How would you approach this opening to a Danish campaign?

[Viking Prince]

Some assumptions:

1) King Knut wants to control the castle at Thorn as a part of the master plan for a Danish Empire of the Baltic.

2) The Poles will get there first.

3) The Danes will not simply declare war and take Thorn.


How will you recommend the Danes approach the campaign? Which settlements to take. How to ally with. Would you consider a Danish drive into Bohemia and take the great town of Prague? Many questions, but I wnat your suggestions and ideas.

[Sulfurion Blackfyre]

Gather a huge army of axe wielding warriors crying "rape loot and burn!" and then conquer the whole world, regardless of consequences!

serious now.. you can do just what the danes do in every campaign i play, start to conquer scandinavia and why not declare war on poles? they are weak, i guess, then invade england and then mainland germany and france.. thats what they do whenever i play portugal and such. Danes and Hungary are the ones who get to conquer most land around the map.

[Viking Prince]

Gather a huge army of axe wielding warriors crying "rape loot and burn!" and then conquer the whole world, regardless of consequences!

serious now.. you can do just what the danes do in every campaign i play, start to conquer scandinavia and why not declare war on poles? they are weak, i guess, then invade england and then mainland germany and france.. thats what they do whenever i play portugal and such. Danes and Hungary are the ones who get to conquer most land around the map.

Awe come on -- get in the spirit and play the scenario. Give me how you would approach this deviation from what you or I would normally do with the Danes. A good general takes the resources at his disposal and completes the objectives set for the campaign. You have the objectives and constraints -- how would you use the resources?

[Sulfurion Blackfyre]

ok ive once started a danish campaign lol, just to try it out, i started by conquering scandinavia, i evolved a little bit (the poles were too far to attack me..) and then i attacked the holy roman empire, which was being squeezed by poland and milan... i started too a war with england and was massing an army to invade when i got tired and deleted the save game.

[DeMolay]

With the Vikings , i usually take the Flanders first for the money , then try to conqueer Stockholm and Helsinki quickly (before Russians get it ) , and then Oslo whilst trying to ally with the Polish .

Once this is completed and well protected , i try to get my allies (Poland for example) to attack Russia (for Novgorod and baltic region) with me or i just attack Poland and seize the Baltic coast from them , like this my empire is homogenous , owning all the trade in the baltic sea and able to defend each region fairly comfortably .

Or there is the choice to go for a British campaign which is probably a bit harder but feasible , but when i play this game , i usually try to constitute a small but rich and powerful regional kingdom and then defend it , for instance with England , i conqueer only Britain and try to defend it whilst often launching crusades and help the Pope and factions that are in trouble , with France or HRE or Hungary i do the same , i never complete the campaign objective of 45 regions , usually i have about 8 regions , i give all my conquests to the Pope or in some rare case , seize a city then destroy all military installations to weaken my ennemy and then give it to another ally in need or just let the city rebel

[Silent Assassin]

Take Thorn ASAP instead of Hamburg unless you can do so try to take them uin the same time. Hamburg will be your protection against HRE and others from the North and Thorn will give you your great army units to conquers the Poland

[CaeserAugustus]

Rebel speaks the truth. Thorn basically pwns. Like many others have said try to control the baltic and then I'd wait there or maybe establish a foothold in england. I would attack scotland as they are usually very weak. Then you can either continue on down britain and try to take all the british isle or maybe ally with england. I'd say wait to attack russia until the mongols attack then if they go after turks attack russia. If they go for the steppes(hungary, russia) let them beat down on russia then as they are about to reach you attack and hopefully russia will have weakened them atleast a bit. Once you can beat them the only must is preparing for timurids but other than that by now you should have a stable economy to support any expansion you want. Maybe HRE, maybe finish off britain if you haven't already. Maybe crush poland, whatever you want.

[Callawyn]

Put a general, alone, on a boat, drop him off near your target and run him to your target. You may reach it before the AI lays siege. If so, recruit mercenaries to take it (lay siege and bring up reinforcements if necessary).

If that fails, just park an army near your target (helps to pick a location that'll block any AI reinforcements from coming in). The AI usually fails on its first couple of attempts to take a rebel settlement. When they fail, you lay siege.

There's a dirty trick you can pull here too. Ally with the AI faction and park your army in the ZOC of the castle, the AI will assume you'll help them attack and may assault sooner. When they do, hit withdraw on the pre-battle panel. Your army will stay exactly where it is while the AI's army, if it loses the fight, will rout all the way back to its nearest city.

Now, if the Poles succeed in taking it, and you don't want to declare war on them, forget about trying to turn it rebel since its a castle. You can, however, acquire it diplomatically. Best bet is to take another province, or two, that is contiguous to the Polish territory, send your best diplo and offer to swap provinces, offer to pay tribute if necessary to grease the wheels. I do this all the time in Italy to get the HRE out of Bologna, they'll trade it for just about anything that's contiguous to the rest of their territory. Thorn might be tougher trade though, since the Poles really want it while the HRE isn't particularly attached to Bologna, so you may need to offer 2-3 provinces and a hefty tribute.

[Viking Prince]

Regarding Callawyn's expansion (of Rebel's post) to take a general and fast naval (merc boat?) to Thorn and then hire mercs -- Has anyone counted the number of turns to move a force to Thorn? It is quite a distance from Arhus and this takes up about 1/3 of the initial resources and how much of the florins? It seems like a huge expense. I am not suggesting that it cannot be done, but is it worth doing versus alternative uses of the resources.

[Silent Assassin]

Regarding Callawyn's expansion (of Rebel's post) to take a general and fast naval (merc boat?) to Thorn and then hire mercs -- Has anyone counted the number of turns to move a force to Thorn? It is quite a distance from Arhus and this takes up about 1/3 of the initial resources and how much of the florins? It seems like a huge expense. I am not suggesting that it cannot be done, but is it worth doing versus alternative uses of the resources.

Old friend,

I'm pretty sure that it won't cost you much to take Thorn, but if you want another suggestion. This is what I do when I'm strong financialy or even when I start my campaign.

I would do as Callawyn said bring one general but with him briong a diplomat. If the Poles gets Thorn before you just try to buy it off from them including Alliance, if you can mayrriage, map information( In all of my Danish campaigns I would always alliy myself with Poland who 95% of the times help me butcher HRE, it could be costly at first but in the end this will give you a great advantage but don't don't forget to get Hamburg on the first turn to protect your borders from HRE.

Another example last time I played as Venice I bought off from HRE Bologna and on the next turn captured Florence, right there I was very strong. Milan then attacked me I've taken them Genoa and Milan abd gave it to the Pope.

[Leonidas_I]

Yeah I was thinking that maybe leave thorn for later and take the city's/castles near you first.

[townie33]

I normally go Hamburg, Stettin, Magdeburg, then on to Riga, Helsinki, Stockholm, and finishing with Oslo. This normally gives me a good base of operations but be careful Riga, Stockholm, and Stettin take time to grow and become money makers, but it is worth the wait. The only castles needed are Hamburg and Helsinki. From here i normally take Thorn from the poles using diplomacy, or if they have already declared war on me I just take it. The other way I go is after the first rush takes place ( around 20 turns, 15 if your not picky about building solid Huscarl armies ) is to take Antwerp then Bruges. The HRE may have taken Antwerp but it doesn't happen too often. From there it is your choice on how you subdue the world.

[Skyline Pete]

I agree on the Baltic option. Try your best to take all the cities/castles around the Baltic and turn them into cities and start upgrading their ports and markets. Anything and everything to do with trade.

In my current Danish campaign I went for Magdeburg first because the HRE went straight for Hamburg on their first turn and got it the buggers. Instead I allied with the Imperials (for now haha) and turned my attention to stopping Polish and Russian expansion. I quickly seized the key Baltic cities of Stockholm/Riga/Helsinki and then turned Stettin into a city.

In my campaign only Thorn and Magdeburg are my real troop producing cities. I've a few wooden castles about but haven't spent any Florins upgrading them just yet.

Heck I even took Inverness before the Scots could, then quickly took Dublin just as the English were arriving. My armies are very very very thinly spread however but luckily all my Alliances with the Poles/Rus/Imperials have held since I made them in the first 5 turns.

Infact, the only non-Rebel faction I've fought is Sicily and that's because they had a Crusade called on them.

[Viking Prince]

@Skyline Pete -- Sounds like you are having great fun!

You have implied that Hamburg was converted to a town. If this is correct, when did you make the conversion? Do you keep a defensive force in the region?

Did you beat the Poles to Thorn? If so, did you go straight there as suggested by Rebel6666? Do you find the distance to the boats from Magdeburg an issue? Hamburg is so well situated with the Arhus port for the North Sea and Hamburg's port for Baltic operations.

[Skyline Pete]

I didn't get Hamburg sorry, the Imperials beat me to it and got it which created a massive massive anxiety level in me as it was what I was hoping to use as a buffer between me and them but I got to Magdeburg and Thorn before the either the Poles or the Imperials did.

I'm not sure what the Polish were doing but they took their time getting to Thorn.

The Rus in my game (this is all Vanilla AI by the way, I use the Grand Unit Add-On) seem to have stopped doing much in East Europe from what I can tell now. Like I said previously, I've been allied to the HRE since turn 2 and they've not even sent units into my territory, they're too busy pissing off everyone else in Europe. We've sought of got a big North Europe Alliance going on with Poland/Rus/HRE/Denmark at the moment which severly limits my options for expansion, hence the invasion of Scotland.

My plan for the moment is to just consilodate what I've got and hope the HRE slips up somewhere so I can launch an invasion of their severley unprotected northern flanks.

[Haakon]

I use the same tactic nomether what faction I play. It works really well. So far it's worked wonders for England, France, Holy Roman Empire, Byzantine empire, Norway and Milan.

Just start off normal and gain traderights with everyone. Make as many alliances as possible. Then just build infrastructure until you are attacked. When the first attack comes, you should be strong enough to assimilate the attacker completely. Then, when the next faction attacks, you are already so strong you can just consume faction after faction. This is very straightforward, and you could easily fight 4 wars at the same time.

We are borg, prepare to be assimilated.





edit : And keep a task force ready, whenever someone gets excommunicated, take their largest cities imidiatly! Pillage and plunder but dont keep them as it will cause problems when the faciton is forgiven. I just exit after raising it to the ground with max tax and after a turn or two rebels take over.