Britannia Campaign: Wales

[Remember, your goal is to capture this s]

It looks like there is supposed to be a series of events (The Welsh Uprising) that trigger when you start taking the English settlements that border your starting cities, but I can't seem to get them to happen. Is there something messed up in the campaign_script that is preventing them from triggering?

[IvarrWolfsong]

Just a bit of unit and tactical info...

Obviously, Wales is a Longbow & Spear nation. The fact that your main infantry is made up of spearman makes the Stake ability a little redundant; I almost never use it (more on this later). You also have some agile light cavalry units that work well with the spear bow combo.

This is what I have had the most luck with...

line of longbows then a line of spears then a few axe/sword units. Cavalry is basically a general and a few light cav.

1) longbows kill anything at range especially enemy cav, light cav keeps enemy missiles off balance, spears kill enemy cav that come near your archers. Keep skirmish off and protect your archers manually, pulling them back just before the melee begins.

2) infantry fight a linear battle. you have great spearmen and they will last a good while against swordsmen/axemen. However, they will eventually lose if left fighting on equal terms. This why we will do two fiendishly clever things... 1. we will move our archers to the flanks facing in 2. we will use our nimble, fast cavalry to charge the rear of the engaged enemy (this why I don't use stakes... they prevent a rear charge). We now have them in Ivarr's Magical Welsh Faerie Box of Death (IMWFBoD for short) with our spear inf as the bottom, longbows on the sides and light inf as the top.

3)As the enemies route, make sure you turn fire at will off on the bowmen or they will cause huge friendly fire deaths.

The key here is to paper-rock-scissor your way to regional domination.
DO NOT -
-Get in a fair longbow shootout... sick them light horseys on the enemy bowmen
-Fight knights with your cavalry... use your agility and speed to drag the knights across the longbow field of fire or close to the spearmen for a whole lot of pointy death.
-leave your spearmen alone against axe/sword/bill infantry. either crush them from the rear or shoot them up from the sides or BOTH (in the amazing and astounding IMWFBoD)!
-Forget that your general is uber heavy cav. If you see an oppurtunity to flatten something, do it.

Things can get complicated when the enemy has a lot of siege. I typically try to get some action going off to one side to get the enemy forces strung out while my cav circles to attack the siege in the rear.

[Aetius22]

I have been playing this campaign for a while now. I managed to break the English, using a blietzkrieg strategy with their king in charge.

The problem I have is that the British only made one attempt to recapture their lands. Ever since they have placed large amounts of troops in the forts. I just sidestep them and grap their cities/castles.

I noticed that as long as the major culture in a conquered city is English you will be able to build English Billmen and Mailed Knights depending on buildings available. I haven't conquered a major castle such as Nothingham yet, but I am wondering how many of the English troops I will be able to build (they are more like mercenaries). I thought it was weird that such a major feature wasn't mentioned in the main manual.

[TheLastPrivate]

u get to build english mailed knight, heavy/norma billmen, english spearmen(just like merc ones) and thats what i've seen so far.

Anyone encounter baron's alliance disappearing with the english faction, both going reble at the same time for no truly appearant reason?

[Gallicflair]

The problem I have is that the British only made one attempt to recapture their lands. Ever since they have placed large amounts of troops in the forts. I just sidestep them and grap their cities/castles.

I had this sproblem too. I finished two Brittania campaigns, one as Wales, one as Ireland and through the whole of both campaigns the AI seemed predisposed to sit around with its stacks, often in castles. Infact, thinking upon it, I don't recall the AI actually attacking one of my armies in the open field on any occasion, though I do recall its stacks besieging the miniscule garrisons I ofen left in forts. This was on H/H and VH/VH.

[Aetius22]

Mine was m/m. So you answered my question about higher difficulties. I see this as a huge flaw. Granted if the English had thrown their full might at me I might have lost, but they didn't even make an attempt. Edward returned to find the Baron's Alliance holding London, the AI English then used Edawrd to recapture London, it hasn't made any further moves.

I believe this is a flaw on the AI. Perhaps there will be a future patch to fix these issues.

[Dutch_guy]

Hmm I seem to recall there being several 'types' of AI: every faction is accorded a particular 'personality', which defines how it goes about on the campaign map*. For instance, the Danes would always greatly expand in vanilla MIITW, and the HRE would die off - on average - between 20 - 40 turns.

In my games the English have been rather aggressive. Even landing troops under Edward in Ireland, to take back long lost lands. Finishing off the BA they never did, although they did come close to it on a couple of occasions. (on m/m difficulty)

* at least this was the case in RomeTW.

[aimlesswanderer]

I started a H/H campaign as the Welsh expecting a real struggle, but within 20 turns I had more provinces than the English and their forces were scattered all around the place getting picked off. The only large battle happened when Edward returned with his stack from the Crusade at about turn 27. At turn 30 they are down to 3 provinces along the east including London, and the Baron's Alliance has 2, both of which I have under siege and are about to fall. My forces were extremely strung out, but the AI never managed to get itself organised enough to exploit it....

Rather stupidly, the English finally managed to bribe one of my settlements right next to Wales and cut off from any of theirs, and it went straight to being the Baron's Alliance first province and capital.... derr.

The spearmen and the archers are just about all you need to grind up the English armies, and I haven't even gotten the heaviest spearmen yet, or any better cavalry.