Tips for viking campaign

[LegionOfSteel]

I been playing the vikings heaps lately, and i got a few tips i picked up thru my experience.

BIG TIP: your vikings are a pagan religion,everyone else i catholic, as soon as you conquer a province, build a pagan shrine or you will have to put up with years of rebellion, even with 500 men guarding it.

1. You need to be very offensive, and do many raids at the start to build up an income, you will not be able to farm it.

2. Only produce offensive troops, vikings are very strong and kick ass against just about anything. this means lots of landsmen, huscarls, and eventually joms. also a few units of raider cavalry will stop any annoying archer fire. still use peasants for garison in regions.

3. use your king or princes to lead the attacks, viking kings are extremely tough, and often come with high command, besides, unless they have 4 units of royal bodyguard charging you, your huscarl bodyguards are gonna tear thru anything. (you can probly even beat off 4 units of royal knights if u got 5 valour or better.)

4. dont kill your prisoners; money is hard to come by.

5.upgrade your armour and weapons as soon as possible, you are going to be using the same troop types for most of the game, so you want them to be as good as they can get.

[The Programming Dragon]

Another tip is: Immediately take lands and establish a good foothold in the South East of England. It may seem hard at first as you will take AND lose lands, but as soon as you get the strength to push North, it becomes a lot easier as there is less provinces and you can begin to merge your armies.

ALWAYS garrison the West Coast of England as when you push North the Irish tend to invade the west coasts and you have to march back

[Satyr]

Build for producing Huscarles in 3 provinces. I take the islands first then Ireland, then I start picking off factions in England. I also build Cav in an iron province (Manua) so that they gain some striking power. Most of the time I don't bother with archers as huscarles are such great killing machines that I just charge everyone into battle. I use nothing but peasants to garrison. This means that you need to be very careful about having really short borders so that everything behind them can be filled with peasants. Take over all the sea zones and build as much trading as possible. Raid for the rest of your income, aiming for abbies for that 2,000 florin payoff is your best bet. My last game I gained my 100% victory in 868 so a Viking game doesn't need to take very long. I actually never got around to creating joms this game instead working on armor and weapon upgrades (and trading). Besides, joms aren't twice as good as huscarles so the 2 year build time isn't worth it unless you let the game go on for a long time and need to face lots of mounted nobles and upgraded huscarles.

[Earl of Sandwich]

for the early game, go on a tour of britain, raiding provinces all around. after all, you are pretty much untouchable until you actually have territory to lose outside of your homelands. pay special attention to provinces that have abbeys, because they can yield 2000 florins when pillaged. use this income to build up your infrastructure for a while, then at some point, when you have a army big enough to make for a sufficient garrison, you can play for keeps on the british provinces. my suggestion is that you target a faction that looks like it might be a potential threat.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Hello and if I may add my share of salt and spice; when you follow the history and start invading the island from Scotland/Northumbria, well, you get stuck into history. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-smile.gif Not essentially will Alfred kick you off but you'll have to deal with an overgrown Saxon kingdom.

Instead, start with knocking off Wessex first and advance northward. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

As for units, I didn't even have the chance to complete the tech tree enough for Huscarles and beyond. Carls with mass-support from Landsmen will do the job. If you can gather a unit of Berserkers or two, that will guarantee an easy victory. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif

I noticed that the Irish don't mean but numbers. They can easily be beaten even when you're outnumbered by 1 to 2.

FWIW
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cheers.gif
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[katank]

beware of their bonnachts though as they can be damaging although you can take them most of the time.

use berserkers too. they rock especially with high valour. just kill through their peasants and spearmen and you'll have some great berserkers soon. they are also really fast and i find myself not really needing cav.

[Gregoshi]

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif Welcome aboard Mouzafphaerre. Thanks for joining us.

I'll vouch for your suggestion. I started up north but realized it was a mistake. Unfortunately it was a little late and the Saxons were more than a handful. Alas, I haven't gotten back to the campaign to resolve the Saxon problem.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Thanks for the welcome; I'll hang around for learning modding from you wise elders and exchanging gameplay ideas. :)

Glad my suggestion helps.
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