Help for playing Bretonnia

[Hywel]

Hey there,

I've got around 150 hours now playing mostly wood and high elf lords in IE and was trying out Bretonnia recently. I wonder if I'm missing something here as this seems a lot more difficult.

For the early game I don't see a good alternative to "elf" play in getting archers behind infantry (Leoncoeur has some knights), but they are much weaker in stats and severely limited in number by the peasant economy (once you start to recruit you 2nd army).

Knights, while micro intensive seem to be decent, but you have to start with Leoncoeur and his oaths unlocked plus five cav from the start to use them. It then feels like I have to work very hard with those units to get somewhere near the power level of a simple elf army. Plus the other lords are just heavily penalized until they have their oaths unlocked.

Do I need to rely more on trebuchets or other units? The former seem fine, but their dps is not that high, plus I need additional infantry to cover them effectively.

The last problem I have are the starting positions. With Leoncoeur I can defeat the orcs in the east and the two vampire factions, but after that it becomes randomly more difficult. Grom often gets quite strong in the south while Belakor and Vanaheim often invade from the north together pretty early on, later joined by Slanesh and others. Carcassone is a bit easier but still has the problem of constant cross mountain skaven harassment together with Grom and beastmen aggression.

TLDR: How do I best deal with the severe limitations that are put on me with Bretonnia?

[kekkuli]

Just make pure cavalry armies, get enough air support, and some paladins&caster heroes. Easy win.

[jtm_alaska]

Bretonia Cavalry hit like a freaking truck meanwhile I'm being rained down upon by masses of archers that I can't get to because either my guys are dying too fast or there being run over. Fighting them came with new challenges.

I'd Alternate Cavalry (Your best strength) and Archers. Micro archers to fire down on hostiles when the cavalry need to retreat, and when archers need to retreat run the Cavalry in. Never actually played much Bretonia but I get the concept because Cav/Archer tandem was quite popular in Age of Empires 4.

[HappyMarmot]

Sorry for my bad English

Although Couronne is the hardest of the Bretonnian starts the campaign is still usually not that difficult.

I usually do the following at the beginning of a Couronne campaign:

• Take out starting vampire army and take the settlement
  
• Peace out with the Red Duke and recruit units
  
• Recruit a melee lord in Couronne and recruit archers.
  
• Turn 2 force march Louen so that he can attack the orcs on turn 3
  
• Recruit another melee lord in Couronne.
  
• Three lords + Urannon's Thunderbolt + archers easily takes out the orcs
  
• As soon as Couronne is tier 2 build tavern and get Gotrek + Felix
  
• Put Felix into Louen's army
  
• Ambush bait Kemmler out of Artois or just attack the castle. Both are easy fights.
  
• Destroy the Barrow Legion since they cant hold their capital vs 4 regenerating lords.
  
• March back to Couronne province and declare war on the Shadow Legion.
  
• Be'lakor's will usually sail toward the port settelment.
  
• Take out Be'lakor's army with now 3 decently leveled lords + Louen"s army
  
• Defend the settelment until it has def building + grail shrine for strong garrison
  
• While defending recruit additional knights + paladins from Couronne
  
• Then I go after Grom who could have a Waaagh at this point.
  
• Grom can be defeated easily in a settelment, ambush, or by dividing his army
  with good cavalry micro

This works well for me on legendary and very hard battle diff.
I also recommend getting the carcassonne confed tech as soon as possible because the AI Fay usually not that strong.

Some additional tips for general Bretonnia:

Bretonnia has no supply lines, decently strong lords and a very strong economy. It is a good idea to get 3 melee lords to support the main army very early. These extra lords will get their vows done, get strong Bretonnia-exclusive traits, generate extra chivalry and magic item drops. They can also be used to bait the AI into ambushes. I usually spec these lords into their yellow combat tree until they are ready to lead their own proper armies.

Getting Gotrek and Felix early from the tier 2 tavern is also recommended because Felix will give all these lord regeneration in an AOE when in combat. 4 lords + Felix + lore of heavens damsel with Urannon's Thunderbolt is extremely strong early game and can trivialize siege battles where AI like to blob at the gate.

Bretonnian infantry might be weaker than high elves, but they are very cheap. Shielded man at arms with spears will hold just fine early game especially when boosted with Louen's starting trait. Unlike high elves Bretonnia also gets a easy access to poison debuff from their archers which makes a big difference in melee.

I found that a balanced army with 3-4 archers, 1 treb(later blessed one) 3-4 spears/halberds with the rest being cav/flying cav + heroes works just fine even on L/VH through the entire campaign. Of course for very easy battles from mid-game Bretonnia can easily afford full cav armies and later royal hippogryph knight doomstacks, but I found this kinda gameplay boring since WH3 in its current state is not that hard even on max difficulty.

Bretonnia also has the Armoury building that gives +2 armor to every unit and this stacks. This make late game even easier since armor is highly valued in auto-resolve. The blessed field treb is also amazing especially with manual targeting its shooting into the already locked infantry line or blobs because it does not cause friendly fire.

[Hywel]

Excellent advice happymarmot, thank you!

I'll try increasing the number of lords first and foremost, was going for only one additional at the beginning and wasn't aware of the availabilty of the legendary lords at all ("I wonder if I'm missing sth", lol).

The rest sounds easy enough once you "got gud", but I'll play below legendary anyways, plus I'm not a big fan of AI exploit cheese, which mostly seems to be centered around big blobs of units in choke points or melee lords on foot. But that's another topic entirely.

One minor thing here: I'm not sure, but I think you can't recruit archers at Couronne T1, need to dismantle barracks and build farms first if I remember correctly.

[Aas]

I don't play very much of Bretonnia but here are some thoughts:

Originally posted by Hywel:

I've got around 150 hours now playing mostly wood and high elf lords

If this is your first time playing Total War Warhammer it's normal to initially struggle with some races. A lot of them play very differently and there are a lot of playstyles to learn over time.
If you are used to High and Wood Elfs
be aware that these exact two races are masters of the bow, this is one of their strengths.
You can expect every other race to have weaker bows (exception: dark elf and cathay crossbows, tomb kings constructs).
So you might be used to the exception, not the rule.

Originally posted by Hywel:

getting archers behind infantry [...], but they are much weaker in stats and severely limited in number by the peasant economy

The strength of the peasant bowmen is pretty much what you have to expect from bows in general. Took me some time myself to accept this reality, that bows are not armor piercing 180 range in general.
But they are still good for everything not to heavily armoured, to fast or small and not shielded.
If you are used to woodelfs you might be aware how usefull it is to try to shoot shielded units in the back because here their shields don't work. It's harder to accomplish this with peasants of course because of their mobility and no stealth but it still works for them too, just as a random Tip.

You can build different money buildings for Bretonnia to not entierly rely on peasant Economy.
Don't know how usefull this is, how hard it is to get a big limit of peasant units or how bad the drawbacks are if you go over the limit.
I trust it should be a balanced mechanic in general. I didn't hear a lot of people complain so you might have something interresting to figure out for yourself here.

Originally posted by Hywel:

It then feels like I have to work very hard with those units to get somewhere near the power level of a simple elf army.

I had this feeling with a lot of races that I tried for the first time and wasn't used to.
I would advise not to compare races one to one with different races too much.
Sometimes some things are weaker others stronger but in the complete package every race is strong.
Most of the time I had to learn new mechanics like gunpowder units Work or mounstous units, cavallery or chariots etc. and use different tactics.


Tldr:

Bretonnia is cavallery all the way.
Weak infantry is used only to hold enemies in place for cav charges.
Bowmen are not the strongest bows but still usefull as bows always are, same with the trebuchet.
Try using a lot of cavallery.
Try learning to be good with cavallery.
Hammer and Anvil, intercepting other cavallery in the sides, catching enemy missile and artillery units with fast cavavallery, sweeping walls in settlements with flying cavallery all while bowmen, magic and artillery shoot... something.

[Hieronymous]

Bretonnian infantry will loose every engagement. You need to be using heros and grail relics to delay the rout, which is inevitable and appropriate given the martial, spiritual, mental, and hygienic inferiority of Bretonnians.

Archers and cavalry archers are really important - you need to skirmish well to make openings for your cavalry to strike. Until your cavalry can fly, of course, which obviously makes placement easier.

Use casters for support rather than direct damage, to support all of the above. I know it's unsavory to wield the terrible chaos magics of The Lady, but if your cavalry is going to win the battle before your infantry evaporate, you gotta do it.

Last, it's important to remember that Bretonnians are more akin to beastmen than humans. As such, keep in mind that they are disposable and best used en mass. Don't worry about losses, just worry about the agriculture vs industry aspect of the economy. In fact, every Bretonnian loss doesn't just improve the in game world. With less computational resources devoted to maintaining the artistic error that is Bretonnia, you improve base reality as well.

[Lampros]

Bretonnia needs a third generic hero slot - desperately! ;(

[Hywel]

Thanks for the replies, yes I do realize that I'm still basically a noob, and getting good with cavalry will certainly help, Aas. With elfs, I was using mostly non armour piercing archers though, so that hasn't changed.

Hieronymous, I was actually expecting Bretonnian hygienic inferiority to spread to the enemy frontline and weaken them substantially enough for my peasant mobs to win the engagement.

[HappyMarmot]

Originally posted by Hywel:

One minor thing here: I'm not sure, but I think you can't recruit archers at Couronne T1, need to dismantle barracks and build farms first if I remember correctly.

Yes, you are completely right. Only man-at-arms can be recruited turn 1. It is however still possible to start building a farm at Couronne turn 1(there is an additional slot next to the barracks). At turn 2 it should be then possible to recruit the archers from this farm with a supporting lord standing at the border with Marienburg and then at turn 3 transfer these to Louen's army after he besieges the orcs. There is even a commandment for additional recruitment if necessary.

I also agree that using lords to blob units is not very fun way to play but in sieges the AI almost always blobs at the gate when trying to prevent the attacker from entering. This is especially true for factions without ranged units. Good thing is that you can easily use these lords fighting together with actual units or even on the wall(if dismounted). No need to send them in alone to force huge blobs.

One thing I forgot to mention is Bretonnia has extremely good diplomacy technologies with order factions and the High Elves are very close, easy to discover. They are usually willing to trade and little later usually defense alliance is possible which opens up allied recruitment. Bretonnia is one of the best factions for using allied recruitment because it has technologies that boost all units when fighting specific factions. Blessing of the lady will also work on allied units. This way you can have the very strong Bretonnian cavalry backed by high elf infantry. Phoenix guard with blessing of the lady will resist 45% phyisical damage.

[trooperrob]

make sure you get lords their vows.
archers are pretty rubbish, use the fire archers or poison, till then, meh...
inf are only there to last long enough for the cav to hit the enemy rear...
get lots of lords as no supply line.
sieges are more of a problem.

[Hieronymous]

The Bretonnian vow system is interesting - there's no supply lines (progressive upkeep interest per army), but each individual lord has to level up to avoid prohibitive upkeep costs. It is, Sigmar help me, almost cool. Almost.

As for Bretonnian spreading disease , unfortunately the maladies that affect them are more like the rot that affects inanimate matter and can't spread to more sophisticated organisms.

[Hywel]

Ah ok, beelining for Ulthuan and investing one research into high elfs seems a good economic strategy as well.

Just realized I would have to do some linking of accounts shenanigans to get Felix and Gotrek as FLC, thats probably why I didn't notice the option.

I think I'm on top of the vow system, but it's very easy to forget when recruiting new lords and heroes. I also think that the second one, with the fight at sea / siege in desert / defeat legendary lord is a bit cumbersome, but oh well.

[Da_Higg]

For the second one i if i haven't got a suitable siege battle coming I usually pick the battle at sea, then find one of those sea encounters where you fight generic vampire coast - that counts as a sea battle for the vow

[(Steelclaw)]

Bret infantry/archers are bad in the earlygame and of dubious quality even with full redline upgrades and armory spam. Their big advantage is that they're cheap - they're really not meant to win in 1v1 situations. I wouldn't go as far as to recommend full cavalry armies - using cavalry is a pain if you don't have anything else to help deal with halberds/monsters - but your armies will be vastly improved if you can get an early alliance with Dwarfs and pick up 4 units of their basic Warriors. (Even if you can't, make sure you pick up the shielded peasants instead of the unshielded ones - one of their jobs is to take damage so your cavalry doesn't have to, and shields will help them survive that for longer.)

Even so, your peasants won't win the fight for you. Your lord and cavalry will have to do most of the work, although peasants can win individual small engagements with good use of combined arms (in much the same way you'd win a high elf spears/archers melee).

And yeah, cavalry absolutely does have a higher micro requirement to get the same DPS performance as archers. You have to run around the risky parts of the battlefield, and your only reward is that you don't get minced if the enemy breaks through your frontlines. It's a learning curve, but they can be just as satisfying as archers once you figure out how to get them to do their best, and they never run out of ammo and can't be made to miss by a sudden change of direction.

Bretonnia really does have the best cavalry in the game. Knights Errant/of the Realm/Questing Knights don't majorly outperform higher tier cavalry, but they are still good enough to carry your armies. Use that lance formation, especially when you're charging through one unit to attack another (best way to deal with many units of archers at once, when their melee isn't in a position to protect them). You'll want to turn off lance formation if your cavalry gets stuck in a prolonged melee.

Try to only engage favorable targets with your knights - they're fast, so you should get to pick most of your fights. Knights Errant and Questing Knights prefer fighting infantry, and Knights of the Realm do well against enemy cavalry and monstrous infantry (though they'll still struggle vs single entities, and often need archer/lord support to beat a big monster).

Rear-charging stuff with cavalry when it's already engaged in melee with your peasants is one of the best ways to do damage without taking too much in return. Do note that thicker blobs of enemy infantry will be more dangerous to do this with, since your cavalry are more likely to get stuck in a costly melee rather than routing the enemy or piercing through and escaping into your own backlines.

Your cavalry - like most non-monstrous cavalry - will do terribly in a fight if it does not get to charge in. It's good cavalry, so it might still win a fight even if it doesn't get to do a good shock charge, but it will be a far more costly victory than had you charged. A good charge can easily knock 20% of the HP off an infantry unit you're attacking in the first second or two of engagement.

If you have two cavalry units fighting one enemy unit, you can pull one at a time out of the melee to let them charge again. This isn't worth doing with only one cavalry unit, since charging is most effective when done into the enemy rear, and you'll take way more damage from trying to disengage if your enemy isn't fighting another unit.

Grail Knights are pretty busted, and a few of them can serve as anchors in an otherwise weak army, racking up hundreds of kills without even losing a model if you play them right. You won't be able to get them right away, but once you do (and if you can afford them - which you usually can, Brets have a good economy), it's a whole different game. If most of your knights are relatively specialized in what they can handle fighting, Grail Knights do well against *everything* (though some things certainly have a higher HP cost to fight than others - most infantry are virtually free as long as you pincer them).

Trebuchets are worth picking up one or two of, not because they're spectacularly good but because having artillery at all opens up the options of breaking towers, making holes in walls, and forcing the enemy to come to you rather than having to charge them. You might think you want to charge them since you're a cavalry faction, but it's actually best if they rush at your infantry in an undisciplined manner. Some of their units can get isolated from others on the march to your army (due to different speeds or poor management by the AI), and these isolated units are easy pickings for pincer attacks by Knights.

Regarding the finicky vow tier: do the Fight At Sea one, and just go sailing and look for sea locations/shipwrecks. There's one which always offers you a fight, and it's not that rare - easy way to get your sea battle vow done.

[Hywel]

Steelclaw, thanks a lot for the thorough write up on how to use cavalry. While I'm doing some of the things you describe, I can certainly improve a lot more, especially with using two cavs in tandem. But I guess it's a matter of practice and will be a lot more fun once the micro stress is reduced somewhat by experience.

Having tried out Repanse just now I've also realized how quickly she and the paladin hero become very strong. Would you all say that keeping those on a mount is better than having them on foot bolstering/replacing infantry units? They seem almost unkillable this way and lack mobility of course, but I still have the knights for that.