Brittania

[HornetThrower]

How in the name of Jesus are you meant to succeed at this? I always try to play as Ireland or Wales but but get my a** handed to me everytime. I don't really want to try England as they might be too easy. Scotland and Norway don't interest me.

Tips for Wales/Ireland much appriciated.

[The Sundance Kid]

As Ireland, you need to expel England from the island as quickly as possible. If they stay there too long, they a) have a foothold and b) have the potential for the Barons Alliance to spawn, meaning you now have two enemies on your island. I then suggest taking Castle Town, as the Norwegians are too busy with the Scots to do anything about you for the present. This also gives you a nice stepping-stone into Wales and England.

Seeing as you're already at war with England, the best possible strategy after securing Ireland would probably then be to hit Lancaster, a nice big fortress with which you can train decent armies to spread across England. Avoid the populous south for the moment -- hit the north, up to the Scottish border, who will also be raiding English lands, or distracting English armies. Don't antagonise the Scots just yet, but keep a fairly decent army up there, in case they get cocky.

Once you've taken the north, spread southwards and cut Wales off so you've surrounded them. Then, once you've dealt with the weakened English, hit Wales from every side until its yours. Then its a simple matter of pressing into Scotland and defeating whoever won the Scottish-Norwegian war

[Insurgent]

For Wales you should strike the three border towns (cardiff, Shrewsbury, Chester) as soon as possible and try and capture them with minimal losses through good use of your archers and missile troops. With these three towns captured you should be able to quickly build up and then blitz England with Llywelyn and some additional armies. When the Baron's alliance emerge make an alliance with them and boot the English from Britain. Once that's done attack and capture Castle town and send your main armies up into Scotland. Once you own Britain make huge armies and attack Ireland with a lot of stacks and there you go- you own the British Isles!

[malcolm mcdowell]

Seeing as you're already at war with England, the best possible strategy after securing Ireland would probably then be to hit Lancaster, a nice big fortress with which you can train decent armies to spread across England. Avoid the populous south for the moment -- hit the north, up to the Scottish border, who will also be raiding English lands, or distracting English armies. Don't antagonise the Scots just yet, but keep a fairly decent army up there, in case they get cocky

diving in straight away to mid-england can be risky, as i found out (i didnt suppport enough and got royally creamed by: barons, scotland, england and wales all at once). i would suggest going in via the south - there shouldnt be a whole load of english troops around, and if you have enough money and troops you can easily seize a good sized chunk, hold it and build it up to standard. also, by working your way up from the south you never need to worry about having another frontier. i would take cornwall, then extend slowly out eastwards (going slightly north at the same time). although this will give you a long front, you can take strongholds (+ london) fairly quickly. if you are powerful enough, send a few stacks into wales on the way past, to avoid another front potentially opening behind you. then slowly just roll up the country.

[Harry Lime]

Moved to Strategies and battle planning

[Mr Harold]

Hello there

My favourite faction is Ireland, and I find that the best strategy is to:

A) Kick England out of your island immeadiatly - use spys and assassins to make them rebel also
B) Let your economy grow - No one EVER attacks the island, and all your objective provinces are there.
C) Get a couple of decent sized stacks, and head to Launston , and keep working your way east until you have all of southern most England.
D) By now, England will usually be depleting rapidly, so make an alliance with whoever is at war with them - Wales is usually Ideal
E) Once youve delt with England, rid yourself of the Welsh. This way you will have half of the mainland and Ireland.
F) Work your way north to Scotland and eventually the Norweigans if theyre still there.

This strategy varies once you go to the mainland because unless your using toggle_fow you wont know whos got the biggest foothold.

Remember, if your insurtion on the mainland ever backfires, just retreat to Ireland, and youll be safe there. In my experience, Ireland itself is very very rarely attacked.

Hope this helps

XKillerX

[HornetThrower]

Hello there

My favourite faction is Ireland, and I find that the best strategy is to:

A) Kick England out of your island immeadiatly - use spys and assassins to make them rebel also
B) Let your economy grow - No one EVER attacks the island, and all your objective provinces are there.
C) Get a couple of decent sized stacks, and head to Launston , and keep working your way east until you have all of southern most England.
D) By now, England will usually be depleting rapidly, so make an alliance with whoever is at war with them - Wales is usually Ideal
E) Once youve delt with England, rid yourself of the Welsh. This way you will have half of the mainland and Ireland.
F) Work your way north to Scotland and eventually the Norweigans if theyre still there.

This strategy varies once you go to the mainland because unless your using toggle_fow you wont know whos got the biggest foothold.

Remember, if your insurtion on the mainland ever backfires, just retreat to Ireland, and youll be safe there. In my experience, Ireland itself is very very rarely attacked.

Hope this helps

XKillerX

I just captured all of Ireland finally by turn 12! Dublin always seems to rebel, and this was my final settlement. I started by taking Derry with King Brian, then the west castle with a motley-crew army. Then, I defeated all of England's army in a big field battle with my king and prince. When they were dead, Trim was a pushover! Dublin fell to me on the same turn, too. As you say, I'll now start making some money and attack southern England.

[Habelo]

Ireland was too easy for me.
So i captured the island Ireland first then i waited one generation and with my comming heir i set out to counqer south england, while attacking wales and quickly taking over their cities(their economy was bad becuse of all my spies and assasins ruining their towns). Now, take one of the army and mittle-england while the other army takes over the southern settlements
Then you make war against Norway and then scottland

[Pyrebound]

Ireland is easy and kinda boring indeed. After you secure the island, youre quite isolated from the rest of the 'world' - no one will attack you, they just ignore you. You can continue attacking or build up your island for some time, and when the gunpowder comes you can just roll over other factions with your mounted calivers, muires etc.. If you fail, you can just rebuild your armies at your island... Yawn.

[roy34543]

Ironically, Apart from norway england is probaly the hardest faction to play.
Ireland is pretty easy . Especially if you take advantage of wales.

[Jarus]

If playing as Wales, don't forget that you'll need to modify the campaign script (or download the modified one) to fix the Welsh Reinforcements bug.

The extra units you get when you conquer certain cities (or when you lose certain cities) can be very helpful against the English.

[Problem Sleuth]

If playing as Wales, don't forget that you'll need to modify the campaign script (or download the modified one) to fix the Welsh Reinforcements bug.

The extra units you get when you conquer certain cities (or when you lose certain cities) can be very helpful against the English.

Pfft. Wimp. Play the game is it is. I'm manly enough to not fix the bug! Or, rather, I'm too far in and don't want to restart now that I've gotten progress. I'd be nice if you gave a link to it, though.


For Wales, use Saethwyr. Extremely useful. Also try to do a lot of hit-and-run; hide in the woods, pop out, annihilate the English army that would have bolstered their ranks, return to hiding. You're going to need skill in field and fort battles above all; with the second, you can get amazing kill-loss ratios with only 4-5 unit cards. After you've worn them down, the Baron's Alliance should be helpful in weakening them. Ally them, and offer trade rights and map information for some gold. Proceed to expand.

[Cruel-Regulator]

Ireland is my favorite faction in the Britannia campaign. As Ireland (as everyone else has said) I secured my island. My first attack was on southern England. I captured the southwestern-most English city and fort, and pushed east, only to meet an English diplomat. He declared a ceasefire, and a few turns later, an alliance, demanding me to crush Wales (who was pushing eastward, and had almost reached London).

I helped England push the Welsh out of their territory, but, at this point, the Baron's Alliance rebelled, and formed an alliance with Wales. I figured the Baron's Alliance would weaken England further, and decided to ignore them for a while. However, it didn't turn out like I planned, and they immediately attacked me. I captured their few cities, and then helped the English eliminate Wales.

Next, I set my sights on Scotland. However, I found that pushing into Scottish territory was more difficult than it should have been. I managed to take 3 cities, 2 of which rebelled when William Wallace showed up. Instead of interfering with the Scottish-Norwegian more, I instead fortified my Scottish garrisons from the inevitable counter-attack. I didn't fortify quick enough, because Scotland attacked me with a full stacked army. Fortunately, I was able to destroy their battering ram, and hold the walls against their seige towers. They attempted attacking almost every chance they got, and finally took the city. Because my economy was being wasted in Scotland, the English saw this as an opportunity to betray me, and attacked me in Wales.

At this point, the Baron's Alliance sent me a contract, saying that if I captured London, and gave it to them, they would form an alliance with me, and together, we would attack England. I did so, but the Baron's Alliance wasn't much of a help, and I betrayed them. Sacking London twice was a nice boost to my economy.

The Norwegians defeated William Wallace, and pushed deeper into northern Scotland, while I pushed into central Scotland. I formed an alliance with Norway, and I fortified central Scotland with Scottish mercenaries. I then set my sights on terrorizing England, assassinating their major generals (including their king) until there was but one lowly general (who ascended to the throne) holding Nottingham with a full stack. I terrorized them further by dominating their economy with merchants. With my boosted economy, I bought all of Norway's cities except for their capital. I betrayed them, and took their capital, eliminating them from the game.

Finally building up two gunpowder-heavy armies, I conquered the remaining English (which gave way to my 35 territory win). However, I continued, and finally defeated the Scottish a few turns later.

[Pater Familias]

Ireland is the ideal turtle faction: You get to secure your island base first, then get to pick your fights. One easy way to build a buffer is to snag the last island or two from the Norse once the Scots have beaten them up. You would rather have the Scots, focused primarly on their English neighbors, as your cross-channel partners than a bunch of Viking raiders, anyways.
And Castle Town in particular makes a fine forward observation point to shuttle armies through, to provide good units nearer the front than Ireland proper, and to maintain the navies that intercept any invasion threats that may arise.
Turtles are well advised to then take Cornwall and push eastward along the south coast, fighting a one-front war the whole time. Because you're not rubbing borders with the Scots and Welsh (and the Barons, sooner or later) the whole way, it's easier to build lasting alliances while you all work the English over.
By the time the other factions get around to betraying your alliance, you should have 20 or so regions and the game in your grasp. If you can keep just one alliance, you should have the upper hand. If you can keep say, both the Scots and Barons on your side, you'll quickly overwhelm Wales and should emerge with 25+ regions, far and away the largest faction and in great shape to dictate the endgame however you choose.
More aggressive players can follow Cruel-Regulator's example and dive into Wales, where the mix of all the factions guarantee lots of action and where repeated betrayals are the norm.

[Strom]

I played Wales on Hard/Medium (my first Kingdom's campaign) and really it didn't seem too hard.

The first thing to realize is that even though you start off with 20,000 florins your pitiful economy means that you can't even support your starting troops let alone pay for economic development or recruitment. The English, who you start at war with, have a huge number of lightly developed territories.

You have more troops than you can pay for and the enemy has lightly defended towns? This pretty much defines your early game: Blitzkrieg! There are three towns in Wales that give you stacks of units after you capture them so your economic situation will get worse before it gets better.

Scrape together every troop you can without your settlements revolting and capture as many English towns and castles as you can. I pretty much went east to Nottingham, taking everything in my way, then branched southwards to London and Cornwall and north to York. Then mopped up Oxford and the southern coastal towns whilst advanicng to the borders of my Scottish allies.

Really play out the battles carefully. You can't afford to buy reinforcements so you have to make your troops last. Don't get bogged down in field battles that you can avoid unless they're heavily in your favour, take towns instead. Many towns are guarded only by a sole general, who is easily killed (use ladders to scale the walls and he'll retreat to the town square, most small towns the town square is in range of archers on a small section of the outer wall, just turn on flaming arrows and x6 speed as archers on the wall are completely safe from the mounted general...) England is a whole series of choke points guarded by forts (which give free upkeep to two units) so make good use of those. Oxford and London are both good to sack for money, most of the other towns are too small to be worth much.

By the time of the Baron's rebellion the English only had three or four territories left on the mainland (plus twoish in Ireland I think) and the Barons took one of them and then proceeded to do nothing and recruit very few troops until I crushed them a few turns later.

After mopping up England on the mainland I made nice with the Scots whilst I developed my economy. Units were shuffled around to get the most of free upkeep which let me finally get enough money to start buying upgrades and converting all my southern castles into towns. A couple of dozen turns of this transformed me into an econmic power house so that when the Scots finally attacked me they were never a real threat.

There's not much unit advice really... In the beginning you fight with whatever you have to hand, which is given to you by the script. In the middle and the end your economy is so good that you fight with the best available which typically means castle based infantry (armored spearmen with funny names) supported by a handful of cavalry. For all the fame of the Welsh longbow I really wasn't impressed by it. It has its situational uses, of course, but I found it rare that a unit of bowmen would get more than a units worth of kills...

[Duke_of_Bavaria]

Really? I found all of the campaings to be easy. The Americas was hardest because I allied with France instead of stealing tech from them and it was so quick back and forth.

Anyway I played wales and all I did was capture English settlements and when the Irish attacked me I went over the sea and sacked almost all of their cities, they never bothered me again.
The English forces were spread so thin, take a city. Exterminate and leave like 1 peasant troop there. If they are still unhappy raze all the buldings to the ground and then leave it to rebel. That keeps the English buisy until the Barons alliance pops up after which it's really a walk in the park.

[kickoutthejams]

Personally I found the Britannia campaign way too easy.

As an Irish citizen and student of Irish history I was thrilled to find the Irish a playable faction.

Sadly, I had conquered the entire map by turn 45 on the long campaign, none of this involved use of the Irish speciality (cavalry and gunpowder). All of this was done within the lifespan of King Brian. I pretty much relied on English billmen mercanaries, Ostmen and Ceithrne.

My advice:
1)Ceithrne are surprisingly good, despite crappy stats, their axes are good against armour.
2)GET ENGLAND OUT. Extremely important, as once their gone, you can convert all the castles into towns getting income. England are in a poor position in Ireland.
3) Send diplomats everywhere. When I played, the English were treachorous but constantly wanted peace. Whenever they betrayed me, I would send a diplomat offering a ceasefire in exchange for territory, which I used as bases in Britain for the next time I was betrayed.
4) Ally to everyone except the Norwegians. They will be too busy fighting one another on Britain while you take over Norwegian islands meaning that when you get betrayed (And you will) you have ready made forts to send out troops on raids.
5) Attack simultaneously. I sent King Brian to fight in Scotland and worked his way south through England while his son went to Southwest England to fight up to Wales.
6)Castletown is amazing. Get it and use it to make strike forces.
7) Don't antagonise the Baron's Alliance, they are useful against the English.
8)Send spies and assassins to cause havoc in Britain.

Just to clarify, this stratagy worked for a mediocre general like me, and allowed me to complete the long campaign in around 30 turns and conquer every single territory by turn 45.

[Heavy_]

well kickotthejams, thats pretty damn impressive. BUT!! just incase anyone here likes to play the full campaign let me tell you this.
The Britannia campaign is the easiest campaign in total war history
the secret? Ireland. Ireland? you may ask, yes, Ireland. Its the big ol' pot of gold at the end of every financial rainbow.
Nomatter what faction you are playing as, Capturing the entire Ilse of Ireland
will be the answer
you turn every settlement there into a city(trade tax playground)
then capture Castletown for raiding efforts and suddenly no one will rival you in the amount of full stacks of soldiers