- PC
Tips & Tricks:
- Units are precious, especially one with upgrades. If the combat looks like
it’s going the wrong way, consider retreating your units to rest and resupply.
Losing experience and armor will hurt your war effort. Conversely, it’s a
good idea to have fast units in reserve to run down retreating enemies
(in keeping with the traditions of the period).
- Beyond the basic natural features and impassable obstacles, the game also
adds another wrinkle: Units can hide in bushes, high grass, or forests,
allowing them to attack the enemy at an optimal moment. More importantly,
ranged units will remain invisible, even while attacking, as long as the
enemy isn’t in direct contact.
- Attacking an enemy from the back, flank or charging at him, grants you
extra damage and lowers the enemy morale even before the actual fight
begins. It can give you a significant advantage.
- An outnumbered unit also suffers significant morale loss.
- Friendly fire is a big morale loss for your own units.
Starving:
If you have more squads than your villages food production can support, then you
will start to lose stockpiled food. When you run out of stockpiled food your
squads will starve. If your squads are starving, then your squads will be defeated
in fights you should have won. When training squads keep in mind the increased food
upkeep.
Do what you can to avoid starving. You can strike at enemy food production to
starve him. Starving will put a player at a large disadvantage.
- Try taking a village with food production.
- Factions may have techs that reduce upkeep, or boost food production.
- Factions may have have prayers that reduce upkeep or boost production.
- Make sure your village farms are producing food.
- You can disband some of your excess squads.
The viking upkeep reduction tech is basically required for the vikings as the game
progresses. The saxons and germans upkeep reduction is useful but not required.
While the slavs should frequently use the upkeep prayer. Both the vikings and slavs
have a production boost tech. This boosts your production for your base, and can
be useful but not amazing.
Villages:
Villages come in three types: bronze, silver and gold. Each village will provide
a combination of food, wood and iron. All villages are not equal. When you are
taking a village, especially at the start of the game. It is important to send
enough squads to take them. You can tell the strength of each village—neutral,
allied, or enemy—by looking at the frame color around the village health bar.
Average number of squads required to take an unfortified village:
Bronze Village – 1 Squad, Silver Village – 2 Squads, Gold Village – 3 Squads
(Exception, viking blacksmiths can upgrade building HP, Viking villages can be
harder to take.)
Once you control a village be sure to send the villagers back to work. This can be
done by directly clicking the village on the battlefield, or by the buttons in the
lower right side. It is important to always keep your villages producing.
How to Capture a Village:
To capture a village, first command your squads to set it on fire, then occupy
it to take it over (both actions are reflected by the status bar above the
village’s main building). Villages can have four levels of defense: no defense,
brown, silver and gold – all reflected by the outline of village’s status bar.
The higher the defense, the more troops are needed to take it over, and more
soldiers might die while they capture the village.Take notice, that capturing
stops upon enemy soldiers entering the village.