Guide: Horde gameplay and Raiding

[YourMadDoc]

Many new players may have a problem getting a grasp on these mechanics so here is a short guide on how to do it.


I am going to demonstrate horde and raiding mechanics on difficult migration to a very hostile place with powerful factions and no culture at all, except for one province. I play on VH/VH with increased AI recruitment.


You can play as a horde and raid as some barbarian and nomadic factions. The good thing about horde is that you get a bonus army and you don't have to pay for your soldiers, bad thing is that you have no income and no place to feed your troops.



Migration


Leave your settlements and gather all near your capital. You want to raise taxes to the max to make settlements rebel quickly and train spies. Don't train units, it will prevent rebellion.






During the horde stage, the most important things are leader authority, and loyalty so your armies will not rebel. Give all valuable units and diplomat to the leader and heir, cheap units to other generals, preferably with the highest loyalty. Very important is to give spies to auxiliary armies to decrease their rebel chance. But they may rebel anyway if your leader's authority is low.


Your armies will need some food during migration, and money for new soldiers, and you will get that mostly from raiding and sacking settlements on the way. It will take one turn for raiding to kick in, and as you cant move much during winter it is the best time to raid. Soon enough some of the armies will start starving if they are not lead by a good raider, moving slower so while others are waiting they will raid and become better raiders hopefully. Remember that you don't need to move the raiding group after they start raiding, you will get money every turn they are raiding on a place.



Another source of income is the enslavement of enemy soldiers. There is no one at this point able to stand against you in the field with three armies moving around, so attack all factions and all small groups of soldiers you will meet. Pass around large armies, they will not start to fight with horde and they are not worth the causalities right now.


The third source of income and food is sacking settlements. This work differently as you are a horde, you have two options: occupy it and settle, or to sack it and leave as an independent province. Don't occupy them, or your horde benefits will end. Pick easy prey, sack it and move on. If there is an army near and it will come to help, attack them with your horde to chase them away. Sometimes even garrison from nearby province may come to help, you can defeat them easily in field and sack both cities. After almost decade on road raiding and pillaging, I had 3 armies with belts tightened and only one starving so it is doable.





In case you go to some serious fighting, you can use the money to hire mercenaries, but I spend them mostly when I am about to settle, because of fear of rebellion.


Settling

When you find a place where you want to settle, remember that you will be smashed into your face with expenses for your armies at the moment you capture the first settlement so you want to go big, siege as many cities as you can, and attack them in one turn.

Unfortunately, my general leading almost 1/3 of my horde did rebel during the siege of Ipsos. While it is heavy loss, they will keep a strong garrison pinned down in the province for some time. I had to use the money I have gathered during migration to hire mercenaries and replace losses. I wanted to use the money to survive initial economy hit, so this complicate things a lot. I waited for garrisons to sally, while beating incoming forces with fast cavalry army, then I defeated garrisons on the field.




This is still not enough to get my economy on its feet, and I cant disband my armies, my neighbors would devour my new defenseless realm. So I keep attacking with all I have, getting money from sacking cities and enslaving, while I have to pay less for troops.





But there is one more way how to make good money. I took the opportunity to attack Edessa. It is away from the front and Seleucids focused their defense at Antiochea so garrison isn't too strong. It would be difficult for me to keep it, so I sacked the city, pillaged all infrastructure I could, enslaved troops coming for the rescue, and gave the province to another faction. Now I have nice pile of gold, a strong ally and it will keep my enemy busy for a while. I used the money to establish alllied governments and build farms.






The work of your diplomats is also very important in this stage, as you need to make a lot of deals and pacts, and if you play your cards right it can be a huge advantage.

Conquest of provinces with no culture is usually a big problem, but the fact that they are neighbors to my new capital reduces unhappiness from distance to capital you would usually get. Some provinces will rebel anyway, but that is to be expected.


You want allied governments in your new realm if you did not have a culture there, as you will not benefit much from the factional government.


But what will your FM's do? Well, they will do the thing they are best at -raiding. In my case, my rebel army at Ipsos has been finally defeated by Seleucids so I am sending the rest of my army to face them, while the rest of my FM's rare making money raiding.







After the long bloody war, I managed to push Seleucids away and thus I carved a nice piece of land for my people.






The start of the game isn't the best time to horde, as your leader doesn't have enough authority to keep them loyal, you don't have good raiders, there aren't many factional small armies around to enslave, but it is still a lot of fun. Happy horde-ing

[Shoebopp]

Excellent guide, and insane strategy. Hording isn't talked about much in EBII but hopefully your post will inspire other players to attempt early-game hording. The Boii in particular are good candidates for hording thanks to their wide AOR through boii_col. I'm surprised you didn't consider settling down in Dacia/Thraikia, but hey you went for Celtic Invasion 2: Electric Boogaloo and flooded into Anatolia, which sounds much more fun and challenging.

[YourMadDoc]

I would settle for a while in Thraikia, but I think it would prevent me from migrating again to Galatia. Last time when I tried to horde second time my game ended. And I wanted to make example of migration to place with minimal culture.

[Slaytaninc]

Pergamon went hog-wild trying to make the Black Sea a Pergamese lake.

[YourMadDoc]

Pergamon seems to be pushing to Panonia lately. Who knows, maybe they will settle in my original homeland in the end