Naval Horde?

[TinCow]

I've always been a fan of 'moving' factions to different areas of the map at the beginning of the game to vary the geography and opponents encountered. I'm currently toying with the idea of moving the Franks to Britain. However, this will require boats. Does anyone know whether any boats I build will remain under my control when I go horde?

[Brutal DLX]

Yes they do. I transferred the Sarmatian Horde once this way from Constantinople to Asia Minor, where I let them settle. One problem will probably be the pirate presence in the North Sea, so the sooner you can manage it the better.

[TinCow]

Excellent. My plan is to take a channel port city and then build 3-4 boats. On the turn that I go horde I will split each into a single boat, load each to the max and hopefully cross and unload in one turn. If they die after that, no big loss. If I am not able to get them all onboard, I'll leave only weak horde units behind, since they'll join my cities anyway when I resettle.

[Rilder]

Man wouldnt that suck if your entire fleet with your entire faction on board gets sunk by pirates, by the way i always wondered that too so sweet

[Cras]

watch out... in the beginning of the game the fleets (pirates and others) are consisting of 1 to 3 units.

In order to load an army per unit you will have to make 4-5 one unit fleets

basically your 4-5 one unit fleets will be weaker and smaller then what is going around.

Meeting a pirate fleet with any experience can be quite dagerous...

[TinCow]

Well, I tried it and made the crossing without a hitch. Took one turn to retrain my starting units, then went horde, sacked the two closest WRE cities and settled in the one directly across the channel from Londinium. Built a port, built 5 boats, then wrecked all buildings, re-horded, loaded and unloaded everything in one turn. 5 boats was totally unnecessary, since practically no movement was required to offload them and one boat could do multiple stacks. Two boats could easily have done it and possibly even one. Attacks by pirates are irrelevant since the boats are not needed after the crossing.

That said, I'm going to have to restart. The Franks get a very weak horde so I was not able to go on a wild sacking spree. The 7 turns it took me to create my fleet cost me a ridiculous amount of gold, so when I landed in Britain I only had something like 10-12k left. Ideally I would have taken Londinium and the northern Celt city simultaneously, so that I could built up a bit before facing the Romano-British. However, there was a massive Celt stack up there that would have wrecked me. Since Londinium was not economically sufficient to sustain me, I went for both WRE cities. The game crashed when I took the second one, but it was pointless to try and continue anyway. By that point I was 6k in debt and still losing 2000 per turn. I couldn't train anything and I highly doubt I would've been able to defeat the Romano-British stack. Even if that miracle somehow happened I would have had to disband so many units to get back into the black I would have been crushed if the Celts moved on me, which I believe they would. I may even have had loyalty problems due to small garrisons.

I will give it another try this weekend. I am going to try to land with far more gold than last time by sacking the port city I settled the first time and using the small rebel town to the northeast as my shipping point. This will be a less secure crossing, but hopefully the extra money from the sack of that large town may be enough to sustain me. I will also build fewer ships to keep the number of treasury draining turns down during the temporary settlement period.

[TinCow]

It worked just fine the second time with an interesting tactic and with some luck.

When I horded this time, I sacked the WRE city just west of my starting area as well as the large town that controls the NW Gaulic province (sorry, I'm bad with city names). I besieged and settled in the wood walled WRE town in NE Gaul. Interestingly, since the three adjacent provinces were rebel when I settled there, the WRE immediately agreed to a ceasefire (VERY useful). I then built a port and two boats. One boat could transfer a full stack from the port to the coast NE of Londinium and then get back to the safety of port in one turn. Since I was not at war with WRE, I landed my peasant stack on the first turn with my first boat, then landed both army stacks on the second turn with both boats. That same turn I abandoned my town and received no new horde units for whatever reason, so my crossing was done and I still had 26k in the bank (only 4 gold draining turns in the temporary homeland).

I stuck the peasant stack in a safe place and besieged both WRE cities so that they would fall on the same turn. I took both towns and Romano-British appeared with about 3-4 turns to prepare until they got to me. It would have been tough, but I'm positive I could have beaten them eventually. However, I didn't have to fight the stack. On a whim, I sent my diplomat over to them and they agreed to an Alliance and then turned north and attacked the Celts. I took advantage of this, moved my boats around the island and landed a large force in Ireland. Romano-British took Scotland and I took Ireland, eliminating the Celts. As soon as the RB took a town, they declared war on me. However I had had much more time to prepare now and the extra income from Tara had me actually making money already. I lost several battles against the Romano-British, but each battled whittled down their irreplacable gold/silver units and eventually they fell.

I have now begun an invasion of the mainland. Interestingly, the Vandals and Burgundians are my main opponents. The Vandals have taken all of Iberia, Gaul and Northern Italy. Burgundians have all of northern, central, and eastern Europe. WRE are now my allies, but they are limited to North Africa, the islands and a few provinces in the alps.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Has anybody ever seen any AI horde head for their scripted targets? I've witnessed the Vandals several times settle in and expand around Iberia but never cross the sea to move onwards Maghrib.
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[Brutal DLX]

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Has anybody ever seen any AI horde head for their scripted targets? I've witnessed the Vandals several times settle in and expand around Iberia but never cross the sea to move onwards Maghrib.
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Exactly, this is one of the disappointing facets of BI I discovered after extended play. The whole horde movement seems to be dependent on the player actually starting something first or creating an opportunity by going horde himself, there are few cases only where the AI hordes actually become a power by themselves and challenge the WRE for example.