Oh. My. Goddess. (or, "Why I Love Hounds Of Culann")

**Kekvit Irae** · 10-02-2005, 21:48

I started up a Celtic campaign and went on the warpath against the WRE and the Romano British. I knew the Hounds of Culann were the RTW:BI version of MTW:VI Berserkers, but dang... THEY FLIP PEOPLE!
A single unit of 15 men can cause so much havok. As soon as they go into battle, they go berserk and uncontrollable (you can activate this sooner using their Warcry ability). Once they are in the heat of battle, almost nothing can stop them. I watched one unit of Hounds for awhile, and noticed that a single man flipped five to ten Romans (the good quality troops, too, not the peasants) in a single swing, like he was an elephant! It's like a cavalry charge without having to charge.

Really, the only weakness they have is against missile weapons and heavy cavalry charges in the rear, but they can easily stand up to these as well.

And the best thing about them? You only require a Shrine of Giobhnu (one turn) to build them (though they take 2 turns themselves to build), so having them as your frontline troops is effective because of the ease of retraining them in newly-conquered settlements.

**TB666** · 10-02-2005, 21:50

Yeah they kick some major butt.
The lombardi berserkers look cooler tho.
They have a double-handed sword instead of a hammer.
IMO the new berserker feature captures the feeling of berserkers alot better then before.

**Kekvit Irae** · 10-02-2005, 22:45

The only problem I see with Hounds is that they are wielding TOASTED MARSHMELLOWS!

"Hey, Beonre, hand me some chocolate and crackers, I wanna make some smores."
"Sure, Cein. This really was a good idea, having a campout with a warm campfire and roasting marshmellows. Want to sing some campground songs?"
"Ah, shoot, we're being attacked, and we forgot to bring out weapons. What shall we use to drive back the Romans with?"
*looks down at their marshmellows-on-a-stick and gets an idea*

**Akka** · 10-02-2005, 23:04

Originally Posted by kekvitirae

The only problem I see with Hounds is that they are wielding TOASTED MARSHMELLOWS!

You should see the heavy cataphracts with their rolling pin...

**Kekvit Irae** · 10-02-2005, 23:07

BI is sounding more and more like a wierd version of Iron Chef than Total War

**Bob the Insane** · 10-03-2005, 03:25

I did a pretty wild custom battle...

1x Hounds Of Culann with gold everything

Also fielded a general and warhaounds but they didn't do all that much...

Opposition...

20x Saxon Keels...

Place the custom battle bridge battlefield...

Simply place your berserkers on you side of the bridge and wait, they will go beserk and attack on there own...

It is better then watching elephants attack, in fact it looked a little like the movie "Kung Fu Hustle"!!!

**professorspatula** · 10-03-2005, 04:38

I find the way the beserkers send people flying is like something out of a cartoon. But it really looks daft when chasing routing units. The beserkers don't even swing their weapons, they just run and units ahead start being thrown wildly in the air. It's like wherever the beserkers go, there's an invisible trampoline ready to trip up their adjacent enemies.

**lilljonas** · 10-03-2005, 11:20

It's the Force, you know. ;)

**Ciaran** · 10-03-2005, 11:33

That should be easy enough to solve, just remove the arrtibute "launching" from their weapon attributes.
But to see the berserker attribute works is nice, I´ve never seen it had much effect in plain Rome.

**Kraxis** · 10-03-2005, 13:11

Actually they don't have that attribute. And it makes sense since they also attack normally at times.

I have found that the best way to confine these types of infantry is to strike them with strong infantry in the side. They will be interrupted in their attacks and you will see far less of those rolling attacks.

**Kekvit Irae** · 10-03-2005, 17:19

I just completed a very satisfying Celtic campaign (my first successful!), all thanks to the Hounds. However, I did almost lose Ravanna to the Huns because of them.
One word of advice: Do NOT use them for city wall defense. They will go berserk, and try to find their next target (on the ground), and will go outside the city walls to meet their foes, and will ultimately die. Worst case scenario is that they will give the enemy good time to move up into the siege tower and take your walls, or (even worse) walk through your open gates.

**hoof** · 10-04-2005, 01:27

I tried the beserkers (gold maximized) at the end of the bridge routine. When they kick it into high gear, it looks like a fountain of bodies being fed by the stampede across the river. When the Keels broke, the fountain turned into a volcano. Lots of fun :)

Next I tried 20x Comitatenses Fist Cohorts. They were able to kill the Bezerkers, but it took 599 casualties to do it. For some reason the Romans got packed in on one side of the bridge, preventing the full stampede effect, I suspect this helped the Bezerkers somewhat.

Some oddities (other than the fountain of men issue): The beserkers refused to go on the bridge itself. It could be the "can swim" flag prevents bridge walking. Another issue was I couldn't get zero-valour beserkers to go beserk. Maybe they need to see some combat before they'll snap?

**Kraxis** · 10-04-2005, 02:09

Not at all... I accidentally noticed their interesting attack by doing a test. And tests are normally done at no valour, the same in this case.

**Brutus** · 10-04-2005, 11:16

Originally Posted by kekvitirae

I just completed a very satisfying Celtic campaign (my first successful!), all thanks to the Hounds. However, I did almost lose Ravanna to the Huns because of them.
One word of advice: Do NOT use them for city wall defense. They will go berserk, and try to find their next target (on the ground), and will go outside the city walls to meet their foes, and will ultimately die. Worst case scenario is that they will give the enemy good time to move up into the siege tower and take your walls, or (even worse) walk through your open gates.

Could be effective though, I tried a custom siege battle with the Saxons against the Celts. My Saxon Hearth Troops were moving towards the wall withe their ladders (4 units in total) and a unit of Hounds of culann charges out the gate (really the first time I saw the AI pull a preventive sally during an assault) and slaughtered 2 of my units carrying ladders. The other 2 got creamed on the walls: one buy another unit of Berserkers, the other because now they were the only ones against a larger number of Gallowglasses. Needless to say, I lost.