08 June 2019

A battle between the Saxons and Vikings

It has been over a year since my last Field of Glory II game. I have been playing Grim Dawn a fair bit. There have been two or three expansions since the last time I played.

I set up a custom battle between the Saxons and the Irish Vikings, circa 1000 CE. These are armies from the Wolves at the Gate expansion.

I had forgotten how to play the game, it had been a year. I set my army in an L-shape, with the battle line extending across the width of the battlefield. I have four units of cavalry on the left. My shieldwall and housecarls form the battle line with about six or seven units behind as reserves. I have my light skirmishers forward of the line to seize the high ground. The terrain is broken and would badly affect the shieldwall and other heavy units. I expect the Viking army to be not very different in composition to my Saxon army.

My plan was to advance fast, close in, seizing the high ground with my left flank swinging like a hook. My right flank would be anchored to the forest on the right.

The computer AI for Field of Glory II is competent. As we will see later, it can do a lot of damage.

As I advance my battle line forward, it split in half due to a large pond in the centre of the battlefield. My skirmishers seized the high ground and began driving their skirmishers off.


As my left wing swung into their shorter line, their stronger left wing hit my weaker right. It would be a race of which army would manage to destroy their opponent's flank first.

The AI had cleverly inserted a light skirmisher unit into the forest, tying down a heavy unit of mine.


The Viking smashed my right flank and also my reserve units sent to reinforce that flank. I managed to crush their flank as well and rolled their line up. In the end, I orientated a new battle line and met theirs head on and won.


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