I wonder if the English had this debate back in the day when they were being raided by the Vikings.

Anyways, I'm not much of a history buff, but it seems like the Vikings were unstoppable machines of doom back in the day. I guess Huscarles modeled that whole killing machine thing. The trick was the Vikings didn't really try to keep the land they rolled over. They just looted and left. Well, except Ireland but thats a different story.

Us as players, playing the Vikings, use our raids to acquire more territory. Maybe thats part of the problem. We kick butt then stick around, so we can roll over and acquire more territory to win. We aren't fighting like the Vikings would.

Of course when we have to fight against them we seem to have the same problems the Welsh, the Picts, ect. had. The Vikings were simply better warriors with better weapons. It took combined efforts to stop viking raids, including building watch towers, fortresses and maintaining powerful armies.

All those things we have to do to stop those pesky Huscarles from plowing through our lands, is what the british isles had to do to stop the same thing. I find it kind of funny that were complaining about the same thing a Mercian lord would complain about during the Dark Ages.

As far as the game is concerned I think they are fun to use, and fun to have the computer use against you. Nothing is more harrowing then playing as a british or irish kingdom, and seeing that the Vikings that have just attacked your provence have a core of 3-4 (or more) Huscarle units squatting like wolves in the opposing force. Its scary especially when I thinned my defensive force to attack some other kingdom . It takes alot of work and sometimes alot of men to stop that sort of fighting power, and sometimes I lose that battle, but it seems realistic considering thats what happened back in the day.

Sometimes its tough to admit that brilliant tactics don't always win the day.