Denmark

[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.

[yalpe]

I agree with lalartu. Don't get excom. and focuson taking 5-6 rebel towns (including Scandinavia) and then build up a strong econ. Meanwhile, ensure security with diplomacy. This will allow you to pump military units and upgrade garisons. Soon your forces will be really strong and you should start conquering whoever gets excom-ed first. In my case it was Poland. I took 2 towns from them and signed a truce for Riga. Meanwhile, Venice was overextending itself against the HRE, so I proposed them an alliance for Prague. Two towns for free! Now I started bashing catholics at Frankfurt for the first time.

Oh, btw, take Stettin!!! The pope will send you a few missions to raise catholism there. Your standings will increase by 1 or 2 + after this since its an easy mission.

[Ripipip]

Okey, i got a little problem here. I know it is a big chance that it will be very noobish but i really need help. I won one short campaign as the England and then i thought i could move over to play Denmark but i still can´t play anyone else than those first five factions. Then i started to read this forum and tried to change it in the descr.strat file but it keeps saying that i can´t change anything in the file and that it is "protected". So, what can i do? :P

[frogbeastegg]

Right click on the file you need to edit, choose "properties" from the menu. At the bottom is a set of tick box options, including one called "read only". Uncheck that, and you will be able to save changes to the file.

[McDoogle]

Well i just did a campagin as the english out of boredom, and i killed a force of 1900 danes hascruls and norse axemen with 700 feduel knights, so i am skepctical of the danes

However the viking thing sounds more fun then tackling germany and poland right up.

in the orginal medieval i used to take norway sweden then the british ilses, the parts of western russia, then tok all the northern mose provinces of europe...i think i might relive that... and the danes are the only faction with the scots who really have different units..

england and france have the same tech tree, only diff cavarly..and thats crap in my opionion..