Denmark

[Myth]

VH/VH huge unit stacks (dzidek you are playing on small?)

I like the Danes, just tried them out yesterday. I love difficult starts with one city. The main disadvantage of the HRE for me is that you get so many family members and cities that it feels more like early midgame than true early game. Anyway here are some things I did well and some I messed up on my first try:

1. Expansion - Get all your units in the heir, go take the castle to the south before the Germans can go there from their capital city. From there, proceed east and take all the cities that are rebel. USE THE SIEGE TRICK IF YOU LACK MOVEMENT SPEED. If you are only one square too short to start sieging, take your general and send him to declare siege and then merge your army with him. Now everyone is siegeing (not sitting there right next to the city but you can't click because you have no movement left). Two things I could have done better (and I will tonight)

- Continue expanding into the Russian rebel provinces. Take every port town that has trade routs in the Baltic sea. Because on VH/VH eventually your standing with the other nations will fall, it is imperative that you establish strong sea trade with your own cities.

- Take the town and castle in Scandianavia ASAP with your faction leader. I waited too long.

2. Establish diplomacy - this is a common trick use don VH/VH. I took my Princess and sailed her off to England. I married her off to Rufus, took the English princess for my own lad, alliance, trade and map info for 2000 florins if i remember correctly. Remember, each additional ally you get makes you more valuable to ally with, so the second alliance you can sell for 2600, the third for about 3000 and the fourth can go to 4500 or more, depending on which countries you have as allies already. My mistakes:

Did not make additional diplomats fast enough. As England the minute you ally with the HRE, France and some Italian faction the Pope already loves you. But as the Danes I could not get my papal rating past 4 stars using this. So the solution is to hire more diplomats, ally with EVERYONE you can and go to the pope ASAP. Get an alliance with him no matter what! You need high papal rating to manipulate the first Crusade!

3. As a Catholic nation you can boom your economy using crusades. As I mentioned before, I did not do this fast enoguh but sooner or later the Pope gets bored and declares one on Jerusalem. ALWAYS send your full stack there. If you can and have the necessary starting army, take your faction leader there as well. Along the way take every turkish settlement you can, loot it, tear every building down and give it to the Pope or let it rebel. Note: In my game the pope managed to hold Iconium, Acre, Antioch and Jerusalem even as I had burned them down. Not sure If the Papal States are hardcoded "immune" to rebellions a-la SPQR from RTW?

So with the crusade you get the benefit of no upkeep for a dozen turns or more + 5 or 6 major towns that are looted and plundered along the way + command stars and chiv for your army.

4. Don't go for racial purity in your family tree: Even though I married my boy on turn 2, my heir did not come of age until the HRE had started attacking me already due to the VH dropping of standing with other nations. As such, it was foolish of me to turn marriage proposals and adoptions. You can affoard to not take in filthy peasants in your royal bloodline as England, France or HRE, but the Danes will suffer greatly if you do this. I also had the unfortunate luck to have my first two children be girls (which sucked badly). Perhaps what you can do is wait until your heir has kids. If the first two are boys you can maybe not take in extras ,but if they are girls you pretty much have to.

5. Development: remember, the land clearance line of buildings give both income AND pop bonus. Build them everywhere ASAP. Denmark and it's surrounding provinces are well populated but have two huts and an outhouse for infrastructure! This puts you behind for the first part of the game, compared to the awesome tech of Byzantium, the Italian cities and their stupidly good buildings, England, France and the mighty mighty HRE. My priorities are:

Roads > Fields > Ports > Traders > City Halls . Later on when you get rich enough you can affoard to bump up the City Halls as they give pop bonus as well. Your cities are surprisintly good when it comes to military. Your militia spears are decent, better than the English, Russian, Polish etc. ones. You have militia crossbows who are always awesome to have for defense. Also, every town with an Abbey has Norse War Clerics and those guys are really good! For the castle line, go for Axemen. Before them, the Dism. Huskarls are great - AP, high attack, medium defense. They will plow trough most things (the truth is I took everything with autocalc, your early armies rarely take more than 50-100 casualties. I waste time leading armies when it matters).

6. Trade - you have the advantage of very rich resources in your territories. Scandinavia and Northern Europe are all littered with them. Make merchants and establish a monopoly! Also, block land access to Scandinavia with one longboat to prevent the greedy AI merchants from taking your stuff. For some reason last night I could not seize enemy assets even with a 30% chance of success!


edit: On units - make use of your dism. Huscarls and Huscarls. Especially your Huscarls. By the time others start showing up on the battlefield with Mailed Knights you have these bad boys. Cavalry with AP = dead enemy Cavalry and a disemboweled enemy general. Always seek the cav fight if you have 3-4 units of Huscarls. On the melee line, untill the enmy starts getting VHI or Dism. EKs your guys rule supreme, because all your infantry has AP. And AP=dead spear infantry and dead DFKs.