Huns (BI faction)

[dismal]

This is not the place for general discussion...

Anyway, Hun strategy. This is based on an H/H campaign I played, my second BI campaign.

3 relatively easy steps to victory:

Step 1: The Hording Life

First, re-sort your stacks so that you can field 3 invincible armies. These will consist mainly of horse archers with a general or two plus 4-5 units of other cav. (If you know how to fight with horse archers, an army of this type should be mobile and invincible.) Your 3 fighting stacks will do most of the work, the other stack will tag along after them Try to keep them safe and out of the way.

Second, decide where you're going to settle. I took my horde east to settle in Antioch. This had the advantage of avoiding the issue of other hordes. Start heading there, basically sacking every city on the way. If you're heading East, like me, you may want to even go a little out over your way to unleash some other hordes (roxolani, sarmatians). They will generally head west and make life a little more difficult for the romans. If you are heading for Constantinople, this may cause more harm than good.

Third, cleanse a wide area around the city in which you intend to settle. This has three purpose: make a lot of money, eliminate potential rivals (I eliminated the Sassanids and drove the ERE from the East as a horde), make it easy for you to rapidly grow and establish an economy after you settle.

As you can see, I'm not kidding when I talk about cleansing a wide area:



Other tips for life as a Horde:

- Sieges are the big problem. Having a long life as a horde requires losing exceptionally few men in each battle. Horse archers can do this, but not in sieges. You're going to want to wait most of them out. On the plus side, you can generally have 2-3 sieges going at a time

- Mercenaries: I avoided them. I hired a few, but they turn out to be very expensive during the horde years. When I saw the bite they were taking out of my plunder, I disbanded them.

Step 2: Time to Settle Down

Sitting on 200,000+ gold and a wide open Eastern region, I plunked down in Antioch, Sidon and Jerusalem.

My army got very small,and I had lots of places to conquer so I hired up some mercs and began working my way down to Alexandria.

Basically, you can win the game easily building just two units. Upgrade your big cities (in my case Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria) to be able to make upgraded Hunnic Elite Warriors. Nothing can touch these guys en masse.

Other cities should focus on pumping out herdsmen. These aren't as cheap as peasants, but you can't make peasants and they're better garrison troops than the weak low-end spearmen unit. They can fight decently well in a pinch, and can be moved about more quickly. You should mass up groups of herdsmen and have them follow after your couple attacking armies to garrison cities as soon as they fall so your attackers can move to the next city.

Mercs: As I said I hired a few at the beginning to get the conquering jump started. Don't get carried away. While you should have a lot of cash when you settle, it will go amazingly fast when you start to rebuild those cities you sacked once or twice and exterminated again. My approach of building only hunnic elites also ensures you won't quiclkly build an army you can't afford with all your plunder.

Using this approach I was able to convert that gray rebel area to Hun black in relatively short order:



Step 3: Take Rome and Constantinople.

Depending on where you headed at the beginning, you may already have them. But, of course, I didn't.

Constantinople is a simple matter of hopping across the straits of the Bosphorus with one stack of mostly hunnic elite warriors. Then I massed up a second stack and hopped across the Bosphorus and walked around to Rome.

At the time I won the game, I'll bet I didn't have more than 4 stacks total of military defending this empire. One in Rome, one in Constantinople, one in Alexandria, and bits and pieces around the nothern border. I was cashflowing maybe 30,000 per year.

Here's the world at the time of victory:



Interesting to note the ERE has fared far better than the WRE despite the fact I left the WRE alone and pounded the ERE most of the game. I lost Alexandria to a rebellion a turn or two before the end and decided I'd just win the game instead of taking it back.

[Franconicus]

I have no clue how to read the rules, and thus I am spamming this forum with discussion instead of strategies.

[darsalon]

That really is an excellent report. Tried as Huns a little while ago. Cleaved my way into the Italian peninsular and then hit that familiar problem of having the horde go, no armies and money leaking away like anything. I was having to maintain armies on absolutely no money whilst being attacked by the WRE around north Italy all the time.

So time to go east and give the Sassanids & ERE a good kicking for the next game.

[dismal]

That was an H/H campaign, but should work fine on VH/VH.

My next campaign I used basically the same strategy on VH/VH with the Vandals settling in Rome/Tarentum/Ravenna and in worked like a charm.

I relentlessly pounded the WRE and the greek part of the ERE while in horde mode, until I settled with around 250,000 cash and lots of rebel grey where the romans used to be. In the west, you will get more competition from other hordes and factions. The goths plopped down right next to me in Mediolanum, which I would have liked to own, but elected to coexist instead. The Alemanni and the Franks took advantage of the swath I had cleared and soon showed up on by borders.

With the Vandals, you have the advantage you only need 10 settlements though. I never even had an economy, just used my horde money to pump out enough units to take the cities I needed and a few more.