Danish early attacking armys

[TheBMeistor!]

Playing an early Danish game and was wondering what others use as attacking armies.

I have conquered England and Ireland and have one rebel land in the Baltic (Livonia I think).

Its about 1130 or so and I can make Huscarles in Sweden Norway and Denmark.

My last battles have been armies led by a RK, 3 or 4 huscarles and the remnants of my viking units from earlier battles.

I havent even bothered with missle troops other than a vanilla archer here and there. I doubt that I am going to be able to keep fighting much longer with only RK and huscarles, even though it has worked wonders to this point.

I'm playing GA so I don't plan on taking the whole map just some of the better provinces that are easily defended and maybe some viking style raids.

I usually play Muslim so its not normal for me to show up on the battlefield and just charge my whole army over right away but its been fun so far.

[Si GeeNa]

The typical Danish army has very good infantry. Your huscarles will be the backbone and can smash most foot stuff...

the limiting issue of course is that they are slow. So if you can get some Cavalry, it should complement your army nicely. The cav need not be super powerful, just act as a point of threat if the enemy should turn to run...

Seems right so far... But i'll much rather play the Muslims too...
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[RedKnight]

I like archers and Danes are vanilla catholics, so you can always try the mix of a third archers, spearmen, and horses. Archers kill from afar (arbalesters are best), spearmen keep the enemy from your archers (chiv sgts are the best - but they're not available until 1205 IIRC), and at least a little heavy cav for pinning heavy enemy units, plus the rest of the cav can be light or heavy - for harassing and chasing routers. Halberdiers are Death Incarnate to horses - catch some cav in the woods with them and you'll probably only lose 3 men while taking down a whole RK unit, or even 2 or 3 RKs.

If you really love archers, you can go very archer heavy - like 8 archers, 4 spears, and 4 cav. This will decimate a lot of enemies before they can even close.

I recently played a Danes High Expert game. The huge challenge was the fact that they only have one good province for building hi-tech troops... it really slowed how many 'border' provinces I could successfully hold, for the first third of the game. I suppose that this isn't so bad in an Early since the rest of the map is pretty low-tech anyway. In retrospect, I might've tried bribing my way into any hi-tech province with rebels.
There's so many things to try in this game So many lovely ways to kill the enemy stone cold dead. I'm in love http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-jester.gif

[katank]

with all due respect redknight, I disagree.

Danes are not vanilla catholics in early

make the most out of your viks.

huscarles can take anything, horsemen can run down archers and pin stuff for a while for your huscarles to move up and are expendable.

vanilla vikings from Norway have 4 AP attack and can rival CMAA.

[KillerKadugen]

Use your Huscarles while you can. Only have til 1205 to build these behemoths.

Also, be on the lookout for any good HA mercs because, as previously stated, your armies will be sloooowww. If you can use the HA's to distract the enemy while your Wall of Death approaches the enemy line, nothing in early will stand a chance. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-glasses2.gif

[RollingWave]

I agree.. Danes are one of the most powerful catholic faction in early...... (with possible exception of hungarian too)

Well viking units should be the back bone of ur army ... normal vikings are dirt cheap and extremely good for their cost..... will kill anything that's not on a horse and will kill any horse that's not charging them....

So the vikings should be ur back bone... and then add in support units along that line... some spearmen for AC... some Cavs for anti range and some range support in generals... you don't need any MAA as the Danes as the vikings already do the job better/cheaper.....

Even so... carrying into the HRE early on could extremely difficult at best as you do not have enough good generals.....

I like to have some serious fun and make a army of Vikings/Highlanders/Gallowglass/kerns..... THE BARBARIANS RETURN http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-jester.gif seriously though this army have insane AP power (and ridiculas attack power in general for their cost) And with the vikings as a good solid defense in the middle this army could work a lot better than you think as long as they aren't going up against mass horse archers....

[Doug-Thompson]

Concentrate on Vikings and Huscarles throughout the early era. Make plenty, because you won't be able to train any more Huscarles once the year 1205 rolls around.

Vikings with the Norway valor bonus and the weapons upgrade from Sweden, an iron province, are the best bang for the buck in the game. Katank wasn't kidding about them being able to take on Chivalric M@A. Huscarles are even better.

The only reason you'll need archers is to keep horse archers at bay when the Golden Horde arrives. By that time, you'll be able to build Pavaise crossbowmen or, even better, Pavaise arbalesters.

Build up some decent knight cavalry. If you simply must have some early era missile troops, conquer Pomerania, Prussia and Silesia and build yourself some Slav javelins.

========

(Edited P.S.) Well, I see there were other replies made. The fact they agree tells something.

[RollingWave]

You don't really need knights as Danes... they are good to have obviously but usually for anti missile and flanking purpose mounted sergents do the job well enough at a much lower cost/req ......

Obviously you could still go for a all standard catholic army in high knights/cs/arbs etc with vikings as ur maas (or even use normal maas since you get sweden which give you above average maas with weapons anyway) but that's not really the most efficient way to do things :P a army of vikings/spear/archer and a few mounted sergent or knights is extremely effective and a lot cheaper than a full catholic army (not to meantion much easier to get)

[Doug-Thompson]

Honestly, I wouldn't even build spears.

I'd rather face a charge of Royal Knights with Norway-bonused Vikings than with Feudal Sergeants.

The anti-armor bonus of the Vikings puts their anti-knight capability on par with Feudal Sergeants, and Viking morale is MUCH better even without the Norway bonus.

Feudal Sergeants will cause some damage, then rout. Vikings will stay in the fight much longer. The Royal Knights may eventually win, but there won't be many of them left.

Any melee cavalry that isn't armored doesn't stand a chance against Vikings either, despite the loss of the Viking anti-armor bonus.

Therefore, Vikings give you more anti-cavalry power than Feudal Sergeants without the terrible vulnerability that spear-line units suffer to sword-wielding infantry.

If you master the difficult art of using javelins, you can spread your Vikings into a thin formation two-ranks deep. This gives Slav Javelinmen behind them a very short throw. That's something you really can't do with Feudal Sergeants or you lose the spear-line rank bonus that comes with a deep formation.

A formation of Royal Knights that attacks a unit of Vikings backed by javelins is a dead bunch of horse riders.

[katank]

yep. the Viking Inf will satisfy your heavy inf needs for some time into High if you pumped them out religiously during the end of early.

arbs are always good and the Danes are a bit less reliant upon knights.

just juice up your mtd. sarges and let them catch the enemy.

as long as your huscarles can catch something, they can maul it.

[RedKnight]

Yeah my comments were based on a High game (no Huscarles), and I never tried Vikings much... sounds like there's a lot to learn here, BMeistor http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

[katank]

thread said early. besides, Danes in High on lose their flavor and becomes like the Poles in being shafted by being noncrusading catholic but still risk excomm and all that business.

BMeistor? that's a new one.

[RollingWave]

Errr i would think you still need spears ..... although vikings can do more damage to heavy cavs thx to AP... they will die much faster than Chivaric or feudual (or #### even villinia spearman) because they have no ranked bonus and no bonus defense vs cav... going head up against a knight's charge will devastate them.... much more efficent to take the charge with spears and then flank/mobb with the vikings....

Not to meantion they won't prove very cost effective vs light cavs like stepp/saharan/hobliar etc cause the APs don't work while spears maul those....

[ah_dut]

Quote[/b] (RollingWave @ July 14 2004,10:20)] Not to meantion they won't prove very cost effective vs light cavs like stepp/saharan/hobliar etc cause the APs don't work while spears maul those....
i don't relly think so, vikings espcially norse ones at v1 can maul them anyways in my experiance

[katank]

I never said regular vikings.

huscarles can eat a charge from those light cav and barely feel a thing or counter charge with RKs

I'm just saying that to be as balanced as vanilla catholic is stupid in early.

go axe heavy like 6+ is fine.

I just meant that huge spear wall, 2-3 swords flank, massed archery and cav shouldn't be Danes in early.

when you can afford it, 16 huscarles pouring down their throat is more like it. https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Doug-Thompson]

Quote[/b] (RollingWave @ July 14 2004,10:20)]Errr i would think you still need spears ..... although vikings can do more damage to heavy cavs thx to AP... they will die much faster than Chivaric or feudual (or #### even villinia spearman) because they have no ranked bonus and no bonus defense vs cav.
Don't forget that I'm usually a Muslim cavalry kind of player.

I've tried charging Vikings. It doesn't work.

Forget the anti-armor bonus. As I said, the big difference is morale. Vikings with a valor bonus have 6 morale. Feudal Sergeants have a base morale of 2.

The feudal sergeants will put up a good fight, but are much more likely to rout, leaving a cavalry unit that will attack other units in the army. The Vikings will either win or kill so many cavalrymen, there's none left. It will be a draw, at least.

[katank]

good point doug.

viking are awesome because of their morale esp. with the valor bonus.

they are amazingly cost effective too with little reqs.

I remember that for early novgorod, all I did was to crank out vikings from forts and maybe some slav warriors for bulk and some slav javs for more anti armor.

I remembered destroying the evil Byz in this manner.

6+ vikings a turn > 1 Byz inf a turn.

I simply out attrited them.

[lancer63]

The Danes had the best ligh/medium infantry of the game before VI. After VI they have the best early infantry on the map. Even on high and late periods vanilla vikings properly upgraded can take on most anything. (I gues JHIs and SAPs are the exception).
It seems unfair to have such good infantry but then you remember that viking raiders will fall to any other cavalry unit of the game and their tralls are too weak to be taken seriously.
But still I hate to see my vikings fall to the hails of bolts and arrows of my enenmies. so I always have at least 4 ranged units per stack.
Good thing the Danes have to tighten their belts with their poor early economy or else they would flood the map before high period.

[katank]

vanilla vikings aren't available to build in high and late so you better have a huge stash.

[TheBMeistor!]

I've had a very busy King of late so my armies are mostly Huscarles led by RK's. I have a few units of high valor vikings left over from early expansion thrown in the mix.

The reason I started the thread was because I wasnt sure if this type of army would last but it seems to be working very well. Trade income is going up so I just keep pumping out Huscarles from all three places.

Normally I play Muslims so although I love slugging it out at the start I must say I do miss my Saharan Calvary quite a bit, maybe I'll rush Spain for some Jinettes.

I'm playing GA this time around so I think I'll skip on the missile troops entirely untill I can make some arbs, looks like I just need some cavalry to chase routers in case I run out of RK's.

[katank]

get into the steppes like khazar and kiev.

steppe cav are awesome for chasing routers.

also, you can have fun horde battles.

huscarles+arbs+bridge against all cav army=fun. https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

[Ludens]

Quote[/b] (katank @ July 15 2004,04:59)]vanilla vikings aren't available to build in high and late so you better have a huge stash.
Vanilla vikings are 'all periods'. It is just the VI-viking units that disappear after early.

[Doug-Thompson]

Sigh. More evidence to use against me at my commitment hearing.

Danes get a 25 percent discount on vanilla viking units, anywhere they're built. I can't believe I never mentioned that.

A normal 60-man unit of Danish vikings costs 131 florins -- less than a unit of vanilla spearmen or militia sergeants. Danes have to pay full maintenance cost, though, with is higher than for those cheaper units.

[massamuusi]

My worst ever battle was fought with 16 units of huscarles in south spain, I tried to get a naval base from there, and it seemed easy cause all they had were some light infantry and javelins and jinettes..
And after seeing my men crawl on the sand, unable to catch my enemy, any unit that broke away from main force being immediately surrounded and destroyed to last man, I organized my men to square to protect all direction hoping time would run out or a miracle would happen. They had surrounded me from every direction, but no, time didn't run out, miracles didn't happen, at least, no other than at end of day 1920 huscarles rotting on the desert accompanied by few hundred light infantry.

They NEED cavalry. They NEED archers to protect them from enemy missiles. Guess you have to hit your head into a wall at least once really hard before you learn the value of being able to perform mutliple types of attacs with your army.

[ah_dut]

it has been accepted long ago massamuusi, 16 units of huscarles is suicide against a decent combined arms force. we use vanilla vikings in conjunction with other units, to whoop ass.
longbowmen supported by good heavy inf, can kick ass anyway. that includes huscarle ass https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[RollingWave]

16 unit of pure anything is hard to win with XD... best bet is probably 16 cav archer or very powerful heavy cav... everything