Teutonic Campaign: Denmark

[frogbeastegg]

This topic is for the Danish faction in Kingdoms expansion's Teutonic campaign.

[Doug-Thompson]

Money is tight in the opening moves of the Dane campaign in Kingdoms, and the Holy Roman Empire is a real nuisance.

The strategy goal is very obvious. Holding Hamburg and whatever other north German provinces your council pays you to take is the first and foremost priority. You also want to take over Scandinavia — fast and on the cheap. "Cheap" and "fast" don't normally go together, so it's a nice balancing act.

Your strengths are dismounted Huscarls from castles and Norse War Clerics from your capital. Huscarls are pricey but have very low maintenance costs. War Clerics are pricey and the supply of them is very limited.

The land route from your capital to North Germany takes a wide bend to the west, to Jutland in Denmark. It's better to keep a decent fleet to shuttle war clerics to your main army on a North German coast. Huscarls can be recruited at Hamburg.

The land route to Scandinavia from your capital is much more direct.

Crippling the Holy Roman Empire in a blitz might be possible, but I haven't found the way yet.

In hindsight, I recommend wiping out Norway first. If possible, I'd skip everything else and grab the castle near the present-day location of Oslo ASAP. After that, the Norwegians are crippled with one province far to the west, at the southern tip of Norway.

So buyer beware: I haven't tried this yet. If I had my campaign to do over again, though, I'd capture that castle near Oslo, get ready to fight in north Germany and conquer the rest of Scandinavia with troops raised in Scandinavia. The money and a few units of war clerics given to you for completing missions and capturing rebel settlements in Scandinavia can make a lot of difference in north Germany. I was awarded four war clerics for completing one mission, and they single-handedly arrived by ship and relieved a siege while my main German army was taking another city.

Another thing: Scandinavia is rich in trading resources, so recruiting merchants pays off rather quickly.

[llewellyn]

denmark is an easy faction to win with, first and foremost upgrade your castles and fill up the unit quenes. then take your starting armies and head into scandinavia with them, quickly so you can get the kalmar union. the norweigan king must die to aqquire the union, after you have aqquired the union make a north baltic run all the way to polish settlements, have one full stack head directly south from hamburg conquering everything to the end of the southern part of the map.
then with your remaing forces take the HRE capital and consolidate the rest of there lands. next you can either
A. teutonic war
B. polish war
i would advise a teutonic war as you do not want to ritterbruder or halbbruder, and by taking them out you will aqquire the haneastic league.
now you have an empire with the poles in the middle. consolidate and fend off any raids, train 5 full stacks and blitz the poles with 3 of them and send the other 2 to keep the mongols occupied. by now you control most of the map and have more money then you know what to do with. train all your elite units and head north pushing thru lithuania and novogrod

[Dead Guy]

In the opening moves I chose to use small cavalry armies to lay siege to the swedish towns, one goes for kalmar and later on Visby which is a bit trickier. The other goes Goteborg and then Uppsala via skara. Using family members and some initial War Clerics it's completely possible to rout the rebels as they sally forth with bareable losses and move on, moving up peasants from halmstad and hassleholm to garrison goteborg and kalmar. You'll be in the red for a bunch of turns early on but you can hold out with your initial armies.

Meanwhile, take your initial troops from Narva with perhaps some supporters from Reval and ship them to Abo. The garrison in Abo is strong, but can be taken out when they sally with just your starting troops. Novgorod can be a threat if you do this, but they usually go for an alliance early on. Get Norse archers in Narva as soon as you can if a conflict with Novgorod arises, they kick butt against missile cavalry and can beat spearmen in melée most of the time. Also they make an excellent garrison.

In germany, go for Stralsund, Uelzen is useless and incites the krauts to attack you. Stralsund usually does too but is a better settlement. You'll soon be figting off pretty capable german armies. I used one large army to fight them off one by one. When the opportunity arises it's possible to take Stettin or Magdeburg, eventually you can press on to Prague which is a kick-ass settlement to own and use as a recruitment/retraining base. You can get serpentines pretty quickly from it too, and it usually has a swordsmiths guild and sometimes good stables and barracks.

I chose to completely ignore the Norwegians until I had to kill their King which was hiding in Agder by himself, an assault made short work of him and the union was formed in turn 20 or as close as makes no difference.

After that I built my forces and eventually attacked Poland and Novgorod when my assets had stabilised. Goteborg, Uppsala, Arhus and Abo will all make great trading cities, I converted Akershus, the norwegian castle, to a city as well as it's completely unthreatened and serves better to generate income than troops in the remote location.

Good luck!

[TKaz84]

In germany, go for Stralsund, Uelzen is useless and incites the krauts to attack you. Stralsund usually does too but is a better settlement.

While I agree that Uelzen won't produce much in terms of cash, the Germans are going to attack you anyway, and Uelzen is usually one of the first missions you will receive. I would recommend taking it and turning it into a castle: not only can you use it as a secondary production center against the HRE but because of the terrain in the area (Uelzen is built upon a hill) any attackers have to navigate two winding pathways: one to get to the walls and the other to get to the castle. Thus the Germans are likely to simply lay siege to it, giving you time to bring in your War Clerics and kick their a$#.

[SirNoobsALot]

I can't seem to be able to trigger the Kalmar Union. I've captured (and held) Visby, Kalmar, Goteborg, Uppsala and Abo. Then when I assassinate the Norwegian King (Haakon Haakonsson), either Norway is destroyed or whoever the heir he adopted gets to be King. Am I missing something here? Please help!

[McDoogle]

hey i have conquered every city in scandinavia! ever single one and several islands! i have taken every city that the objectives page talks about why havent i gotten the allaince thing?


what are the citties u guys conquered in order to start the change?

[Dead Guy]

You can't eliminate Norway, or you won't be able to form the Kalmar Union. You need Abo, Visby, Kalmar, Hamburg and Arhus I think... Maybe Narva too? I've always taken everything in scandinavia but Akershus when I get it.

[doombringer]

hav formed kalmarr union, but hav no new units


WTH?

[A Norseman]

I know.. It sucks..
Seriusly lead you to question ca and how they can miss such a major error.
I was looking forward to command armies of my countrymen.. No, wait? Gotland footmen? gotland is in sweden.. Sami axemen? the Sami is a compleatly useless people to the north of scandinavia.. so realy no new norwegian units..

[McDoogle]

So how does it work if you dont destory norway? i mean i conqouered particualry everything else but for them..

and by the by i just fended off 1200 german sergents with 120 dismounted huscrals and a general unit! Woot Woot!

[Bulawayo]

I know.. It sucks..
Seriusly lead you to question ca and how they can miss such a major error.
I was looking forward to command armies of my countrymen.. No, wait? Gotland footmen? gotland is in sweden.. Sami axemen? the Sami is a compleatly useless people to the north of scandinavia.. so realy no new norwegian units..

Hey man, you can't write that in a public forum like this. I know it's a fact that many Norwegians, Swedes and Finns have that opinion about Samis, but it shouldn't be posted here. I don't believe it would be acceptable even in the backroom

[PuppetMaster]

lol, so i guess norway needs to stay alive for the kalmar union?

that sucks, i eliminated them in like turn 10

o well, haha

[Dead Guy]

Yup yup... there's a thread in the Citadel on how to work around the glitch where you don't get the kalmar union specific units I think, and one at twcenter too. And yeah it's kind of a shame they didn't bother to give Norway any units of their own, but then again maybe scandinavia was pretty homogenous at that time, as it sort of is now :p

[LøLç@t]

Yup yup... there's a thread in the Citadel on how to work around the glitch where you don't get the kalmar union specific units I think, and one at twcenter too. And yeah it's kind of a shame they didn't bother to give Norway any units of their own, but then again maybe scandinavia was pretty homogenous at that time, as it sort of is now :p

Really? Could I get a link to that?

[O'Hea]

About 25 turns into my first Denmark campaign, managed to wreck the whole Kalmar thing by killing all of Norway's family members in a battle outside Akershus, but otherwise doing well for myself.

Also, I'm thinking that Denmark isn't exactly set up for war with the HRE, since they give you one of, maybe THE single most defensible border in all of Total War with the two crossings just outside Hamburg. Your turf in Livonia, not so much.