How to win in Viking Campaign

[Budwise]

I have beat the Viking campaign with a 100% using the Irish, Welsh, Viking, and Scots and unless you are playing the Vikings, to win easily do the following. To test my theory, I gave the vikings 9999 starting Florins and by doing that, they stay around the entire game. Here is the 10 commandments of VI. I didn't add tips for the Vikings because if you are good at all, you probably don't need them. I found these out playing HARD.

1. On turn two, DESTROY EVERY NO LANDLOCKED (Edited for clarification) ABBEY you have. Yes, you will lose some income but the Vikings will leave you alone this way, plus, its better to get a 1000 florins than to give the Vikings 2000.

2. Farms = Money, after your boarders are protected and you have a good 30 years to build, mass farm build. I have never been so amazed in this game than when I was just breaking even to being filthy rich in just 10 turns do to this.

3. Use the Vikings to your advantage, for instance, try to ally with them. If you are the Irish then Shipbuild spam until you outnumber the Vikings ships three to one. By doing this, I have in two of my campaigns effectively used the Vikings as a second army. They not only won't attack you because you would cripple their only source of income (Raiding) by blockcading their ships but they will often join you in battle. It is so sweet to see the Vikings Elite units working with you to crush someone else instead of against you.

4. If against a superior force like if you are playing Welsh and the Saxons attack you. Mass spam any unit in all provinces possible and try to take two of their terriories in one turn. Most often, this will cause a civil war. Try whatever you can to kill their king or better yet, cut him off from the empire. If you do take their land, SLASH AND BURN is a great way of neutering your enemy. Remember, war isn't about killing off their army - its killing all their options but to surrender.

5. If the Vikings do attack, try to hold the territory you have or at least garrison. Then hit them back NEXT TURN with everything you have in the surrounding areas. If you do this right, you can attack back when they try to defend and hopefully take on many Viking Prisoners. I would suggest Ransoming them back because to kill the Vikings, you must destroy their money, not units.

6. Unlike the original MTW campaign. The AI usually stays with you on your Tech advances, so don't expect a 16 unit army to destroy a 30 unit because even knowing your tech is higher than theirs, its not by that much.

7. Trading is worthless in my opinion, if you aren't the Irish or about to attack Ireland, don't build a boat. You might provoke the Vikings to sink it and start a war. While your at it, don't build Traders/Merchants either. By the time you have the buildings built you won't have a trading partner due to war.

8. Save Ireland for last. The Irish usually stay on that island without moving but they mass spam on units. Don't waist your units unless you have the main island to yourself.

9. Mercs own here. If you have the money, hire them in legions.

10. Thats basically it, due to no mass rebellions, smaller map, and more fun tech tree, 60% is a copout - a true victory is 100%.

[Budwise]

Excuse my grammar and spelling, I am just too tired to fix it.

[Weebeast]

Don't build a boat? The Irish will eventually try to land on mainland near the end so you need a boat to cut off their rolling army. They'll send about 6 full stacks on one turn once the war is declared.

I played as Saxons last time, my first game too, and I didn't have enough ships to cut off the Irish. Well, they were taking out rebels in the north but I just had to stop them. The other factions (Scots, Picts) were losing badly against rebels, turtling in little provinces up north. In result, I lost more than 6 provinces in midwest region. I did recover from the blitz after couple nasty battles but I ran out of time and lost the campaign lol.

[Ludens]

Excellent work, Budwise.

However, how are you going to make money as the Picts? Their farm income is lousy and trying to upgrade it is wasting money, so they need their abbeys.

[Vladimir]

The Picts' abbeys don't seem to last long when I play them. Maybe a large garrison would help.

[Patron]

"1. On turn two, DESTROY EVERY ABBEY you have. Yes, you will lose some income but the Vikings will leave you alone this way, plus, its better to get a 1000 florins than to give the Vikings 2000."

"2. Farms = Money, after your boarders are protected and you have a good 30 years to build, mass farm build. I have never been so amazed in this game than when I was just breaking even to being filthy rich in just 10 turns do to this."

Bad idea, in the long term you're better off with them, it's sometime cheaper to build them in provinces without basic farms. To get rid of vikings cheaply...

Build a navy using your most technologically advanced coastal province as quickly as possible nad keep on churning out cheap ships to cover all your coastal provinces. Vikings never attack your navy for some reason. You can neuter them a lot more cheaply this way.

Build a decent army of spearmen and cavalry to begin with, then your factions elite troops later on. Generally pwn everyone in battles and conquer provinces strategically so you have to defend little and can put more into offfense.


I agree with 3, except ship build spam no matter what faction you are.

I also agree with 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10

I've never noticed the AI tech up very much and mercenaries are only really needed when they are mounted noblemen or some vicious viking unit.