Today we discuss strategy, tips and advice for the Franks Campaign for Rome Total War Barbarian Invasion Second channel: / @lugoreviews2805 Discord: / discord
Sorry for not uploading in a while guys, I've been busy at university. I'm back now, and more faction guides will come. The next faction guide is a particularly interesting one so watch out for it soon!
Good review, especially what you said about the effects of the moral support unit or the armor piercing. This is what i like about rome total war, there are some details that can be discovered everywhere. Because on the first look, units like the priests or druids are complete trash, but if they are used in a special way like you explained they can be really effective. Like the skirmishers, who are useless when firing at charging infantry, but completely destroy a generals bodyguard, when they throw spears at them from the side.
The Franks are definitely my favorite faction in Rome Barbarian Invasion. Even without the ability to horde, they are in a great position, and have great units. Gotta love paladins!
Just got BI as a bday present for myself. I’ve been using your vids as help for the vanilla TW. Starting with the Franks for my first non Roman campaign. Thanks a lot for your excellent faction guides. Looking forward to more BI faction guides. Keep up the good work!
Something to note is that Paladins aren’t made available from Stable upgrades, they’re made trainable from Monasteries. If you want them you need to go Christian which is a pain considering the location, but worth it for that fantastic shock cavalry imo. Combined with their victory goals it’s supposed to nudge you towards their historical path I guess. By the way, are you considering guides for normally unplayable factions? Ones you change to playable in the files or ones like the British you can play with editing or modding?
The Frank Levy Spearmen is the only Levy Spearmen unit that has missile attacks. They are a good base unit, combined with the Heerbaan Swordmen in the beginning, eliminating the need for Hunters on the field (still good in walled cities).
Oh, I love the Frankish units. Their colours, their visual design and their balanced stats make for one of my favourite Rome factions. Edit: As for the pronounciation of "Heerbann", it sounds pretty much as if it were spelled "hair bun".
After taking out the Saxons and Alemanni, I swing over to where the Celts are and take Tara, and Dal Raida. The West Rome empire doesn't usually fortify those back end regions and makes for an easy march through that area, which also includes the 3 regions required for victory. Tbh using this method, you could have a quick victory without having to deal with the Huns or the Vandals. Although if the Vandals penetrate far enough West, then you might have to tangle with them, but by then you should be more than formidable.
I remember that the warcry improved the attack by 10 in rtw vanilla. Does anybody know whether this is also true for missiles on BI? Looking at these francisca axes there...
Trying to go Christian with these guys is quite the challenge, I horded to Italy and spread Christianity from there since Rome and Tarentum were already Christian, took West Africa, took part of Gaul. Every settlement I take I convert to Christianity, yet still after 25 years I still don't have a Christian general. Will search for a Christian East Roman I can bribe I guess. Lots of generals doubtful about the old gods though which gives negative traits. A tactic you might want to use: building a shrine or chapel in cities and letting them rebel (since you usually can't control them with all that unhappiness from religion) and moving on with your army to turn the area Christian. In hindsight, should've tried to locate the most Christian man that ever Christened and try to bribe him
A pretty viable tactic is to demolish pagan temple and build church at turn 1 and horde on turn 2, there's a good chance that one of general spawned will be christian
Out of all the frankish units my favorites is the sword heerban and levy spearman, because of their abilities, shield wall for the heerban and missile attack from the spearman and an added bonus fron the spearman is they march and fight in a form of a phalanx but not to the extent like hoplites or pikemen in the base game and out of all of this both unit are cost effective and easy to reinforce and easy to support one another with the raiders
Their throwing axeman are really good, give some nice Age of Empires 2 vibe. The best faith for them is Christianity due to ability to recruit Paladins, just like Celts must remain Pagan to make use of Druids and Berserks. Changing faith and building up christian structures will take a while, so Paladins are long term investment, but it's worth it and the structures themselves will help with public order. Christianity is more for public order, while Pagan gives a few unit upgrade bonuses (missiles, light weapons, experience). Paladin bodyguards can be recruited but 4 turns is a long time. Strategy: I would say go horde mode into west. Taking the 3 victory provinces won't be that hard, but Avaricum will have a big garrison with lots of comitatenses and general so need to play it smart. Spain isn't heavily defended and it's rich so it's nice to capture it. Then probably hit Italy which has a few rich and well-developed cities to take. Celts can make landfall from the north with a big army to steal a city or two and the battle against them won't be easy, because in my case at least, they would bring stuff like druids or berserks. Vandals, Huns and whoever else will usually roam in Central Europe, but need to keep strong garrisons on the borders and spy close to track their movements. After capturing most of needed provinces it's nice to slow down, build up and consolidate. Hordes won't get stronger, while we will tech up in cities. Then we can move out and finish the campaign or go on to conquer the world.
Well, I recently started a campaign as the Franks and started out by taking Campus Marcomann and Campus Quadi after retraining my troops to give them a bit more experience at my capital. Though it looks like the Saxons aren't going to amount to much in my campaign since both of the settlements near them are already under siege by other powers.
thesacredlobo Franks are my fave. I’m doing a Frank campaign in which I ally Rome, and stay in Germany as I convert to Christianity. It is really fun and challenging to play the religious game, especially if you don’t want to expand to get paladins, which require a hermitage (I think).
@@deutschamerikaner - Yeah you have to go the Christian route to get Paladins. Though I decided to focus on the religion that gives you additional experience upon training units. After all, that seems far more useful at the moment. Though, I've already broken ties with the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. Or I should say the Eastern Roman Empire told me to piss off after I got 1,,500 out of them for attacking the Burgandy and I decided to end my agreements with the Western Roman Empire in order to begin expanding towards settlements worth more money. After all, I really need more funds if I'm going to keep growing my military might at this point. Though, I did manage to con the Western Roman Empire out of 4,000 for attacking the Burgandy before I did so. Though, I imagine I only managed to get that much because I got the game on M/M at the moment. I really like to get a feel for a game on normal before I start to up the ante after all. Though I imagine I won't be working on that campaign again for a few more weeks. After all, I've already got all of the planned episodes for that series already recorded with the first episode being planned for August 1st and with following episodes coming out on a Monday and Saturday schedule since I've already devoted Tues, Thurs, and Sun to the base game as the Brutii with plans to work on Shogun 2 and Napoleon on Wed and Fri respectively for next month. Albeit, I've been working on the base game for a while now so I've got updates for that one recorded up until the end of August at this point.
Thanks a lot man. In terms of a full on let's play, that's quite unlikely for a while, but I would like to livestream some gameplay soon when I have the time!
I recently finished up my first campaign in barbarian invasion as the Franks on M/M and never even saw the armies of the Huns. On the other hand, they did have a diplomat just hanging out near the Lombards for half a dozen turns or more. In fact, the only relationship I had with the Huns was to sell them map information.
Thanks for making this series. I'm really bad at RTS and these videos have helped me at least offset that with long scale strategy. I even watched a couple of those annoying ads if it's any good.
Just a question Great vid by the way Do you record the footage and have a script Or do you talk with the footage with a script Or just talk with the footage no script?
Thank you. Nah none of my videos are scripted, I just talk along with the footage. Quite often I will have notes to remind me of points I need to cover though
@@lugotorix6173 yeah I love my horse archers and solid foot archers. I love just widdling the enemy down like a plague. I never play as the huns because they are the "bad guy" in BI and Attila. So I like to destroy them and take out Rome. Idk why but I always end up starting my Kingdoms in Iberia and then heading to Africa and then pushing East. I take the North and far east much later as those provinces tend to have poor economic strength.
Heavy cav, heavy cav, heavy cav, and more heavy cav. You can never have enough; you can never have too much. A full stack of general's bodyguard, while very expensive, would be the most powerful army in the game.
@@DangeHD Perhaps in a bridge battle or a siege. I've fought field battles that were exactly this with the result the spear army routed and the final kill ratio was 20:1 in favor of the cav. Spear units in BI are mostly trash. Conversely I've had battles in vanilla with phalanx infantry where the AI charged headlong into them, didn't bat an eye or suffer a kill, and routed my whole army. I'm not a fan of spear troops or any infantry really in this game.
@@timothyernst8812 Yeah you´re right, in an open field battle it´s certainly OP, but you have to be good at mikro managing your Cav to outflank the enemy. I didn´t really thought about an open field because most maps are Hills or Forests. But you would win every battle except some sieges with a full stack Bodyguards, it´s just that you would have to sacrifice some of them :D
What do you think is the best to do for religion? It's easier to be Pagan, since all settlements and characters there are pagan, but christian is better on the long run, since you get paladins, and more buildings to gain public order from, but it's absolutely impossible to convert to christianity.
Christianity is the best option for Franks, as the Paladins are a worthy reward. In fact, I'll say only Franks, Berbers, Goths and East Rome are worth to play as christian.
For those not having tried the Franks: beware, the hordes might come for you even if you are way off in the west. And your roster isn't the best for dealing with cavalry. The safest route is probably to take out the Saxons (for their port, mainly) and then migrate to the British Isles. If you do this you don't have to abandon your mainland territory, but it is safer to invest and focus on your new home. Alternatively, try to make alliances with factions around you and head southwest into modern day France. At the very least it'll put some additional distance between you and the hordes. I like the Franks, but I also like good spear and archer units and the focus of the Franks lies elsewhere. However, since a lot of your units have some form of missile weapon, even levy spearmen can play an important role in your amies. 120 troops in a unit throwing missiles isn't bad at all. Plus they can be sacrificed to take an enemy charge and, weakened by all the missile fire, the enemy will be more susceptible to your infantry and cavalry charges. - edit - One thing I missed in this video was the religious aspect. You can choose to go Christian or pagan and both have their benefits. The paladins being the main benefit of going Christian, the pagan side offering more unit upgrades.
I've played 5 full campaigns with the franks and the hordes really are not hard to deal with, mostly just time consuming. You just have to build a lot of swordsmen and archers and just let the hordes kill themselves in siege battles. Even if you lose a few settlements their numbers will decrease very quickly and It should be winnable. You can become a horde yourself if things go REALLY badly and by that point you could either flee or fight them off with your new found numbers.
I always broke my brain with The Roman Empire that a reach half way and i Rage quit xD, but i made it tho with the ssasanid faction cause the heavy calvalry
Oh cool bro, this was the first faction i used in BI, oh i love it so much, my tactics was ally with Alemania to support a defense against Sajonian and expand to west to get france obviously, then when huns or vandals come to me, i should be stronger. You could do a berebers guide, im doing now a campaign of them, but actually my challenge is become christianity the powerful religion
Glad you enjoy the Franks, I think they're a really cool faction. Yeah I'll definitely do a berbers guide at some point as well, so watch out for that!
Fun fact about the Franks. Historically, when they conquered the territory that would eventually become their country, they named it after the Francisca throwing axe cause it was such a lethal weapon. When they threw the axe, enemies would raise shields up to block the axes, but many would fall short and because of the uniquely shaped head, they would actually bounce back up and hit the target from below. The name of their country is France. So basically France is named after an axe.
I hate BI, every faction has similar units and it is completely broken - `shield wall=shit wall it stops absolutely nothing, Archers are useless and super weak, Cavalry are way overpowered nothing stops them.
