Hi there. thanks for the mod, Really enjoying it!
Best mod for twm2 imo.
The first faction I tried was Northumbria but it was very hard to manage, expansion and production was very slow so I dropped it and started anew.
Now I'm currently playing 3 factions on different days.
Monday to Wednesday = Gwynedd
Thursday to Friday = Denmark
Weekends = Vestfold
I wanna share my experience and current journey on the game.
I am almost done with the Victory Conditions on Denmark, I feel its the easiest faction to use and quite OP because East-Anglia and Northumbria is quite weak unlike Mercia and Wessex. I am now in turn 47 and have conquered East-Anglia->Mercia->Wessex. Northumbria is my current foe and the East-Franks that are invading my mainland after Ragnar conquered Paris and he died after it at age 59. Then the franks launched full scale attacks on my mainland which is not yet that strong because I focused on the invasion of the english kingdoms. Also Wessex was quite strong and I just got lucky to snag their cities in surprise tactics like hiding an army in the river between Reading and Winchester, Lundene and Selsey, Colceaster and Hrofesceaster until they were cornered in their western settlements. Gwynedd was pretty passive and we never had any conflict. It seems as Denmark and you conquer Mercian Territory, Gwynedd won't do anything at all in the game if you just let them be without waging war against them. If they were active I would have had a hard time fighting Wessex. And northumbria only attacks 1 settlement that I took from Mercia which is 'Ceaster'. Northumbria doesn't even attack my near settlements to their territory which are 'Lincoln', Leiceaster and Tamworth'. But overall I enjoy fighting with Wessex. Maybe Northumbria was busy against the scots but I don't know why Gwynedd hasn't launched any attacks on me. Their Military Power is always 'Pathetic' in faction statistics even though no one is attacking them. XD But they have 5 full stacked armies standing in our border 'Mathrafal <-> Tamworth. So I think maybe they are not programmed to attack former Mercia Area conquered by Denmark.
I like Gwynedd the most because of its Great Advantage with the Skilled Archers, the AI in Very Hard difficulty dunno how to correctly outplay gwynedds archers so before they can charge in, with proper shield wall and 10 stacks of archers the enemies morale drop by 30-40% already. Idk about normans/franks and magyars deal with gwynedds archers with their cavalry but so far I think gwynedd is the most OP faction using one trick via 10 stacks of Celtic Noble Shieldwall and 10 stacks of Saethwyr Archers. Almost all factions in Britain have low cavalry so even if the infantry get close to the archers with skirmish mode activated they can do a successful hit-and-run with only 5-15% casualties. Unless the Infantry movement speed is quite fast and have good defense. Mostly the Skirmishers can get close and throw them javelins but they are pretty vulnerable to missiles so it is a mismatch. So unless theres a Faction in Britain that have decent Cavalry production, Gwynedd is the strongest of them all.
I enjoy my weekends the most because of Vestfold. I tried it recently because the Loading Display Messages mostly showcase Harald Fairhair's Saga.
Its quite challenging and I sacrificed my Scotland starting settlements and migrated the 2 armies to sail back to norway to destroy Holdaland. The Tax rate on the starting scotland settlement is very low due to the long gap from the capital so I thought it was not worth it to focus on scotland when the Holdaland Primary settlements only have King Eirik and his heir. So I conquered those asap and I think Holdaland at Dublin
and Munster destroyed the Connach Faction. But I am regretting that move and started again. This time I sacrificed my scotland primary settlement and sailed the 2 armies to Dublin and conquered it. Reason for this strategy is the Gold bars in Iceland. I notice its hard to make 2 merchants if a faction doesn't have a Huge City the 2nd Merchant structure required cobbed roads that can only be built on a city. So taking Dublin which is a starting city for Holdaland was my choice to make 2 merchants asap and making them stand on those 2 gold bar areas in Iceland which gave me lowest 880 to highest 1800 financial boost. I haven't tried to conquer Iceland and maybe make Mining Networks on those Gold Bars for more profit. But anyways thats the strategy I took up in my Vestfold campaign. Now I am having a good fight with Hordaland's King Eirik and slowly conquering the eastern Norse Rebel settlements and holding Dublin. Connach is losing to Munster and so far Munster is not so aggressive due to a war with Connach so Dublin is pretty okay.
I Saw you have updated their portraits specially in gwynedd, will there be a new downloadable patch for it? They look very nice. Goodjob