Any advice on taking on the vikings as the Anglo-Saxons?

As Wessex they're pretty much always survivable - don't expect to beat their initial stacks (though that can happen, it's reliant on AI allies moving to useful places and supporting your armies, which they won't always - or indeed often - do). The initial Viking attackers have little starting territory, and once the stacks are gone they're each about Mercia-sized factions or smaller.

Keep real history in mind: the Danelaw survived for a couple of centuries after Alfred, so don't feel you've "lost" if a Viking presence survives in England, just contain it - they can actually make life easier in the long term because gavelkind tends to lead to a lot of civil wars (if you can kill any of the Norse rulers this will help speed the process), and you can declare holy wars to grab territory from rebels while they're fighting their liege. It's harder to grab territory from significant Anglo-Saxon powers, or to get enough territory to vassalise Mercia.

Certainly if you want to save Mercia (which will help against the later Jyllander invasion) you want to try and limit Halfdan's territorial gains (he's usually more interested in ruling England than Ivar, who will generally get caught up warring with the Scots - by the time he wins ideally you'll be the dominant English power) - if possible (i.e. both Halfdan's stacks and your allies are in the same place, usually Northumberland).

The Norse stacks are large but finite, and the AI will often squander them by assaulting settlements rather than besieging. It can take a while for them to gain 100% warscore by besieging settlements; they get more for winning major battles, so try to avoid engaging them until their stacks are diminished enough to defeat. Mercenaries help - with Sons of Abraham you can borrow money from the Jews which will let you maintain more mercs for longer (don't hire them too early as they'll drain your funds and may eventually turn on you).

Wessex is the easiest.

PhilBowles said:

Certainly if you want to save Mercia (which will help against the later Jyllander invasion)

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You can easily murder the Jyllander/Dane king. I've made it many times.

Divilly said:

Wessex is the easiest.

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Undoubtedly, and is my default start. But this thread has me wanting to play Mercia...

However, since I understand the new map extension will invalidate old saves, I'm not planning to play CKII until RoI hits, at least not to start a new game.

You can easily murder the Jyllander/Dane king. I've made it many times.

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I managed that only once - it seems quite variable how much his people hate him.

Then there's Haraldr Fairhair, although he comes rather later - haven't managed to assassinate him yet, and it seems to vary whether Norway will emerge as a serious problem, but in both of my last games he declared war on me after unifying the country (and soundly beat me in the first one -in the second for some reason he only sent a tiny contingent of soldiers).

Back to the initial invasion, the only time I prevented the Vikings taking any territory at all I got lucky, killing Halfdan in battle and so ending his war instantly and freeing my army to defeat Ivar. In my last game somehow Ivar got both Northumberland and East Anglia, so Halfdan was never a threat of any kind at all. Ivar himself died relatively young (in his 60s rather than his 80s), so giant Sudrevjar fragmented rather quickly and I was able to gobble its English territory swiftly.

I still recommend trying to keep Mercia alive, even if your sister and brother in law tend to be annoying and quite likely to try and assassinate you (as Wessex). If Halfdan survives and does well out of the initial invasion, it will be his first target and Mercia will always lose without help because he can bring Ivar into the war.

Can't be that hard. Not once have I seen the Norse AI win in Britain, if the Catholics AI can do it then any decent player can too.

Northumberland is more or less a lost cause, but I have seen it where Jorvik doesn't expand beyond that. Happened in my 867 Aberffraw game. In that game I ultimately took the Duchy of Northumberland of them. I had also united most of Wales. I also had the Duchy of Galloway and the county of Dublin.

'Course I was playing CKII+ where they might have nerfed the Norse...

Arcvalons said:

Can't be that hard. Not once have I seen the Norse AI win in Britain, if the Catholics AI can do it then any decent player can too.

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I really have to try a non-British 867 start sometime just to see how it does pan out with the AI doing its own thing.

EU3NOOB said:

Northumberland is more or less a lost cause, but I have seen it where Jorvik doesn't expand beyond that. Happened in my 867 Aberffraw game. In that game I ultimately took the Duchy of Northumberland of them. I had also united most of Wales. I also had the Duchy of Galloway and the county of Dublin.

'Course I was playing CKII+ where they might have nerfed the Norse...

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I still don't understand how Sudrevjar managed to take Northumberland in the invasion instead of Jorvik in my last game - 200 years later an Ivaring was still my vassal Duke of Northumberland, if memory serves.

As Wessex it`s really not that hard, specially if you help Mercia survive long enough before taking it yourself

Save every coin for (very) short mercenaries contracts at the proper moment, the ocasional alliance with a Karling King can help a lot

The rest is waiting for succession crises to do their thing and pick the pieces through war and marriage

The easiest eay is to play as wessex I managed to form brittanis by 921 by play as the kings brother then killing the king and by saving all money for mercs. The key was to get your larger forces in formation with your allies and to beat ivar first if possible. Killing the viking leaders is the best course becuase of succession. Another thing that I try to do immediately is to gain claimd on wales as fast as possible it gives you extra troops and anytime you can marry with the scotts do it the longer they surrvive the easier time you will have but if you are unsuccesful in any of these pland always save your coin for mercs

Just started my first post-RoI game, and I did indeed try a Mercian start. Mercia starts with basically no money and no army (what you probably should do is raise your 2,900 levies before parcelling out your demesne - I didn't, and went down to 900 + 400 levies from vassals. Either way, though, you don't have close to enough to take on Viking armies directly, not even with merc support - which in any case you'll want to avoid because you'll need them against Jylland). Ivar took East Anglia in record time - I just avoided battle and sent my army to besiege Jorvik while the Jorvik army was in Northumberland. Taking Jorvik has a huge impact on warscore, and Halfdan can't get reinforcements - his army was wiped out by a Wessex/Wales force, without any active involvement from me.

With Jylland's invasion immediately afterwards, I then had Northumberland plus everyone else on my side, and hired the Swiss Band with Jewish funds for good measure. I had to go with a white peace having a force just a little too small to take on Sudrevjar (who were called into the war), but I was at more than 80% warscore in my favour when I did.

This all took about three years - it's now 870 and I've ended the session, however I'm fairly well-placed. Unlike Wessex, I don't need to go through contortions to grab Jorvik since it's an adjacent territory and thus holy war target; I just need to make Ivar like me enough to stay neutral when I invade. I'm also adjacent to East Anglia, so can get those back the same way either when I'm strong enough to take on Sudrevjar, or during one of their inevitable rebellions.