Denmark

[frogbeastegg]

Denmark needs to be unlocked before you can play as them. To do this you can either complete a campaign (on any difficutly, long or short setting) with one of the five starting factions, or you can edit the preferences file. To do this open your Sega/M2TW folder/data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign, find the file called "descr_strat" and open it with wordpad. Now find the section which says

campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
   england
   france
   hre
   spain
   venice
end
unlockable
   sicily
   milan
   scotland
   byzantium
   russia
   moors
   turks
   egypt
   denmark
   portugal
   poland
   hungary
end
nonplayable
   papal_states
   aztecs
   mongols
   timurids
   slave
end

Change it so it reads

campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
   england
   france
   hre
   spain
   venice
   sicily
   milan
   scotland
   byzantium
   russia
   moors
   turks
   egypt
   denmark
   portugal
   poland
   hungary
end
nonplayable
   papal_states
   aztecs
   mongols
   timurids
   slave
end

[McDoogle]

Denmark is more a pain now, well in my opionion...

This excummincation thing is going to far! you cant do anything!

to me, you just have to damn to the pope and expand ruthlessly into the german empire. Personally i own an extensive assaiain network! about 5 or 6 of them all very good at what they do and i simply kill any thing that comes into my lands. I am more aggressive with the danes becase basically i dnt have much of a choice for expansion.

When u begin, dnt worry about the rest of scandanavia. No one touches it and u wanna bet the germans to the four rebel provinces south, i lost one to the polish, i was about to take it off them, however they offered me a princess so i accepted and left them...i have three cardinals atm, i am still at a lose how to gain piety exactly...i am sure the answer will come soon.

i regiged the papal elections only to lose my bloody pope three turns later! lol

However norse axeman detroy everything that moves to oppose them...so get them!

Learn to attack in bulk, the more units attacking the more demoralized the enemy become! Personnaly i am taking advantage of the feduel knights and charging in and out of my enemy till the break then hunt them down!

I wish the influence meter was back fom the first medieval...but oh well...the authority thing just doesnt have the same effect

[Poised]

The Danes have superb economic potential, but it requires an aggressive start, if done right, you wont even scratch your relationship with the other catholic nations.

Send 2 norse bowmen + half of the militia south with your prince, and send the rest except for one peasant across Østersøen to Sweden with your king, leave the 1 peasant army in Aarhus.

The King's objective is Stockholm first, its a small battle and you most likely wont need mercenaries for that battle, but I prefer to buy 2 spears anyway, since they will be used for Oslo very soon, and before you take Oslo be sure to buy as many mercs as needed, I had a lot of trouble with Oslo although it looks perfectly harmless on paper.

The Prince's objective is Hamburg, Stettin, Antwerp, Bruges and if its still a rebel town, Magdelburg, Magdelburg will most likely be attacked by Poland or HRE quite early, but its the least important town, since it doesnt have a port, so leave that for last, I was lucky to have it still being rebel after I took Bruges, so I swooped it up and its a nice defensive town, the river between Hamburg and Magdelburg makes for a perfect HRE screen.

Hamburg should be sieged by turn 2 and taken by turn 3, move all but 1 troop from the Prince's army east towards Stettin right away, both Hamburg and Stettin are relatively small battles, so you can probably do these without mercs, but I hired a few merc spears just to make the medicine go down a little easier, it also free up troops to garrison Stettin and allow you to move on to Antwerp.
You should have produced a few town militia while attacking Hamburg and Stettin, send them to Stettin as garrison, and move the Prince's army west to Antwerp.

The King will reach Stockholm just around the time you reach Stettin, occupy Stockholm, plant a guardtower and move to Oslo, I sacked Oslo for the extra cash, its a nice boost :)

Antwerp and Bruges are both pretty well defended, and will require both skill and manpower, but with enough mercenaries they WILL fall.

Now you hold even more land than King Valdemar managed to hold by the year 1180 :P

I used Hamburg and Bruges as castles, and Aarhus, Stockholm, Oslo, Stettin, and Antwerp as towns (Magdelburg too in my game, but you need a lot of luck to grab Magdelburg without upsetting your neighbours)

This is a monster cashcow, and all of it was aquired without breaking any alliances/agreements, or losing reputation, this is for Hard / Hard, but I see no reason it shouldnt work on medium or very hard too.

Now you are ready to plant the raven banner in the sands of the holy land :)

[Stolpmeister]

Another good option for danish expansion is to not go south, but to instead do what your viking ancestors did - go west. Divide your beginning forces into two - one taking Stockholm and Olso (converting Olso to a city), the other taking Hamburg. Don't expand south further than Hamburg. Build your economy and a navy in Arhus, Stockholm and Olso, and your landforces in Hamburg. Make a sizeable army consisting of plenty of viking raiders or dismounted huscarles, but them on a boat and send them west. If you're quick enough the scots won't have taken the castle at Inverness, which makes a good staging area for your campaign against the Scots and English. Taking Britian means you'll have TWO strong, easily defended economic bases for further conquests.

Expanding southwards will get you quickly involved in continental european politics, and you'll take over the HREs position as being surrounded by enemies and fighting a multi-front war. I tried it in a campaign I'm playing now, and I'm now at war with the HRE, Milan, Polan, Russia and Hungary (and of course Egypt and the Mongols in the Holy Land).

[Skott]

That sounds like a fun game tactic to try. Lets go a viking!

[lalartu]

I think there are a lot of potentials for Danes and even tho it's not the easiest faction to play with, you get a great amount of strong units.

Now as others have said, you can pretty much go any direction and succeed, it all depends on how much you're willing to sacrifice.

The easiest way I find, along with a potential to build up a very strong alliance is the following:

Send all your troops to take 4 rebel town to the south/east of you. one or two you might not have a chance to take because Poles and Germans will try to grab them as well.

Having done this, send your diplomat to estabish trade and alliance with germans, then france and then move him into the italy and ally with papacy.

Danes usually have the highest relations with the pope (go figure) so you should use that to your advantage and ally with papal states asap. that way, not only pope will excommunicate anything that attacks you, but your populous will always be happy and you don't have to garrison any inner cities because their mood will always be happy.

now obviously you're not gonna be allied with them forever. as soon as you establish a strong enough empire and the borders with other catholic states are drawn, no rebel cities are left either. proceed to building up a conquest army.

I suggest using diplomacy to your advantage and taking out Poland first and Germany next. but it's really up to you.

The reason I would not recommend playing an aggressive campaign early on (except for obviously taking the rebel states) is because you have very few very weak units at first and only one town. so you'd be risking a lot. you also need to at least be able to make dismounted huscarls, which I think are one of the best early units in the game. they can easily cut through most infantry and I even defeated general cavalry with them. so when you can produce them pretty quickly, you can start a major conquest. just remember if Pope tells you to stop aggression, wait a bit or let the other faction attack you, so play it smart.

don't get excommunicated. it'll be the bane of you. if the pope excommunicated denmark, you will spend a long time trying to hold your cities together, rather than conquering territories nearby.

[buzzard]

I'm a veteran SHO/MTW/RTW player and have just got MTW2.

the danes are a fave of mine from MTW and in m2 look pretty good early on (like before).

I'm still early on in my game (most advanced unit i have is the dragon boat), but the key to winning with these guys is to expand early and to keep the HRE happy and your friend. Unmarried pinces and princesses come in handy here. make some diplomats and get them busy selling alliances and trade rights.

make taking hamburg, oslo, stockholm and stettin a priority. make a push for antwerp and bruge if possible as well. all these are decent moneymakers and will serve a good springboard for an attack when someone breaks an alliance.

I am building up forces, waiting for someone to break an alliance, to do this, i plan to leave a city lightly defended to suck in a army to try it on. considering doing this with bruge, as it has antwerp not far, as this will be where the relief force will come from and i have france and england sniffing around.

the early danish troops are great. norse archers are excellent (not bad in melee) and the unmounted carles are great and relatively cheap for the punch the give. a few lots of these making a charge have made mincemeat out of anything they have faced.

[Snoil The Mighty]

Running an Early Danish Crusade-

Didn't see this mentioned earlier, so I'll pipe up I guess. Running my first Danish campaign and unlike the other northern Europe factiions, they have a pretty good angle on crusades even in the beginning. Stay north and work straight eastwards until you get past the eastern edge of that horrific fubar of a traffic jam that encompasses northern Italy and south-central Europe. Keep that over-travelled area south of you, dont get stuck in it or there go all your soldiers, usually sooner than later but it WILL happen barring amazing luck the likes of which never visit me. Now you can work your way south, and with an advance spy (though I caught up and passed him eventually, the spy was a great boon working the route out) you will be able to move with full crusader-speed to the sea with no hassle, and hit the sea to grab some merc galleys west of Constantinople, which is a traffic jam in and of itself that you also want to avoid. That first crusade is usually called by the Pope and will be Antioch or Jerusalem. I had so many Council missions I could not get my Dips to see the Pope and ally in time to call the mark and he called Antioch. Once I was in the boats, loaded with crusader fanatics and a big wooden cross on wheels which was kinda cool, it was 2 turns to land and there was not a single other faction in sight. Never lost a single unit to desertion, or even had a whiff of such an issue, never got hung up by cities or troops of other factions, and my forward lookout spy is creeping through Asia Minor gathering very valuable intelligence and should be in to help with the unrest in a couple turns. Next time I'll try to get some priests to send ahead but as the Danes it's hard to get many within 18 turns (I had 3-4 perhaps) and they were busy instilling faith in the homelands to keep Pagan Magician groupies from hanging out with my generals. A fianl caveat, having a priest travel with is nice if you can get to your boats quickly. If not, they slow you down drastically on land making those fanatics get restless much easier if you make a misstep. So I opted to build a church in town and produce local priests.

[Krackin]

I took a different take on the danes then most seem to have. Early game is about the same i suposs, take Hamburg and the 2 settlements to the north. But then i desided instead of heading into Europower-central, i would hit our good friends the Russians. For this i used lots of mercs but sacking towns was enough to keep the money flowing for now. By round 20 the russieans were no more and i had Lots of reble towns to take. Also sense noone was catholic my priest got tons of piety teaching them the right and true church(well, other then the few oddballs who got a -4 modifier for some reason)

Around round 25(as i was taking reble towns in asia) the French went and got excommunicated. Being best buds with the pope and all, i called a crusade on toulouse. I did this because it ment more french towns on the way. Also, sense the crusader units are so cheap to buy i had 2 armies to crush them.

Right after taht Poland attacked me. So i took yet another crusader army and attacked them back, making a genral line for franch.

By round 40 fFrance was done. (2 factions in 40 rounds WOOT! ) The pope was alil unhappy with me attacking Poland(i was down to about 4 from max by this point, almost got excomunicated myself) And ofcorse he have me the no attack law. But lucky for me(and very unluck for them) he excomunicated Poland and trust telling me i can attack again, which i did. Round 50 and Poland is no more.

As it stands now, I have the Europowers surounded working my way back in to the pope's good graces. Back up to normal(3 from max) now and looking forward to HRE's soon excomunication. I ahve 24 (maybe 25) settlements. 3 large armys (i'm trading out the high upkeep crusaders for cheaper units now) and just waiting for a crusade.

[PuppetMaster]

OKAY so I have played as Denmark on H/H and I love those crazy Norse scoundrels. Awesome troops, awesomely spelled names; pretty solid all around.

Not much to really say, but all you have to do is establish trade rights with all the northern kingdoms, take the Black Sea territories, and get ready to kill some Germans (and lots of them at that). Pump out norse swordsmen and feudal knights from hamburg, frankfurt, and magdeberg (which you should have taken the initiative on and taken already) and reign death onto the German territories to the south. From there, the choice is yours on whether to trounce the Polish (if you're not fighting them already) or abolish the Frenchies. I say Poles, but that likens an encounter with the Mongols, but whatever Danish armies can take Mongol armies to town assuming you use a good amount of norse war clerics/knights, you upgrade your troops, and you take out the 10 star general............lol

[rebel8303]

I played Denmark this way:

I rushed started by sending an army to the north taking Olso and Stocholm and another army for Hamburg and Stettin. I managed to take them all and also reach Riga and Helnsiki before the Russians did and capturing Antwerp first. So far so good. I had all the good intentions to obey the Pope as noone wants to have -20% public order in all of his cities. I was stuck between Catholics waiting for an excommunication...

But then Portugal (!) attacked me. That made no sense as Portugal was miles away but there was an army landed outside of Antwerp... I defeated that army but i had not built a fleet large enough to get the war in foreign territory. After a few turns the war was over anyway so I did not care.

I then got allied with French and Milan. Milan got excommunicated and I realised that I was sitting ducks doing nothing for many turns... And then Scotland declared war on me. It did not take long till I waged war upon the English as well and after a well I was the commander of the Baltic. And I could not use that at my advantage because I had not built enough port upgrades in my settlements and I was bankrupt... So I started building naval structure to increase trade income and to be able to support the current and even more armies.

When my fleets crossed the channel I realised that Portugal had expanded towards The western coasts of France and Ireland (So it made some sense why they attacked me earlier in the game). So as they were excommunicated I attacked them and got Dublin, Rennes, Pamblona and Anjers.

And then all hell broke loose. Poland attacked me and after a while their allies HRE attacked me as well. Here I have to mention that a cold war was waging between me and Russians on the Riga region. A great war went on till I conquered all of HRE and some Polish regions founding myself excommunicated. So one by one all the catholic nations declared war on me as Pope had called a crusade on Riga... Only France remained loyal to me but it had just 2 territories and no army at all...

I lost all the western France cities to Milan (my so called allies) and Spain but I managed to repel the invaders in Central Europe and in Riga. In Riga arrived 3 crusades, One from the Papal States, one from Spain and one from Hungary. I had fortified the city quite well so I repelled all the attacks. A fourth crusade arrived by Poland by I had allready defeated it once so it had not soldiers at all. All was nice until Russians declared war on me too... I had war with all the neighbouring nations...

Needless to say that each turn took half or full hour to play, I managed to systematically defeat all of them and arrive victoriously in Jerusalem and complete the campaign with nearly 65 regions under control

[Aemilianus the Younger]

I was dealing with the mongols down in jerusalem and they finally got defeated. i ended up allying with the turks.dont ask me how and why, the mongols were going to wipe us both out.
but anyways, after the mongols were destroyed, the very next turn the timurids show up near baghdad and whatnot,
my question is: is it ever possible for the mongols and the timurids to be on the map at the same time?
it seems that every time the mongols are defeated, the timurids show up like the next turn or atleast within five or so.
is this a feature or a bug? or is it just a coincidence?

[Maltz]

I removed the original content because I have found a much better way to start the Danish game on VH/VH. In the old version (sail straight for London, I own 3 cities at turn 18. In this version, I own 6 regions by turn 14.)

Turn 1: Sail 2 generals north with the spy and restart until the spy opens the gate. Buy a unit of crossbowmen merc just outside Oslo. Exploit the AI's dumbness to pick out the defending crossbowmen, and shoot down all the infantry. Very satisfying.

Reason: Oslo can be converted to a large town (3000 pop to start), giving 1500+ income right away.

Turn 3-5: March your 2 generals, spy, and the crossbow merc east to occupy Stockholm. This town is very small and needs a lot of turns to even grow to pop 2000 (I am currenty turn 30 and it still has a pop. of 1500, despite my low-tax benefit!).

In the meantime, build up the Brothel - Inn line in the capital and ship the assassins and spies west to the British Isles. Send another assassin to Caen.

The 2 generals and their army landed on British Isle at turn 10 or so. In my game the AI only had the England King in Nottingham - easy win and one less assassination to do. The next Turn I rushed for London, which was only defended by non-ranged units. My 3 spies there made sure the gate was open.

I declared war on England and attacked them twice. Luckily the Pope didn't give me the cease fire order.

Then I assassinated all Scotish generals. They were trying to "escape" from boat, but my longboat fleet took care of them.

Although I landed the British Isles about 4 turns later than my original game, the VH AI built up their towns significantly better for me to use (free port, mines, etc.)

With this setup I am now in turn 30 with 14 regions.
4 from Arhus - Oslo - Stockholm - Hamburg
7 from British Isles
3 from coastal France to link up with Hamburg.

Economy is great and I only have to worry about France and HRE. France has just been totally wiped out by assassins. Strangey HRE became a vassel of Vernice, but they were doing pretty well still (what the?).

[McDoogle]

Ok i take it back!

I wasn't in jerusalem last time witht he mongols! They just didnt stoped i killed over 17000 of them over 6 turns! and lost thousand myself...i fought them so savagely that they went north and conqouered modern turkey and they are begingint to back off, and just as i organised to fight them again and had tken four of their now weakened settlements, the Timmuirds show up...man the mongols got nothing on this lot!

four large armies of fedual knights and knights hospitlaer arent able to defeat a single army of theirs... i am trying to push them north towards the mongols and i did push 6 of their armies. then another four arrived in the south and they turned and hooked up...my 6 full stacks dnt stand a chance against their 10!

IM gonna have to give up several cities just to be able to weaken em enough..

prob give up the holy lands and come back with a larger army and destroy them once they lose their men to the mongols..

I never realized just how annoying they can be. the western pwoers are eaisly subdued, the only problem with them is not their armies but their cities etc are difficult to get them to submitt. the eastern armies are far more difficult. Well in my opionion...

altho in my current game for one reason or another several factions are dead not by being conquered but most of their family died...the french died by turn 20..that was a huge shock and i had one of their princesses in my family...i didnt not feel like fighting for their lands...i was focused on the holy lands...

btw does anyone know how to help stop ur armies constantly turning rebels and having to track the CUTE FLUFFY BUNNIES down.

I always have a few armies of fedual knights about to help defend myself and they keep turning to triator, i mean i can destroy them its just like so many turns of building and then...i have to kill the KIKKOMAN SOY SAUCE..

[McDoogle]

Ha ha fine.

But with that i didnt work, i conquered all of England scandinavia and Germany and half of poland with the same king, only him. he had i think 5 or 6 authortiy points and still was losing armies.

I took England because they got an english pope and they then went to war with me and i couldnt fight back without the threats and none of my priests which i had over 30 of were not getting promoted to cardinals. So i destoryed the English, and thent he french and the germans. so lets see what happens

[Krackin]

Sorry about the grammer in above post. Also i'm on H/H.

One last note, sense crusader units tend not to like killing other catholics i autocal battle with them. This seems to nullifie that.

By the way, has anyone noticed that holding toulious (sp?) andthe castle just north of it gives you free reign to kill off the Moors, Spain and Portigal(i know i spelled that wrong) whenever you want because they will be to weak to do anything from fighting eachother?

[eire1130]

The following is a black sea expansion plan / story:

In TW:M1 Denmark was my faction of choice, though I'm not sure why. I beat the game on England and then moved on to Denmark in this newest edition and here is how I did it.

My initial strategy revolved around good relations with the pope and a solid sea based trading empire. I also wanted a more historical expansion, so I chose to expand towards the black sea. After the Danes were removed from the Dane law, they expanded towards Siberia, indeed up until recently there were sizable portions of The Ukraine that spoke an old form of Swedish. I did the standard mercany hiring and made way towards Bruges with one Army and secured the north country with the other. I also grabbed Stettin. I then progressed into a short build period before being attacked by the poles. Once they were ex-com'd I I expanded towards their countries, keeping the Venetians and Hungarians as Allies. The Russians attacked as always and I took this opportunity to take Riga and later, finland and novogrod. I finished up the poles by taking Iasi. Expanding in this direction can be dangerous if the Mongols decide to go north, and they entered Sarkel, declared war on Russia and I knew they would be on me.

Since I didn't think the Russians could hold the northern fortress, I decided to take Vilnius. This gave me a line of three Fortresses all the way to the black sea, which held off the Mongols... although barely. I started to run into money problems.

In the mean time, I was financing my endeveurs through the taking of and sacking of german cities. This worked fine until I ran out of german cities to take.

Around this time I held Tunis, due to a crusade, which was helpful in instigating the Sicilians. They were perma exiled the entire game, after this point, giving me more financing options and expansion opportunities, which I didn't take many of.

When the plague hit I started to lose 20K / turn. Though, I only went red for two turns, I believe. Towards the end of the plague a crusade was called on Constantinople, around this time the Timurads invaded as well. The Hungarians held this space. I Expanded back west from Iasi and took out the Hungarians in three consecutive moves. They went from ally and five provinces to eliminated.

Fending off the Timurids proved to be the most difficult thing of all. I was playing a bugfixer mod (med2 lite) and as such, once my tower canons were upgraded, they too weren't so bad.

A crusade was called on Jereuselem (sp). I took this opportunity to take three provinces in the holy lands (the two just north of the Jer). The Venetians backstabbed me, the last three provinces I didn't own in central Europe and I finished the game with four or so turns remaining.

I ignored the new world.

This could have probably been done faster or more efficiently, though the big problem for me was fighting the stack after stack after stack of Mongols and then timurids. It turned out to be a giant garrisoning money sink, which I would have rather spent on the better money making provinces to the west, but such is life.

I play Hard/Hard

[oz_wwjd]

The Denmark Infantry good but not that good.In my recent campaign as the english,massed retinue longbowmen mowed most of them down before they got a chance to be a threat,and my armoured swordsmen and General's bodyguard units finished what was left of them.

[RoadKill]

I need a little help with Denamrk, which I have just started today we are in year 1119 and i have 8regions of Vilnius, Riga, Oslo, Hamburg, Stettin, Stockholm, Magdeburg, and Arhus. Big problem is all nearby rebel settelments have been taking and I'm basiclly compltly bourdered by russia, poland, HRE, and France. So I am compltly stuck no gaps to go through, no where to go, no where to expand, and I dont think starting a war with any of these factions are good ideas, please help me Thank you

[Moah]

I need a little help with Denamrk, which I have just started today we are in year 1119 and i have 8regions of Vilnius, Riga, Oslo, Hamburg, Stettin, Stockholm, Magdeburg, and Arhus. Big problem is all nearby rebel settelments have been taking and I'm basiclly compltly bourdered by russia, poland, HRE, and France. So I am compltly stuck no gaps to go through, no where to go, no where to expand, and I dont think starting a war with any of these factions are good ideas, please help me Thank you

8 Regions is a not bad starting point...Build up your economy and your military and then...


1) Do nothing. One of them will declare war on you soon enough.

2) Do nothing. One of them will declare war on one of the others. Then ally with one side and both of you attack the unlucky blighter in the middle.

3) Try and ally with 1 (or more) of them. Then either attack or provoke the other(s) into war. Careful of the Pope though - if he prefers the other side you may get warnings of excommunication.

4) Ally with the pope. Send a diplomat. Give him 200fl tribute for 100 turns or something. Your rating will go higher, then ally. Now...wait for someone to get excommunicated. Then declare a crusade on them or just attack. You won't lose any standing with the pope because they're heretics and the others may just help you even if not allied.

5) Just attack Poland. They're going to come for Vilnius anyway.

6) Just attack HRE. They're going to come for Hamburg anyway.

etc....