Question: Storyline Readingum. (Spoiler, only if you have finished SL)

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SPOILER ALERT!

I found it pretty hard because it is extrmely difficult to rais more than 150 troops at one time during the playthrough of the story mission (without deviating from it for a year or more to rais enough money to get a bigger army). Also, the level of the troops of Sven is quite high and since training your own troops takes very long in VC and recruiting high level ones is also quite expensive.
I only managed it by putting down the battle size to something like 150 or 200, thus evening the odds.

That said, I only noticed that for some reason If I tell my troops to build a shieldwall during that fight they for some reason first want to run to the left side of that small building, wasting precious time before they are in formation and the stragglers always got picked of. And losing about 20-30 troops of 160 or so in a fight against 250 even before the real fighting has started is pretty bad for your winning chances.

That said: I feel like the battle should be hard and splitting up Svens forces in two parts is a good way to accomplish that. On normal combat difficulty I always lost when sven had around 50-100 troops or so left. I think if his numbers are reduced to 200 instead of the 250 he normally has and switching a number of troops from high tier ones to Tier 2 troops (for example) could do the trick. It will still be hard but beatable without grinding around for a year or so.
 
Idibil said:
Is it too tough to beat Sven Bull Neck in Readingum, final storyline?

Some players comment that it is near impossible, and I like know if this is, in order to balance it.
I think its too hard I completed it with only the most elite troops and i was only able to do it because i had like 500 in game days, because sieging dun tauro was so hard (I ended up lowering the difficulty because i was tired of waiting to do that mission).
 
Idibil said:
Is it too tough to beat Sven Bull Neck in Readingum, final storyline?

Some players comment that it is near impossible, and I like know if this is, in order to balance it.

The only issue i had with the storyline was the need to constantly deviate to build up enough strength to take the next chapter on. I always thought you should be able to play the whole thing through and then go into "sandbox mode" I just think it breaks immersion having to chase bandits for a few weeks to buy a sword, all the while your mums captive somewhere. IRL (i hope!) we would make getting our mothers back the first priority, the murderer in whats-its village can wait LOL
 
I think it is to hard...
I managed the battle only at around 300 in game days AND after I aborted the battle once with CTRL+ALT+DEL and hiring more high tier troops. First time my 130 or so troops got killed in no time even though I was usually able to fight off up to 250 enemies in normal battles. I also got the Troll's axe which enabled me to kill a lot of Sven's men. Still, it was to hard and I managed it only after I hired around 200 quite well trained troops (like veterans, svear warriors and so on...).
And I agree... freeing your mom should be your first task. But if I had done so, I would never have been able to raise my 200 high level soldiers...
 
Rising elite troops is very hard for the player. It takes ages and it´s very expensive. Yet Sven has a lot of them and they attack you from two sides at the same time which effectively removes your chance to outsmart him with tactics. There is also the fact that the first time you go in blind. There is no way to know how strong he is, much less to expect an attack from behind.

IMHO there should be things the player can do prior to the battle that would ease the difficulty. Perhaps a series of tasks that would remove Sven´s ability to attack from the rear, or maybe draw some of their men into an open battle thus reducing the amount he gets during the actual assault, perhaps if you befriend a certain lord during the story he would offer to help you thus bolstering your own ranks...I don´t know, something like that.
 
Articulo34 said:
IMHO there should be things the player can do prior to the battle that would ease the difficulty. Perhaps a series of tasks that would remove Sven´s ability to attack from the rear, or maybe draw some of their men into an open battle thus reducing the amount he gets during the actual assault, perhaps if you befriend a certain lord during the story he would offer to help you thus bolstering your own ranks...I don´t know, something like that.

Very good idea...
 
Ok, I understand then that, generally, after Aescesdun player come to Readingum with few high level troops, and Sven beat him. Your balance point is 200 men for Sven then, right?



Aethelflaed said:
Articulo34 said:
IMHO there should be things the player can do prior to the battle that would ease the difficulty. Perhaps a series of tasks that would remove Sven´s ability to attack from the rear, or maybe draw some of their men into an open battle thus reducing the amount he gets during the actual assault, perhaps if you befriend a certain lord during the story he would offer to help you thus bolstering your own ranks...I don´t know, something like that.

Very good idea...

We cannt add more quest in this storyline point, sorry.
 
Yeah it is a little too hard, i hate to say it but i think i'm going to have to use cheats just to beat this mission. Even if i wanted to take the time to go off and train 150 men until they were completely upgraded. I don't have the money to support an army that big for that long.
 
Idibil said:
Ok, I understand then that, generally, after Aescesdun player come to Readingum with few high level troops, and Sven beat him. Your balance point is 200 men for Sven then, right?



Aethelflaed said:
Articulo34 said:
IMHO there should be things the player can do prior to the battle that would ease the difficulty. Perhaps a series of tasks that would remove Sven´s ability to attack from the rear, or maybe draw some of their men into an open battle thus reducing the amount he gets during the actual assault, perhaps if you befriend a certain lord during the story he would offer to help you thus bolstering your own ranks...I don´t know, something like that.

Very good idea...

We cannt add more quest in this storyline point, sorry.

Would you be able to do something similar to the battle in Denmark where the bloke has a bag over his head ? Then you can still have an epic battle, not sure if thats considered adding to the SL though.

The only other issue is the ending, now this definitely isn't your fault as sandbox after wasn't originally intended but it seriously harms the winner, I spent a good part of a year trying to pull Northymbre out of the S**** and we were suppose to be the winners!
 
Idibil said:
Ok, I understand then that, generally, after Aescesdun player come to Readingum with few high level troops, and Sven beat him. Your balance point is 200 men for Sven then, right?

I THINK 200 men for Sven with less high tier troops should be enough to make it a winable challenge without resorting to grinding or putting down the difficulty in the options.
But one would probably have to try it out a few times to see how it works.
 
Readingum was easy enough for me on 1.03 due to having 100+ Svear Warriors and Veterans but I'm sure I'd have had more trouble in 1.04 due to the greater difficulty in raising money. Sven's force was composed of primarily high-tier troops, many of whom wear mail (the biggest problem) and it'd be hard to raise a force of equivalent quality to Sven's without relying on mercs. 200 troops with maybe a 1/3 elites and 2/3 mid-tier would make things more manageable, IMO.
 
And I wondered why noone mentioned this fight before  :mrgreen: On usual circumstances the battle is not winnable, by the time you would get there in the storyline. The only way to win is by taking the troops from ceded castles and let them be lost, and / or recruiting as many as you can before you attack. I have been playing this in 3 different playthroughs, on a normal difficulty of ~70% which means full damage to everybody and a battlesize of ~400. Iirc sven has 80 danish elite vikings and 120 vikings plus a few captains ~250 men, I attack with about 300, the 50 vikings you are given, the remaining forces from ascendun, roughly 60 heavies and your companions, plus any troops from the castles, propably another 150 spearman including elites.

The general tactic which has proofen most effective is a full assult, anything else isnt working. The key is to destroy the force in the back as fast as possible, with the player in the flank hitting the elites on their unprotected heads, which results in about 1 kill every 2 seconds. Still its a meatgrinder, this and the fortress taking are the worst. Infact holding the fortress for 30 days is even more difficult with an imported character, as the lord parties grow in size, I usually have to use 100k in cash to buy all the bandits around to quickly bolster the numbers so an attack is less likely, resulting in only 3 sieges with a thousand men or so  :razz:
 
I got distracted during the entire storyline and was very intently focused on defending Dyn Bich and a couple other places given to me from attack. This mean that I had probably about 25+ elite troops along with about 80 or so middle tier troops, and then remainder of 170 total troops as bottom tier. I barely won out with one elite troop left. It was tough but you can raise a solid army, or hire some tough mercenaries.
 
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