Denmark

[frogbeastegg]

Denmark needs to be unlocked before you can play as them. To do this you can either complete a campaign (on any difficutly, long or short setting) with one of the five starting factions, or you can edit the preferences file. To do this open your Sega/M2TW folder/data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign, find the file called "descr_strat" and open it with wordpad. Now find the section which says

campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
   england
   france
   hre
   spain
   venice
end
unlockable
   sicily
   milan
   scotland
   byzantium
   russia
   moors
   turks
   egypt
   denmark
   portugal
   poland
   hungary
end
nonplayable
   papal_states
   aztecs
   mongols
   timurids
   slave
end

Change it so it reads

campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
   england
   france
   hre
   spain
   venice
   sicily
   milan
   scotland
   byzantium
   russia
   moors
   turks
   egypt
   denmark
   portugal
   poland
   hungary
end
nonplayable
   papal_states
   aztecs
   mongols
   timurids
   slave
end

[McDoogle]

Denmark is more a pain now, well in my opionion...

This excummincation thing is going to far! you cant do anything!

to me, you just have to damn to the pope and expand ruthlessly into the german empire. Personally i own an extensive assaiain network! about 5 or 6 of them all very good at what they do and i simply kill any thing that comes into my lands. I am more aggressive with the danes becase basically i dnt have much of a choice for expansion.

When u begin, dnt worry about the rest of scandanavia. No one touches it and u wanna bet the germans to the four rebel provinces south, i lost one to the polish, i was about to take it off them, however they offered me a princess so i accepted and left them...i have three cardinals atm, i am still at a lose how to gain piety exactly...i am sure the answer will come soon.

i regiged the papal elections only to lose my bloody pope three turns later! lol

However norse axeman detroy everything that moves to oppose them...so get them!

Learn to attack in bulk, the more units attacking the more demoralized the enemy become! Personnaly i am taking advantage of the feduel knights and charging in and out of my enemy till the break then hunt them down!

I wish the influence meter was back fom the first medieval...but oh well...the authority thing just doesnt have the same effect

[Poised]

The Danes have superb economic potential, but it requires an aggressive start, if done right, you wont even scratch your relationship with the other catholic nations.

Send 2 norse bowmen + half of the militia south with your prince, and send the rest except for one peasant across Østersøen to Sweden with your king, leave the 1 peasant army in Aarhus.

The King's objective is Stockholm first, its a small battle and you most likely wont need mercenaries for that battle, but I prefer to buy 2 spears anyway, since they will be used for Oslo very soon, and before you take Oslo be sure to buy as many mercs as needed, I had a lot of trouble with Oslo although it looks perfectly harmless on paper.

The Prince's objective is Hamburg, Stettin, Antwerp, Bruges and if its still a rebel town, Magdelburg, Magdelburg will most likely be attacked by Poland or HRE quite early, but its the least important town, since it doesnt have a port, so leave that for last, I was lucky to have it still being rebel after I took Bruges, so I swooped it up and its a nice defensive town, the river between Hamburg and Magdelburg makes for a perfect HRE screen.

Hamburg should be sieged by turn 2 and taken by turn 3, move all but 1 troop from the Prince's army east towards Stettin right away, both Hamburg and Stettin are relatively small battles, so you can probably do these without mercs, but I hired a few merc spears just to make the medicine go down a little easier, it also free up troops to garrison Stettin and allow you to move on to Antwerp.
You should have produced a few town militia while attacking Hamburg and Stettin, send them to Stettin as garrison, and move the Prince's army west to Antwerp.

The King will reach Stockholm just around the time you reach Stettin, occupy Stockholm, plant a guardtower and move to Oslo, I sacked Oslo for the extra cash, its a nice boost :)

Antwerp and Bruges are both pretty well defended, and will require both skill and manpower, but with enough mercenaries they WILL fall.

Now you hold even more land than King Valdemar managed to hold by the year 1180 :P

I used Hamburg and Bruges as castles, and Aarhus, Stockholm, Oslo, Stettin, and Antwerp as towns (Magdelburg too in my game, but you need a lot of luck to grab Magdelburg without upsetting your neighbours)

This is a monster cashcow, and all of it was aquired without breaking any alliances/agreements, or losing reputation, this is for Hard / Hard, but I see no reason it shouldnt work on medium or very hard too.

Now you are ready to plant the raven banner in the sands of the holy land :)

[Stolpmeister]

Another good option for danish expansion is to not go south, but to instead do what your viking ancestors did - go west. Divide your beginning forces into two - one taking Stockholm and Olso (converting Olso to a city), the other taking Hamburg. Don't expand south further than Hamburg. Build your economy and a navy in Arhus, Stockholm and Olso, and your landforces in Hamburg. Make a sizeable army consisting of plenty of viking raiders or dismounted huscarles, but them on a boat and send them west. If you're quick enough the scots won't have taken the castle at Inverness, which makes a good staging area for your campaign against the Scots and English. Taking Britian means you'll have TWO strong, easily defended economic bases for further conquests.

Expanding southwards will get you quickly involved in continental european politics, and you'll take over the HREs position as being surrounded by enemies and fighting a multi-front war. I tried it in a campaign I'm playing now, and I'm now at war with the HRE, Milan, Polan, Russia and Hungary (and of course Egypt and the Mongols in the Holy Land).

[Skott]

That sounds like a fun game tactic to try. Lets go a viking!

[lalartu]

I think there are a lot of potentials for Danes and even tho it's not the easiest faction to play with, you get a great amount of strong units.

Now as others have said, you can pretty much go any direction and succeed, it all depends on how much you're willing to sacrifice.

The easiest way I find, along with a potential to build up a very strong alliance is the following:

Send all your troops to take 4 rebel town to the south/east of you. one or two you might not have a chance to take because Poles and Germans will try to grab them as well.

Having done this, send your diplomat to estabish trade and alliance with germans, then france and then move him into the italy and ally with papacy.

Danes usually have the highest relations with the pope (go figure) so you should use that to your advantage and ally with papal states asap. that way, not only pope will excommunicate anything that attacks you, but your populous will always be happy and you don't have to garrison any inner cities because their mood will always be happy.

now obviously you're not gonna be allied with them forever. as soon as you establish a strong enough empire and the borders with other catholic states are drawn, no rebel cities are left either. proceed to building up a conquest army.

I suggest using diplomacy to your advantage and taking out Poland first and Germany next. but it's really up to you.

The reason I would not recommend playing an aggressive campaign early on (except for obviously taking the rebel states) is because you have very few very weak units at first and only one town. so you'd be risking a lot. you also need to at least be able to make dismounted huscarls, which I think are one of the best early units in the game. they can easily cut through most infantry and I even defeated general cavalry with them. so when you can produce them pretty quickly, you can start a major conquest. just remember if Pope tells you to stop aggression, wait a bit or let the other faction attack you, so play it smart.

don't get excommunicated. it'll be the bane of you. if the pope excommunicated denmark, you will spend a long time trying to hold your cities together, rather than conquering territories nearby.

[yalpe]

I agree with lalartu. Don't get excom. and focuson taking 5-6 rebel towns (including Scandinavia) and then build up a strong econ. Meanwhile, ensure security with diplomacy. This will allow you to pump military units and upgrade garisons. Soon your forces will be really strong and you should start conquering whoever gets excom-ed first. In my case it was Poland. I took 2 towns from them and signed a truce for Riga. Meanwhile, Venice was overextending itself against the HRE, so I proposed them an alliance for Prague. Two towns for free! Now I started bashing catholics at Frankfurt for the first time.

Oh, btw, take Stettin!!! The pope will send you a few missions to raise catholism there. Your standings will increase by 1 or 2 + after this since its an easy mission.

[Ripipip]

Okey, i got a little problem here. I know it is a big chance that it will be very noobish but i really need help. I won one short campaign as the England and then i thought i could move over to play Denmark but i still can´t play anyone else than those first five factions. Then i started to read this forum and tried to change it in the descr.strat file but it keeps saying that i can´t change anything in the file and that it is "protected". So, what can i do? :P

[frogbeastegg]

Right click on the file you need to edit, choose "properties" from the menu. At the bottom is a set of tick box options, including one called "read only". Uncheck that, and you will be able to save changes to the file.

[McDoogle]

Well i just did a campagin as the english out of boredom, and i killed a force of 1900 danes hascruls and norse axemen with 700 feduel knights, so i am skepctical of the danes

However the viking thing sounds more fun then tackling germany and poland right up.

in the orginal medieval i used to take norway sweden then the british ilses, the parts of western russia, then tok all the northern mose provinces of europe...i think i might relive that... and the danes are the only faction with the scots who really have different units..

england and france have the same tech tree, only diff cavarly..and thats crap in my opionion..

[Skott]

First, let me say, I havent gotten the game yet. Its on order and hasnt arrived but from what I'm reading if you want to play the Danes, and from a Viking Reconquest playstyle, you have to attack British Isles in one of two ways. Either hit the English, Scots, and Ireland right away before they can build up decent troops and economy, or do a slower build up before attacking. Like take hamburg and all the Scandanavian cities. Then once you have built up a good economy, force, and navy launch the raids upon the British Isles. The second method is probably going to be easier although it does have its drawbacks as well. The longer you take to build up the more time England and Scotland have time to build up. The upside sounds like they may be at war when you go stomping in though.

Lets say you choose a Viking reconquest playstyle and decide to ignore the Pope. For roleplay purposes say your Viking king and lords throw off Christianity and redopt the old ways and gods. Okay, the Pope excommunicates you. What happens? Every nation attacks you immediately or just a few? I'm curious how that works. Does everyone make a beeline to take your cities or is it just those nations neighboring your own lands? What exactly happens when you get excommunicated?

The AI being what it is (And it doesnt sound like its been improved that much from RTW. I have heard of this Passive AI bug so it doesnt sound like the AI is vastly improved) is that once you got strong units beating the AI on the battlefield isnt that hard. The AI can throw alot of units at you though in a battle of attrition but once you got a strong foundation its an attrition of losses more for them than you. especially if you can get them to attack at a bottleneck spot on the map. River crossings are great for this. Good City/Keep/castle defense is another.

Like I said I havent played the game yet so I'm merely guessing based on what I have read from others and past game experiences.

[lalartu]

The AI has definitely improved, but it's still not perfect.

in my 3 games, AI kept probing my provinces and attacking quite often and quite smart. they sometimes ignored me, waiting for me to move my units or even amassed huge forces on a strategically imprortant point for me.

I think it's definitely much better than AI in RTW and by far superious to any other TW game.

now as for excommunication:

1- your citizens are catholic, so they become VERY pissed. you need a lot of units and buildings to prevent rebel uprisal even in your capital. it's very difficult to play if you're excommunicated. many nations will strike from all sides and since you're no longer officially catholic, you might get ripped to pieces from several directions every turn.

now it was that bad only once for me, when poland, hre and england attacked me at three moderately protected points. I lost one and after I got readmitted to cathoicism, could not retake it for a while because pope was getting pissed.

you cannot play as a pagan if you're dane it seems. you can only be a catholic (the idea here is that the dane empire is trying to enter the civilized catholic world)

so it's for the best to keep pope happy because then
1 - any nation that persistently attacks you get excommunicated and is up for grabs (in my case it was both england and poland for a long time and hre for a while)
2 - any nation that pope hates gets a little present from the inquisitons that pretty much starts killing off a lot of your good generals and agents (tho I'm not 100% sure that they do that when you're excommunicated or just very low on pope's list)
3 - obvious dissent from citizens or their ultimate happines and absolutely no need to have ANY units garrisoning inner cities if you're 7+ stars on pope's list
4 - crusadeeees! crusades are cool. you can declare a crusade if you're at good terms with pope on ANY city you really want from anything non christian (that means Byzantine's constantinople, egypt's cairo, turkish Antioch or any of those high profit cities out there that you really really want).
when you successfully take a city during the crusade you become instant pope's favorite and get money+lots of units get experience.
5- finally if you're at good terms with pope for a long time, meanung that you don't anger him much, he'll randomly give you money here and there just cause you know...he likes you.


now a little more dane strategy:

I tried my second game and it plays along quite similarly.
I noticed that in my two games Milan stayed a loyal ally as did Russia.
France did not care about me and even gave me money to improve relations.

England attacked me only when I took Antwerp and had a good profit going from the port.

holy roman empire attacks always and usually sneaky. I had an alliance in my first game and they betrayed me by attacking the weakest province.
poland attacks if you take some of those SE rebel cities in the beginning, but seems to ignore you if you don't take two of them. I advise to take them and face the poles. they're weak against your early infantry.

make sure to establish trade with moors, egypt, byzantium, turks, scots - they never declare war on your and it seems never betray. I had an alliance with moors and turks/egypt/byzantium pleaded for peace when I declared on them. scots had an alliance with me the entire game.

venice can be a problem. they can get spread out and attack from two points. their units are quite strong too, so bewary of venice.

spain eventually pushed through france in one of my games and had tons of units that after the demise of france attacked me and milan. they can be a problem because most units they bring are heavy infantry and heavy cavalry, so be ready on the western front.

I also think that taking English isles can and should be done early on, but if you're allied with scots, it may present a problem. they're devoted christians and good fighters. so it's up to you. their provinces are not worth it either, except london, nottingham and caen (dublin is okay, but worth taking because it's so remote).

if you ally with Russia (which you should), you can ask them to attack poles from their side while you attack from yours, that way eliminating them entirely.


overall though, you should really try to expand as much as you can since your early units (huscars and vikings) are by far the best early units in the game. they're cheap too and you can have tons of them.
I'm going to try another game where I go for non-christian lands, probably byzantium and turkey and try to establish there rather than in scanvdinavia.
if I do it right, I'll be ready for mongolian invasion and have whole mediterrenean trade network to myself.

[McDoogle]

I must have a different game from Lalartu, the pope is nothing but a pain in the arse to me. I have been his fav factions with ful crosses for maybe 50 turns straight because i kept to myself and hunted rebels while building churchs, i have lost four generals and 5 agents to his miserable inquistors, however i ended up with 8 assasains chasing them and finally killed two of the three, the last one keeps getting away.

i used to get excommunicated all the time in my first danes one, and my populace didnt seem to mind, i could leave one unit garrisons and high tax rate with 90% public order. i also must have scared the germans and poles and french, none had any desire to turn on me, i held two large arms with two very succesful generals with a war with england.

However back to the pope, i think he focuses on 'helping' you out by trailing ur generals, however when you have 6 cities and four generals you tend not to be very appreciative...

and the hint for winning the papacy, is to build as many priests as you can get and eventually by majority you will end up holding most of the positions in the college of cardinals... and thusly u hold more votes to throw around and the better and cheaper ur chance of keeping a danish pope smilig upon you.

With me, i have so far in both games managed to grab the french princess and they are loyal ever since, the english worry about me when i take Antwep or burges and each time they attack i utterly destroy them then execute their armies and they dnt return for along time, the HRE...well they made four full armies of town malitia, sargents, spear malita and mailed knights. They attacked in three turns of the first appreance...in which timei had built 11 units of fedual knights, i defeated two of their armies losing a total of 200 men, the last two, one ran home after i crushed the other army with 500 men killing their king and capturing their heir.

I am considering opening a front in the middle east and having two empires on either side of the map.

btw has anyone gotten up to the aztecs yet? i am turn 122 and still nothing...however i faught them out of boredem in a custom battle...they are not an easy foe... equal armies, i had heavey infantry and cavarly and used cannons...and they wiped me out... i did a random select and they had good and bad units.. So it should be interesting to see how it goes

[lalartu]

hey Macdoogle, what units do you usually build?

I noticed that when I mass produce dismounted husclars and let computer take care of my battles, I barely lose ANY no matter what units computer sends against me.
it used to be the same in MTW 1 with vikings though, so no surprise there I guess.

I'm on my 200th turn in my 2nd game and still no aztecs. I have 3 explorer guilds, 1 master explorer and 1 explorer HQ, all my ports are up to date and most cities are top tech, so I dont know what else I need to trigger it. it seems it might be random or something.

I also found a very cheap way of making lots of money the viking way. on my last campaign I took Antioch, sacking it, selling all the sellable buildings in it and abandoning it for whoever wanted it (it happened to be the mongols).
so not wanting to go all the way back to scandinavia, I decided to march south. I sacked 4 turkish cities (jerusalem and others) before reachin egypt and sacking 2 of theirs, capturing their citadel, building more husclars and continuing my sacking campaign back north.
every city yielded about 20 000 (15 000 for sacking and 5000 for buildings sold) and on my way back every city gave me about 7-8000 more. so I think I made about 200k within 20 turns. this sort of really reminds me of the barbarian addon for RTW, except a lot more fun and definitely worth trying especially since you are playing as the only barbarian faction apart from mongolians. so sacking cities is in your blood and pope doesn't mind it since you're sacking heathens.

it's also possible to actually settle in egypt by taking cairo, alexandria and the third city and establishing yourself in a new remote region. I tried doing it for 10 turns and nobody ever tried to attack me there. which is why I left, because it was turning my vikings into couch potatoes, but if you feel like having a safe haven, egypt is it.

[lalartu]

oh and as for excommunication not causing dissent - well it becomes a huge problem later on when you have 30 000+ citizens

I noticed that unless I have 3+ stars with pope and have built enough morale supporting buildings such as brothel and town guard, cities that are far away such as paris have huge revolt chance. when I'm excommunicated, I can't take any city and expect it not to revolt if it's somewhat away from my capital.

so the only other solution is to slaughter populous, but that means you'll have miserable tax income from that city.

it doesn't affect castles as much it seems, they have better overall morale

[lalartu]

one more annoying thing about being excommunicated that I recently discovered:

your generals randomly leave you because of the lack of faith in you.

fifth turn being excommed two of my 4 star generals left me.

[McDoogle]

Well i agree with the generals leaving every now and then, and personally from RTW i have learned that with a city that grows beyoung 20000 pop, i pull everything out let it revvolt take it and slaughter the populace, otherwise it will remain a probelm that merely grows.

i prefer staying in the north, sand has never been of much appeal to me, so i tend to 'forget' crusaudes, i know theres lots of money etc to be made but i just prefer showing european supremacy.

Personally i use norse axemen, or redual knights...the raiders and huscarls hold their end, but they just dnt look powerful to me :P and i lost a full army of dismounted huscarls awhile ago they became rebels and couldnt be re bribed...so i had to hunt them down...400 fedual knights destroyed 1400 huscarls losing 152 men.

So personally i tend to use cavarly to a maximuim advantage

I have never liked the pope so tend not to care about what he says. however like i said, i have that many cardinals elections are in my favour and all the other spanish and french cardinals support me.

However i must admitt the advantage, for two turns after i bet the germans back, a new hungrainian pope was elected thanks to me and my influence and being my allies and enemies of germany, they were excommunicated the same turn and they withdrew all of thier armies from my borders.

I am glad politics is finally begining to show itself in Total war games, however i do tend to catch the enemies general as often as i can and kill him if he survived the battle, hell theres nothing more annoying then not having the generals to help gorven and eventually u might kill enough of them to turn thir terrioties to rebels...so u can have free dibs..

and so far i am not tuoching the german lands only the edges of russia and scandanvia and the coastal provinces seeign as i have the largest navy.

But yes i use norse axemen because they are strong in small numbers. or feudal knights

[McDoogle]

I just found a way to get tot eh new world from the begning :P

cheat! press '~' and type 'toggle_fow' and move ur cursor to the corner of the map and keep going and there they are

[Skott]

Well, I'm glad to hear they improved the game's AI. It was one of my biggest complaint about RTW. In some ways it kinda sounds like you wait for the Pope to get mad at someone, or for a nation to attack first, and then you rush in and take as much as you can before the Pope changes his mind and decides to stop things. Then build up and wait for it to happen again. I'm looking forward to playing the game.

I got a email yesterday saying they are shipping the game but delivery got pushed back to December 4th! Dang it! First time I ever pre-ordered a game and I could have gotten it at the stores on launch day most likely. I cant cancel the order neither. Oh, well. Luckily I got enough to do to keep me busy till then. Although if it does go out in today's mail it shouldnt take more than 3-5 business days to get to me via regular mail. With the Holiday that would put it next week. December 4th must be like latest date to expect it. hmmmm...

Anyway guys. Thanks for the replies and good reads. I'll keep reading your experiences.

[lalartu]

I decided to see what would happen if I remained a heathen and told Pope to go * himself so here's how it went:

I had a stalemate on all fronts and had about 20 provinces. year was 1200ish and Danes were the least like nation by pope, constantly abused and always pushed around because Spanish took over France and established themselves as catholic supremacy.

so I got tired of that, took three army fulls of vikings and sent them on Italian peninsula, sacking everything on the way.

having destroyed Venice, I was excommunicated and kept pushing on toward the Rome. I reached Rome with half force and attacked Pope (it's an actual unit with some escort). he summoned a huge force from Rome and kicked my ass. They mostly had quite powerful heavy infantry units and swiss pikemen that took care of my husclar cavalry easy. so learning from my mistake I built up a full norse axemen army, grabbed my best two generals and sent them to sack rome and kill the new pope (he got reelected next turn and was spanish again).
Rome was sacked this time and I kept killing every pope they'd bring up until there were only two cardinals left and the pope was still....spanish.

so I got pissed and took everything I had west into the iberian peninsula. it was a tough campaign and I had my best generals burned on a stake (inquisition), assassinated and two of my kings perished, but eventually I sacked their every city and some of those sacked decided to stay with me with little or no army support needed.
so that sure added to my profits. by then I think I had about 40 provinces and about 4 full armies itching for more.
then comes a mongolian diplomat asking for peace and demanding an outrageous sum of 100k in return. that was the last I heard of mongolia. well not really, they kept asking for peace as I was advancing through egypt and sacking their cities, but i obviously didn't care, my goal was Jerusalem and Antioch.

it's also interesting that as soon as I sacked their cities, they would obviously not join for religous reasons, sothey all turned very rebellious and belonged to no one at all. so in a sense it was sort of a liberation mission.

by the time I reached antioch, my armies were almost completely gone mostly due to 9 star generals that mongols had from the beginning, but also due to their annoying skirmishing tactics. they work well on slow vikings and i didn't bring enough mounted husclars to take care of them. so I thought my campaign failed until I checked the merc units that were for sale in asia minor...and I boughtthe most powerful units in the game. four heavy cavalry units (kwazimirians I think) and two elephant cannons.

now having cavalry would be enough, but these elphant cannons were something different.

imagine having heavy elephants from rtw that can shoot as far as half the screen and kill people with explosive barrage. now that's something you don't mess with. so long story short, those two mammoths stomped their way through two hordes of mongols and reached antioch taking it with minimal losses.

then came the black death...
which is an event that kills off 1/3 of your population/soldiers and generals and causes a general havoc on anyone still trying to fight. so I had to stop and hope the aztec event would trigger, but nothing yet. and sincethere's no actual power threatening my empire anymore, I feel compelled to quit.

now as politics go, it's interesting how easy you get betrayed in the game. I had the warmest relationship with Russia, yet when I accidentally take my unit too close to their border, they eliminate my fleet, blockade my ports and take two of my cities.
whereas Milan which only had one major city left, kept *protecting* one of my cities from the spanish, but as soon as I went ahead conquering the spain, they attacked that same city and took it for themselves...bastards...

the only country that had not betrayed me was the Scots, but that was probably I never gave them a chance

[McDoogle]

You can't destroy the papcy...even if u take rome, they beg another christian kingdom to take them in...so th only way i can see would be to destroy every christian kingdom and then they have no where to go...but it would take too long, so personally i just put up with him, if i am to go to war, i make a big army, march in tak what i want in two turns and then defend till im told to back off. works :P, and just make sure u build churchs all the itme it willhelp u get back with the pope...n build heaps of piests cause if u do more of em will become cardinals, and then u will have control of the church...

my only problem is with all these bloody rebel armies appearing in my provinces, i have to keep a army at home to deal with them all, however im ainly just chase em into germany and then sit my army at the border so they cant be chased back.let them lose men

[AlphaDelta1]

I'm on turn 237 of the Danish campaign. I've taken all of northern France, England, Scandinavia, Germany, Poland and Austria. Well on the way to victory right? Nope..Mongols, mongols, mongols...They've been sieging my eastern settlements for atleast 40 turns..I've defeated more than 20 full stacks of Mongols while defending my settlements. I've yet to face them in the open, I'm pretty sure they'll wipe the floor with any army I send out.

Do they stop coming at some point? I've already failed the campaign.

[lalartu]

they stop coming after about 3 waves of 6 or so stacks.

but then timurids come and timurids are a true pain in the ass. think mongols with some really heavy ass units along with big attitude problems.

I'd advice to just keep to western europe and take england/spain so that you can pretend to have won the long campaign game hehe.

ps there's also always carribeans/south america

[Skott]

Well, after having played a English short campaign to familiarize myself with the game and its working mechanics, not to metion to open up the other nations, I started a Danish short campaign today. Settings are M/H. I started out by sending out two armies to the south and East. I sent my faction leader to Hamburg and my faction heir to Stettin. Instead of rushing in I laid siege to each. Takes longer but I figured it I was less likely to lose troops this way. Which I was right. Hamburg took 5 turns but at the end it folded without a fight. Stettin took 3 turns but they sallied forth. Luckily my mercenary archers whittled them down as my line held them in check. I swung my leader's unit in around behind them and forced them to flee back into Stettin. Which then I followed them in and let the archers whittle them down to the last man.

With Hamburg and Stettin secured I sent out diplomats and spies to uncover the lands and set up trade agreements. Magdeburg was taken by the Poles before I could get to it so I didnt proceed to move south or east since there wasnt anything left to me to take. The HRE and the Poles already got everything that was unclaimed. I then moved onto Stokholm. After capturing it I held my one army there to regroup and resupply.

I managed to bribe a general in Denmark and got some good troops along with him. I figured I'd send him to Oslo to capture it but at the last moment I trained more troops and put him on ship and sent it west. During my exploration of the continent I uncovered Antwerp and Bruges(Brussels? the rebel town just due west of Antwerp). During my earlier expansion and build up I noticed the HRE attacked Antwerp once but was repulsed. I kept a spy in the area to keep a watch on things and when I got a army together to take Oslo I noticed Antwerp had been left alone since the HRE's first attempt to take it. Well, I figure Oslo can wait and sent my army west by ship to take it if possible. Its a gamble but if I can get Antwerp it'll be a good cash cow for my growing empire. If I do it correctly maybe I can get Bruges too before the English or French take it. That would definetely be a coup for my Danes.

I'm on turn 22 and I have Hamburg, Stettin, and Stokholm under my banner. My shipboard army is halfway to Antwerp. I have all of Europe, Moorish Africa, and Turkey revealed on the map and trade relations with everyone except Scotland, Turks, and the Egyptians. The only alliance I have is with the HRE. I figured since they were my predertimed enemy that has to be wiped out I felt they'd be my biggest problem so I allied with them early to keep them off my front door and give me time to build up. As soon as my Stokholm army rebuilds I'll take Oslo and secure my final back door. After that I'll just build up my economy and take what scattered rebel towns are left and go any crusdes that might start up. I'll also watch for the HRE to lose favor with the pope. Hopefully they'll get excommunicated at some point and I can dart in and do a land grab.

All the Catholic nations are on good terms with the pope so I just need to build up and bide my time. Hopefully I can get my victory conditions done before the Mongols show up.



Addendum:

Well, after another session I continued my build up. I did capture Antwerp without a fight and then quick marched on Bruges and took it as well. All seemed well. I made another alliance with the Poles figuring we can all be nice nice together and and at first it was. I built up for a while and then the English decided they wanted war. Mostly it was a sea war at first. At the same time the Pope calls for the first crusade. I got two good half stacks of men in Antwerp and Bruges each so I figure I'll answer the Pope's call. This is where everything starts to go bad.

I didnt want to cross overland through other's territories. I missed the crusades in my English campaign so I didnt know what to expect. I was afraid an army marching through their lands would start wars. I skimmed the manual real quick and I didnt see anything about it. So I elected to go by sea. Apparently this was a big mistake. I took my Faction Leader and his nice full stack army and put them on my best ships. Oh, what a grande fleet of six boats it was too. I figure no one would touch them. The admiral had two stars. On the second turn I was going through the English Channel and desertion started. WTF? They start deserting on the second turn? Then they kept deserting each turn. By the time I entered the Medditerranean Sea I had lost half my beautiful crusader army. Where did they go to out at sea? Jump overboard and drown? About the time I passed Malta my King ups and dies! Just off southern Greece I run into a Egyptian fleet twice the size of mine and none too happy. They hold Antioch so I'm at war with them. They decimate my fleet. Whats left of my crusader army deserts. They preferred drowning I guess to landing somewhere. A few of my ships and the admiral make a wild run back west towards Sicily but The Egyptians chased my fleet down and destroyed what few ships I had left. So ended my grand fleet. ::sniff::

Okay, at this point I said screw the Crusade. Isnt worth the effort or price. I got a mission to blockade the English town of Caen. this works well for me. England and Denmark are at war. I'll take the town and get some freebie men or money for the mission and take the town. I build up a quick decent army and go by boat. I get almost there and then Poland and The HRE both declare war on me. WTF? This isnt good. I decide to forgo the mission and get that army back to Hamburg and Stettin ASAP. The English can wait. I still got good garrisons at Antwerp and Bruges and no English armies in that area. Turns out Poland just marches around killing rebel troops in my lands and The HRE just sits and builds up at Frankfurt. Cool deal. I can go on the offensive and grab HRE lands which i need anyway as a victory condition. Grab some polish territory too.

The Pope dies. An election is called. Turns out my Cardinal is in a tie with another guy for Pontif. I have maintained a good relation with the Vatican. I decided I wanted to experience what its like to have my Cardinal in the big chair so I buy the votes of two other cardinals. Cost me all the money I had to do it too but I won the Pontif seat and my Cardinal was elected Pope. Now I figure I can use this to my advantage somehow (still trying to figure out how). Then the English finally decide to wage war on land and attacks Bruges. Its a big full stack army too. I'm tied up marching on Frankfurt and Magdeburg to come help them. After a long assaulting battle my forces at Bruges wins but barely. The next turn the English attacks again with a half stack army. I send all I can afford to from Antwerp to help break the siege. I manage to rout the English in open fighting near the town. I move whats left of my forces into Bruges hoping I can rebuild their units they are so decimated. No luck. On the next turn a full stack of English troops show up and lay siege to Bruges. Now I know all is lost. During this time I have taken Magdeburg from the Poles. I'm at Frankfurt's gates and laying siege. It has a full force inside too so I cant break away in time to save Bruges.

The next turn I expected the English to pour into Bruges but they pull off somewhere I cant see. WTF? Hooray! Turns out France got excommunicated so the English went south after them. At least thats where I think they went. I cant see because I have no spies in the area to check. Throwing everything I have sieging Frankfurt I assault the place and win! The following turn I make peace with the Poles. Also the crusade ends. Things looking good finally.

Several more turns later and I'm rebuilding my depleted armies and preparing to march south and take more HRE territories. Things are looking up finally. I'm around turn 66 I think and if I can just hold the English at bay I can concentrate on wiping on The HRE since they refuse to a ceasefire. My merchants and assassins are getting their butts kicked. My merchants lose to other merchants all the time and so far not a single assassin of mine has managed to score a kill. I'm really ticked about this. RTW was never this bad with its assassins. Best chance I can get with my assassins is 33%. Most chances are 16%. They just dont have the right stuff to kill anything and I been trying them against every kind of target I can think of. They die each and every time. I dont know if its just my bad luck or what. When I played the English faction their merchants and assassins performed better. Maybe Danes are lousy spies and merchants in this game? Doesnt make sense to me.

To be continued...

[McDoogle]

Why are all of you so worried about Mongols!?

Every mogol army that has come my way runs home with their tail between their legs. All you have to do is focus on their general and send more then one unit at a time at thiers at a time. once u rout a few of their units the army crumbles. personally i dnt mind that when its an enemy, but i hate it with my own troops.

BNut mongols are easy to hunt down. they are only painful because they have huge armies. so keep two on your border ready for them because after a few defeats they will decide its easier to go someowhere else for awhile. So create ur armies and hunt down their family members and send every unit at them in battle and dnt let him get away. i destroyed then mongols when they kept trying to sneak in to my western povinces.

[McDoogle]

Ok i take it back!

I wasn't in jerusalem last time witht he mongols! They just didnt stoped i killed over 17000 of them over 6 turns! and lost thousand myself...i fought them so savagely that they went north and conqouered modern turkey and they are begingint to back off, and just as i organised to fight them again and had tken four of their now weakened settlements, the Timmuirds show up...man the mongols got nothing on this lot!

four large armies of fedual knights and knights hospitlaer arent able to defeat a single army of theirs... i am trying to push them north towards the mongols and i did push 6 of their armies. then another four arrived in the south and they turned and hooked up...my 6 full stacks dnt stand a chance against their 10!

IM gonna have to give up several cities just to be able to weaken em enough..

prob give up the holy lands and come back with a larger army and destroy them once they lose their men to the mongols..

I never realized just how annoying they can be. the western pwoers are eaisly subdued, the only problem with them is not their armies but their cities etc are difficult to get them to submitt. the eastern armies are far more difficult. Well in my opionion...

altho in my current game for one reason or another several factions are dead not by being conquered but most of their family died...the french died by turn 20..that was a huge shock and i had one of their princesses in my family...i didnt not feel like fighting for their lands...i was focused on the holy lands...

btw does anyone know how to help stop ur armies constantly turning rebels and having to track the CUTE FLUFFY BUNNIES down.

I always have a few armies of fedual knights about to help defend myself and they keep turning to triator, i mean i can destroy them its just like so many turns of building and then...i have to kill the KIKKOMAN SOY SAUCE..

[McDoogle]

Ha ha fine.

But with that i didnt work, i conquered all of England scandinavia and Germany and half of poland with the same king, only him. he had i think 5 or 6 authortiy points and still was losing armies.

I took England because they got an english pope and they then went to war with me and i couldnt fight back without the threats and none of my priests which i had over 30 of were not getting promoted to cardinals. So i destoryed the English, and thent he french and the germans. so lets see what happens

[buzzard]

I'm a veteran SHO/MTW/RTW player and have just got MTW2.

the danes are a fave of mine from MTW and in m2 look pretty good early on (like before).

I'm still early on in my game (most advanced unit i have is the dragon boat), but the key to winning with these guys is to expand early and to keep the HRE happy and your friend. Unmarried pinces and princesses come in handy here. make some diplomats and get them busy selling alliances and trade rights.

make taking hamburg, oslo, stockholm and stettin a priority. make a push for antwerp and bruge if possible as well. all these are decent moneymakers and will serve a good springboard for an attack when someone breaks an alliance.

I am building up forces, waiting for someone to break an alliance, to do this, i plan to leave a city lightly defended to suck in a army to try it on. considering doing this with bruge, as it has antwerp not far, as this will be where the relief force will come from and i have france and england sniffing around.

the early danish troops are great. norse archers are excellent (not bad in melee) and the unmounted carles are great and relatively cheap for the punch the give. a few lots of these making a charge have made mincemeat out of anything they have faced.

[Snoil The Mighty]

Running an Early Danish Crusade-

Didn't see this mentioned earlier, so I'll pipe up I guess. Running my first Danish campaign and unlike the other northern Europe factiions, they have a pretty good angle on crusades even in the beginning. Stay north and work straight eastwards until you get past the eastern edge of that horrific fubar of a traffic jam that encompasses northern Italy and south-central Europe. Keep that over-travelled area south of you, dont get stuck in it or there go all your soldiers, usually sooner than later but it WILL happen barring amazing luck the likes of which never visit me. Now you can work your way south, and with an advance spy (though I caught up and passed him eventually, the spy was a great boon working the route out) you will be able to move with full crusader-speed to the sea with no hassle, and hit the sea to grab some merc galleys west of Constantinople, which is a traffic jam in and of itself that you also want to avoid. That first crusade is usually called by the Pope and will be Antioch or Jerusalem. I had so many Council missions I could not get my Dips to see the Pope and ally in time to call the mark and he called Antioch. Once I was in the boats, loaded with crusader fanatics and a big wooden cross on wheels which was kinda cool, it was 2 turns to land and there was not a single other faction in sight. Never lost a single unit to desertion, or even had a whiff of such an issue, never got hung up by cities or troops of other factions, and my forward lookout spy is creeping through Asia Minor gathering very valuable intelligence and should be in to help with the unrest in a couple turns. Next time I'll try to get some priests to send ahead but as the Danes it's hard to get many within 18 turns (I had 3-4 perhaps) and they were busy instilling faith in the homelands to keep Pagan Magician groupies from hanging out with my generals. A fianl caveat, having a priest travel with is nice if you can get to your boats quickly. If not, they slow you down drastically on land making those fanatics get restless much easier if you make a misstep. So I opted to build a church in town and produce local priests.

[Krackin]

I took a different take on the danes then most seem to have. Early game is about the same i suposs, take Hamburg and the 2 settlements to the north. But then i desided instead of heading into Europower-central, i would hit our good friends the Russians. For this i used lots of mercs but sacking towns was enough to keep the money flowing for now. By round 20 the russieans were no more and i had Lots of reble towns to take. Also sense noone was catholic my priest got tons of piety teaching them the right and true church(well, other then the few oddballs who got a -4 modifier for some reason)

Around round 25(as i was taking reble towns in asia) the French went and got excommunicated. Being best buds with the pope and all, i called a crusade on toulouse. I did this because it ment more french towns on the way. Also, sense the crusader units are so cheap to buy i had 2 armies to crush them.

Right after taht Poland attacked me. So i took yet another crusader army and attacked them back, making a genral line for franch.

By round 40 fFrance was done. (2 factions in 40 rounds WOOT! ) The pope was alil unhappy with me attacking Poland(i was down to about 4 from max by this point, almost got excomunicated myself) And ofcorse he have me the no attack law. But lucky for me(and very unluck for them) he excomunicated Poland and trust telling me i can attack again, which i did. Round 50 and Poland is no more.

As it stands now, I have the Europowers surounded working my way back in to the pope's good graces. Back up to normal(3 from max) now and looking forward to HRE's soon excomunication. I ahve 24 (maybe 25) settlements. 3 large armys (i'm trading out the high upkeep crusaders for cheaper units now) and just waiting for a crusade.