A rambling mini-guide to the Iceni

I've played through a few campaigns so far, as the Romans for about 75 turns, then as the Egyptians, Romans, and now the Iceni (all on normal difficulty). These guys might be like most other Barbarian tribes in terms of building setup and troop recruitment, but they definitely threw me for a loop when I started out. This information is mostly geared toward the recruitment process for the uber-units, Heroic Riders and Heroic Nobles. I've also included some notes about buildings and tech trees, and a very brief sketch of my early Iceni campaign.


Buildings
Unlike most other factions I've played as, the Iceni have no city center building to increase research. That building comes from the farm chain where you recruit druidic nobles. It gives you an eight percent bonus to research, and 2 food with a minus 10 public order, as opposed to the 20 percent and up that other cultures have; those buildings, the library chains, typically take away food instead of public order, and I always have more food than public order. The industry wealth building, the brick maker chain in more "civilized" cultures, is in the farm chain, as is the building to recruit horses.
The city center building group features, predictably, the improve public order building (the odeon/theatre/gladiator school chain). This building, the chieftain's hold also increases experience of champions, which is cool, but in addition offers, at maximum development, access to the Iceni's uber-infantry unit, the heroic nobles. The meeting hall city center building offers an increase to morale at recruitment. Both of these city center military style buildings are -10 to food at max development. The temples that offer military benefits are the andraste temples, which give charge bonus to land units. The Epona temples, which give bonus to cavalry charge, experience, and recruitment cost. And the Nodens temples, which give bonus to missile infantry damage and experience. The Britons don't have much to speak of missile infantry wise. Slingers and skirmishers, and that's it. I'm not sure if this bonus to experience applies to ship recruits. I never researched the tech necessary to get Nodens temples.
The military buildings that apply to soldiers are the smith line that give access to weapons/armor upgrades, as well as recruitment of chosen war bands at the third tier building, Ironsmith. The Bronze furnace allows ballistae at level one (Ballistae are the only siege weapon I've been able to use/spam effectively), and some really awesome morale and defense bonuses to melee infantry on recruitment, 20 and 10 percent respectively. Lastly, the Woodworker chain offers bonuses to missile infantry damage and gives ammo upgrades.
The buildings are researched oddly as well. The meeting hall and chieftan's hold city centers are researched in the 2nd military tech tree. The siege tree offers missle upgrades, while the siege buildings are researched in the main military tech tree.
I never researched the fourth level horse pens, that give access to level three horses and Heroic Riders. Toward late midgame, I found a few of these in conquered barbarian settlements and built up horse recruiting province around those, with andraste and epona temples, and the meeting hall city center. Heroic nobles are recruited out of a specialized region with a maxed out smith building and a maxed out bronze furnace, and andraste temples throughout, to give the heroic noble huge bonuses in melee attack, defense, charge, and morale.

The Iceni have two "free" buildings also (i.e., buildings that give no negative modifiers at high levels). The food temple of Cernunnos offers at max a +2 to public order, 8 food and 20 percent bonus wealth to agricultural buildings. The resevoir line gives at max -15 agriculture building costs, 40 percent wealth to agriculture, and 7 food.

What I haven't figured out is the best provincial setup for money. A mix of farms, cernunnos temples, and farmers market buildings with some resevoirs and farms doesn't produce nearly as much as a coastal province with trading ports, which the Iceni do not have access to; farms just aren't money makers in this game (I'm NOT gonna say "unlike in S2" ). Upgrading some of the market small towns helped to a degree, but they do not have many of the monetary exploits other cultures have. They have no temples at all that give monetary bonuses, except the food temple. With the romans, for example, I could build a bunch of trading ports and a bunch of neptune temples (I think, the one with the bonus to maritime commerce and food), or build a bunch of brick makers and industry temples in gold settlements and rake the money in. The iceni have the jewelsmith line, but with one thing and another tech wise I never got around to researching that line until way late in the game, when I still needed it, but was mostly focused on finishing campaign over province development.

Which brings up another weak mark for the Iceni, no access to city center libraries seriously gimps your tech research. The British tech tree is slightly modified, as mentioned above, to group the military buildings you need together (so the city centers for morale and heroic nobles are in the military tree, and the siege tree is barren of buildings) but it's nice to convert a lot of city spaces you don't need in mid campaign to libraries and rage through techs, and this is not really possible for Iceni.

Campaign
I started by, obviously, consolidating Britain. Researching the 3rd tier horse farms allowed me to recruit a few units of veteran riders for both of my conquering armies. These guys are a lot tougher than the Briton scout riders, and were definitely my first priority for the Brits research wise. It's a lot quicker to get them than it is to get the chosen bands, and my method thus far has been to research up to a point where I can recruit a unit type that will serve me well from beginning of game to late game, and then go with economy for a while. As a result, I chose to go for vet riders over chosen bands. With two armies of mostly Levy Freeman, a few Veteran riders, and either ballistae/slingers or just ballistae, I marched down the west coast to the Vivisci settlement, Burdigala (This settlement is the crossroads between iberia and northwest europe). They were allied with a few of the Iberian factions, so I took my armies east to Uburzis, the southernmost settlement in Magnia Germania. North through Magnia Germania to the sea, then back west to clean up the other four provinces in the northwest. At that point I controlled 7 provinces minus Burdigala, which borders Iberia on the north. Then it was turtle time: build up a few more armies with Chosen spear and sword, ballistae, and more veteran riders. Those armies went south into Iberia, while my original armies went north east around Suebi territory and then south into Dacia.

I don't really understand the civil war triggers, but I've found that if I trigger the penultimate imperium level (the one that allows 12 armies), then freeze expansion and maybe trigger a rebellion in a province I only own one settlement in, I can delay the civil war by basically dropping my imperium level to just one settlement or two below that pivotal civil war-triggering 4th imperium. This happened when I reached Dacia so I backed out of Ponto Caspia (on northwest shore of Black Sea) and Maurentia (directly south of Iberia) and finished developing my military provinces. After a very dull civil war (I was WAY too ready, and had my armies in NW europe, 2 turns or so away from ireland, where the civil war started), I blitzed everyone in my path to reach the 110 mark. An interesting thing about this faction is you MUST sack 50 provinces for a military victory, which is kind of a huge hinderance, considering how little benefit sacking gives you. It's really more useful to sack cities you don't intend to stay in, but my armies are just DYING to plant my banner in foreign soil! (I wonder, do any of you go on blitzes into foreign territory with the intention of raiding, not colonizing?)

Your points are valid for most barbarian factions. It is important to note that Civil War can happen even at stage 2 Imperium. It did so for me on Legendary as Rome, but I had conquered a lot of land in short succession.

For money, prioritize upgrading minor settlements that produce resources and trade, trade, trade!

My brother and I did a duo campaign with iceni and averni. We had to make friends with many neighbors to just survive (it was literally our first TW:RII game ever) and once we found that you can invite other factions to join a confederation, he assimilated 5, I assimilated 3 provinces in two turns. Literatlly, your name changes to, "British Confederation," and you take over full ownership and control of their settlements/provinces, but you have to be in pretty good standin, so it takes a while to build. And you have to be more powerful then them, I am sure.

So...conferations make positive relations pay off! That was a weird concept for us, but how fascinating.

Oh, and beward of this, we grew so fast we couldn't defend all the new fronts and got spank't. lol

Or... Have tons of armies next door. They will come for fear of being annihilated.