Britannia

[MajorFreak]

QUICK START

forgive me for not reading the guide listed in the first page. i've probably repeated alot of advice and i'll further add to repetition. But, i feel this way i can compare notes and give an honest critique later. Anyhows, on with it:

Relevant settings are medium campaign/battle difficulty; Most important issues at the very beginning are

• right off the bat, before you do anything else, disband the 2 mainland 'warbands', plus the 'slinger'
• secondly, move Cynfawr a tiny bit southwest to that 'beak' on the coast, and take the spy, plus the archer chariot at london, and send them to Cynfawr
• Take the general in europe and place him into the city there. Then move your ship due south to the coast and board that archer chariot standing near the shore. Pack them off to where Cynfawr is standing.
• move all other 'warbands' and 'slingers' to 'britannia superior' and disband them there (even the ones at london. The upkeep of troops you won't need right away is horrendous)
• at all cities queue up Brigantia shrine then Trader, if needed. At london, instead queue up a Port plus Brigantia, then Trader (roads are cute, but we won't need the movement bonus just yet.)
• Reduce all taxes to low
• queue up two diplomats at London
• Diplomat roaming...To make things simple, just send the starting diplomat towards approx location of the city, Trier.
  
  SECOND TURN
• with the diplomat, go get an alliance and trade rights with germany at Trier and then send him off to where Mogontiacum should be (the idea being to get a quick spot of the cities for future reference)
  
  THIRD TURN
• Build a boat
• Get the diplomat to Mogontiacum and then off to where Iuvavum should be.
• Now, all there's left to do is grab the shore army and unload at the irish fishing village, along the coast.
• you detach the spy first, from the unloaded army, and into Tara (25% chance to gain entry without siege gear)
• then, lay siege
  
  FOURTH TURN
• Diplomatic exodus: getting diplomats roaming around. One for italy/greece (head down south through Alesia). two for going straight east - one aimed at the black sea the other going across the top of the map. (they'll go clockwise around the map after that ending up at sahara; see earlier post for details)...i don't know what you'll do with the italy/greek diplomat (open up a bizarre at constantinopal when he retires?)
• Queue up a Trader at london, mines at Deva and Roads at Sama
• Attack Tara. You'll have enough time to pepper the enemy to death, and the new 1.2 patch lures the troops out chasing arrows enough to rout so you can get easy kills for your druids.
• Occupy option at victory screen, then build shrine of brigant plus a peasant
  
  FIFTH TURN
• You'll have a coming of age now, plus Sama will upgrade to next settlement type.
• grab the spy from tara and send him down south to europe to begin scouting/infiltrating towns (builds up his skill)...grab the other ship and send it to tara
• Now, you'll have a while before you're cranking out archer chariots so use Cynfawr to build watchtowers around ireland and britain just in case you spot a rebel force - i'd recommend setting them up along the coastline to spot ships too
• always check your diplomats...having them get "blocked path" during AI movement phase slows them down too much
  
  SIXTH TURN
• Queue up blacksmith then sacred grove at london
• shift governor from ebur to deva
• remember diplomats
• continue monitoring your spy movements and Cynfawr's tower building spree.
  
  SEVENTH TURN
• Queue up Port, Blacksmith and sacred grove at Sama...

What you'll be doing is preparing to blitz through gaul (avoiding the alps) on your way to spain - Get upgrades to large towns as a priority, plus getting a blacksmith churning out archer chariots at london. Though i'm not really sure how fast you can do this...i'll get back on this subject later today.

I think the really large issue for this "blitz" strategy is the goal of also capturing high-end gaulish temples. I wonder how long it takes till they have them. guess i'll have to use spies and stuff...oh bugger, i spied around and Gaul's still holding mamma's apron strings. looks like any blitz will have to chuck the idea of grabbing advanced gaulish temples.

you'll have 7 archer chariots built from london and sama by turn 14 to add to your current 2 units. It's a shame the AI is so stupid when it comes to sieges because that's pretty much all you'll need to blitz Gaul and slam into spain. Heck, why not build a few more, split the force in two and use your heir and good ol' Cynfawr to pincer movement south then west into spain.

• i think the seige AI problem doesn't have an easy solution, though stopping them parading in front of a mass of archers would be a good thing. not to mention giving those towers a better range and angle of attack would stop folks like me camping outside the main gates...the thought of rushing a mass of defenders hiding behind competent guard towers with only chariot archers isn't putting a smile on my face. Come to think of it, i'll bet they toned guard towers down because of the overly sadistic castles in Medieval:Total War

what really irks me is the way taxes were set up. there's no real disincentive to extermination (if pop is too high), setting tax to low, building a few cheap peasants, and continuing with the conquest a couple turns later. simply because of the law of diminishing returns that's been coded in