Scotts are weak... and here's why

[Sheogorath]

Awww, diddums get ums widdle fanny kicked?

Seriously, EVERY faction is weak if you dont use them right. The Scotts can OWN the English if used correctly, especially the AI English.
I almost always push the English off the islands very early in the game.

Like Ive said in the Scotts tactics topic:
Use your pikes to pin, then flank with your nobles. If you do this right, you will own every army that comes your way.
This is a problem with horse-archer based armies, but the Scotts are far enough away that they dont have to worry about that.

[CountMRVHS]

I'm trying H/VH Scots, no patch, with Carl's problem fixer. As usual in the British isles, I wish the AI factions were a bit more aggressive. It's around turn 50 and the English haven't even made an attempt on York or Caernarvon. I've been wanting to play a defensive game against the English, so I only have Edinburgh, Inverness, and Oslo. Turtling makes the Scots more interesting as they're quite poor; but still, that's no excuse for the English to leave their backdoor open. I'm curious about other people who claim they have to pull out all the stops to beat the English. How did the war start? What provinces do you own? It seems the English campaign AI is just too passive to be any kind of threat. I'll give it a few more decades, but...

[tsu33]

no faction is weak in a good player's hand, scotland has her own strength and weakness. They have some excellent early infantry which will plow through all the spear militia/sergeant spearmen the AI throw at you early in game. A mediocre archer unit and the same knight all the other catholic gets at the beginning. If you play right u can build a stable economy base and conquer the rest of the world. With that being said scotland really dont have much good "elite" units later on. no offensive infantry, no "uber" cavalry, no HA, no long range missile troop or advance gunpowder units. Their best unit, the noble pikemen is only good at holding the other unit in place, and they tent to act more like swordsment than pikemen , a good calvary commander can easily flank them due to the fact most nations has better calvary than scotland; not to mention 2H offensive infantry just mow through the nobles with the 2H bug fix applied.

[zstajerski]

The scottish rule...

You have the best spears in the game plus fanatical infantry, and what consernes the cavalry:
every catholic faction can have hospitaler knights or any other religious knight order, and they all kick ass

And for eaven my surprise (since it is true that the english army is more well rounded and if you ask me "hardcore") in almoast every secund game i play (VH/VH) they drive the english away from the isles

edit:
not to mention the highland noble archers, they can stand their ground eaven against yeoman archers only with retinue longbowmen or Sherwood archers can you clearly defeat them...

[Carl]

All right, I'm an avid infantry fan, and thus love Scots.

First I'll address a point raised in a post just above this: If you apply a 2-Hander Fix you HAVE to make sure the Highland Noble are altered to fit the new 2-Hander balance, they where balanced to be competitive, (in relation to their price), with the bugged 2-handers and the shield bug in place. Fixing either of those requires a large power up of Highland Nobles to keep them in the same place in relation to other units in the other armies army. DEK will still win, but it will be a very close cut thing, AND the Highland Nobles are available a full 3 tiers earlier.


Onto The rest of it.

Another misconception is that the pikes are only good for pinning. Actually they are excellent fighters even without a Pike Fix if you put the micromanagement in. Do that and they will kill ANYTHING you put in front of them. The cheapest Scottish Pikes are Scots Pike Militia. They turn up a full 3 Tiers earlier than ordinary Pike Militia do in other armies and are identical in everything except name and models. Finally, Heavy Pike Militia and Noble Pikemen both have 8 defense vs. missiles, this is FAR more than any other pike, and partially eliminates the normal vulnerability of pikes to Missiles.


Highlanders are another excellent unit, effectively a slightly lower attack and much lower deference version of VHI. Not the bee's knees as it where, but still very impressive considering their tech level. Their sadly isn't a comparable unit in any other army. But they are loosely equivalent to some of the weaker 2-Handers that become available to some other factions at the 3rd or 4th tech level.

Next up is their archers. Are they especially good shooter? No. But thats because they aren't really archers at all, their basically a lower attack higher defense version of highlanders with the added advantage that they have a bow. Stop thinking of them as archers, and start thinking of them as defensive S&S infantry with AP and you are thinking of them in the right way.

Lastly, they actually have excellent heavy Cav for what they need. The DON'T NEED good Cav, they can get away with using their weaker Cav to pine the enemy in place and disrupt their charges whilst the Spear Militia/Highlanders move in. Border Horse are the best non-Muslim Light Cav and are excellent for attacking enemy archers and chasing down Cav that tries to run from your pinning Cav. If you have Light Cav as fast as Border Horse you simply don't need anything better than Mailed Knights 95% of the time.

edit:
not to mention the highland noble archers, they can stand their ground eaven against yeoman archers only with retinue longbowmen or Sherwood archers can you clearly defeat them...

Not to mention that they can outfight them in melee. In fact the only better composite Archer is the best russian one (Dismounted Dovor I think).

[Forward Observer]

It's a well known fact why the Scots wear kilts

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Sheep can hear zippers

[dacdac]

The Scots can be great if you use the AI stupidity and the English agressiveness to your advantage.
As far as troop use, use what Carl said^. I will give you tips based on my personal experiences.
They are going to send all of their troops to either the mainland, or to take the castle between you and them.
first turn, build a ship.
2nd turn, get on it, go south.
3rd turn, invade the wealy defended London from the south. Now you have them surrounded and cut off from the mainland.
After wiping them out, i usually try to re-establish relations with the pope, and go east above Denmark to take the rebels there.
In all of the games i have played, Milan gets ex communicated, use that to your advantage, and take the borders of France from the Milanese.
To get bonus money, declare a crusade on the milanese on a town with one of your armies within reach of it and take it. That should give you good enough standing with the Popeman.

Next, wait.
Eventually, France or HRE will attack you.
If France, then invade southern france from Milan, and once their troops are diverted their, come through the north from England and take Paris from behind, just try not to be excommunicated.
If HRE, build up your defense and let them assault you. Use troops from England and Norway to strike down through Denmark and Poland. Secure the Spanish and eastern borders and rebuild. Everything from Iverness, London, Paris, and Bolonge can be poorly defended as they are in the middle of your empire.

[hellblazer]

First I'll address a point raised in a post just above this: If you apply a 2-Hander Fix you HAVE to make sure the Highland Noble are altered to fit the new 2-Hander balance, they where balanced to be competitive, (in relation to their price), with the bugged 2-handers and the shield bug in place. Fixing either of those requires a large power up of Highland Nobles to keep them in the same place in relation to other units in the other armies army. DEK will still win, but it will be a very close cut thing, AND the Highland Nobles are available a full 3 tiers earlier..

What do you suggest their values be changed to for single player? I am new to the game. I think that an expertly trained greatsword weilder should beat a polearm weilder like the british dfk. Granted the brit has better armor so I guess it means they should be roughly equal.

[PrestigeX]

Definantly it depends on what type of a general you are. I can easily see how the scottish faction has an army that isn't the best rounded. but i found them to be very reliable, pike units are my favourite, and the border horse are very fast and decent light cav. What i do for field battle is recruit a bunch of peasant archers cuz they are cheap, but with 5 units of them, they are a pest. I deploy them just to shoot up the enemy while in loose formation, doesn't relaly matter if they are getting whooped ny enemy archers because the idea is to draw out the enemy closer to my own troops. Usually all u have to do is get the enemy all tied up with ur pikemen, and send the border horse or highlanders to flank.

[pike master]

i have no trouble winning with the scots.

your border horse can outrun most horse archers and nerf most cavalry 1on 1

pikes can be used in any manner of ways to give victory against melee units.

dismounted fuedal knights will make excellent heavy infantry

even though the noble archers dont have long range missiles their arrows have good damage points.