Why does everyone hate Bretonnia?

[EvilJoshy]

Stupid question but I don't know the answer. I didn't get into TW until the 2nd game and I haven't played as Bretonnia yet. Seems like they are one of the worst, most under powered factions in the game. Why is that?

[RCMidas]

An equal number say that they are one of the strongest, most overpowered factions - provided you've got good micro. No supply line mechanics, free walls on tier 3 minor settlements, Lords that can become Unbreakable with Perfect Vigour if they win enough battles and complete their Vows, horrifically cheap peasantry that is only itself terrible if not cleverly supported with a Grail Reliquae, the Paladin Hero providing considerable defences to its supporting Lord...

Yeah, it's a "love them or hate them" faction all right.

[Hurricane]

I love them. Their cav spam is the strongest army in the game. Beating even anti cav in prolonged melee...

[zefyris]

Not everyone. Plenty of peoples like them.

Also, while they're pretty hard to play in multiplayer battles so many peoples won't play them for that obvious reason, they have their good and bad match up there as well; but as you probably know, multiplayer isn't the focus of that game and is barely played by peoples anyway,


so about campaign :

-They're nowhere near weak. More like, all of the 3 existing bretonnian factions easily rank in the top 10 most powerful factions in the hands of a player. When lead by the AI, they're less strong, but they're still usually amongst the last one standing (although their allies being strong helps obviously), so they're nowhere near a bad spot either.
-They're especially strong for players at high difficulties since they don't get impacted by supply lines debuff which is massive in VH/Legendary.
-They're especially strong end game as they have a lots of stacking factionwide buffs; and early game they usually aren't really threatened so overall they're pretty easy to play on the campaign map.

However, they
-are fairly hard to play durng the battle themselves due to being cavalry focused, which is obviously way more micro intensive, especially for players used to "cheese" battles against the AI by turtling in a corner with lots of ranged and artillery or just using lots of powerful single entity monsters.
-are fairly slow to start, which like I said isn't a problem since they're not threatened early on, but means that their main occupation for the first 20 turns is fighting greenskins rebelions. Some peoples simply don't like that.
- are fairly low-key fantasy compared to a lot of other factions. Some peoples want more err... "flashy"? factions than human knights in armours with commoner infantry.

[AVGAMER]

Since when does everyone hate them

[Psyco]

Originally posted by RCMidas:

An equal number say that they are one of the strongest, most overpowered factions - provided you've got good micro. No supply line mechanics, free walls on tier 3 minor settlements, Lords that can become Unbreakable with Perfect Vigour if they win enough battles and complete their Vows, horrifically cheap peasantry that is only itself terrible if not cleverly supported with a Grail Reliquae, the Paladin Hero providing considerable defences to its supporting Lord...

Yeah, it's a "love them or hate them" faction all right.

Exactly that...that said I found that low tier cav are literally useless...and this goes for alots of faction, cav just never felt all that great in this game to begin with, the revised Bretonnia was very miss imo...vow are powerful but I usually take the same vow since other vow are next to impossible to complete unless you go very out of your way to complete them.

I found that you can also stall very early on which is very very boring in the campaign and although peasantry unit are great imo they have the problem of being necessary and sometime it just limit with massively compared to other faction, so playing defensively with them is almost required in higher difficulty.

I do wish Cav in general felt more brutal and even if it would make them weaker in other point since...leaving them in the back of enemy will usually make them take massive casualty if they do not rout.

Cav being their strong point also is very problematic in siege.

[azguz]

was the first faction i played as when i bought TW1, and i've only ran through to completion once with that army. I don't care for them much, i don't like monitoring Cav all battle. i hardly use any cav with any army that has them because i feel they aren't good in the game, at least with my play style. to each their own right?

But i did appreciate some aspects of the gameplay. i like having farms to support local peasants and things. i liked the campaign play i guess, the battle just wasn't how i play. Like someone mentioned above, a love em or hate em...

[Galactic Origins]

I used to really like them in the first game. Now, in Mortal Empires, they must go with an extremely slow start. There is no way they can take and hold Marienburg in the first few turns. They start at war with Norsca, who is just itching to send wolf cavalry down south, and the Orks, who hit anything in sight if you try and attack Marienburg. Also, they are at war with Marienburg but it is just too hard to hit them in the first 10 turns.

I just quit playing them after 2+ hours with several restarts. Many changes compared to the older version of the game. I will give them a try again but with a different strategy.

Their main problem is that many of their troops are 'peasants' If you have too many your income drops like a rock so you cant get many foot troops early on, and the Noble Knights take tier 4+ cities. So, I guess they go slow.

On the other hand the AI Bretonnia is Very good confederating the rest of the Bretonnian kingdoms.

They also get a bad event on turn 2 lowering their 'order' in cities unless you raze the Ork village nearby.

[Wraith]

Originally posted by Psyco:

Exactly that...that said I found that low tier cav are literally useless...and this goes for alots of faction, cav just never felt all that great in this game to begin with, the revised Bretonnia was very miss imo...vow are powerful but I usually take the same vow since other vow are next to impossible to complete unless you go very out of your way to complete them.

I found that you can also stall very early on which is very very boring in the campaign and although peasantry unit are great imo they have the problem of being necessary and sometime it just limit with massively compared to other faction, so playing defensively with them is almost required in higher difficulty.

I do wish Cav in general felt more brutal and even if it would make them weaker in other point since...leaving them in the back of enemy will usually make them take massive casualty if they do not rout.

Cav being their strong point also is very problematic in siege.

??? Cav are super strong even early game bretonian Cav are great.

maybe your just not cut out to play bretonnia.

your not suppose to leave your cavalry in the back of enemy your suppose to cycle charge taking advantage of all that juicy damage.

[Ewalden]

Most of the dislike for Bretonnians come from multiplayer because they are one of the most predictable factions in PvP matches. They are generally cavalry heavy, whether it is Knights of the Realm, Grail Knights or Pegasi. In multiplayer stacking up on anti-large is a quite easy thing to do, and even if you meet a peasant army instead, your anti-large can still win the battle.

In campaign however Bretonnians are awesome. They are one of the easiest factions to unify because of their tech tree and confederate dilemmas. They can quickly become a powerhouse and a Bretonnian army of mostly knights can defeat most AI armies it meet.

The only peeve I have against them is that they have a somewhat small unit roster compared to many other factions; I would wish CA got the all clear to create or invent a couple of new units for them. After all they did get to make Vampire Coast pirates from scratch. Would be nice if they could add a bit of diversity to the Bretonnians, even if they are a very established faction.

[Ashley]

Besides their Calvary they're a bit bad. And in ai's hands ai can't build the buildings well so they end up with really bad army comps. So that leads to them getting a bad reputation when you play against them. Considering they are Cav based they have issues vs siege battles. Both defending and attacking. Also the fact that cav aren't considered to be that good especially the higher you get in difficulty and higher model counts. AI gets bonuses to leadership and melee so your charge won't do as much especially vs higher leadership factions that might as well be fight to the death because higher leadership.

When you have options like magic and range + artillery that stays the same strength no matter the difficulty it's easy to pass on cav with range being easier to use. Just not worth it personally when I can free up another spot or two for ranged or another large unit. But if I play Bretonnia? Yeah i'll use the cav. But for some factions i'd just pass on cav almost entirely.

Not that cav isn't strong i've gotten around 200 kills+ before in a fight with them better then i've gotten with ranged excluding artillery. But alot of that leads to Bretonnia getting a bad reputation.

[RCMidas]

The AI also suffers from the massively increased upkeep for superior cavalry units when the Lord does not have the corresponding Vow - even the bonuses received by the AI in this regard do not really help, so they cannot field truly impressive armies the way a player can in the end game.

They are definitely an Advanced Race over something like, for instance, the Dwarves or Empire or High Elves.

[Garatgh Deloi]

My humble opinion on cavalry & Bretonnia:

Cavalry requires a lot of micro to use effectively. Most people that consider cavalry (even the early tiers) weak simply don't micro them to the degree necessary. Depending on playstyle and the type of person you are it can simply be easier to dismiss cavalry all together.

And that in turn has a heavy impact on your opinion of Bretonnia (It being a cavalry heavy faction).

[Wyvern]

Brettonia is generally fine in mp, except a few specific mus where people camp their armored monsters on elite halberds, but even those are all winnable if you know what youre doing.

Biggest issue for brets is that theyre one of the more skill demanding factions, since they cant crutch hard on monsters(until super late gamr at any rate), arty spam or crazy infantry.

Cav is high skill floor high skill ceiling, and so while a good player might consider brettonia stupid good or even op(in campaign especially) a bad or average player will not see that.

Some of brettonias perks like no supply line penalty also tend to get overlooked, but can make them stupid op in campaign.

[Coldhands]

I haven’t played a Bretonnia campaign since WH1. I really need to give them another try.
... Of course I also still really haven’t played Skaven. Or Norsca. Or Vampire Coast, Lizardmen, Chaos, or Beastmen, or that much Greenskins or Dwarfs.

This game is really big, you guys. : p

[Soulfighter]

Originally posted by Hurricane:

I love them. Their cav spam is the strongest army in the game. Beating even anti cav in prolonged melee...

No they certainly don't. I have no idea what you're smoking. In this game cav is always inferior to their infantry counterpart in prolonged combat because they always have bigger models and much inferior numbers on top of having average if not mediocre stats.