How is it even possible to play as Bretonnia

[goobacks]

I’m playing on legendary difficulty for both campaign and battle. I’ve already finished playing as greenskins, beastmen and dwarfs. Now I’m trying Bretonnia and playing as the girl with short black hair.

And holycrap it’s hard. At around turn 10 the AI always comes to me with two full stacks and I get wrecked. I can’t build my army because of how poor I am. I’m guessing I’m doing something wrong. Anyone can give me pointers on how to survive the early game? I’m loving the faction so far because of how they remind me of playing Medieval total war 2 back in the day. Nothing is more Total War than a well time calvary charge to the rear that sends bodies flying. It’s just that I can’t even survive 20 turns.

[Hieronymous]

Originally posted by Alt:

Better to ask stuff like that on r/TotalWar. There you more likely to meet people who play on Legendary. Steam forums toxic a lot of the time and decent players rarely visit them.

Ill save you the trouble- Use a lord to get the AI to clump up, and drop an AOE spell on them.

[/Uninstall]

Bretonnia gets to ignore supply lines. Abuse that. Always have 4 lords moving together, even if only 1 has actual troops. And 1 of them should be a life caster.

Also, trebuchet is the best use of a peasant. 4 lords and a couple heroes can be all the front line you need to protect a full stack of trebuchets. You can sub in a few actual peasant units for some extra chaff if you like.

So make peasants, trebs, cavalry, and have groups of 4 lords moving together to abuse the lack of supply lines. General Bretonnian advise for all LLs

[Da_Higg]

Paladin heroes have access to assault units, assault garrison and, oddly for a guy in full plate riding a horse, assassinate. with just this one hero you can turn a unwinnable battle into a victory by having one man somehow delete half the enemy army/garrison.

[goobacks]

Originally posted by Da_Higg:

Paladin heroes have access to assault units, assault garrison and, oddly for a guy in full plate riding a horse, assassinate. with just this one hero you can turn a unwinnable battle into a victory by having one man somehow delete half the enemy army/garrison.

And not just full plate mail, but also wearing the brightest colored decorations possible. As hilarious as that sounds, is that a viable strat if I’m not going to save scum? If there’s a chance I’m losing my level 10 or higher hero doing that then I’m gonna chicken out.

[Filthy Pollo 🐔]

Originally posted by Alt:

Better to ask stuff like that on r/TotalWar. There you more likely to meet people who play on Legendary. Steam forums toxic a lot of the time and decent players rarely visit them.

I disagree, they used cheat mods to play in legendary difficulty to impress anyone else.

[cernodan]

Originally posted by Alt:

Better to ask stuff like that on r/TotalWar. There you more likely to meet people who play on Legendary. Steam forums toxic a lot of the time and decent players rarely visit them.

Steamsisters, how do we respond without sounding mad?

[Captain Baldy]

Betonnia is not meant to be played and was not created to be played. It was created to be destroyed and in as many creative ways as possible.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3138363247

[Many-Named]

Originally posted by Mu:

Make use of shipwrecks, good way to earn money, experience and the vows thing.

Bretonnia has terrible infantry, even worse than Empire so it's best to focus on melee heroes + knights of the realm early on; the type of unit you make should also depend on what faction you're fighting. Cavalry generally works well against Tomb Kings and Vampire Counts (vampire knights will devastate yours in legendary/very hard however).

Your archers don't get armour piercing (crap against armoured factions like Dwarfs) and the catapults are pretty underwhelming compared to other artillery so best not to rely on them, that said they're cheap within the limits of peasant economy so make as many as you can support with a secondary Lord, you should be earning money from post-battle loot and shipwrecks primarily don't bother with economy early on.

Later on you can start stacking faction-wide armour bonuses to your units from a building that you can erect in every settlement to make your infantry more useful.

Good advice, however OP is talking about the first 10 turns or so, doubt he has the money for an all grailed up cav army.

OP have you thought about immigrating to another side of the map? This sometimes helps you build up then return later with more power, kinda like Ben Hur on his chariot.

[Salty Nobody]

@Op just for you I started a Repanse campaign on Leg/VH. I am more or less steamrolling on my second attempt and the only thing that gave me real trouble was the Arkhan fight on turn 4, which is what caused the restart in the first place. By the second attempt I had figured out how my faction worked and had way more knights and a caster lord in support, tipping the battle in my favor.

Turn 4 battle:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3141164514

By turn 10 Arkhan was gone and I had the luck of getting a skull island off the coast, getting at that skull island did slow me down a few turns though, which Aranessa used to attack my coast wherever my armies were not. Note: while the skull island did give me a ton of money, it also prevented me from intercepting Aranessa or squashing the desert ogre faction that would have been my next natural target. This resulted in significant negative upkeep in the coming turns to deal with those problems.

Turn 10:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3141163182

Since she wouldn't engage in battle I let her take Zandri (my one city in the neighboring province I got from confederation) while I sent my main force after the lightly defended Sartosa. She then laid siege to Al Haikk (province capital of my main province) where one of my lords with a partial stack and the city garrison proceeded to smash her. That army then retook Zandri, which I ended up selling to Volkmar for treaties since I couldn't deal with the public order problems there anyway and he had the entire rest of that province. Meanwhile my main force took out her entire faction. It is now turn 20, and my main army is eyeing Skryre while my second stack is dealing with the desert Ogre faction. My starting area is almost secure, I'm about to finish researching the dwarf diplomacy tech so I should be safe from them, and I have Volkmar's major faction between me and my other likely enemies. My main remaining threat is Skryre, and that is simply a question of whether Repanse can take them by herself or if I need to wait for my other full army to reinforce her after dealing the the Ogres. At this point this ought to be an unlosable campaign for me.

Turn 20:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3141163559


As for advice, spam those knights you get from the port you start with and build the 300 income farm building in every settlement. Use your lack of supply lines to stack multiple lords, including spell casters. Lore of life lords start out with a blob damaging spell and a heal spell, making them quite useful.

For battles remember that the ai is stupid, send your lords in and shoot the resulting blob with spells and large rocks. Walled settlement attacks are even easier, you can bring your archers into range from the safety of outside the wall and rain arrows down in addition to everything else until you run out of ammo.

[goobacks]

Thank you bro that was very detailed. I didn’t know about the trick of stacking lords and using them as meat shields. I think that will help me survive the early game on my next attempt

Although I must admit it kinda makes me want to play them less. The reason I choose to play Bret was because it reminded me of the old Total War games where I would send the infantry in as a battle line, and use cavalry to charge their rears and watch their entire army rout. Sending lords to cluster their army so I can abuse AoE attacks seem… less than chivalrous, if you fellas know what I mean.

[SomeGuy1]

Originally posted by goobacks:

Originally posted by Da_Higg:

Paladin heroes have access to assault units, assault garrison and, oddly for a guy in full plate riding a horse, assassinate. with just this one hero you can turn a unwinnable battle into a victory by having one man somehow delete half the enemy army/garrison.

And not just full plate mail, but also wearing the brightest colored decorations possible. As hilarious as that sounds, is that a viable strat if I’m not going to save scum? If there’s a chance I’m losing my level 10 or higher hero doing that then I’m gonna chicken out.

... I expect it's less about sneaking up on his target so much as just kind of bulldozing his way to them and impaling them with his lance.

[SpeaksTooFast]

Originally posted by goobacks:

I’m playing on legendary difficulty for both campaign and battle. I’ve already finished playing as greenskins, beastmen and dwarfs. Now I’m trying Bretonnia and playing as the girl with short black hair.

And holycrap it’s hard. At around turn 10 the AI always comes to me with two full stacks and I get wrecked. I can’t build my army because of how poor I am. I’m guessing I’m doing something wrong. Anyone can give me pointers on how to survive the early game? I’m loving the faction so far because of how they remind me of playing Medieval total war 2 back in the day. Nothing is more Total War than a well time calvary charge to the rear that sends bodies flying. It’s just that I can’t even survive 20 turns.

Bretonnia is actually pretty strong if you understand how to use them but that involves either making super cheesy army compositions or spamming cav which they can do well but requires good micro.

For pointers:
-Farms/windmills make stupid money while helping with growth and you should be leaning into them unless your really need trade resources.

-Their melee infantry is pretty trash and should be avoided unless you are looking for challenge mode.

-They don't pay for supply lines so bringing 4 armies to every fight is an option and one horse lore or life wizard reinforcing can be super helpful.

-Archers and trebs are more effective than they should be for their price points

-As a cav heavy faction in the mid to late game micro is king and dog-piling on isolated units to insta-break them is your friend. Do not try to 1v1 the other army as you are paying for your speed. Bait out the fast units, then pick off the stranglers, then finish off the rest once you have an overwhelming advantage.

[Da_Higg]

Originally posted by goobacks:

Originally posted by Da_Higg:

Paladin heroes have access to assault units, assault garrison and, oddly for a guy in full plate riding a horse, assassinate. with just this one hero you can turn a unwinnable battle into a victory by having one man somehow delete half the enemy army/garrison.

And not just full plate mail, but also wearing the brightest colored decorations possible. As hilarious as that sounds, is that a viable strat if I’m not going to save scum? If there’s a chance I’m losing my level 10 or higher hero doing that then I’m gonna chicken out.

As long as you can levelling up the paladin the AI won't be able to wound them.

[Hieronymous]

Consider the tactic advocated by ol'Yuz in the WH2 days - mass peasants and trebuchets. Gradually build the armor buildings to buff said peasants, but also kill them with friendly fire constantly.

Hitting them with blessed trebuchets, who's magical explosion will leave the stone-crushed peasants' remains undisturbed, is especially entertaining. Presumably you take some of the enemy down, too.

[Butcher]

Bretonnia has strong archers with respectable range. Spam them as much as you can. You need some spearmen of course to form frontline, but not too much. Be careful with horses, they require lots of micro. There are 2 types of melee cavalry. 1 is charge cavalry that relies on hit-run-hit-run, which is hard to micro and you perhaps don't want it on legendary without pause unless you are super SC2 warlord. 2 is long term melee cavalry that can fight without exiting, that is what you want, I think they have 2h swords. Don't be shy to buff peasants through command line, they can become beasts just like any buffed unit.