The Vikings

[Cheetah]

summary

[cutepuppy]

Beginning of a Viking guide.

OK, let me start with saying that the Viking faction is (in my opinion) the easiest of the whole game, you just have to use them properly.

Their strengths are their very powerful infantry, the fact that they don't need ports to perform an amphibious attack and their raiding capabilities.
Their weak points are the Viking cavalry, which is the weakest in the whole game and the fact they have a different religion than other factions in the Viking campaign. Therefore newly conquered territories are more likely to rebel.

If you start a game as the Vikings and you check your economic status, you'll notice you have a big negative income. Farm upgrades take a long time to build and won’t be sufficient to fill up the gap in your treasury. So you have raid the British isles to gain money.

At the start of the game you have some units of thralls, carls and landsmen at your disposal. I place 2 units of thralls in hordaland and jutland, and use all other units (including my king’s huscarles) as raiding force and move them to hordaland.
Still in the first turn, I move all my ships towards the eastern British coast.
That means I have 2 ships in Hordasaer and Nordsaer (1 needed for amphibious attack and 1 spare if a storm destroys a ship in one of both seas), further I place ships in the 4 northern most sea regions on the Eastern British coast (BeornSae, Muir Giudan, Muir Moray,…).
Still in the first turn fill the training queue in Hordaland with Viking Carls and build watch towers in both your provinces.
Press end turn.

In the second turn move your ‘raiding force’ to the British Isles. Start raiding provinces with an abbey, they will give you 2000 florins/province. The following provinces on the east- and south coast have abbeys from the start: Orcades, Cait, Lothene, Dere, EastEngle, Cantware and Defnas. None of them have large garrisons and the present troops will probably abandon the province.
I always start from the north (Orcades) and go down south. Once you pillaged a province, move your troops out of it, and move your boats to other sea regions (if you don’t have a common border with a hostile faction, it will change it diplomatic stance to neutral automatically, and trade is possible again).
Build border forts in Hordaland and Jutland.

In later turns, I start constructing troop producing buildings in Hordaland (armourer, weaponsmith, royal palace,…) and economic buildings in Jutland (port, merchants, shipbuilders).

After having pillaged the provinces with an abbey, you have to start to look after a suitable place for a foothold. There are several possibilities for that: you can choose for Ireland, which it rich, but far from your home grounds, or you can choose for the provinces on the Saxon/Mercian border, close to your starting provinces and all have good or very good farm income.

[mfberg]

Viking Econ:
Raiding is your main economic factor. Wait until a province has buildings worthwhile, don't raid those empty regions. To keep the raiding income you must keep your people comfortably pagan. Watchtower, border fort, pagan shrine, then village upgrades until sacrificial shrine is available should do this. Keep two or more assassins to kill the priests that may come to Jutland/Hordaland.

To capture more prisoners get Raider Cav started building somewhere. They are the fastest unit you have and increase prisoner count and therefore income. At least 1 per stack, but keep them out of most of the battle, use them for mop-up operations.

A basic econ build order
Mines
Farm 20
Farm 40
Mine Complex
* Trade 1
Basic Farms
* Trade 2
* Trade 3
Forest Clearing

*these need village/fort/keep to be build, so may not be worthwhile at the moment

Hordaland and Jutland should not even be cleared until you have +3 armor/weapons and are able to produce Joms in Hordaland and +3 armor/weapons and whichever other unit you want to produce in Jutland.

mfberg

[Oleander Ardens]

Specific tactics:

Add some archers against the Picts and the Irish;

As your cavalry is very weak and your late game units are pricy Archers help you to take out the pictish crossbowmen, mounted or not even if they are well protected.

If you storm right toward them they can cause some expensive pain.

Same is true for the Irish; Their javelins and heavy spear hurts, especially you give the A.I the chance to throw it.
Archers can inflict much pain to Kers, Bonnachts and Gallows, so use them. Plus they force the Irish to attack you when you attack them, giving you an advantage stamina-wise...

[Poised]

Being a Dane myself, I thorougly enjoy the Viking horde.
I attack every single abbey, starting from Orcades, going all the way down the east coast, then the south coast, then all the way up to the Scottish lands in England (I like the Scottish so they dont get hit), then the small island between Ireland and England, and finally the last 4 Abbeys on Ireland.

By the time I make my new home in the old Irish capital, my homeland should be ready to pump out either armored spears or Huscarles, and I almost have all sea maps occupied by boats, and a handsome amount of florins in my war chest.

From the start I cue a berserker in Nordland, and go straight for huscarles, in Jutland I go straight for boathouse, no towers or runestones untill I have boats, I then repair/train enough troops in Nordland to keep my raiders going through all the abbeys.

In order to have enough ships to reach between Ireland and England, without having to halt the raid for many turns, I had to use the ship in Jutlands waters, and only had my King connected to the homeland via Nordland.

Berserkers are great fun, and we Danes really did have berserkers in the old days, they would drink a potion, wich was partially made up of those psychedelic mushrooms (psylocobin ?), and believed themselves to be invincible.

The first Danish King to embrace Christianity, did so on a dare. He dared a missionary to endure what translates into "the iron burden", if the priest's hand was unscathed, the King would convert.
The Iron burdon is a large metal glove, it is heated over a fire untill it glows red, the priest would then stick his hand in the glove, and carry the weight of the burning glove for set amount of time ..... well it ended with our pagan King embracing God, so the priest must have aced that glove :)

We also had the "Raven banner" when we conquered England, it was a banner made by the Norns(from Norse mythology), and it would show if the comming battle would be won or lost, nice relic :)

[katank]

it's useful to raid multiple province simultaneously.

your forces are so superior that it's quite doable to smash and run using 2-3 forces form the beginning.

each of your huscarle royals can make up an army by themselves, esp. the king since he's autoreplenishing.

[Poised]

Hmm attacking in mini groups would also give the army more V&V and stats, I always have to wait for boats to be build anyway, might as well use the spare time to give my troops a little workout.
I remember trying to get rid off 2 degenerated heirs, I would send them against a vast Irish army, and managed to win the battle, Huscarles are nice :)

If you are any kind of roleplayer though, you need a spear unit in every fight.
Odin's weapon was a spear, and when the Vikings faced an opposing army on the field, the warlord would hurl his spear towards the enemy line, planting it between him and them, that way the Warlord sacrificed the dead enemies to Odin, so Hel would not get them.
(Hel is Loke's daughter, sister of the Fenris wolf and the Midgaard worm, she was made the ruler of the underworld by Odin)

[katank]

by that reasoning, you ought to hire some bonnachts for hurling spears ;)

mini groups cover the abbey territories far quicker and also cook up awesome generals.

then, I can go into conquest (toehold on territories) mode faster and generally start dominating more rapidly.

ireland and manau are always good targets.

[Spartakus]

Berserkers are great fun, and we Danes really did have berserkers in the old days, they would drink a potion, wich was partially made up of those psychedelic mushrooms (psylocobin ?), and believed themselves to be invincible.

Actually, that's just a theory. There's really nothing in the source material, as far as I know, that suggests the berserkers ate or drank mushrooms at all.

Another theoery suggests the berserkers were in some kind of animalistic trance. The old norse word "berserker" most likely means "man in bearshirt". The old norse names were also often based on animals, "Bear", "Wolf", "Raven". Some medievalists have suggested the berserkers went into a psychological state in which they believed themselves to be a wild animal, and thus fought like one. A source which backs this up is the Saga of the Volsungs. Read this short article: http://alexm.here.ru/mirrors/www.ent...liade/145.html

[2faced]

With the Vikings, I find it's quite doable to completely cripple factions without fighting more than 1-2 battles with them (early on). This can be achieved by simply landing in every possible province, first ones with abbeys, that is built up beyond watch towers/shrines, of one nation.

I started with the Picts, landing in Orcades, and every time I landed with superior numbers and they fled my armies. While it's true that early on, very small Viking armies can crush most other factions' troops, this tactic has its benefits.
a. When they flee my armies, I destroy EVERY possible building in the province and leave the next turn.
b. This means they will still keep moderate-large sized armies of low-level troops.
c. The destruction of their buildings will ruin their economy, and prevent them from building up any more, let alone recruiting advanced troops, BECAUSE
d. Retreating from battles will leave them with large amounts of low-level, crap troops, which drain their economy, yet remain worthless against superior Viking troops.

End result: I'm richer, my armies grow in size and quality, I'm still flexible (since I'm not trying to hold their provinces or engage them in pitched battles), and they are essentially stagnant. Doing this to the Picts, the lack of happiness structures meant several provinces (Athfotla, Fib) rebelled, and they lost key money provinces and were stuck. Literally stuck. They couldn't do anything. The Northumbrians lost all of their eastern provinces to peasant revolts and a civil war made them wholly ineffectual for the rest of the game. The Welsh lost Gwyned and the province directly to the right of it, above Pouis (can't remember the name) to peasant rebellions, after I sacked Pouis, and also ceased to be a threat for the remainder of the game.

After that, my armies were huge, and I had Jomsvikings. I took Manau as a nice base. I invaded the Scots, and crushed their armies easily (which were strangely large, about 2.3-3k each time), and kept their provinces. The same thing happened with the Irish, whom I had already been raiding (so they couldn't build up advanced troops...I also managed to net 11k in ransom for their king and ~400 men), and I kept their provinces too.

By this time, my economy was going down the toilet, so I had to fight some pitched battles against the Mercians, who have been moving up into the abandoned Northumbrian East coast, while pinning the Irish down.

Right now, I've just wiped out the Irish. The Picts have foolishly attacked me, and I captured and ransomed their king, getting a nice ransom, and have almost wiped them out (very easily). A battle with the Mercians, some ~800 of mine against ~2k of theirs, left most of their Huscarles in the North dead and started a civil war. The Mercians are now confined to the "Saxon Shore" provinces and the border provinces with the Saxons and I am moving down into the Mercian heartland to take their richest lands for myself (which incidentally will save my economy). The momentum will likely carry me through the rest of the mainland in ~25 years.

Sorry for the long post, it was just a very interesting campaign that I felt I needed to elaborate on .

[Age]

How do you move an army across the water?I have bee trying this left clicking and dragging them across the water and plobbing them down on across the water everytime I do this they move back to their home country.How do you go on a raid and move an army across a body of water as this wasn't covered in the campaign tutorial any help for and other would be appreciated.Thanks.

[Saigo_Takimori]

Being a Dane myself

We really are awesome aren't we?

Yeah, I like to attack the rebel parts of Ireland first, they are usually weak and don't have a huge army waiting in another territory to backlash ya.

[Insonia75]

I believe Favre means it when he says his drive to want to still play outweighs his legacy. I guess you could look at his stats to see just how much he really ever cared about his legacy 22TDs last year with 22 INT. Ive always like Favre, Im happy to see him play against Green Bay and I do think its good for the sport because people like Lethean are making topics about NFL when hes never sat through a complete NFL game

Blame the Vikings if you just have to blame someone. He may be passed his prime but its the Vikings who were willing to gamble on the guy.