Franks (BI faction)

Look for the "Impious Franks" - Thread in the Colosseum. As player1 points out there, the religion of new family members is a matter of chances. As long as your leader is pagan, each new family members has to pass two tests, each with a chance of 30 %. This adds up to an overall chance of roughly 10 % for christianity. Not too much, hmm? ~:) So it seems you have only had bad luck during your game.

To your second question: A christian heir/leader necesserarily has to be a full member of your royal family. The recruited generals do not fulfill this requirement. However even these generals may get the chance to join your family if you succeed to trigger a Man-of-the-Hour-Event with them after an extraordinary great victory. So it would make sense in your situation to build those generals, hoping that there may a christian among them and throw him into glorious battles until he´s finally made it into the family. ~;)

Check the second post of this thread:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=56387

[edit] Sorry for posting the same info, we were typing at the same time.

Thanks for the info. This was a Franks related question, so it didn't even occur to me to check out the Colosseum. Oh well.

So it seems that my main problem is simply family size: few children and hence not enough chances to get the christian one. I'll give recruiting generals a try.

In my experience the size of your family is directly related to the size of your empire. The more you expand, the more your family expands, either through births or adoptions. You will notice a distinct lack of births when you have stabilized your territory for a long period of time. If you then take several provinces quickly, you will receive a large number of births.

Adoptions and Man of the Hour seem to only happen when you are far below the number of family members that the game thinks you should have with your empire. As such, if you really want to try and manufacture a Christian child, you should continually kill off pagan family members to keep your birth rate up.

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Originally Posted by TinCow

In my experience the size of your family is directly related to the size of your empire. The more you expand, the more your family expands, either through births or adoptions. You will notice a distinct lack of births when you have stabilized your territory for a long period of time. If you then take several provinces quickly, you will receive a large number of births.

Adoptions and Man of the Hour seem to only happen when you are far below the number of family members that the game thinks you should have with your empire. As such, if you really want to try and manufacture a Christian child, you should continually kill off pagan family members to keep your birth rate up.

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Interesting. So lack of expansion also contributes to my problem. For the last 10 turns or so I put all available income into building upgardes to get the best infantry and cavalry available. The Saxons and Alemanni are gone, I own everything from the northern Alps to the North Sea (essentially present-day Germany), plus the former WRE towns immediately west of the limes/Rhine river. Those lands produce some serious revenue.

The plan was to hold off on further expansion until I can raise two new and mean armies. Seems like I shot my own foot by doing that~:mecry:. This is all on MM to get a feel for the Franks. I might just save this one for later and start over, this time expanding very aggressively.

Like I said before, killing family members in combat turned out to be rather difficult. My assassins could use some practice targets~D .

Man, the Goths were making mincemeat out of me with their hordes; they pillaged two of my seven cities and then marched on Vicus Franki. So I pulled all my archers into the city before they got there, then had my king do a night battle. I annihilated one of the hordes by just raining down arrows on them and knocked a second down to about 1/3 size, then for good measure assassinated the family member at the head of that stack. The Goths have as a result finally decided that really, the WRE seems more entertaining so they've headed off into Gaul--hopefully leaving a trail of rebellious cities that I can claim in their wake.

The Saxons suddenly died out---I guess their invincible king died of old age or something, and so Frisia is mine for the taking....I think. Anyway, starting to get things back on a reasonable footing again after a couple turns of 100d of income.

If you intend to stay rooted in your starting province in the early stages of the game, it's heartily encouraged you plug the bridge over the Rhine right next to you ASAP with a fort and some disposable peasants. If the WRE decide to get opportunistic and break any alliance you might have with them at an inconvenient moment (say, when most of your troops are up north taking out the Saxons and won't be arriving to help in less than three turns), it's nice if they have to stop for a turn at the bridge instead of suddenly laying siege to your capital. I neglected to do this, which resulted in a strange battle of my faction leader and his forty-odd bodyguards, two Hunter units and two units of spearmen sallying out against something like a total of dozen Limitanensis, three Foederati Infantry, two Archers and one Foederati Cavalry.

Given the glaring tactical ineptitude of the AI (which seems to have serious indecisiveness issues about assaulting any semi-decent battleline nevermind the numbers it has), I pretty much annihilated the lot of them for the loss about five Warlord Bodyguards and ten spearmen.
~:handball:
But man, those bodyguards are tough. :knight:

I agree with Watchman. It is absolutely necessary to plug that Rhine bridge to protect your capital, especially if you move your field army north to take Campus Chattii. Alliance or not, the WRE will attack early.

In order to counter the WRE attack it is crucial to have sword and/or axe heerbanns, so I first upgraded the barracks and then built the stone wall. In my latest H/H campaign I took Campus Chattii first and then Frisii. After that the WRE broke our alliance and attacked my capital and besieged Campus Frisii at the same time. I made the mistake of not plugging that Rhine bridge, but managed to break the siege of my capital.

After retraining my troops I attacked the WRE city immediately west of the Rine bridge. The WRE sallied: I lost that battle, but the WRE also lost a lot of troops and called back the Campus Frisii siege army, thus ending the siege there. At that point the Alemanni attacked my capital and two turns later the plague broke out in my starting city.

The next 10 turns or so were hell, including negative finances for a few turns. I eventually managed to take one WRE town, beat back the second Alemanni attack and not spread the plague to my other cities.

This was one of the hardest campaign beginnings I've had in a while, yet it was also very entertaining.

Next I will punish the Alemanni for their aggression, then take out the Saxons and grab Londinium form the WRE. That should set me up for enough income to seriously upgade my cities an military. In my previous campaign I expanded into France, but this time I'm looking east. I know, that's asking for trouble...

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...and trouble is named "Goths". ~;)
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Originally Posted by Mouzafphaerre

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...and trouble is named "Goths". ~;)
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Not yet. The Goths already split and the Ostrogoths now own Ravenna. Beyond that no confrontation with either Goth faction.

Instead the Lombardi foolishly thought they could attack Campus Chattii AND get away with it. They volunteered to become my first eastern target.~D Fighting against their berserkers wasn't fun. After taking two of their provinces I now share a border with the Huns...

The Goths have been nasty in my campaign, slaughtering many of my citizens and buying flowers for many of my towns. I did beat them up a bit, and they headed off to the WRE for a while but now they're back (reduced from 2 and 1/2 stacks to 1 and 1/3 stacks--does that mean they settled somewhere, or just that they got pounded by the Romans?). Looks like another job for my general with night battle to pick off that 1/3 stack and then kill this horde.

in my franks campaign i tried out my "lets be friends" stragedy which basicly i initiate friendly diplomatic resolutions with everyone i can... first the local barbarians, then the hordes then i sent out and made alliances with the ERE, when i first started i also sent my army, small as it was to conquer the 2 rebel provinces to the east then after i had my feet strongly planted in the soil i looked for conquest, and the alemenii were fresh ripe, had only 1 province and were enemies of the WRE... and the minute i attacked the alemenii, the WRE opened negotiations for an alliance, i eagerly accepted, being a friend of rome is a great honor, i also knoticed the Burgandii had no friends besides me so i sent a diplomat and cancled my alliance, well i dont wanna be rude ;) and took there capital which was poorly defended due to there conquest expdition in the east and right now i'm marching to there last city... hopefully last faction member too.... during my war with the alemeniis I made sure there family members were dead so i didnt have to deal with an angry horde

I call my strategy 'violence and blackmail'.
First turn I gathered my troops at home to upgrade them. Then I attacked the Roman city right on the other side of the Rhine. My spy was successful and I took the town at once.
Then the Romans came and begged for peace. As I am extremly generous I donated peace and demanded two towns (Cologne and Augusta Vindelicorum) in return. They accepted and so this small campaign brought me another three towns. ~D So I managed to block the Saxons from going to France and I have the door to Italy!

I tried to make alliances with the other barbarians and enforced the capitol. I even made peace with the Alemans, because they paid a lot.~:)

Roman's armies started to hang around my towns and so I started war again. My army (1FM, 4 archers, 2 spears) marched east. I was ambushed and for this time it really looked like an ambush. My troops were marching in one line (FM in front and spears at the rear). On my left there were Roman archers and heavy inf., on my right archers and General, in front of me heavy infantry.
My army was a bit stronger in numbers.

Immidiatelly I attacked the general. After a tough fight he run away and I started killing the archers at this side. Meanwhile my infantry was struggling hard against the Roman infantry. Although I had severe losses I managed to win this battle because my FM could crush all the infantry formations after my archers had softened them.

Then I attacked the next town. The next turn this bloody general from the previous battle came again with loads of mercs and attacked me. Again I was able to beat him. But I have never seen such a bullheaded AI before.

Took the next town and again the Romans asked for peace. I accepted and received another town in France and the Italian town south of A.V..

Soon we were at war again. I took Ravenna and Rome and the rest of the Italian mainland. I controlled also all France except the two southern provinces. Romans had a huge army there and my invation operation failed. And I hadn't seen a single horde so far.

In RTW this would have been enough to win the game. Not in BI. Burgund attacked my hometown. Alemans did the same. I could beat them and took the Aleman hometown. Saxons attacked my northern town and took it. So I had to send an army from the south to punish them.

Then hordes appeared. First Vandals then Roxelans. Until now they did not attack me because my towns are very well defended. If I am lucky they will attack the Romans in France. If not they will turn north to attack my weaker cities in the north. So suddenly a new game started. I am wondering which horde will come next :hide:

Good luck with your game. Remember that it is almost enough to show enemy Hordes armies with lots of men, not quality. This will scare them off in most cases so they will move forward, leaving you alone. This works best at YOUR border! Otherwise try to make diplomaty to let them pass your lands in peace.

Hordes also seem to be adverse to forts at strategic chokepoints (which the German forests are lousy with). It doesn't matter if it's just a bunch of scared peasants sitting in there; I've watched the whole Hun horde mill uncertainly about for almost a decade before the few piddling forts I built to stall them. Mind you, just in case I plugged all the gaps in my borders I could - the idea of having a Hun stack circling from the south to besiege Vicus Franki while the armies were elsewhere wasn't very appealing, and they too can use those forest squares to hide their movement.

'Course, when they finally went and laid siege to one, I brought up an army and delivered some severe smiting on them. Say what you will about Hunters, but with the exp plusses from shrines and gold-grade weapons (courtesy of the missile-upgrading temple the Saxon capital had lying around when I took it -the Levy Spearmen could appreaciate the bonuses too) they tend to win firefights with those Horde HAs pretty handily.

I'm a huge fan of the Franks, largely because I hate factions without paved roads. I'm currently trying to horde the Franks and settle them in Britain to start. See the following thread for my experiences and discussion:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=57884

I tried doing the historically correct thing and went horde within a few turns after spending all my money on more troops and upgrades. On my way to southern France I sacked three WRE towns to build up cash reserves.

I made the mistake of taking the three target provinces over the course of several turns, which meant my treasury was drained immediately for army upkeep after taking the first city. After settling in all three places it took less than 5 turns for my cash reserves to be depleted.

That was enough time for the WRE to send armies after me from Spain and Italy. Without my horde units I was low on troops and had a hard time defending my cities while trying to improve my economic situation AND maintain public order.

And then the Lombards took over my starting province and the three sacked WRE towns my horde left behind. Between the Lombards attacking from the west and the relentless WRE I was effectively going nowhere for lack of income and enough troops to expand.

Maybe next time I try to take all of Spain first and consolidate my situation there. That strategic position should be easier to defend against the WRE.

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Originally Posted by TinCow

I'm a huge fan of the Franks, largely because I hate factions without paved roads. I'm currently trying to horde the Franks and settle them in Britain to start. See the following thread for my experiences and discussion:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=57884

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Just some thoughts about the Franks...

Overall, the Franks seem to be one of the better factions for an introduction to BI. They have a good solid selection of units (mostly infantry), good infrastructure, and can form a hoard. As Tincow mentioned, the ability to make paved roads is very useful, particularly once the Franks have expanded; holding together an empire with dirt roads is kinda hard. ~:rolleyes:

Although surrounded by several factions, the Franks tend not to be in immediate danger. Also, I find that starting with a single province and expanding from there is easier than starting with several and trying to keep them. One of their pagan temples provide an experience bonus to all units you produce, 3xp can be a major advantage; although the temple doesn't provide much happiness.

Also, the majority of Frankish units have a combat bonus in woods or snow... and you're in northern Europe. ~D


Levy Spearmen
Your first tier infantry unit; a decent unit with a matching price, it's worth learning to use them. They may not stand up long in a fight, but their javelins give them an advantage over other similar units. Be sure to set them an "fire at will" so they will use their javelins, otherwise they just mill around waiting for everyone to get ready; by the time they're ready the enemy is already on them. Large unit size and fairly low cost make them an alternative to peasants for garrison duty if you have the extra cash, since they can actually well... fight. <.<

Hunters
As Watchman mentioned, these are actually a pretty good unit; which is good because they are your only archers. Stats are actually pretty close to the stats for levy spearmen. While not very well armored, they have a pretty good melee attack for archers, which makes them useful if you can maneuver them to charge the enemy flanks. But obviously their main use is to shoot little bits of pointy wood at the other guys. ~;p

Axe Heerbann
Your first good solid troops, good moral and defense give the axe heerbann some staying power in a fight. Probably the best unit ability for upkeep cost the Franks have; a good choice if you're struggling economically. Add to this snow and woods combat bonuses and a shield wall, and you've got a good all around unit.

Sword Heerbann
Almost the same as the axe heerbann, the two are pretty much interchangeable in your armies. The sword heerbann has a higher defense skill, but also a higher upkeep. The sword heerbann also has the heavy weapon type instead of light. If you have the resources, go with swords; either way, they're both good solid units to use as the majority of your army.

Francisca Heerbann
These guys are expensive. Slightly higher attack than sword heerbann, with a lower defense, and a throwing axe attack... for a major increase in cost. Are they worth it? ...it depends. If you can afford the cost, the ranged attack is nice; but sword heerbann do a good enough job as it is. If you decide to use them, be sure to put them on fire at will (and watch that none of your troops charge in front of them ^^;)

Raiders
Hope you like these guys, because if you want to use calvary, this is most likely what you'll use. A decent enough unit, it also has the Frankish combat bonus in snow. For some reason these guys really seem to drop like flies under archer fire, so keep an eye on them. Obviously it's always a good idea to have some light calvary along with the army (guys in metal jackets don't run fast for some reason ~;p ) and they get an experience upgrade at the stables. You probably won't field as many as you will heerbann, but they're useful.

Noble Warriors
Pretty much standard heavy calvalry, requires a lot of infrastructure and money to train these guys. Use these if you don't want to risk the life of a family member, but you want their heavy calvary. They're strong, but you're probably better off with infantry units as the Franks.

You forgot the Paladins. Although they can be a pain - I converted one of the larger WRE towns (the one right west of Vicus Franci, whatever its name now was) to Christianity with an eye of acting as a production center for these guys... and when I finally got the prequisite Monastery level built found out they're not actually that much better as plain vanilla than Noble Cavalry with the +3 exp bonus from shrines (which, naturally, the Paladins don't get, unless you can go and replace the church with the appropriate shrine *after* building the high-level monastery - haven't tried). Bugger. But with the exp bonus from the highest-level monastery they should be good enough for field deployement.

Noble Cavalry are pretty good and well worth the price, especially if paired with Raiders for flanking and pursuit duties. I've noticed that after I started adding those guys into my armies the infantry (the trusty lineholder Levy Spearmen, who've done splendidly against all comers thus far, plus Hunters) tend to end up watching from the sidelines while the cavalry tear the enemy line apart unit by unit. Once the enemy army has thoroughly confused, tired and weakened itself trying to figure out how to approach the textbook spears-centre/cavalry-flanks/archers-behind formation it tends to be almost depressingly easy to roll up the whole lot with well-aimed cavalry assaults. The infantry are mostly necessary for mop-up work at that point, such as taking care of any pesky schiltroms that might be standing around looking all prickly.

Incidentally, is there any reason to use Axe Heerbanns instead of Swords unless you're so desperately short of cash the few dozen denar upkeep difference counts (in which case you probably have rather bigger problems anyway) ? ~:confused:

Good overview D3tr. However, you left out a major unit... and the single greatest reason for ANY barbarian faction to convert to Christianity.

Paladins

The best cavalry available to the Franks. The same base attack as the Noble Warriors, but an extra 4 charge bonus and an extra point in defense. In addition they have higher morale (Good vs. Excellent) and they do not charge without orders. Paladins are a match for any heavy infantry in the game, with the possible exception of the Sassanid, who you are unlikely to encounter. The downside is that you must have a Monastery (lvl 2 of Hermitage) which essentially means that you'll have to convert to Christianity before you can get them. However, the level 3 of that building will give than an extra experience point, increasing their stats over the Noble Warriors even more.

[edit] ack, beaten to the post again. I do think Paladins are better than Watchman gives them credit for. They certainly take a long time to get, but once you have them they are the ultimate mobile flankers. Due to their extremely high morale they will fight much longer than the Noble Warriors and you never need to worry about them going somewhere that you didn't want them to go.

As for the Axe Heerbann, I *think* that the axes are armor piercing, which the swords are not. This means that the Axe Heerbann will perform far better against heavy infantry and cavalry than Sword Heerbann will, despite the lower stats.

Thanks :bow:

I actually forgot about paladins because I never converted to Christianity; the +3xp was too much for me to resist, even with happiness trouble. ^^;

The sword and axe heerbanns are still a little strange... I mean they have the same recruitment cost, and very similar stats. If the axes have armor piercing that would make sense; otherwise I'm not sure what the major difference is. The swords are higher tech and upkeep... is that all for an extra 3 defense skill? ~:confused:

@watchman: yeah, I had some pretty severe cash problems for a while last game. I found that if you field say... a stack worth of axes rather than swords, you save enough to train an extra unit. Not to mention the fact that you don't need to upgrade barracks at each city... saves a few thousand denarii until you can get things back under control. Once I had income again I switched to mass producing sword heerbann.



Oh, and I hope you never have to face the Sassanids as the Franks. The Sassanids expanded out of control in my last game, and I suddenly saw this odd light blue stack of troops... and over 3/4 of it was heavy calvary. O.o

I got slaughtered in my first fight, but I managed to win the second by careful use of the shieldwall formation. All I can say is that cataphracts and clibinarii put up a heck of a fight.

Huh. In my game the Axes and Swords seemed to come out from the same level of barracks - the next one was already Franciscas, wasn't it ? And at least according to my export_descr_unit file the axes don't have AP, either.

Aside from the minor difference in upkeep costs (20 denarii base), the only difference I can see is that the Axes get a bonus exp point from the highest-level barracks and the Swords don't...

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I think I'll mod the axechaps to have AP instead of getting rid of them. :yes:
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Originally Posted by Watchman

Huh. In my game the Axes and Swords seemed to come out from the same level of barracks - the next one was already Franciscas, wasn't it ? And at least according to my export_descr_unit file the axes don't have AP, either.

Aside from the minor difference in upkeep costs (20 denarii base), the only difference I can see is that the Axes get a bonus exp point from the highest-level barracks and the Swords don't...

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Really? Then there's even less of a difference than I thought...

Do you know if the weapon type plays any significant role?

I doubt it. Far as I know it only matters to some *very* specific bonuses from buildings, and I've wondered a bit if it might have some effect on the "wound recovery rate" of casualties.

Anyway, it seems that the game conceptualization requires AP infantry weapons to be either maces (à la Sughdians) or two-handed "mass" weapons like the big axes of the Chosen Axemen or the big clubs of the Hounds of Chulainn - those assorted Germanic berserkers with their big two-handed swords don't have it, for example. Beats me if that's particularly logical, but I assume the designers had some underlying logic for it.

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Originally Posted by Mouzafphaerre

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I think I'll mod the axechaps to have AP instead of getting rid of them. :yes:
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Done. They have a reason to exist now.
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Well, I have read before that with some armours, more damage is done to the wearer with a hard strike with a large object rather than attempting to pierce it with swords and such. Something about the force of the blow being transferred through to shatter the bones and organs of the victim. Perhaps this is their logic.

That's how maces and similar brute-force blunt-instrument weapons work by. Although it's not just "some armours" - more or less all of them are suspectible to greater or lesser degree of impact trauma getting transferred through to the wearer even if the armour isn't actually penetrated as such.

Which is one reason everyone always wore some sort of thick padding under metal armour - it helps absorb the impact.

And as you might imagine a blow strong enough to cause severe damage through honest-to-god solid plate isn't going to much even notice something like mail... but then again those "mass" weapons (axes included) also had a habit of pulverizing shields on solid hits.

Hi, all of you!

Did anyone try to play the franki campain on H/H? I have tried it a few times but it seems to be very challenging.

The problem is the following: You have less income at the beginning and thus can't build a army for an invasion. From the very start, my income is negative. So this first thing i did was to take the rebel town in the North-East. This balanced my financial situation.

But in the following turns it alway becomes negative again. I allway get lots of heirs (around 10) and I can't pay for their upkeep even if I disband all other units.

Well I now managed to conquer cologne and Trier and have kept my capital but lost the rebel town to the saxons. Again my situtiation is critical. Each turn one of my cities is sieged either by the saxons or the WRE. The WRE send great armies against me but as long as my cities are sieged I can't build units my self. I even can't replace my losses.

The WRE just seems to be too powerful with so much ressources to be beaten by my small germanic tribe. For every man I kill they send 3 others.

The other barbarian tribes aren't very helpful too. They are all stuck in South-East Europe and no Threat for WRE.


So did anyone of you play the franks campain at h/h and give me a few hints?

Have you made trade agreements with any other factions? The Franks don't have the best economy at the start, but if you take some cities with ports and have trade agreements you can usually sustain yourself quite well. Even the WRE will trade with you... if you aren't at war.

I'd suggest trying for both Campus Frissi and Campus Chatti, which should both be rebel. You could also try to knock out some competition early on by attacking the Saxons or the Alemanni, both have just one province.

Worst case scenario, if nothing works you can just form a hoard and migrate somewhere better. Sack a few Roman cities and you'll have plenty of money when you settle in a new location.