund usually does too but is a better settlement. You'll soon be figting off pretty capable german armies. I used one large army to fight them off one by one. When the opportunity arises it's possible to take Stettin or Magdeburg, eventually you can press on to Prague which is a kick-ass settlement to own and use as a recruitment/retraining base. You can get serpentines pretty quickly from it too, and it usually has a swordsmiths guild and sometimes good stables and barracks.

I chose to completely ignore the Norwegians until I had to kill their King which was hiding in Agder by himself, an assault made short work of him and the union was formed in turn 20 or as close as makes no difference.

After that I built my forces and eventually attacked Poland and Novgorod when my assets had stabilised. Goteborg, Uppsala, Arhus and Abo will all make great trading cities, I converted Akershus, the norwegian castle, to a city as well as it's completely unthreatened and serves better to generate income than troops in the remote location.

Good luck!

[McDoogle]

hey i have conquered every city in scandinavia! ever single one and several islands! i have taken every city that the objectives page talks about why havent i gotten the allaince thing?


what are the citties u guys conquered in order to start the change?

[Dead Guy]

You can't eliminate Norway, or you won't be able to form the Kalmar Union. You need Abo, Visby, Kalmar, Hamburg and Arhus I think... Maybe Narva too? I've always taken everything in scandinavia but Akershus when I get it.

[doombringer]

hav formed kalmarr union, but hav no new units


WTH?

[A Norseman]

I know.. It sucks..
Seriusly lead you to question ca and how they can miss such a major error.
I was looking forward to command armies of my countrymen.. No, wait? Gotland footmen? gotland is in sweden.. Sami axemen? the Sami is a compleatly useless people to the north of scandinavia.. so realy no new norwegian units..

[McDoogle]

So how does it work if you dont destory norway? i mean i conqouered particualry everything else but for them..

and by the by i just fended off 1200 german sergents with 120 dismounted huscrals and a general unit! Woot Woot!

[PuppetMaster]

lol, so i guess norway needs to stay alive for the kalmar union?

that sucks, i eliminated them in like turn 10

o well, haha

[Dead Guy]

Yup yup... there's a thread in the Citadel on how to work around the glitch where you don't get the kalmar union specific units I think, and one at twcenter too. And yeah it's kind of a shame they didn't bother to give Norway any units of their own, but then again maybe scandinavia was pretty homogenous at that time, as it sort of is now :p

[Bulawayo]

I know.. It sucks..
Seriusly lead you to question ca and how they can miss such a major error.
I was looking forward to command armies of my countrymen.. No, wait? Gotland footmen? gotland is in sweden.. Sami axemen? the Sami is a compleatly useless people to the north of scandinavia.. so realy no new norwegian units..

Hey man, you can't write that in a public forum like this. I know it's a fact that many Norwegians, Swedes and Finns have that opinion about Samis, but it shouldn't be posted here. I don't believe it would be acceptable even in the backroom

[Boyar Son]

are you a sami Bulawayo?

[Iavorios]

This is not the point. Are you asking "are you a jew" or "are you a gipsy" or wathever in that way in public. I hoped that in Scandinavia you have forgotten about the hole untermensh idea long time ago.

[SeekerDK]

This is not the point. Are you asking "are you a jew" or "are you a gipsy" or wathever in that way in public. I hoped that in Scandinavia you have forgotten about the hole untermensh idea long time ago.

Well, we haven't, seeing as we never had the idea in the first place.
The "Untermensch" is a Nazi concept used in propaganda and has no connection to Nordic culture (thus, it is also a German word).

Lets just let a bad joke, stay a bad joke and get on with out lives.
I thinking about starting the campaign (a few turns away from victory in the non-addon campaign and a great fan of Norse Archers) and this wasn't really the tactical advise I was hoping for.

Some links regarding the Kalmar bug:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=91378
http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/topic/25499

[Bulawayo]

are you a sami Bulawayo?

Oh yes I am

Only that I haven't any reindeers to herd here in the big city

[Prodigal]

Not meaning to hijack the thread back to topic, but you're saying that with the union there are no new units?

Sure that its not related to a timeline? Has anyone played the union till intro. of gunpowder or later?

Something I'm trying in my current game is creating an alliance with Novgorod.

The reasoning behind this is that the Teutons are christian so they'll be more intertested in attacking Lithuania, (who they're already at war with), & Novgorod early on, & should leave the peace loving Dane lurking in the north alone for a while. While Nov. has its capital within striking distance of a castle run by people who will adversly affect their area's religion. So while concentrating on getting the alliance in Scandy land, it's best to have a quiet life where possible.

In order to do this I got trade rights from Novgorod first, (fastest I could do this was by turn 4, our relations had already taken a hit just by my being near them). Got trade rights from the Teutons, (avoiding the alliance options they tried to force on me), then moved to Lithuania formed an alliance with them, (it seems Nov & Lith form an alliance pretty early on), then had to go back to Nov. to get their alliance.

This has been working pretty well, so far I've been left me alone, which has allowed me to send forces to invade the rebel island to the north while getting a tidy income from two close trading partners, who are spending their time fighting each other.

[SeekerDK]

Sure that its not related to a timeline? Has anyone played the union till intro. of gunpowder or later?

It's commonly accepted as a bug. But as I read it, not everyone are affected?
The solution is here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...o=file&id=1642 but again, doesn't seem to work for everyone.

[Boyar Son]

This is not the point. Are you asking "are you a jew" or "are you a gipsy" or wathever in that way in public. I hoped that in Scandinavia you have forgotten about the hole untermensh idea long time ago.

Me??

[aimlesswanderer]

The Danes were very easy, I just had lots of huscarls, dismounted huscarls and War Clerics. Overran Scandanavia, which gives you a large, unthreatened area, and then it was basically over once I got the Hanseatic League HQ as I was rolling in money.

[kitbogha]

I played quite a way into this campaign but found it a little boring, esp after missing out on this Kalmar Union thing by taking too many/the wrong cities. Lots of entertaining battles but not enough variety for me.
Maybe I'll return too it. I having been playing Americas campaign (Apaches-highly recommended) and am now looking for a new challenge. Do the Danes get mounted Musketeers at any point?

[Robespierre]

the Danes are a great side. The start is slow: all settlements have very low growth and tiny farm output. Build farms and ports pronto. There is a strategic weakness in that the most populous and fastest growing castle, Hamburg, is on the wrong coast of the Baltic and therefore very exposed. THis one is vital since if well husbanded it may soon upgrade to produce feudal knights or norse swords, and later the stylish obudshaer. it will be a temptation to the land-based factions especially if this place gets the Hansa HQ building. defend well! keep thy fellow factions pure of the sins of avarice, greed, and coveteousness- by soundly thrashing their invasion forces and keeping all the goodies for thyself
the gist of my approach is to be everyones' friend. after all it makes no odds where they're from, the money is the same colour. you don't even need to fight Norway, just push ahead for the union.

merchants and trade are profitable on this map. scandinavia and the east baltic have rich resources, furs, salt, honey. exploit them. make merchants. it is easy to get 2 out of 5 cities for the league headquaters, but any more implies fighting somebody. a dilemma.

Units
Norse Clerics. Bringing the Fear of God to a battlefield near you. observe the low charge bonus; best used to follow up after proper knights. imagine them fighting each other and you've got the church of england.

Norse Swordsmen rather pricey upkeep. you see, these men eat as much as a entire village of peasants each morning for their breakfast. they do not first ask the peasants.

Obudshaer Halberdiers are cool. if they were still used in warfare today, i would have already joined up. however, in M2TW, Halberdiers are so chivalrous that they never win a fight. they always offer to allow their opponent the first strike. do not recruit these!

Colour Scheme
perhaps you think the Danes are drab? Well, it doesn't show the dirt. If its a striking uniform you want, play the Order.

[Invar]

I just tried manually entering the Kalmar Union fix (1 line of code, and I think I got it in the right place). However, it added 1 or 2 30-second periods of a black screen each time I went to the next turn. I'm just glad I backed up the original.

[TKaz84]

In germany, go for Stralsund, Uelzen is useless and incites the krauts to attack you. Stralsund usually does too but is a better settlement.

While I agree that Uelzen won't produce much in terms of cash, the Germans are going to attack you anyway, and Uelzen is usually one of the first missions you will receive. I would recommend taking it and turning it into a castle: not only can you use it as a secondary production center against the HRE but because of the terrain in the area (Uelzen is built upon a hill) any attackers have to navigate two winding pathways: one to get to the walls and the other to get to the castle. Thus the Germans are likely to simply lay siege to it, giving you time to bring in your War Clerics and kick their a$#.

[SirNoobsALot]

I can't seem to be able to trigger the Kalmar Union. I've captured (and held) Visby, Kalmar, Goteborg, Uppsala and Abo. Then when I assassinate the Norwegian King (Haakon Haakonsson), either Norway is destroyed or whoever the heir he adopted gets to be King. Am I missing something here? Please help!

[aimlesswanderer]

Have you patched it fully? I tried to do it before the fix, and it just wouldn't happen.

[SirNoobsALot]

Have you patched it fully? I tried to do it before the fix, and it just wouldn't happen.

I haven't or at least I don't think I did. I bought the game via Steam, I think they have their own update/patch procedure, is that going to affect it? I'm pretty positive I have the 1.05 version.

[aimlesswanderer]

I haven't used steam but I would have thought that you must be able to patch it somehow.

I am not sure if the patch will fix the situation in a game you've already started, you might well have to start anew. When fiddling with the pesky bandit settings I always had to restart for it to work....

[SirNoobsALot]

Alrighty, I'll try what you said. Hopefully Empire doesn't have as many bugs since it's only playable with Steam.

[LøLç@t]

Yup yup... there's a thread in the Citadel on how to work around the glitch where you don't get the kalmar union specific units I think, and one at twcenter too. And yeah it's kind of a shame they didn't bother to give Norway any units of their own, but then again maybe scandinavia was pretty homogenous at that time, as it sort of is now :p

Really? Could I get a link to that?