FrisiansStory

Warning: Spoiler

Do not read on unless you already mastered the frisian campaign, or you are stuck beyond help.

Frisians – From Water to Ice

The Great Stormflood

This scenario plays on Hallig Langeneß in the year 1362. A tribe of frisians led by chieftain Reebaud has just arrived from the mainland to settle here and live in peace. Advisor Hauke instructs you how the frisian economy works. Once you have expanded some distance, the supposedly pristine island is found to be inhabited by a hostile tribe, resulting in war to be declared. The first big challenge is to train your handful of soldiers and recruit more of them so you have a chance to defeat the much more powerful enemy. Hauke will give you a few useful strategic hints to aid you. Use the power graph in the general statistics to determine the earliest point when it is safe to attack. Once the enemy is defeated, he prays to God to punish you for your deed. The prayer is promptly fulfilled in the form of a stormflood that causes the island to drown rapidly. Hurry up, you have little time to spare. (You did follow Hauke's hints regarding building warehouses and moving materials eastwards, didn't you?!) Once you have built a port and a ship and launched an expedition, you are safe and have won. It is recommended to send some hero soldiers to the port – they will be carried over to the next mission.

An Icy Welcome

Months later, you have arrived in the far North. After you set up a basic infrastructure among frozen hills, you are faced with the problem that you are out of metals. Hauke explains the unique frisian recycling economy that allows you to produce a few iron ingots to get picks for miners. Later, he also explains aqua farming, which is the last concept that has not been taught so far. Soon you meet Murilius, the proconsule of an imperial province that has already claimed the lands you are intending to settle in for itself. Murilius kindly permits you to gather a few wares as a welcome gift for him, and caring as he is, he forbids you to expand your territory. After spying on him using a scout, you discover that you may still expand your territory as long as the total number of military sites does not increase – that is, you may build a new one for every one you dismantle. If you obey his wishes, you will be tasked with defeating a barbarian tribe living nearby – no easy task! Afterwards, you will fall out with Murilius and you will want to destroy his entire colony (merely defeating him does not suffice – you have to conquer every last field of his land). Rejecting his demands by declaring battle is less awkward, then you only have to defeat both enemies – both of them at once, so be sure you are very strong before making any decisions. Again the power graph is useful. It is essential that you get not only to the small mountain range northeast of the fjord but also to the bigger mountains containing many resources southeast of the fjord (which you can only reach at the cost of having a bottleneck in your economy as the debris strip leaves space for only 1 road along the shore. Hurry up before the empire gets to the mountains.). Once both enemies are defeated, well done, you may now live in peace.

Frisian Carribbean

This mission is not part of the mainline campaign. It will perhaps be made available as a standalone add-on one day. In the official campaign, the content of the following tale is summarized briefly at the beginning of Friends In Need.

Let's jump away from Reebaud for a while back to Northern Frisia, to the island of Föhr. The knight Claus Lembeck is having some trouble. He's being besieged by two enemies – Waldemar Atterdag, King of the Danes, and one of his friends – who are too powerful to be defeated. This scenario is special in that there are no rocks, trees, or mineable areas, and players are instead supplied with stones, logs, and ores. Take care of your headquarters, if it is destroyed the scenario is over. Attacks come in several waves, and if you survive long enough, the enemy will grow so strong that you have to escape by launching an expedition. During one of the last waves, you will suddenly switch from controlling Claus Lembeck to his son and ally Henneke, so do not spend too much time preparing for the final goal. This scenario is so fighting-heavy that it was never included in the official campaign.

Friends In Need

Claus and Henneke Lembeck are heading Northwards to seek help from Reebaud to reconquer their island. The journey is harder than expected. You start on a small island with little space, and the concept of diking is introduced to allow you to get a bit more room¹. Use dikes to fill in the little channel just east of the starting point. On the next island, you will meet the Atlantean King Angadthur who challenges you to a tournament which you must win to proceed – make sure you've trained a good number of soldiers, because his guards are very powerful, but don't wait too long lest he claims the whole island leaving you with nowhere to land. Later you will meet the imperial legate Marcus Caius Iniucundus who is on his way to the North to discover why a certain Murilius has not paid his taxes for a while. He offers you a passage on his ship at an exorbitant price – either gather the required sum of gold or defeat him, but hurry up, a storm is coming that will make passage impossible. Again your soldiers will be carried over; if you chose to trade peacefully with the legate, he will accompany you to the next mission with his gold.

Two Friends Reunited

Building up a basic economy, and then the largest part of this scenario is about expanding until you meet Reebaud. The map is the same as in An Icy Welcome. If Iniucundus didn't accompany you, the rest of the scenario will be a short task of fighting an aggressive amazon tribe that newly arrived, and once it's defeated, Reebaud will agree to come and help you reclaim Föhr. If the legate did come, he will discover that Reebaud attacked and destroyed an imperial colony, which may cause some hard feelings. Defeat the empire (ah yes and there was something with those amazons, but those can easily be conquered on the way); then Reebaud will come and help you. This is one of the easier missions in the campaign – if you like a challenge, don't carry over too many soldiers from the previous scenario.

Reconquest

Lembeck and Reebaud have landed on the island of Helgoland, which is being invaded by a powerful force sent by Atterdag. At first, there are some immediate problems to solve. Build a number of woodcutters and foresters post-haste or you'll be deadlocked within minutes. Trees will only grow in the Lowlands; dismantle the farms to make more space for the wood industry. Take the Uplands next and build your main industry there. They also have plenty of space for farms and berry farms. Place lots of fortresses near the edge; they can be manned by a single rookie and will conquer a lot of land in the Lowlands that is thus unavailable to the enemy. Then make sure you block the eastern bottleneck. Dismantle the northernmost port and build as many fortresses tightly together as possible, with a few outposts in between. Do not build any military buildings north of the narrowest choke-point! You can build some more foresters and woodcutters there though. Next, keep an eye on your trade routes. Wares have to be sent from the Uplands to the ports, which you need to manage very carefully. Build three very long roads which shall not be divided by flags from the Uplands to the Lowlands, and adjust the Prefer policies in your ports for trade wares continuously to ensure that your ports will receive only as many wares as you actually need to trade. Any more and you'll get traffic jams. Try to arrange your economy in such a way that ware transport between Uplands and Lowlands is kept to the absolute minimum possible. Later build lots of warehouses (every ten nodes or so). Once your training is running, watch the power graph and keep adjusting your economy until you're stronger than the enemy. You need several hundred fully trained soldiers. Only then start attacking. Before, you can send incursions to destroy enemy buildings, but never conquer anything or you will incur bad losses later. Even if you see a chance to push the enemy all the way back to his port and bunch him up there – do not do that. You must defeat the entire of the enemy army in the field before you destroy the enemy port last of all. Once you've driven them out, you'll receive valuable information about the Danes. Read the story carefully! It is decided to block an important sea-lane prior to reclaiming Föhr so as to weaken the powerful enemy.

Kattegat

Draft

A nice scenario with very little fighting. The aim is straightforward: Claim all the numerous islands in the Kattegat and construct dikes between them to block this sea-lane for the enemy's ships. These pass through your territory occasionally – the faster you can block all paths, the fewer soldiers the enemy will get in the next mission. Take good care of Ketelsen's two sons, your only soldiers – the islands are very lightly defended, but you will not have any other soldiers, and if either or both of them die, Helgoland will render you much less help afterwards, making the next scenario much harder.

Sea of Blood

Draft

The big battle! Reebaud and Lembeck land on the northern tip of Sylt and free Föhr from Atterdag and his allies. Massive battles on Föhr and all the surrounding islands (Sylt, Amrum, Pellworm, Nordstrand, Hooge, Oland, Langeneß (!), Gröde-Appelland, Habel, Norderoog, Süderoog, Norderoogsand, Süderoogsand, Nordstrandischmoor, Südfall) with many points of strategical interest. The geography is revealed to the player initially due to Lembeck's knowledge of the area. Most of the sea is too shallow for ships. The mainland is not accessible yet. Whenever the player reaches one of the principal towns, it will elect to join him. Needs sea-attack to be implemented first

For Liberty!

Draft

Think the last battle was big? Think again. While you were away, Atterdag has conquered all of Northern Frisia as well as the lands east of it right up the coast of the Baltic Sea. A whole country is counting on you to free it! The natives will support you in this quest, but their chief skill is in farming, fishing, and seafaring – you will need to build up a battle economy from scratch, whereas Atterdag has the Danish Empire behind him to support him with never-ending legions of elite soldiers. First, cut through the southern part of his territory to get to the eastern shore, and follow it northwards to destroy the enemy's ports. Half his frequent supply of soldiers arrives by ship, so this will make the rest of the battle somewhat easier for you, though you should not imagine for a moment you could defeat Atterdag's armies in the field. Destroy all his headquarters and warehouses to win.

Mission 0

Not even drafted yet. But the story will go on, promise!!