My style in playing VI campaign, is this:

Early in the game:

1) Try to grow as fast as possible. If there are rebel factions near you, you should obviously try to conquer them before others do. First conquer the land that is beside near other enemies; if there's a land that no one else has access to, you obviously have no rush in conquering it.

If there are no rebels nearby, try to gain some land from some other small country. (I never play the easy/big ones, like Italy, Egypt, ect.) This means you'll have to build military units as fast as you can in the first 5-10 years in the game.

2) When you have gained some land, try to maintain peace with other countries and concentrate on building your economy. Strong economy is the key thing in having a great army. Build units only with one land, that provides you the best units, and build every turn (depends on your finances, of course). I try not to build units, if I gain less than about 1000 gold each turn, unless the units are cheap to maintain (kerns, ect.)

You should probably devote one or two cities in developing mainly military buildings, so you can get access to great units, and build economy with every other city.

Midgame:

3) When you have built a strong economy (you earn about 2500 or more gold per turn), build a big army full of good units, so that you can outnumber some country. This is the stage, where you should grow as one of the biggest countries in the game. If there's not anyone who is really inferior to you, try to pick your opponent from the ones that are already at war against soneone. Obviously it's easier to declare war against the country that already seems to be losing the war.

4) When you're done with this, you're hopefully one of the biggest countries there are. Then you should probably take a break in going war and strenghten your economy, military tech and army.

Endgame:

5) At this point there could be about 3 to 4 big countries left. If you're not the biggest one, wait until the other countries start battling, and choose your opponent well.


In Viking Invasion, the Saxons or Mercians will often grow stronger relatively early in the game. Sometimes you could be forced to go to war against them, if the're about to conquer some smaller country, or otherwise they will grow too strong for you to beat later in the game. The other campaigns are much more balanced in my opinion, so you don't have to worry about that too much, but VI is different. I feel that in VI you're forced to push the expansion to the limits, or else someone will grow way too strong for you.

Those are my basic advices. I don't consider myself as a veteran player, although I play in expert difficulty, using hadr countries, and tend to win the campaigns very often.