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Just started, no money, one troop producer, looks like a winner. Of course I had forgotten the no turtles rule in VI, I tried turtling the first time and it worked for about 20 years until the Picts ate me so here are my suggestions from the second try.
1. Highlanders are good, but Celtic warriors are more numerous, a 2-1 local advantage is probably necessary.
2. Your generals start poor and will only get worse if you don't kill off those Picts.
3. Take the rich pict provinces first Fib, Monoth, Moray, Cait (try to trap the Pict king in Athfotla) Athfotla, Orcades.
4. Ships to protect you from the Vikings and move armies to Ireland/Manau.
Take northumbria out of the running, (raiding, or helping the vikings to raid)
Money - Mines, Mine complex in Ulster is important and a whole lot quicker than the abbeys you will also have to build.
Units - Highland Clansmen fast, good charge, poor defense, but they are your only faction specific unit. If you can you need to bribe/hire armor piercing units. Otherwise it is a slow, painful fight against the mounted sgts, militia sgts, huscarles, and other armored units. Remember you can win without ever fighting the Vikings as long as they don't have land on Isles.
mfberg
early rush is the way to go with scots.
the highlanders are good as it gets and you should just pump them out and knock the factions out of contention before they can build to their high tech units and wipe the floor with you.
use elevation all you can. it's quite intuitive that highlanders do well with elevation and a pack of those boys screaming down hill are a sight to behold and almost guaranteed victory.
good luck rushing http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...s/bigthumb.gif
Can't agree more:
The Highlander is fast and deadly but very vulnerable...
I usually field initially all Highlander armys with some archers and one or two units of cavalry.
The Picts have Berzerker and Celticwarriors, that's why you have some Archers and some cav. The rest is fodder for the Highlanders. Be sure to build a silver armorer up to reduce your death toll. They will still be fast, but much better protected.
Bad weather, steep hills and forests are your domain and there is only one group of units which you fear: Husacerls, Joms and the armored Vikings - you have very little to stop them. Tire them with skirmishing archers when they have no cav before you engage them from all sides...
I think the picts and their celts are better personnaly, but the clansmen are good yes. Mercs are neccesary to compete against huscarles though
celts aren't as strong per man but the 100 vs. 60 is far more.
I personally like to use Welsh as their cheap archers complement celts well.
true celts still better than highlanders imo though
they are, I agree with you.
both serve similar purpose as huge attack and charge shock inf who have miserable defense.
I like celts and only mentioned clansmen since they are scottish and this thread is about scots.
After getting 100% with Scots, maybe I should give some useful info.
Sure, when you compete with Vikings or Armor troops, you will want some Anti Armor Mercs but to get by the Vikings, do what I did and NOT BUILD AN ABBEY.
What you say I can hear you all saying, let me explain.
An abbey takes 12 years (If I remember right) and then you will only get about 10% of what you put into it per year back. Meanwhile, thats 10 years that the Vikings can hit you and take it out. What I find is that Vikings won't attack you if you don't have an Abbey because its not profitable. I'm also not saying you leave your coastal range unprotected, but you won't have to garrison so many troops. Spend those years upgrading your keep or troop training facilities. BUILD ABBEYS AFTER THE VIKINGS STOP HARRASSING PEOPLE. And you know when. Also, look at the coastal waters around your stuff. If their isn't a Viking ship, use more troops in battle, if their is a ship. DEFEND WITH MORE TROOPS TOWARD COASTAL PROVIDENCES.
Sure, you get more men with Celts but they cost 25 dollars more. Highlands cost 100, Celts cost 125. So the money comes about even. The Highlanders seem to last longer in battle due to higher moral and I believe they are stronger then the Celts.
The MOST ABSOLUTELY IMPORTANT ADVICE I CAN GIVE is learn to flank, attack with more men and LOVE THE TREES. Against Cav - The bain of Highlanders - I have won many battles I shouldn't have because I stuck in trees and uphill from the enemy.
IF anyone has any other question or need help, please email me at Budwise_thefirst@juno.com
Hi all,
Started a fresh campaign with those scots, went as it follows:
1/ Struggled to get an alliance with the vikings with my bishop: how comfy it is to be almost sure that picts and northumbrians will get the war!
2/ Went for Connacht ASAP. By that time, thi Irish took Munster under my nose.
3/ Been at war with the northumbrians, helping my viking allies. The mercians did the same and took Pec Saetan. I took Lothene, Cumbri, Elmete, Beornic and Dere.
4/ War with the Irish. Oddly, lightly improved Highlander seem to stand easily an army of Kerns/Gallowglasses. I had to build a boat fast in Sci to bring some archers and heavy spears to finish the Irish though, but they were never a big threat.
5/ Civil war among the picts. I have the time to take FIB.
6/ Then building big armies to attack the Picts, but the mercians sink two of my boats, declaring a war. f..., they have already taken the Saxon lands, and I have a three provinces border. We're all massing troops.
- First attack launched by the mercians on Dere, autocal make me win 1500/600 casualties. To run quickly, I accept it.
- then the mercian waits for a while and launches a huge army against one of my province. 3 star general, first wave with 10-12 huscarles, 2-3 fyrds, 1-2 armored spears and 1 archer. And something like 45 units in reinforcements, at least. Nothing remarkable though in the reinforcements, a set of peasants/fyrds with the occasionnal mounted sarges or medium cav. Except the last 10 ones, containing two royal bodyguards and a huscarl. Well... On my side, 4 archers, 5 armored spears, 1 royal bodyguard/prince/general (6 stars), 4 highlanders, 2 plain spearmen. Reinforcements where 1 med cav, 3 armored spears and 3 highlanders (one of those a unit of 3 men...).
I did the autocalc after saving the game (I had to sleep!): battle lost, 1200 casualties on my side, 300 on their.
Well, I decided to try it myself to have a better kill ratio when I started over yesterday.
Outstanding battle. I display a spear wall, archers behind them, Highlanders on the flanks, 3 on the right, one on the left with my royal bodyguards. The enemy line arrives. One huscarl unit get off the line and tries to wipe out on one of my three clansmen on the right flank. Thanks to a swift manoeuver (thank you increased speed), I create a 3 to 1 situation there, the huscarles flanked on both sides. I kill them all but 5, and loose some 20-25% of my clansmen. during this time the batlle was engaged against the spears, I had to make my royal bodyguards manoueuver against the enemy archers, and clansmen of the left flank manoeuver to charge the huscarles in the back. At the same time my three left-flank clansmen strike the enemy's left wing. After 10-20 seconds my left flank breaks, but their left flank as well. I manage to get in my reinforcments and finally root them all capturing the general. I have at that moment killed about twice as much as they did (thank you valor bonus, thank you 6 stars prince) and my army consists now of 14 units, some of them tired.
I kill my 161 prisonners, having a bad feeling, and them prisonners being huscarles, I don't want to see them ever again. Then the waves of enemy reinforcements come, and come, and come. Each time I rout them easily, but my cavalry is exhausted and my royal body guards were down from 13 to 5 men (but 14 in valor!!!). Being bored of routing 80 peasants after having lost 2 men, I start a slow advance towards the enemy side of the battle map, killing, routing, loosing 2 men, and again, and again. My cavalry cannot run anymore, I have to spare them (5 body guard, 23 medium cav at that moment). My units are from quite tired to tired. (one or two bars), and are down to 60% men for the spears (60 guys average), 40% for the clansmen (25 guys average). Oh my. I kill another bunch of 650 prisonners, mostly fyrds/spearmen and peasants.
This is when i did a mistake, I think. Wanting the battle to speed up (had been 2 hours already) and having not counted how many units were routed this far, I decided to camp at the limit of the battlefield to rout the enemy unit as soon as they arrive. the problem was that my units were really tired, and loosing a few men each time. And doing this, I was routing 2-3 units at the same time, and so the reinforcements came at the same rate. Worse, one wave of reinforcements was constituted of 6-7 units of fyrds and one or two of peasants, while my lines were disordered and still fighting of one or two other units. I was stuck, couldn't withdraw even a few yards, and my battered men, some rooting and coming back to battle under the war cries of my 6 star 15 valor general were slowly taking the battle back in their hands.
Too slowly. The spearmen could'nt count how many people died under their pikes, their arms were burning stones, their legs were shaky, the enemy was everywere.
And then came the two royal bodyguards, and the huscarles. These guys don't rout easily against 13 highlanders and 20 spearmen, and they do some killing. One after the other, my units went rounting, I could'nt do anything. Retreating meant certain death. My prince was alone in a swarm of mercians. 16 valor, still raising his sword. Resisted a while, even routing one unit and making a prisonner. Maybe killing 50-60 guys, I don't wanna know.
But he finally fell, spilling his blood in the name of the Scotish king, his father.
The battle finished with a 5000 dead for the mercians, 1200 for me. I had lost the ground. They lost most of their huscarles, but they still had a vast army (3000? that's the problem with units of 80 people fleeing the battle field - they don't die), and are controlling the waters on the east coast, and up to seafern mutha (the on just under muir eriu). I took empty Pec Saetan and reconquered Dere. I lost a few boats, but Muir Eriu is still mine and the upgraded highlanders from ulster and v2 medium cav from Brega are still crossing for the main island.
This one will be tough. If I stay defensive (easier battles), the mercians will beat me because of the 3/4 huscarl producing province. I'll have to try to attack, but with this darn time limit, I'm not sure that I will be able to take over vast armies of peasants and I know that autocalc will be bad...
More news tomorrow!
Sound like you are in a bad situation, despite your epic battles. How is your naval capacity? Would it be possible to drive of the Mercian fleet so you can take out their huscarl-producing provinces with a raiding force?
Hey Ludens!Quote:
Originally Posted by Ludens
You're right, my situation was quite a problem. The Mercian had someting like 4 huscalres producing provinces, and I was navally speaking stuck in Muir Eriu (not bad as I had Ireland and could sink any mercian boat coming there with my three stars admiral).
What happened is that the mercian Made a similar attack than the one I described, with less troops (about 5 000 and hopefully only 4 huscarles in first wave, none afterwards, more Royal Bodyguards though), and I had more reinforcements. I won this battle, with 3000 deads mercians on the field and 5-600 for me (if I remember well). I didn't make the mistake of coming too close to the enemy's end of the map this time! This battle took place at the same place (Dere), and I had between those two battles totally plundered Lindissi (gold producing, not huscarles producing though). The mercians came into civil war and the saxons made a reappearance. At the same time.
Sometimes a man needs some luck ! :yes:
I concentrated on accomplishing three tasks to create a winning strategy for the Scots: neutralize the Viking menace, conquer Ireland and then the Picts.
On the first turn, I sent the priest to Hordaland to make an alliance, which was accepted. I then built the infrastructure necessary to spam Highland Clansmen (HC) in Ulster, Sci and Cyil. I also built the necessary infrastructure to produce three-star spies in Dal Riada.
ASAP, I sent a spy to Jutland and then Hordaland. By the time these were replaced by the three-stars, the Vikings were bankrupt. About a half dozen of the expensive Viking heirs had piled up in Hordaland as a garrison. After that, the three-star spies in my own provinces had slain enough assassins so that two had reached the fourth star. When I switched these to the Viking lands, rebellions started there.
After I had a large garrison of HC’s everywhere, I specialized province production. Valour 2 HC’s were produced in Sci, v2 horsemen in Cyil, boats in Ulster and armoured spearmen in Dal Riada. I put about four ships in the sea zone by Ulster’s port to secure sealift lanes.
After my homeland was garrisoned by spies, I filled the Irish provinces as well. This set the stage for my invasion. Fortunately, the Irish attacked Ulster first, giving me an excuse to attack. Six turns later, Ireland was mine. Ireland adds about 2k to my income over the cost of the garrisons.
I am now ready to take out the Picts. My armies consist of a four-star general, four armoured spearmen, five v2 HC’s and five v2 horsemen. I can afford six of these.
I will flood the Pict provinces with three-star spies and blitz them.
The Saxons took out the Picts before I could attack. Fortunately, I was able to smash the overstretched Saxons and took everything down to Pec Saethan-Dere. I then invaded southern England in an “end run” that destroyed them.