Britannia

[frogbeastegg]

Guide.

[Darklight1138]

Sooo, ya figure with that Island up in the corner yer safe eh?

Not quite.

Here is what I do to get started with Britannia. First off, move a few extra troops onto the mainland to defend your only city there. Ignore ireland for the moment. It's tempting, but you need the troops elsewhere in the beginning. The Gauls will attack. In every start with this one, the Gauls attacked me every time so be prepared. The germans will be open to diplomatic solutions in the beginning. Build your towns towards swordsmen as quickly as possible, then light british chariots. These two units should form the backbone of your early armies and if used correctly they can be devastating to your neighbors. I generally fight all my battles, but if you prefer to automate some make sure you have good generals fighting the battles. I'm certain you can read up about generals/family members somewhere else here.

With the practically destined conflict with the Gauls, you may have to forgo a large and expensive navy and rely on subterfuge to keeps a few ships running to ferry troops to the mainland. Once your lone city on the mainland is secure and you can afford to retrain your armies defending the area, attack Ireland. It's only a few bandits in Tara, but once yours Tara is a valuable resource. From there you can build an army in peace specifically for invading the north coast of europe while using your home island to supply the mainland during the ongoing struggle. I suggest building a temple for creating Woad warriors, as these are powerful units very early in the game even though the temples to Britannia can really help trade. Extra unit? More Trade? Better missiles? Temples will play an important role in your strategy in my opinion. If you are having trouble keeping a navy in the water, use short hops to transport troops across dangerous waters. Move ships up to Tara when it's clear. Wait till next turn. If they are still alive, move troops to Britannia in one move. Then walk the troops down to the south coast and use the same process to move to the mainland. Clever use of your navy is essential in the initial stages.
I cannot stress the importance of the Warcry in battle. The warriors of Britannia are fearsome indeed.

And ta-daa. You have a basic plan of action. I've played Britannia on a medium and hard (I ran into financial problems, my weak point. heh.) and both times this was a successful plan to start. It's my later decisions and lack of patience that cost me.

[Boudicca]

Using the chariots and swordsmen is a good idea. According to your advice, I didn´t wait for the Gauls to attack me, but struck them immediately at Alesia. This led me into a more than 30 years war with the Gauls, who stood firmly against my forces, Spain and the Julii and conquered all of Spain and the North of Italy.

During my conquest, I experienced it to be the best tactics to have swordsmen or warbands advance, leading the chariots around the flank of the enemys forces and striking from behind, after hand to hand combat had started. This usually set the enemy on the run.

I´ve also been starting to use stone slingers recently, as they can significantly reduce the numbers of barbarian infantry...especially if it does not dare to attack due to the war cries of my forces.

The most important thing to me still remains the use of an experienced General in combination with highly experienced troops.

P. S. Don´t use your light chariots in city assaults...they will get split up in the roads and surely lose their way...

[Raizen]

On my first turn, I dragged every spare person I could and headed over to the mainland, and took that city on the northwest coast (Concave something). It put the Gauls on the defensive, and I got a good coastline from which to strike at Tara pretty easily. I left a governor and a warband there and immediately moved back to the mainland. I ignored my navy and just used the one boat to ferry over the channel and head back into port.

Afterwards, I took Lemonum, Lugdunium, and Alesia (in that order), and got trade agreements with the four Roman factions. It's only 30 or so years in, but my money is coming in faster than I can spend it, and I can easily bribe armies out of the way so I can take provinces quickly. The Gauls are basically finished, and I have a good base to strike Germania and the Julii.

[DojoRat]

As Britain you should be able to handle the Gauls and the Germans but defeating Rome is a challenge. As stated above, ally with Germania and sell trade rights and map info to Gaul before you attack them in Brittany. You'll fight a lot of battles around Aleisa but you should be able to defeat them in detail. Keep your diplomats moving out to sell Alliance/traderights/map info. Aim high. I sold an ATM package to Carthage for 9600 dinar (hard/hard) and it was my first offer! Use this cash to bribe Gauls or rebels and life will be easier.

After the initial Gaulish attack I went back an took Tara. I concentrated on trade there as well as the north of England and my unit production in London and the Continent. Make sure to build the right temple. One increases trade, one produces Woad Warriors then Head Hurlers, and the third Druids.
Trade for the home front/coastal areas and a mix of the other two on the continent. Keep your fleets on "skirmish mode" the gauls have too many to start with and so it's more efficient to ferry troops and family members across the channel and run up north to hide.

Tactics early on are rather basic. Use light chariots to disrupt their formations, they will chase you, and then attack with war bands center and Woads and Swords on the wings. Use the war cry and overwhelm them paying particular attention to killing their leader. War hounds are good to chase routers/disrupt missile units as are barbarian cv.

After you have taken greater France you'll have to make a strategic decision. Where to? In my game I had three options. The Julii were fairly weak and had taken only Segesta and the northern Spanish province. So I could take them on, or continue after the Gauls in the Po valley and Spain, or attack the Germans before they hit me. I was tired of the Gaulish fleets harassing me and figured it would be good to take Milan and venice before the Romans did.

WRONG. As I went for Milan the Julii came north and the Germans got in on the game. With 20/20 hindsight I should have really knocked the Germans for a loop and let the Julii take the Po valley. I used a lot of cash bribing Roman armies but my dinar would have gone farther in Germany. Take out the German capital but anything east of that loot and leave it to rebel, you can always get it later.

After Germany its on to Rome. A whole other story.

[TimDogg]

That is the part of the story I want to hear! (Cause this is where Britania gets really difficult imho)

[wanderingblade]

I've mainly been using the tactics above. After a quick start at it, I'd say taking Alesia should be your first priority, as elsewise the Gauls reinforce it and its a hard battle to take. From here, Condate Regenum in Brittany should be easy to take - send it two armies, one to hold the bridge and prevent reinforcements while the other sieges it into submission.

I did it the other way around and am slightly regretting it at the moment.

I slightly delayed my rush to Swordsmen to get some boats out of London, as I found the Gauls were slightly too keen to make friends with my boat and I couldn't shake them off. A simple fleet of two boats on Seek and Destroy should keep the channel fairly safe and open. Besides, it feels wrong to be British and surrendering sea power :p

I've also found a few units of slingers are a good investment (well, its already made for you). Not only do I find the Britons with their chariots work naturally defensive against their fellow Barbarians, which means another missile unit is never a bad idea but they clear out town squares nicely as well as killing anyone too chickenshit to charge your lines.

btw - How do you people use Warcry and the Druid's chant ability? So far, I've yet to find out how to use either effectively.

[DojoRat]

I took all of Italy lat night except for the toe and unfortunately it had more to do with AI failures than my strategy. The Brutii still have massive armies in the Balkans but failed or were slow to either ferry them across to relieve their cities or land behind my line in the middle of the peninsula. I built a fort on the border of Dalmatia? and Venice and this slows them down and allows me to defend against their attacks in the open. I also have assassins taking out their captains (and family members if I'm lucky) and diplomats bribing little stacks.

I exterminate the cities I capture and knock down there temples and build my own. This makes cash not a problem but bribing Romans is expensive so i do it sparingly.

My tactics vs. the Roman armies rely on strategic movement to put my self in a threatening position so they will attack me. (Of course this army has the best troops and leader). The AI often attacks without combing groups before hand so I can often defeat them in detail. Even a unified army has trouble keeping together when I send out missile troops, light chariots and slingers, to harass their flanks. Often they send their cv chasing after them which is fine because they won't be around to flank my rush.

As the Romans advance I position my infantry in one line for the charge. If I have a druid I start him chanting and select the inf group and have them give their war cry. While they're pumping themselves up I send my barbarian cv/heavy chariots along the sidelines so to speak to be in position to double back on the Roman line or pesky skirmishers. By this time my boys are ready to go so I double click the whole group/line to a point behind the enemy line. The Roman units defend in depth in an open grid pattern so my swordsman rush smashes into and around their units. Their is a lot of feverous clicking as I send those units not engaged into the rear or flanks of a nearby unit or the enemy general if he's close. I then pick the best targets for my nonmissile cv and that usually does it. My leader I might sent in to mop up but usually I keep him close.

Again, this tactic assumes you have experienced chosen swordsmen with upgrades as the core of your army with a balance your most experienced inf chariots and barb cv. Non missile cv is essential because your swordsman can't rundown their skirmishers and they will decimate your lightly armed inf. Heavy chariots are decent flank shock troops but are too slow to be effective chasing skirmishers. I use head hurlers as well and send them in behind the rush to where resistance is strongest use them to crack the line.

Pretty soon its mop up time. The above tactics will work on the offensive but you really have to use your skirmishes to pull their formations apart. Also maneuver your inf and try to catch their line out of formation when you charge.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Chariots. A Mini Guide.

Hmmm. After such an impressive title, maybe I should think of some nice stuff to write, no?

Notes: the information I am gathering/have gathered is a compilation of my experiances and the experiances of others as recounted on these great forums. Please feel free to point out an errors I have made/left standing. Also, I am playing Rome: Total Realism (v 2.2), a very nice mod that can be found in many places. It edits out and/or modifies units to more realistically reflect the history of the time period in Rome: Total War. Therefore, this guide may be less useful than you may or may not have hoped. I also generally play on hard/hard. Enough notes.

Chariots in General
A chariot is a cart, usually with two or four wheels pulled by one to four horses. For this guide, I will refer to the chariots that the Britons have in Rome: Total War, and not other chariots. British chariots are very cartlike, according to RTW. They are boxy and have two to three people on them. They are drawn by two horses.

A chariot's value is in its maneuverability and speed on the battlefield. It moves much faster than a normal human being (ie, not RTW infantry). It is also much heavier than a human being. This gives it a strong shock value. A chariot crashing into a human body can be quite detrimental to said body. This is pretty much true in RTW, though maybe less so than in real life. When a chariot drives into a group of men, the men will probably be sent flying or just crushed. The same effects apply for women, you politically correct snobs.

And less on theoretical, dusty stuff on to... no, not the individual units yet, just more general stuff!

British chariots do not perform as well as Egyptian chariots (that don't even exist in Total Realism). I have found (at least in the Realism mod) that the general's chariots - and presumably heavy chariots, too - are not of much use. Yeah, they send troops flying, but they don't actually kill them. This may seem at conflict with my previous remarks. Well... actually, that is at conflict with my previous remarks. And so I find general's chariots to be just about useless, except for applying general pressure to an enemy or mostly harmlessly chasing routers.

Anecdote: One time, I was fighting some rebs in some woods. I had a huge advantage in [general's] chariots. They had a couple more warbands and peasants. But my general was quite good (faction leader and all). So I come into the battle thinking, "Well, time to kick trousers with my shiny chariots." But when I told my chariots to charge the enemy warbands, they would run up to the enemy dogs and... stop. Then advance a little further and... stop. They finally walked into the enemy, immediately getting bogged down and killed. Maybe because this happened in forest... but it left a bad taste in my mouth regarding heavy chariots ever since. [Lost the battle, faction leader, and two family members, by the way. Had to bribe them rebs... humiliating.]

Moral of Story:
Don't let your soldiers die. Or, use chariots wisely. Like, don't use them.

Light Chariots (Breton Light Chariots in Total Realism)
This is the first chariot you can get, besides generals. They are actually very good. They can form Cantabrian Circles, a must for skrimishing cav. They have a good stock of ammo, and are deadly accurate, and can fire while moving. Use them to harrass an enemy unit, then hunt down routers or flank the enemy. I find them very useful.
Realism Note: Breton Light Chariots haven't had their charge reduced, like the other chariots. This may contribute to their effectiveness.

Heavy Chariots (Breton Heavy Chariots in Total Realism)
Haven't gotten to these babies.... suspect they will be utter crap. Please tell me if otherwise... and then I will form my own opinion.

General's Chariots (Or whatever you call them)
As I may or may not have conveyed to your, dear reader, my opinions of this unit, let me iriterate:


They.
Are.
Useless.

Realism Note: This may be because the charge bonuses have been lowered for most chariots. Don't actually know, because I am not a numbers man.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This concludes the written part of your SATs.

Uummm. Never Mind.

Hope this helps people with questions about British chariots. I may or may not come back and append to this, depending on how loudly the masses complain about it. If I insulted or bored you to death...

I dunno, try playing outside or something.

[Shottie]

The Britons dont have archers do they?

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Nope. Though I really like their slingers, the Brits substitute for the archer.

[The_Emperor]

One thing I dislike about playing the Britons is the lack of any Cavalry. You end up relying on Cavalry Mercs to fulfill that role... (Why oh why didn't you include at least 1 Brit cav unit CA??)

Heavy Chariots I find are best used to disrupt a formation with infantry charging in to take full advantage. But they are not tanks. Generals are too valuble to waste and charging into a dense infantry formation with them is a good way to get them killed.

Your main infantry line needs to be made up of Woad Warriors and Swordsmen to start with. The basic Warband is too weak in my opinion to be of much cop. Once you get the "Chosen" Swordsmen you'll really be able to give the enemy something to worry about.

Head hurlers (despite my reservations about them as a game unit) are quite effective and dangerous. Train these guys up and hold them behind your main battle line to create a hail of sickening trophies into the enemy while your infantry charge. Slingers are also of use out in front of your battle line to harass the enemy, just remember to take them off "fire at will" mode when you put them behind your lines as the enemy closes, or you'll take extra casualties.

Warcry and Chant usage

Both of these abilities are a must for the Britons. It makes you into a very rowdy and noisey sight on the battlefield but really has a shock on your enemies.

When the enemy approaches, just before you are ready to give the charge order. Get your entire infantry line to warcry. This really pumps up your infantry with combat bonuses. Then when they are done immediately charge them in... The shock of the charge should be a severe blow to the enemy battle line.

Druids should always be placed behind your line as support, as like Screeching Women they are not as good in combat as your main infantry. Their chanting helps to bolster the morale of your own units at the expense of the enemy and will make your battle line harder to break.

The one thing I cannot stress enough is Buy CAV MERCS!! Trust me you need them to fill a role that your heavy chariots cannot do very well... Chasing routers and heavy charges into compact infantry formations.

[Fridge]

I've just finished my first campaign with the Brits, and found the light chariots the most useful unit I've used in the game...

I like to stick them in front of my infantry, and send them straight into attack using Cantabrian circle. They have several advantages over normal archers, and though I'm not too hot on horse archers, I expect over them too. F'rinstance...

1 They carry so much ammo, for most purposes you can consider the supply unlimited.

2 They're quick, so can escape any attack apartfrom a cavalry charge. They can also draw enemy units away halfway across the battlefield, then leave them to return to the fray

3 Their Cantabrian circle sends a non stop rain of arrows down upon your enemies, according to the game this is a big morale sapper (not noticed that particularly myself)

4 After I'd dealt with the Gauls and Germans, faced the Romans and their General's heavy cavalry, and found that a unit of light chariots could usually stand against a Roman general, and usually start him routing. Against infantry as well, if your chariots do get caught, they'll usally set any light inf to routing, a vast improvement on yer normal archers!

5 And this may sound like a minor point, but due to their skirmishing nature, and the fact that I always sent them to soften up the enemy before the fight, and so caused a lot of casualties, I found that most of my chariot units gained about one experience 'chevron' about every other battle, or more. Very soon I was fielding units with silver and gold experience, by the end, I had one army with three (I found having more than three light chariot units meant too much micro management and stress) units all with three gold chevrons. And those boys were awesome! (Oh, and Tthanks to the bug in the game of course, even having one chariot left with one gold chevron means you can retrain a whole unit with gold exp) The only battle where I managed to use up all my arrows, the three-gold unit killed over 400 Gauls each. That's 1200+ dead gauls using just three units - and no friendly casualties.

Mmmm.... light chariots....

Also, head hurlers rule. They do massive damage - in my experience the most kills per man than any other skirmishing unit - and sap morale quickly. They're also fast and never rout, so don't dismiss them...

[duncan36]

The basic formation I use as Britannia is first to put my slingers up in front of my army. The enemy will do one of two things sit there and do nothing or charge. If they sit there, you move your slingers into range and pelt them. If they charge you'll get off a few volleys and the slingers will retreat, move them off to the side of your army, careful that your armys not in the way and continue pelting the enemy during hand to hand.

The next part of my basic strategy is to put all the warband in the army in a line in guard mode. Immediately behind this line are all my swordsman and woad warriors. I came up with this tactic early on because woad warriors have such terrible armor they simply cant be allowed to be attacked, however it works great with swordsman too.

Basically this setup has several advantages, if the enemy tries to overload one side of your line more than the other your heavy units that can change the tide arent locked into the front line and can be sent to attack the side where the main thrust is coming. The shock of a fresh heavy unit charging straight at the enemy after combat already been going on with the warband seems to break them every time. Keeping the swordsmen back guarantees you get the full charge bonus as the enemy is at a stop fighting the warband. Also the warband in guard mode since its so thick never seems to let a cavalry unit through it, which enhances the speed at which you kill the cavalry, especially when your unit of swordsman behind the warband comes charging through the warband.

Also I learned the hard way to never get your general involved in anything other than mopping up activities. Barbarian armies are totally undisciplined and if its an even battle will rout at the drop of a hat without the general.

Also I pick up barbarian cavalry whenever possible, the lack of cavalry is a huge disadvantage for Britannia, and I havent got them yet but hopefully the heavy chariots are better than the generals chariots.

The other problem I've run into is beating the German phalanx. I've managed to get a full cavalry charge on a phalanx units back while it was moving and the unit simply wheeled around pointed its spears at my cavalry and routed the whole lot of them. Phalanx's are kicking my behind I'd like some help with them as nothing i've done has worked so far.

[Fridge]

re. the phalanxes, (phalanges?) you need to engage them from the front before charging from behind, and even then be ready to pull your cavalry out of their charge if the spearmen look like they're reforming.

[hoof]

The reason why General chariots stop when ordered to charge is often because skirmish mode is on by default. What happens is the unit will charge. When it hits skirmish minimum distance range it will stop. The only reason it finally engages is because it reaches that minimum distance at which all units will engage in combat (ever had that frustrating experience where the enemy catches your archers, and they *refuse* to quit fighting and retreat?)

Turn off Skirmish mode and General Chariots will charge properly.

I find that Chariots are a lot like a poor-man's Elephant in use. Basically, you charge them in, and follow them up with a good killing unit (like an infantry unit or cavalry). The Chariots/Elephants completely disrupt the target formation (and kill a few guys themselves), and this makes them extremely vulnerable to the follow-up unit.

I've rolled up entire Battle lines of infantry by Elephant/Cavalry combos. Very effective combo, except against well-managed Phalanx units.

The problem is that the best follow-up unit is a unit of cavalry. Unfortunately, the British don't get any except for Mercenary cavalry. Thus it becomes difficult to capitalize upon the disruptive effects of the Chariot, and the Chariots don't kill fast enough to make them useful as killing units themselves.

[duncan36]

I've played quite a bit more, really the best way to deal with the German spearman is to pelt them with slingers and light chariots, luckily the AI is dumb so they tend to send one unit at a time. If it was a human vs. human situation of Britannia vs. Germania I dont see it even being a close contest.

More thoughts: head hurlers' use is limited. They need to be a lot closer to loose their missles than slingers, unlike javelins the head hurlers stink at lobbing heads over units. Like Roman javeliners if charged they dont seem to have time to get a shot off before they run away. If you manage to get them to work perfectly they can be devastating but 90% of the time they're fairly useless and often do something stupid and kill a ton of your own men.

I have more respect for light chariots than I used to, they can be used to take out enemy generals, and if charged by lighter cavalry while in the cambrian circle they usually take it out, they also make the enemy concentrate on them which open the enemy up to a charge from your other units. They become less useful when the Romans start bringing the heavier cavalry to battle though. Also they have an annoying tendency to act like idiots and charge randomly into the enemys lines and then just sit there waiting to get killed.

Heavy chariots are not a match for the Roman heavy cavalry, they get bogged down when they hit the heavy cavalry and get killed rather quickly. Against lighter cavalry the heavy chariots are pretty devastating.

Chosen swordsman one on one are somewhere between a Early Legionary Cohort and a Legionary Cohort in overall power. The cohorts dont attack as well but their armor is much better. Obviously Britannia's best unit.

Well thats about it, the chariots and head hurlers need some tweaking. On normal difficulty the game is definitely winnable with Britannia, I'd take out Germania first and weaken Gaul leaving a buffer between Gaul and Rome and then start going after the Romans and the Spanish peninsula.

[HopAlongBunny]

The Light chariots are fantastic imho. The general's chariot is peculiar but decent enough for chasing routers-entire flank of a Gaul army started to rout after getting peppered with heads; general's chariot kept the whole mass moving to the "red-line"_kept running back and forth through the routers.

The head-hurlers are indecent. Good damage and break the morale of units very quickly; I place one in the middle and wait for the line to "bow" somewhere_start hurling heads into the flank. Great as flankers if you can manage them.

Slingers work well but need way too much micro-management. If behind your units they will mow a path through YOUR units

I remembered from playing Germania how warbands (or anything else) would impale themselves on the spears; now that I'm on the other end of the stick it seems to help if you put warbands in "guard" mode; they still run the final few steps to contact, but I guess because they are defensive they will not throw themselves onto the speerpoints. Flank with whatever you have available.

The main use for Heavy Chariots seems to be disrupting formations. I doubt they will be a mainstay of my army: expensive and 2-turn build req.

[Zorn]

I was just trying something weird, but it worked, to my amazement (vh/vh)
In the first turns, I gathered all my troops and familymembers at the coast. I left one unit of peasants in each city.
The rest of my army sailed to the mainland. There they started their long walk to - Italy.
Once I arrived in Italy, I started besieging an juli city. I quickly captured it and the fun began. Every turn I had to fight at least one large stack of either SPQR, Juli or Gaul.
Gaul was easy to rout, and the romans send their generals allways on suicide missions so those battles were not too difficult.
Then I was lucky a few times when I catched a very small stack next to a city and lured the garrison out that way.
So I captured the two remainung juli cities on the mainland, rome and capua.
Now I am still fighting with gaul, scipi and bruti but I am slowly gaining ground.
I was losing money untill I captured Arretium and Armenium, but sooner or later you will break even.
This is not a very safe way to play, but a very challenging and entertaining one.

[froglegs]

I started using the name "froglegs" a couple years ago in a CIV 3 forum so I kept it here. They are a favourate snack of a good buddy of mine. I am new to this conference.

IMHO Britannia is the easiest tribe to play at large armies, realistic combat, very hard, very hard settings. In my first attempt I conquered Rome and 50 provinces in the summer of 217 BC. I took Tara first, then took out Gaul, Germannia, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, Greece, Dacia, Sicily, Crete, and moved into far Eastern Europe.

Although I fought with all the forces of the Brits, I became very fond of the light chariots. Near the end of the game I was only using light chariots and barbarian light cavalry in my active armies. My greatest oppositon came from chosen archers. Those had to be dealt with. I never faced any post Marius Roman troops.

I then played , same level of difficulty, the Julii. In the first 15 years I was almost taken out by the Gauls. I suspended play in 180 BC holding 43 provences and a commanding lead over everybody else. Britannia was a lot easier to play.

I have restarted again at the same difficulty as the Brits just to see if it was a fluke. It was not. After 25 years of play I have only built light chariots to fight with, peasants to garrison with and barbarian cavalry. I have taken out Gaul, 2/3 of Germany and have all remaining Julii cities under siege. This almost seems too easy!

I have started several games as other tribes -- Greeks, Egypt, Germannia, Carthage for instance but they seem much more difficult to play. Has anybody else used my methods as the Brits? I am using the first patch.

[Maltz]

I just had some experiences with Britons (Vh/Vh/Huge). Now it is about 262 BC and I just took the last Gaul settlement in Iberia, and about to face the Senate army on the other side.

Britannia is one of the easier factions to fiddle around. The biggest reason, as many players have pointed out, is their light chariots. With a good number of light chariots you will dominate the barbarian world. To fight more civilized faction - especially in their cities, then you will need higher-end infantry such as chosen swordsman.

You must hate Egyptian generals - same here. These missle chariots moves as fast as any light cavalry, making them really great at skirmishing. Nobody can touch them. But they can't shoot while "driving away" from the enemy, for unknown reason. (driver and shooter are 2 separate soldiers). Therefore, you always want to team up 2 light chariots, so when one runs away from the enemy, the other shoots.

Light chariots seems to have more ammo than horse archers. This might be an illusion because of their bulky size, sometimes not everybody is shooting at the same time (slowly depleting ammo). For the same reason you wear down the enemy slower.

Oh yeah, all you need for light chariot is a pop. 2000 town with black smith (needs trader)! What a gift from the sky.

Against Gaul, Germenia and Iberia/Spain, light chariots are the early wargods because the above factions do not have long range missle units before their pop. reaches 6000. You can easily achieve X vs. 0 kill "heroic" battle results. For sure you won't wait that long; you are going to kill them before they build any chosen archers, right? If they get long range archers, then light chariots's slow kill rate will make them poor rivals of any shoot out.

The bad thing about chariot is in huge unit size I can't really tell the chariots go anywhere in the city. They get stuck at the gate and anywhere in an alley. They sometimes wander into the town square and get slaughtered. There should be a building upgrade "driving school".

This means if you probably want to train a few slingers / head hurlers for city assasult reasons (especially at the town center). Briton slingers are one of the worst slingers you can imagine, though.

For all field battle - you can really forget about swordsman, warband, slingers and all that. All you need is light chariot. Just use your patience to wear them down. When they advance, you back off, and vice versa.

Same as everybody else think, general units (heavy chariots) suck big time. They don't last for more than 10 seconds, and they are bad router chasers. I just fought a bridge battle and half of my generals' body-cargos just ride directly into the water and died. The most useless RTW general unit - Briton heavy chariot.

[froglegs]

Against enemy archers, chosen archers in particular, I take several of the Brit light chariots off skirmish mode and charge them. This tends to always route the archers although the chariots may take losses.

Against a city I normally just starve them out. However, I have taken cities by buying the required infantry for the ram. I generally use the chariots in loose formation all the time. They seem to behave better that way. Forget about crossing a bridge though. I just finished taking all of Italy by blitzing the pennsula and sieging all the cities from Rome south. Several attacked out at me -- a big mistake for them. The others I waited the 7 turns or so to get.

I always have an easier time against Rome than against Sythians or Dacians because of the chosen archers. For some reason, the Spanish ground troops give me more problems too. Part of it are the hilly battlefields. On defense several times I was almost taken out by a downhill infantry charge against my chariots in the initial setup. I had no high or even flat ground to defend. Again, most of my major battles I fight on defense. I take a crucial position or besiege a city and wait for them to attack me. Often times I am outnumbered 4 or 5 to 1 in defense. I will run my army up a hill to defend if there is not a hill to set up on. Shooting downhill seems to be a big advantage. By the way, having taken all of Italy, Germany, Gaul, and 2/6 of Iberia, by 235BC I still have only built 2 types of troops to date -- light chariots and peasants -- all this at v hard, v hard, large army settings.

The only other tribe that I have looked at that looks anywhere near this easy is Egypt -- and that is only because they are isolated from enemies and have money out the wazoo. Their troops do not seem to fight as well though. That is probably due to there being a lot of horse/camel archers to face and archers in general.

Another thing -- it seems to me that the birth rate for the royal family is a lot higher for the Brits than for the Romans for instance.

[Mountaindew]

had very little problems playing as the brits...light chariots, u rock! u just gotta love 'em! win my battles everytime.

u gotta make use of the warcries and the druid chants...they are there for a reason...by the time the enemy (specially romans) gets to my inf line, having being peppered by the chariots, they rout when my inf. charge.

hmmm...ive realised that the brits do have a tendency to give birth to royals very very much, even rivalling egypt...

yeah, the lack of cavalry is a bummer...

[tan1415]

Playing the brits in very hard/very hard level....
How do you get the Druids? I havent gotten them yet. And I have I think finish building everything.

Toughest thing is when the gauls and germans gang up on you.
Key is light chariots. They are available relatiovely early.
I like to use them as skirmisher and shoot up the enemy from teh flanks. Much better than the scythian horsearchers and other horse units. The chariot AI are relatively smart. They never get caught by infantry and when a cavalry unit catches up..the normal cav units are ussually toast vs Chariots.(Not sure why...but cav units always loose vs chariots)

In the beginning I used the Chariots to breakup large AI army so that I could destroy it piecemeal on teh battle field. Pretty cool effect. Large parts of the armies would be running around behind the chariots. The infantry would be used to finish the armys piecemeal.

Heavy Chariots...the lack of cavalry makes it difficult to exploit the holes they create when they charge.
I agree with the view that Chariots are actually elephants light. They bust open most infantry, except if they have spears.
Just make sure when they have charged that there's a followup unit to finish off the unit that was charged.(*barbarian cav are like gold) The lack of good mop up units severely handicap the chariots.
A good idea is to use wardogs...tehy are great killers. Just make sure to have a couple of units and to use them wisely. Once unleasghed they are out of control.

[AntiochusIII]

I'm sorry if this sounds stupid but I have a short question.

I always liked Britannia's strategic locations and stuff, but I've been avoiding playing as them since I bought Rome. (While playing as Carthage or the "beloved" Seleucids for several times.) It seems my generals got themselves easily killed, as if I am an AI!

How can I use those Britannia's chariots effectively? I mean, even though my general flank, not charging head-on or whatever, he still got himself killed in a rebel hunt battle!

This sounds noob, I'm sure, but I really want to play them. However, I couldn't withstand the continuous loss of my precious generals.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

P.S. This is my first post

[randomn00b]

General's Chariots suck. Light Chariots are paper.

You've got to keep Chariots away from the main lines. Your Chariots aren't just sturdy enough.

Light Chariots kill so slow, but apparently, the Gauls and Germans don't know how to field cavalry, let alone Archers.

It's nice to have a decent early game missile cavalry + Infantry army.

[Callensius]

Guide.

Don't have anything to quote but

BELIEVE me if you wanna do anything when playing with Britannia you have to use swordsmens believe me swordsmen are like the best unit, you can train them in almost the beginning of the game, once (in armour) upgraded highly skilled and with the warcry really effective as i've read here before, in Britannia you can first pepper them with a bit o' arrows from the chariots and then you can just charge them with a warcry'ing bunch of swordsmens usually the enemy will start to run, cuz, the arrows was a first moral blow, and after they're a bit shaken the enemy will runn at the first warcry'ing son of a gun believe me, o yeah also Warhounds are also effective but only in non-besieging battles in besieging battles they'll loose theyre way believe me and Warhounds are also an incredible moral blow believe me


Conclusion: Swordsmens, Warhounds GOOD!

[roman god's]

playing on vh/vh it was very difficult to get very comfrotable. with playing with the britons. (just coming off a glorious camapaign with the julii).


first you lose money in your capital and it never makes any money for you. its just frustrating. you lose all your money so quick. it's hard to build an army with no money. and you slowly get killed off by your neighbors gaul and germania later. it's just a pain in the rear




p.s. this is my 2 post.

[ajgundam5]

I expanded into Gaul and then took over Spain, by the time i was finished with that i was in a war with Germania. After wiping out Gaul,Spain, and Germania I focused on Italy. Don't start a war with Dacia bc you need all the help you can get. Wiping out all the Italian Factions will be tough but as long as u have some diplomats outside your cities ready to bribe you should be fine until you own Italy

[roman god's]

It's me again.

I've just went through 20 more turns and found that swordsman and warhounds are the bomb to use. They are the best before you get chariots and other good units. I've started a war with both the gauls and the germans.

So, far my conquests are a success. I've captured all of the german lands and most of the gaul territory. I've made alliances with both the dacians and the spanish. Because I know the julli and the other roman factions are not to be trusted.

I've got a little money and tons of land.

right later