Scotland

[McDoogle]

Personally i prefer to make the poms sweat :P

I would take one settlement and then amass armies to scare then and take the next after awhile. and allainces with the french go along way when i started ont he poms the french were at them as well...they english are gone and now i gotta contend with the french

[IRPhydeaux]

Everyone says Scotland has bad cavalry . . . I disagree. They don't have any missile cavalry, but they get Templars and thats pretty darn good. Once you get offered the Templar guild you can build Templar Knights to replace your other horses. They're damn expensive and I don't know about retraining them yet. Do you have to go back to a city with a Templar Guild?

I do know that i'm stuck in a quagmire in Caen and Rennes. I took britain rather quickly, then decided for a jaunt across the channel to keep up my end of the Aulde Aliance. Now I have weak French allies to the south, Danes attacking from the East, English from Paris, Danish fleets blockading all my ports. I can't build faster than they can on the mainland and i can't keep ships in the water long enough to get troops across the channel. I just built a massive fleet and marched a huge stack of Nobles, Templars and Highland Archers to London. If I can get across the channel I should be able to sack Antwerp and maybe get the Danes to back off.

I'm enjoying this campaign more than my others. I think cause I set it to 1.0 and Hard/Hard. I played that with Portugal and got my butt kicked, but i'm doing fairly well with the scots.

[Andrew of Newcastle]

Im on turn 400+ now with a Scots campaign and have discovered a rather fantastic and cheap tactic that goes to prove that Scots do have a useful cavalery unit, although this would actually apply to probably every other faction.

The situation that has forced my drastic move is a surgence of Spain, allies since turn 10 who have launched a European dominiation attempt and swept eastwards across western Eurpope ala mongol style taking down every city in their path and destroying the relative peace we have all shared until now. Up to this point I had some pretty full stack in each of my Western eurpope cities, eg Paris, Rennes etc but the spannish handgunners have caused mass hysteria on the battle field and cause fear in virtually everything I threw at them, including temple Knights. I was on my last legs and lost 3 or 4 cities within a few turns with no show of then slowing down their march east with half a dozen full stacks dotted around.

That’s the situation.

The tactical solution and somewhat of a nice little roleplay opportunity for me was sitting their all the time in my Edinburgh Capital. For some reason the scots breed like rabbits. I had nearly a full city of neglected family members and generals all getting fat and getting gambling traits etc so I gathered them all up (they filled all my unit slots but didn’t really look that an impressive stack if you know what I mean)

This stack made up purely of Scottish Family members, ie 100% ‘generals bodyguard cavalry’ is an absolute monster. It would take on spannish armies 3 or 4 times its size in numbers and nevered routed. Used properly like any cavalry, ie split it up into 2 focres and with either a small ‘bait’ unit at the front and main army sweeping round the back and taking them on the blindside, or 2 equal flanking armies, they have yet to meet a stack they cannot rout. Obviuosly ive taken casualties but these have been topped up with new family members as they have joined the family.

This army is now 10 Stars and anything other than a full yellow stack will withdraw from battle and move away from it.

[McDoogle]

turn 400? well no wonder u got so many of the buggers! i usually get bored with my games around 150-200 and am always family memebers to inquitors or assians or the bloody plague.

But ur way would take a while to get that many family members, personaly i prefer to get one or two full stack armies of fedual knights and fighti n person, focus every unit on one enemy unit and make it a HUGE wedge of thousands of men :) never lost a battle and with 700 knights i destroyed 2800 danes at bridge. I am a peacful nieghbour and one hell of an enemy when u push me.

in a previsou game i had just conquered England and then the danes sent a flet to block my ports and attacked burges. So i let them have it. In four turns i came back with several armies, sent two spies in grabbed the city in a turn losing 14 men and thier loses around 500+. i then built my navy destroyed thiers and made a rather peaceful un challenged sail to Arthus, took it and worked from arthus an Antwep and joinedup thus destorying my enemy. then the french turned on me! ha ha lets just say it took me 3 offical turns to conquer france once my armies where back at Burges.

Personally i am a cavarlyman, its in my blood for most of my family were the Australian light horesman, and i have only once EVER lost a battle using horse and that was when i had to fight the Timmuirds...So now i am settling in the west and waiting for both Mongols and Timmurids to come and go then im going for the holy lands

[dismal]

Playing VH/VH as Scots.

My basic strategery is to deal the English a quick, crippling blow before worrying about all the rebels cities, which are relatively poor.

The Scots are well suited for early aggression, as they are capable of assembling a very nice army on the first turn. I moved the one general (from the north) and two spear militia to garrison Edinburgh, and assembled all the other units into a single army in the south. I supplemented the initial allotment by hiring some merc crossbows and 2 welsh spearmen. Initial army = 2 generals, 5 ranged units, 2 highlanders and 6 or 7 spears. By turn 1 standards, this is a powerhouse army.

Originally planned to bypass Kent and head straight to Nottingham, but as my main army happens to be heading right past Kent I get a mission to take it from the nobles. Oh well, it has no walls, and I have a big army right next to it, so I take it that turn. The 2000 florins reward is a nice little helper. I leave behind a couple spears and keep moving south.

In a turn or so, I have Nottingham under siege. Nottingham is defended by 6 or so units, and doesn't look to present too much of a problem. But, the problem is I have no siege weapons. While I'm waiting to get my towers built, the English muster up a large relief force (7-8 spear militia, 3-4 town militia, 2 archers, 1 mailed knight) and send it North from London. At this point, both I and the English have about 80+% of our forces on the island around Nottingham. The decisive battle for the British Isles looms. It's still only about turn 8.

After toying with the idea of maintaining the siege and taking on the whole English force on defense, I decide to assault Nottingham's garrison first. Though they only have 3 units of relatively weak militia infantry, I'm somewhat concerned with taking heavy losses that I can't afford on the walls. Fortunately, my ram gets through and I am able to send some spears through the gate, who manage to kill the enemy general. After he dies, I send in my two general's units in to punch a hole through to the square. Nottingham is mine, but I still have that big English relief stack right nearby.

Next turn, the English siege Nottingham. Long story short, I sally out and with some nice cavalry work (or bad AI play, depending how you look at it) take out the English's two units of archers. After which, the English are relatively helpless before my 5 ranged units. A wholesale massacre ensues. Losses are like 1000 to 7. I pause only briefly before tapping the "execute" button on 500 captured men. On to London.

London under siege on Turn 10. They have William I, some other general and 4 or 5 militia units. Not much of a problem, I'm thinking. My army is still pretty much as strong as it was in Turn 1 because I have been replacing my losses and garrison units with militia spearmen from Edinburgh.

However, just as I am planning my new residence in London, I get the Pope warning to desist attacking the English for 5 turns. I seriously think about taking the excom, but the same turn the nobles tell me to take Caernavon so I elect to break the siege and go take Caernavon while waiting out the Pope warning. A nice side benefit of this is that for taking Caernavon the nobles send me 4 mailed knights to Edinburgh, which gives me a legitmate army of the North. I pair them up with a general and a coulple spears to besiege Inverness.

The bad news is that this allows the English to recruit several more units. And I can no longer afford my army - losing 1000 or so per turn. On the other hand, I have made a few units in Nottingham to beef up my force. In a few turns, I have London under siege again, and this time there no Pope warning comes to save them. It's around turn 25 and the British Isles are mine, except for Dublin which falls easily enough to my army of the North a few turns later.

A little rest and relaxation would be nice, but the Pope has called for a crusade on, of all places, Toulouse. Since my popularity with the Pope is not that great, and it's a good chance to cut my payroll, off I go. Poland ends up beating me there, but having a nice army in excommed France is not altogether a bad thing. It might not have been my first choice, but I ended up taking Bordeaux as my foothold on the mainland. Starting out on the continent with a fortress is not a bad thing. I have converted all settlements except Nottingham on the British Isles to towns to get some economy going.

Anyway, there were a few anxious moments, but generally this was not that hard of a start to pull off. The secret is concentrating your forces and dealing with the English early. Fortunately, the lack of other threats allows you to maintain minimal garrisons as you move south. Given the relatively weak economic and developental status of the rebel cities, you will be many turns before you can field an army as strong as your initial force if you spread it out too much. Meanwhile, the English will enjoy a superior economy and a nearby castle.