Where to go with Norway

[Misery]

Hi All,

I normally play eastern or central powers, this is my first campaign with Norway and am wondering which way to turn with them.

It is early period campaign, I took most of Scandinavia and have an alliance with Denmark at this stage, I need to expand now.

I have gone to Britain where Scots and English fought over few towns, I took a castle and fortified it. Now Scots and Poms have made peace and I am under constant sieges. This is costing me a fortune and I am not heaving much luck with further conquests there. (I brought over two stacks but they got wiped by combined Scot/English armies). To make matters worse Pope keeps forcing me to make peace with one of them constantly.

Second option is to invade east, Poland or Lithuania. Poland looks good due to regular conflicts with HRE but will probably bring Pope to my door again. Lithuania is fairly strong and is in alliance with Novgorod and majority of my decent settlements are on west coast and damn Brits have million navies patrolling my shores.

I am starting to loose money due to my activity in Britain and now am only making around 1.5k a turn. heaving to endure siege every or every 2nd turn is preventing me from raising new army.

BTW I am playing on VH/VH, any advices from Norway veterans?

[Deadly Rabbit]

Sell your castle in England, to anyone who will give you decent money or an alliance or both. Come back to Britain later when the Scots and English have had at each other again, or take 2 or 3 stacks and smash the Irish in short order. In the meantime, buildup, grab finland/estonia/latvia and dig in. You may face an extended war with Lithuania and Novgorod, but at least the baltic is your sea, and your lines of communication won't be cut.

[Staffen]

The alliance with Denmark is a mistake, get rid of it as soon as possible. You shouldn't expand anywhere until the whole of Scandinavia (including Visby) is yours.

[Tacitursa]

Yeah you should take all of scandinavia and hamburg which will act as a defencive choke point and keep it safe from attack. Once thats done you should invade and take over ireland.

Then from ireland and scandinavia send 3 stacks to the main british isle.

From Ireland attack wales and take Caernavon , From Oslo send an army upto Iverness and from Hamburg/Oslo send a third and final stack to nottingham once you controll those 3 Castles on the Isle it should be a breeze.

If you take some siege equipment with you can take Caernavon/nottingham/Iverness/York/Exeter/Aberdeen in 2 turns. Make sure you leave edinburgh last only take it after Iverness and aberdeen have been taken and then try to quickly take edinburgh in the same turn or william wallace will spawn with a full stack.

If you take edinburgh last and quick he will spawn but he will turn rebel (faction destroyed) after you take edinburgh, Then you can bribe him or just leave him there (he never moves once rebel).

By this point you should be a power house and HRE should be excomunicated so call a crusade on frankfurt or viena and completely take over HRE. Then you can attack french from the north via sea and from the east via HRE.

Games pretty much over now just send 5 stacks into spain and 5 into italy you'll have more money than you can spend and out number everyone

[Navajo Joe]

The alliance with Denmark is a mistake, get rid of it as soon as possible. You shouldn't expand anywhere until the whole of Scandinavia (including Visby) is yours.

Have to disagree here, I made allies with Denmark, Poland and Hungary. Both Denmark and Hungary were allies for the game. I chose the first two as I wanted to create a buffer between myself and HRE & France.
I held all of Scandinavia, except Kalmar owned by the Danes, although it is imperative to get Visby, before anyone else, jumps on it. After achieving the above, I invaded Finland and secured this region, then moving eastwards I took Novgorod and found that this was a very profitable and that the faction, only tried to take it back once.
My next invasion target was Scotland, but you have to wait until Scotland & England are at war, at this time France were at war with England. I took Aberdeen first, then Edinburgh and finally Inverness. Next Ireland, they put up a better fight than the Scots and then as mentioned take Caernarvon. I also launched a seaborne assault on Exeter at the same time, the AI chose the fight in Central Engalnd and the East.
All this playing as Norway, you might ask what did the Pope make of it all, well he warned me once excom, but I generally took advantage of excommunication of other factions, I always fill his pockets with regular tribute and the majority of the Cardinals were Norwegian, so to be honest he loved me!

[Kawee]

I actually have to agree with Staffen though. I make sure I control all of Scandinavia + Visby + Hamburg first, as quickly as possible as well. IF I'm lucky, I grab Groningen (sp?) and Stettin as well. Scandinavia must be united playing as Denmark or Norway.

From there go East or West at your leisure. But first, have Scandinavia. It'll be the base from which you conquer everything else.

A general rule though, don't commit to weak invasions like your 2 stacks invasion of the British Isle. Send 4-5 and knock out the targeted factions as quickly as possible. Once you have a foothold of 4-5 settlements, then they'll be significantly weaken and you will have a much easier time conquering the rest. Also, target the castles first. I know towns are more profitable, but with Scandinavia already under control, money should not be top priority. Take the castles first so you can train/retrain your soldiers and your enemies will be forced to field their armies with mere spear militias.

[Tyrenia]

First I must ask, which castle do you have?

If it is Nottingham, give it to Ireland. This is almost certain to begin a 3 way war which will inevitably weaken all of them for you to deal with later. If it is Inverness, just give it back to the Scots for peace.

Having cut and run from the Isles, my next suggestion would be to create a strong alliance with France, preferably with a marriage. This acts as insurance against an English counter-attack and against the HRE, who you will soon have to share a border with (try to get an alliance with them also). After securing the alliance, find a reason to terminate the Danish alliance (ally with one of their enemies, then chose to break with the Danes when war is re-declared. Do not just attack, it will DESTROY your rep)

After taking Scandinavia, try to get the Pope to order a crusade to Vilinus. Sweep down through Lithuania (getting Papal brownie points as well as providing an opportunity to train your cardinals), then solidify your Eastern provinces by taking the coastal provinces of the Republic of Novgorod.

From there, it's up to you. You could either continue to expand in the Baltic, attack Poland and sweep from the North and East into the HRE, or you could return to England take it, attack the HRE then pincer France, or you could just cut through the HRE and into Italy. Or you could do something completely different (like continuing to expand eastwards).

Hope this is helpful

[Staffen]

Navajo Joe, if that worked out for you then you've got better nerves then I do. Leaving my back exposed to Denmark like that would make me feel very uncomfortable.

This game being what it is, you can never fully trust any faction to keep an alliance. So in the end, I'd rather have a single stack in Hamburg guarding my booming economy in Arhus and Southern Scandinavia from the HRE, than the same stack guarding a border with the Danes without any economic advantages whatsoever.

[Misery]

The castle was Nottingham, I sold it to France to keep me out of my financial troubles. England and France declared war 2-3 turns after that. Now I am out of British Isles.

I have sent my army from Britain and Eastern Sweden to attack Lithuania (as well as 8-9 priests to start converting population). After taking over Vilinus + nearby settlement my expansion has stoped in its tracks. I am still running out of cash tanks to incredible virility of my generals. At this stage I have 10 towns and around 20+ generals (these are all grandsons from original king, who lived to be 86, didn't even think that was possible)

Attacking Denmark is out of questions, they have 2-3 stacks on peninsula without being in war with anybody else. I can not muster enough army to defend against them if I break Alliance, plus I would rather not have to fight HRE.

Few have mentioned that I should not have problems with money, but I found that I am running fairly lean this early in the game with Norway. How many castles do you keep in Scandinavia?

[gewehr36]

This game being what it is, you can never fully trust any faction to keep an alliance.

This isn't necessarily true. Once while I was playing a campaign as Lithuania, the pope called a crusade on Vilnius, not knowing that I had convinced the Teutonic Order to be my allies. Once the Christian hordes arrived, the Order marched in 5 full stacks to defend my capital, and ended up getting excommunicated.

[Tacitursa]

Thats not proof that AI keeps alliances thats just evidence AI will help you out sometimes.

Ally the AI for a reasonable ammount of turns without them attacking you , It will never happen eventually they will attack

[Misery]

Thats not proof that AI keeps alliances thats just evidence AI will help you out sometimes.

Ally the AI for a reasonable ammount of turns without them attacking you , It will never happen eventually they will attack

I don't know about that, while playing East Roman Empire I was allied until the end with Russians, they took all of North and East Europe and I did all of Balcans, Anatolia, North Africa and Holy lands.

We remained allies until I quit game

[Tacitursa]

Far away allies like that arent too bad as the AI never goes there tbh.

If you controll a region the AI would ussually attack or controll though (Denmark/norway for instance) they will attack you eventually no matter how good allies you are it seems. In every single game i play with england i enter a marriage alliance with france and get perfect relations with them while i deal with Scotland , ireland and scandinavia but France will ALWAYS either start blockading my southern english ports or attack caen/rennes.

Ally ERE as Turks , venice or Hungary and see if you can maintain an alliance without them attacking you

I think its impossible to maintain a faithfull alliance with neighbouring AI either VH/VH is to blame or AI is just scripted to favour attacking certain regions more than others regardless of who controlls said region.

I think thats the case because no matter what happens in a new campaign regarding diplomacy AI always seem to attack and expand in the same pattern. i.e Scotland always attack Brughes or York. Milan and Venice will fight regardless if they beomce allies or not etc etc

[Staffen]

This isn't necessarily true. Once while I was playing a campaign as Lithuania...

Exactly.

[gewehr36]

Exactly.

I meant that specific time. It has happened more than once for me.

[Sir Walter]

I think that the best plan is to have alliances with lots of people but guard your back just in case... especially as a mostly friendless faction like Byzantium, watchtowers looking at allied territory do no harm, and I've fortified my border with my Hungarian allies because a cavalry horde can easily get through as they'll be out of sight one turn and besieging the next... the other thing to remember with any faction is know their territories! I attacked the Cumans taking Bucharest and Iasi and they crossed the Caucasus and got Tblisi, one of my best castles... but my one unit of Contaroi put up a hell of a fight against two spear militias and three horse archer units... I killed half their army with one unit and they were short work for my Black Sea reserve task force

[campbela]

What is your biggest expense, army? Just asking as one game as Khwarezmian Shah I had huge corruption expense as my king was up in the Volga Delta and separated from the rest of my territories. Moved him back to Ray and made it the capital and majority of it went away, finally started making money. Never noticed it happening in vanilla.

[Misery]

Split evenly between generals pay and army. there is 2k in corruption and other but I think that is because English and Scots keep blockading my ports

[Sir Walter]

The order goes Army, Army, Army... then Navy. Then other crap like wages...