Teutonic Campaign: Lithuania

[frogbeastegg]

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

[Mithras]

initial attempt seems to show trying to play from a defensive strategy is suicide. The Teutons just muscle there way into your cities through there insanely heavy infantry. Hit there northern territories hard and fast. Avoid fighting them on equal grounds and use your mobility flexibility to wear them down. Cash is in short supply so churn out merchants. The duke is a military genius so should be put to good use form and allience with Novgerod asap and establish trade with Neutral nations .

The Pagan temple system is unique and quite effective, each tier on the temples allow access for military units of either infantry tactical infantry or cavalry, this makes cities more self reliant on troops for their own defence. I can't honestly say the differance Christnization makes becouse I havnt tried it yet Personally I'm temped to avoide it since it seems to reduce the faction flavour but chivilric knights and bigger cities do appeal....

[IvarrWolfsong]

Playing as Lithuania can be very challenging. However, you have some very good assests and as long as you play to them, you can be very successful.

First off, Lithuania is a Horse Archer (and Jav Cav) nation. If you don't like the fun, high speed pace and headaches of HA, Lithuania is a bad choice for you. Expect lots of micro-managing and looooooong battles. Your HAs arent the best in the game (although you do get a plus sized 60 man HA unit) and the Teutonic Knights (TKs) have a huge amount of armor. When going stack for stack, I suggest you bring a snack.

Ok now off to the campaign...

1) You will initially be fighting the TKs and, soon after, Poland. Later on, the Mongols will attack you from the south. So much hate! Surely, you say, some one must love the Lithuanians and their lively folk dances! And some one does... Novgorod (Russia). Get an alliance with them ASAP and try to get trade rights with the Danes, the Mongols, HRE and Poland.

2) The overall strategy that I think works best is to use HA based cavalry armies in the west to harass and stall the TKs while you expand east and north with siege and infantry armies. This allows you to secure your northern border with the sea and your eastern border with your Novgorod brothers while bleeding the Teutons.

This "bleeding" should be done prudently by attacking small forces, releavind sieges, attacking poorly garrisoned towns, etc. Try to kill as many enemies as possible with as few loses as possible so you can concentrate your resources to the east.

Also understand that you will probably lose a settlement or two in the west.

Once you have the TKs eliminated to the east, I suggest trying to get the Danes and the Russians to be at war with each other. I was able to do this by attacking a Danish stack when a Russian army was next to them. My noble ally was now at war with Denmark who they (but not I ) share a border with. The Novgorod hordes can now invade those viking strongholds and leave me alone.

Now you need to focus either on the Mongols to the south, hopefully with the help of the Russians, or get ready for a the main event against the Poles/TKs.

There is no "secret" to taking the TKs castles and cities. Their infantry is more than a match for yours so expect a lot of losses. I usually try to outnumber them if I need to assualt a settlement, and if they have a good force in there, starve them as long as you can.

Thats it for now... as I learn more I will post again.

[derfinsterling]

I wiped out the TK fairly quickly, playing on H/H. I lost only a single settlement to them which I later re-conquered.

The basic strategy is to attack their rear, when they march their armies into your lands. I managed to take their citadel with only a handful of troops since they left it almost vacant. The AI charged out of the fortress on its turn and the spearman and infantry were no match for my archers and horse archers.

You need to move fast on their territory, attacking their castle in the North and taking Königsberg.
In my game, the order managed only to create one full stack and yes, I had nothing to counter with. A couple of battles of attrition later, their numbers had dwindled sufficiently.

I mostly built the places of worship that give you Lettish crossbowmen. They caused the order a lot of headache ;-)

[Slaists]

2) The overall strategy that I think works best is to use HA based cavalry armies in the west to harass and stall the TKs while you expand east and north with siege and infantry armies. This allows you to secure your northern border with the sea and your eastern border with your Novgorod brothers while bleeding the Teutons.

novgorod brothers, huh? that seems quite inaccurate (the way they implemented it in the game). lithuania and novgorod were enemies at the time and lithuania ended up occupying a huge chunk of russian/ukrainian lands for quite a few centuries.

the relationship with bielorussians was more vague. bielorussians comprised demographic majority in the enlarged grand dutchy of lithuania and bielorussian was used as the state language even thogh the rulingh dynasties were ethnically lithuanian.

[IvarrWolfsong]

Read the whole post.

[bigcow]

I'm at turn 50ish for Lut at VH/VH, it has been a blast playing them. Eliminated TKs and just cake walk with my stacks of HAs with gold vets, got a question tho, should I convert to my religion or stay at Pagan? If I click yes to convert, will I be able to change it back to Pagan later on? thx