After opening that special box under the Christmas tree, I can finally post my experiences in M:TW. I started a hard Danish campaign because I liked the idea of Vikings taking over the world. Hard, because I wanted a challenge but I didn't think I was ready for expert on my first game. I forgot to download the patch so my first campaign is unpatched. I heard the pre-patch save games are incompatible with the 1.1 version. I've spent too much time in this campaign now to loss it.
The Danes have a very predictable opening. You conquer Sweden and Norway and then have two choices. You can wait and build boats to invade England or go for the HRE right away. My Vikings were impatient. A quick note about Vikings, I love them The reason the HRE fell so quickly was that my armies faced numerically superior armies of mainly spearmen, urban militia and peasants, which my Vikings cut through like butter. I've never had a Viking unit run until it was down to 10 men or fewer (and that was with a 2 star general). Later when I had feudal men-at-arms I still preferred Vikings. They're fast, high-spirited, effective against armor, resistant to missiles and cheap. What's not to like about Vikings?
Back to my conquests, Saxony fell and then the provinces surrounding it and in 5 years, half the HRE was in my hands and the other half was begging me for peace. I accepted. It was a big mistake. I hadn't noticed, but I had been supporting my army through pillaging. Once I lost that source of income, I was very poor. I couldn't even build farmland improvements in my newly conquered terrority to generate more money. I was faced with the disagreeable situation of having to disband my armies while watching the HRE build more. Has anyone noticed that the Danish King produces so many sons? I didn’t help my finances to have to support 6 units of royal calvery.
I managed to climb out my financial hole and rebuild the lands I conquered. I eventually had another go at the HRE and with French help stripped it of all but two provinces. I would have conquered everything but the Pope interfered. I have grown to hate the pope in this game. I turned my eye towards the Polish. Poor guys, they’d always been good friends, I’d even married one of my daughters to them. But the old king was dead and the new one hadn’t liked his sister anyway. The Polish had lost most of their lands to the Hungarians but strangely were allied with them. 4 years later, the Polish were down to two provinces and the stupid pope ordered me to stop. No problem, I’ll just take this one by storm and do the same with the other one. Only I forgot to assault the castle. EXCOMMUNICATED. The Hungarians declared war. Some of my lands revolted but I put them down. The French remanded my faithful allies. Hey it’s not that bad being excommunicated, I’ll just wait until the pope dies… The Spanish have launched a crusade against you.
My empire was over extended. The Hungarians refused to fight fair (e.g having a giant infantry brawl). They introduced to my new most hated unit, the horse archer. I had huge armies of Vikings mixed with some royal calvery. No archers. I barely managed to win my first battles because I hid in some trees and waited for their infantry to enter and for their horse archers to run out of arrows. My Vikings were invulnerable in the trees but I couldn’t catch their horse archers. The Spanish crusade is nearly to my borders. The English have launched a crusade against you. Ack The Spanish took one of my border provinces and my men fled to the fort. The Spanish attacked the province where my army was and decided to retreat back. My men in the fort retook the province as soon as the Spanish had left so they had nowhere to retreat. The entire crusade vanished. I wasn’t as lucky with the English one. Due to a mis-positioning of my forces, they rampaged into Denmark. I defeated them there but only after they had done much damage. The HRE was exterminated, and I received word that the Amerhads were gone too. Including Poland this made 3 factions gone.
On the plus side, my campaign against hungry gained momentum. Units of Crossbow men were starting to come online; there is no sweeter sound then the sound of crossbows firing into packs of horse archers. My old king died of old age and when his son took over, I was no longer excommunicated. My allies, the Byzantines had most of Russia to my east, but they were rapidly falling to the Turks. I tried to save my allies but the Turks rolled across their lands. My spies in the south reported that the Sicilians and the Turks held Constantinople
I fought the Turks back on the eastern front. Every turn they would attack and I’d be forced to fight another half-hour long battle. I fought the Turks, wiped the Sicilians out and worked on building up Germany and Scandinavia. The Hungarians were wiped out. I had just reached Constantinople when my empire imploded. First, the French launched a crusade to Constantinople. I share a border with the French all the way from Flanders to Austria. Still I had a sizable army in the west and I had wanted to conquer Austria anyways. I refused to hand over Constantinople and the French attacked. Their allies the Russians broke their alliance with me and hit my border. On the same turn, both Poland and the HRE reappeared. The Italians took the former Sicilians proveniences. I wanted to see what would happen if I did nothing. In two turns I lost half of my empire and went from being at war with 1 empire to being at war with 4.
I reload and I’m trying to save my empire now. I think my forces in Constantinople can swing northwards and crush the Italians and I’ve enough forces in the far west to avoid losing there. I’ll probably loss my north eastern and central provinces but I’m mass-producing hordes of Vikings and I might to about to intimidate them.
It’s early in the 1200s, and I’m wondering if I’ll be able to conquer everyone before the timer runs out. I’m having a blast playing.
