I was thinking of starting a game and trying to set a up a Germanic kingdom in these borders.
So my question which Germanic culture has the best retinue?
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Best Germanic cultural Retinues?
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I was thinking of starting a game and trying to set a up a Germanic kingdom in these borders.
So my question which Germanic culture has the best retinue?
Generally I feel a good offense is the best defence so the North Germanic one seems best. It's also shared by the Frisians and both flavors of Saxon.
Between them all the germanic cultures have six different retinues:
- Longbow (English)
- Knight (German)
- Goededag Militia (Dutch)
- Frankish/Lombard Heavy Infantry (Frankish/Lombard)
- Housecarl (everybody else)
As for which of these retinues is best it depends on whether your main concern is efficient use of your retinue cap and gold or whether you want to jam as much fighting power as possible into a certain supply limit.
I've done extensive testing (with the help of others) and posted results in this thread. Be warned though that the test focused purely on the cost-efficiency of retinues and the testing conditions were unrealistic (retinue size was quite large compared to simulated levy), so "most efficient" does not equal "best". I have a suspicion that the test overvalued the performance of skirmish phase focused retinues, becuase they were more likely than normal to rout at least one enemy flank before the beginning of melee phase.
All that said, according to my testing Longbow retinues are by far the most cost-effective of all the ones listed, but they feel the least Germanic and English culture would require some quite gamey moves to adopt. For those reasons I recommend against being English.
Goedendag Militia are almost as cost-effective as Longbow, but their performance varied greatly during testing. Also, due to the large component of Light Infantry they would run into the supply limit faster than others and are also likely overvalued by the specific test.
Knight retinues have by far the lowest cost-efficiency, but their advantage is that you can squeeze a lot of power into a relatively small army that will be underestimated by the AI. Still, I would prefer something with more efficiency.
This brings us to Housecarls. They are somewhere in the middle when it comes to efficiency, but they don't strain your supply limit as much as most of the really efficient ones. Your cultural building will also give a bonus to the largest portion of your levies and it is used by a majority of all Germanic cultures so it would feel the most Germanic too. One word of warning though, the unique North Germanic tactic Berserker Charge is actually bad for retinues, so I would recommend one of the West Germanic cultures instead (Saxon, Anglo-Saxon, Frisian).
Frankish/Lobard Heavy Infantry are essentially a weaker version of Housecarls.
- Longbow (English)
- Knight (German)
- Goededag Militia (Dutch)
- Frankish/Lombard Heavy Infantry (Frankish/Lombard)
- Housecarl (everybody else)
As for which of these retinues is best it depends on whether your main concern is efficient use of your retinue cap and gold or whether you want to jam as much fighting power as possible into a certain supply limit.
I've done extensive testing (with the help of others) and posted results in this thread. Be warned though that the test focused purely on the cost-efficiency of retinues and the testing conditions were unrealistic (retinue size was quite large compared to simulated levy), so "most efficient" does not equal "best". I have a suspicion that the test overvalued the performance of skirmish phase focused retinues, becuase they were more likely than normal to rout at least one enemy flank before the beginning of melee phase.
All that said, according to my testing Longbow retinues are by far the most cost-effective of all the ones listed, but they feel the least Germanic and English culture would require some quite gamey moves to adopt. For those reasons I recommend against being English.
Goedendag Militia are almost as cost-effective as Longbow, but their performance varied greatly during testing. Also, due to the large component of Light Infantry they would run into the supply limit faster than others and are also likely overvalued by the specific test.
Knight retinues have by far the lowest cost-efficiency, but their advantage is that you can squeeze a lot of power into a relatively small army that will be underestimated by the AI. Still, I would prefer something with more efficiency.
This brings us to Housecarls. They are somewhere in the middle when it comes to efficiency, but they don't strain your supply limit as much as most of the really efficient ones. Your cultural building will also give a bonus to the largest portion of your levies and it is used by a majority of all Germanic cultures so it would feel the most Germanic too. One word of warning though, the unique North Germanic tactic Berserker Charge is actually bad for retinues, so I would recommend one of the West Germanic cultures instead (Saxon, Anglo-Saxon, Frisian).
Frankish/Lobard Heavy Infantry are essentially a weaker version of Housecarls.
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Saxon seems like the best choice then, they already own part of the territory I want, just have to survive charlie, which is a coin toss. Germanic religion is nice for an expansionist nation.
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Knights are very expensive, but they become extremely strong when you can take a full flank of them (and nothing else) because of excellent tactic choices giving a very high chance to charge and gain huge heavy cavalry bonuses as soon as the 10 day mandatory skirmish phase is over. You can take advantage of the fact that "charging own skirmishers" is really, really good if you don't have archers by assigning a "cruel" commander to the all-knight flank. With multiple weight 10 charge tactics (generally with +300% heavy cavalry offence) they'll generally get into melee as soon as possible and cause very high damage when they do. Plus, occasionally you'll get a couched lance charge with a germanic commander, which is basically good game for everyone else.
With Saxon, it's not that hard to convert to Christianity.. doing so prevents Charlie from getting any claims on Saxony at all, although if he manages to form the HRE it might be worth swearing fealty to him anyway.
With Saxon, it's not that hard to convert to Christianity.. doing so prevents Charlie from getting any claims on Saxony at all, although if he manages to form the HRE it might be worth swearing fealty to him anyway.
You mean the German reformed Germanic Empire of Germania?
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