Tips for bretonnia?

[Lucipurr, The Silly One.]

I think repanses vortex campaign is supposed to be a cake walk, but ive never played bretonnia before. I know they are all about cav, and their infantry is pretty bad. Thats all i really know.

I have no clue where to start with army composition. (no doomstack answers plz). Almost none of my frontline units have shields. So im guessing a line of spear-men-at arms with shields, 2 foot squires maybe polearm. then some archers or artillery then the rest cav? Is there a certain tech I should be rushing?

[A.Pot]

My best advice is to do a few custom battles first and practice with cavalry tactics. You are going to need getting a hang of them, especially for Repanse's early game.

[yuzhonglu]

No. You're doing it all wrong.

Give Repanse a life mage. Hire two other melee Lords. Repanse, her paladin, the two melee lords, and the life mage can solo Khemri and every other TK garrison.

Try it and you can see why her campaign is a cakewalk.

Disband the rest of the army except the knights and the trebuchet to save on upkeep.

Then later after Repanse has taken all the settlements around her (Khemri, Pyramid, etc.) mass an army of trebuchets and paladins with some knights mixed in as support (and because of peasant cap). If you build a single barracks or a single barracks unit in ANY of your territories you deserve to be sacrificed to the lizard and rat gods for incompetence.

[zacharyb]

Originally posted by yuzhonglu:

No. You're doing it all wrong.

Give Repanse a life mage. Hire two other melee Lords. Repanse, her paladin, the two melee lords, and the life mage can solo Khemri and every other TK garrison.

Try it and you can see why her campaign is a cakewalk.

Disband the rest of the army except the knights and the trebuchet to save on upkeep.

Then later after Repanse has taken all the settlements around her (Khemri, Pyramid, etc.) mass an army of trebuchets and paladins with some knights mixed in as support (and because of peasant cap). If you build a single barracks or a single barracks unit in ANY of your territories you deserve to be sacrificed to the lizard and rat gods for incompetence.

You didn't read the part where the OP asked for no Doomstack answers.

[yuzhonglu]

It's not a doomstack. It's literally your starting lord, paladin, 2 other lords, and a life mage that you can get by T3. If that's a doomstack, then your definition of "doomstack" is kinda broad.

And anyone who considers mass trebuchets (tier 2 unit) to be a doomstack is, again, a person with an overly broad definition of the word.

[Red Bat]

Repanse's Vortex campaign legitimately probably is the easiest campaign in the game right now. Possibly only matched by one of the High Elves as a lot of the reason Brettonia is easy is because they get a lot of economic benefits that the High Elves also get.

Assuming legendary difficulty. Repanse wants to crush the VC's she starts at war with before doing anything else. This is pretty easy as you have early access to Knight's Errant who counter early VC units very easily. You also want to try to ally with the Dwarves nearby as you'll be making quite a bit of trade income from them later. You also probably want a trade agreement with the Empire faction a bit further south, but you won't meet them right away. An alliance with the Empire might not be worth it as they will get dragged into a war with the Lizardmen at some point. I forgot if Repanse has confederation techs or not, but if so those are a first research priority. You also want the tech's that give you bonuses vs enemies you are fighting or expect to be fighting soon, however the Vampire Counts will cease to be a factor soon enough that you can ignore that tech. You then want to focus on techs that improve relations with Dwaves, Empire/Brettonia, and High Elves. After you wipe out the Vampire Counts, you usually want to destroy Arkhan the Black before he takes out your ally, then fight Clan Eshin before they take out the Empire faction to the south.

You also want to try to take settlements before your non-Brettonia allies do and try to confederate ASAP. If one of the other Brettonia factions grows big enough, you can hold off on confederating them for a bit as sometimes you are better off letting the AI pay to upgrade their settlements and armies before confederating. It's especially nice if you can snag a trebuchet or two off your confederation before you can make them yourself.

Prioritize building trade resource buildings almost always before anything else. If you ever end up unable to export all your trade resources, hire a lord and send them north to make contact with the High Elves and then get trade agreements with them. Once you are making a decent amount off trade, prioritize trade boosting technologies. Around 30 turns in you'll typically end up at a point where you have to actively try to run out of gold and your stuck just fighting battles simply to get your Chivalry high enough to win the campaign.

For battle, just split your cavalry into 2 squads that move around the sides of the map until they can charge the enemy from behind and you'll almost always win early fights with few losses. You might want to split them up further to have them go after archers or artillery first without leaving your infantry entirely unsupported.

You want probably around half your army to be cavalry. Preferably Knights of the Realm or better. You ideally want to get the shielded variants of your infantry units fairly early as well. Foot Squires can be put off for a while. Actually Battle Pilgrims are a unit you'll likely be getting before Foot Squires. If you lose your starting Trebuchet, you probably want to get the building that lets you construct more ASAP as artillery is one of the few things Brettonia does very well. In fact it's not a bad idea to build generic lords to have the red skills for Trebuchets after you get the red skills for cavalry and try to put a Trebuchet in every lord's army.

Your infantry are terrible even with Repanse's buffs. You can eventually get technologies to make them more passable, but they trade poorly with almost every faction's comparable infantry. Even Foot Squires and Battle Pilgrims aren't that great. However you can use them alongside a Grail Relique to have them last long enough for cavalry or archers to save the day.

Your archers are below average until you get Pox or Fire archers. However they are pretty crucial to wiping out missile cavalry and doing a decent amount of damage to infantry before the main engagement happens. Just keep in mind they rout after only taking like 3-4 volleys of return fire.

Your starting Paladin should be used for combat due to getting unique skills that boost his anti-large damage, and due to getting a hippogriff mount usually reserved for lords. I usually split him and Repanse up and have them flank with the cavalry. Future Paladins can be split between agent actions and combat as having a unit that can assassinate is going to be pretty useful once you fight the Greenskins and have to deal with Black Orc Big Bosses.

Repanse is mighty, but she isn't one of the LLs who can wipe out most of the enemy army single handedly. She can get pretty close with items and the Lore of Life but she's better suited to lord sniping. She can charge through mobs with her horse to kill an enemy lord and she's well suited to duking it out in a clustered melee, but she will be taken down if overwhelmed by anti-large units. She also trades well with monsters, especially if you have Henry helping out.

[zacharyb]

Originally posted by yuzhonglu:

It's not a doomstack. It's literally your starting lord, paladin, 2 other lords, and a life mage that you can get by T2. If that's a doomstack, then your definition of "doomstack" is kinda broad.

I misread what you wrote and saw Trebuchets and not just the singular Trebuchet in the Disbanding sentence.Though some people might find what you wrote to be a cheesy tactic, which I'd imagine if someone doesn't want doomstacks they wouldn't want to use cheese either, but only the OP can answer that.

[Gamefever]

Bretonnia is fairly easy to play as with Repanse that is.

For some reason players on the forums think that peasants and foot soldiers are trash but they really are not, they get better than you might think and can hold a fort wall which is what matters.
They get easy access to both poisen and fire arrows for their "trash" archers which is very helpful though not needed.

Something that throws a lot of players off is that there is a "peasant" economy, farming which if you have too many peasants causes the farming value to plummet but the thing is that you also have the option of making industry which is not effected by peasant mechanics. There is also trade which they benefit from quite a bit.

Peasants are super cheap, get better over time, and actually useful. By comparison the Knights themselves sure these are powerhouses but those units cost a fortune.

There is no Upkeep increase per army, its entirely possible to have 3 or 4 Lords with peasants/foot soldiers holding down area's or committing to conquest while your main army is loaded up with good stuff. You can do that in just about 20-30 turns!

Britonia is fun to play as but against the Tomb Kings its sort of a slaughter. The Lords are melee power houses with options of either a barded warhouse or a flying mount. They can solo great amounts of the enemy and take down Tomb King Lords with ease and ask for more.

Tier 3 settlements have a WALL, there is no reason to build walls other than needing more troops there.

Since there is no additional upkeep cost for keeping around a Lord, its super easy to hire a Lord at 250 upkeep per turn to just sit around in a province if you like waiting to recruit an army of peasants on the turn before a hostile landing takes place. Lords that sit around in provinces like this get special traits that help with industry, farms, and taxation....They also get a sit on their duff debuff but oh well.
You can easily recruit up to around 10-12 units in a province in one turn this way BTW.
Building no wall fortification since walls are free on T3, you can build 3 financial buildings in a settlement, so the whole thing works out fine.

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by Gamefever:

Bretonnia is fairly easy to play as with Repanse that is.

For some reason players on the forums think that peasants and foot soldiers are trash but they really are not, they get better than you might think and can hold a fort wall which is what matters.
They get easy access to both poisen and fire arrows for their "trash" archers which is very helpful though not needed.

Something that throws a lot of players off is that there is a "peasant" economy, farming which if you have too many peasants causes the farming value to plummet but the thing is that you also have the option of making industry which is not effected by peasant mechanics. There is also trade which they benefit from quite a bit.

Peasants are super cheap, get better over time, and actually useful. By comparison the Knights themselves sure these are powerhouses but those units cost a fortune.

There is no Upkeep increase per army, its entirely possible to have 3 or 4 Lords with peasants/foot soldiers holding down area's or committing to conquest while your main army is loaded up with good stuff. You can do that in just about 20-30 turns!

Britonia is fun to play as but against the Tomb Kings its sort of a slaughter. The Lords are melee power houses with options of either a barded warhouse or a flying mount. They can solo great amounts of the enemy and take down Tomb King Lords with ease and ask for more.

Tier 3 settlements have a WALL, there is no reason to build walls other than needing more troops there.

Since there is no additional upkeep cost for keeping around a Lord, its super easy to hire a Lord at 250 upkeep per turn to just sit around in a province if you like waiting to recruit an army of peasants on the turn before a hostile landing takes place. Lords that sit around in provinces like this get special traits that help with industry, farms, and taxation....They also get a sit on their duff debuff but oh well.
You can easily recruit up to around 10-12 units in a province in one turn this way BTW.
Building no wall fortification since walls are free on T3, you can build 3 financial buildings in a settlement, so the whole thing works out fine.

It's not so much that Peasants are trash. But they don't really match other units of the same tier.

They are at least priced appropriately and they trade somewhat decently for their price if supported with some kind of leadership buff. However Foot Squires are uniquely disappointing units for their tier and are much worse than you'd expect a faction's elite infantry unit to be.

Peasant Archers are fine low tier ranged units... As long as nothing shoots back at them. Once they start taking damage it isn't uncommon for them to rout with 75% of the unit still alive and they don't live very long in back and forth ranged battles even if you buff their leadership.

The issue I have with peasant spam strategies is Brettonia doesn't do it anywhere near as efficiently as other factions like Skaven, Greenskins, and Vampire Counts manage to do with comparable strategies and it only works because Brettonia has a brokenly overpowered economy. If you play to Brettonia's strengths of having strong cavalry and artillery, you'll need a more micro intensive playstyle but you'll end up more resource efficient than peasant spam despite cavalry's higher price. I was able to conquer all the Tomb King factions and the Greenskins in my VH Vortex campaign with only 2 lords and I didn't really bother doing much with other lords until I decided I wanted to destroy Sartosa while Repanse is off elsewhere.

[Gamefever]

Well, its not so much the "peasants" which in thinking about it is actually a really cheap unit in the rooster and of course its low upkeep. Its more fodder tier than anything else. Sure that unit can be made to actually be something.

However I'm really talking about the "Footsolders" which are a wide variety of units includes the Squire unit. In general when I read the forums about this particular group its All Knight Armies or Bust.

What I'm saying is you can field foot soldiers and do just fine.

The other artical is the "Peasant Economy" farms produce less income when over a certain "peasant threshhold" all foot soldiers, all trebs, and quite a few horsemen are all actually considered peasants including the Squires.

This is overcome by ignoring farm economy all together and focus in on Industry buildings and trade goods.

I'm not attempting to advocate spamming of "peasant" armies sorry it came off that way. Im advocating Footsoldiers, professional men at arms. Which are considered in game to be peasants btw, which is where the confusion is coming in.

Leaving a Lord at an important province is still viable strat btw, you hire about 12 units of footsoldiers just before a roaming Pirate Coast army makes landfall and that town is very tough nut to crack open.

[wrought82]

peasants with hoes bows or swords are all perfectly viable for their cost, but brettonia can also just field all cavalry/flying armies.
Using th no walls=no siege mod is highly recommended, that way you dont have to cheese with trebuchets against walls

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by Gamefever:

Well, its not so much the "peasants" which in thinking about it is actually a really cheap unit in the rooster and of course its low upkeep. Its more fodder tier than anything else. Sure that unit can be made to actually be something.

However I'm really talking about the "Footsolders" which are a wide variety of units includes the Squire unit. In general when I read the forums about this particular group its All Knight Armies or Bust.

What I'm saying is you can field foot soldiers and do just fine.

The other artical is the "Peasant Economy" farms produce less income when over a certain "peasant threshhold" all foot soldiers, all trebs, and quite a few horsemen are all actually considered peasants including the Squires.

This is overcome by ignoring farm economy all together and focus in on Industry buildings and trade goods.

I'm not attempting to advocate spamming of "peasant" armies sorry it came off that way. Im advocating Footsoldiers, professional men at arms. Which are considered in game to be peasants btw, which is where the confusion is coming in.

Leaving a Lord at an important province is still viable strat btw, you hire about 12 units of footsoldiers just before a roaming Pirate Coast army makes landfall and that town is very tough nut to crack open.

I assumed you didn't specifically mean peasant mob. My response should have made it clear I knew you weren't just talking about peasant mobs, which is why I mentioned Foot Squires.

Ignoring farm economy to make less efficient units doesn't sound like a good strategy. Yes you can make it work, but only because you have the economy to be wasteful. I could see this being a good idea early on in a Boardeleux playthrough maybe. But Repanse has knight errants at the start and very easy expansion options.

Also knights aren't as expensive as you are making them out to be. With the vows they are massively cost efficient. Around 40 turns in I made 2 full armies of nearly nothing but Knights of the Realm (I had like 8 assorted peasant units as support) to attack Sartosa with and I still had 2000 gold income per turn. Yes you can ignore knights and just meat grinder your infantry against better infantry that is difficulty buffed, taking massive losses every battle. It will work, but it's an exceedingly poor strategy for a faction that has better options.

You don't need to go full knight army either, but usually if you are going over the peasant cap there probably is a better way you could be playing.

[chaosbringer42]

Originally posted by Red Bat Media:

Originally posted by Gamefever:

Well, its not so much the "peasants" which in thinking about it is actually a really cheap unit in the rooster and of course its low upkeep. Its more fodder tier than anything else. Sure that unit can be made to actually be something.

However I'm really talking about the "Footsolders" which are a wide variety of units includes the Squire unit. In general when I read the forums about this particular group its All Knight Armies or Bust.

What I'm saying is you can field foot soldiers and do just fine.

The other artical is the "Peasant Economy" farms produce less income when over a certain "peasant threshhold" all foot soldiers, all trebs, and quite a few horsemen are all actually considered peasants including the Squires.

This is overcome by ignoring farm economy all together and focus in on Industry buildings and trade goods.

I'm not attempting to advocate spamming of "peasant" armies sorry it came off that way. Im advocating Footsoldiers, professional men at arms. Which are considered in game to be peasants btw, which is where the confusion is coming in.

Leaving a Lord at an important province is still viable strat btw, you hire about 12 units of footsoldiers just before a roaming Pirate Coast army makes landfall and that town is very tough nut to crack open.

I assumed you didn't specifically mean peasant mob. My response should have made it clear I knew you weren't just talking about peasant mobs, which is why I mentioned Foot Squires.

Ignoring farm economy to make less efficient units doesn't sound like a good strategy. Yes you can make it work, but only because you have the economy to be wasteful. I could see this being a good idea early on in a Boardeleux playthrough maybe. But Repanse has knight errants at the start and very easy expansion options.

Also knights aren't as expensive as you are making them out to be. With the vows they are massively cost efficient. Around 40 turns in I made 2 full armies of nearly nothing but Knights of the Realm (I had like 8 assorted peasant units as support) to attack Sartosa with and I still had 2000 gold income per turn. Yes you can ignore knights and just meat grinder your infantry against better infantry that is difficulty buffed, taking massive losses every battle. It will work, but it's an exceedingly poor strategy for a faction that has better options.

You don't need to go full knight army either, but usually if you are going over the peasant cap there probably is a better way you could be playing.

Amusingly, even if you have MASSIVE losses every turn, you can global recruit many peasant units in 1 turn, so can have an army almost die out, merge and recruit to have a full stack next turn. Its one of the reason bret is so strong in the hands of a player, almost any tactic works (no supply lines really made them OP in so many ways :/).