Total War: Warhammer II - Ultimate Bretonnia Guide (Repanse de Lyonesse Campaign)

Repanse de Lyonesse's campaign can be a fast and fun campaign of stomping Tomb King faces into the sand. This guide is here to help you achieve victory and glory; and not end up bleached bones in the desert sands.

Guide to Beat Repanse de Lyonesse Campaign

Victory Condition

To win Repanse's campaign, you must reach 2000 Chivalry, choose an Errantry Battle to fight, then fight that Errantry Battle and win. If you win, you win the campaign. NOTE that as soon as you hit 2000 Chivalry, the Errantry Battle choice will pop at the beginning of the next turn, so save beforehand if you want to fight both battles.
You get 2 choices for your Errantry Battle - Vanquish the Tomb Kings, or, Strike at the Vampire Coast.

• If you choose Tomb Kings, the marker will spawn just below the Black Pyramid of Nagash.
• If you choose Vampire Coast, the marker will spawn in the ocean north of Aranessa Saltspite's island.

Either way, I always recommend for fighting a Bretonnian faction's Errantry battle that you bring an army composed mainly of Royal Hippogryph Knights. Makes for a stupidly easy win. Repanse plus Henri le Massif (on his Hippogryph) + 1-2 Life Damsels with the rest being Royal Hippogrphy Knights should make any battle ridiculously easy.

Other option might be Grail Guardians and/or Grail Knights, which should also be a powerful doomstack.

Repanse First Turns Guide

Key Info: Starting Turn 2, you need you armies to carry water or they suffer Desert Attrition. Move your armies into a settlement in order to carry up to 5 turns worth of water with them. This is a unique mechanic for Repanse's campaign.

Turn 1

Do not turn on research yet. Have Repanse choose Pledge to Valor for her Grail Vow (kill 5 enemy lords). Have Henri le Massif choose Pledge to Chivalry (Rank up 5 times). Move Repanse up just above Henri, THEN have Henri join Repanse, so he does not subtract from her movement. Attack the Vampire Counts army to your east and Auto-Resolve that battle (apparently auto-resolve does better than you likely will per ItalianSpartacus). Choose the +4 leadership option kill captives, then attack the fleeing army again, finally kill them for good. If you get a +10% research rate follower drop after the battle, add that follower to Henri le Massif. Have Repanse choose the "Route Marcher" blue line skill, then March Stance back toward Copher. Now choose "The Southern Guard" tech (+3 chivalry when , which you will want in preparation for your fight against the Tomb Kings, and it will choose the tech leading to it and start researching. Recruit a "Lord" lord, hopefully with the +10 Melee Attack or Melee Defense trait, but also Penitent for the +5 Ward Save is good too. Have the lord recruit 2 Knights Errant and 2 Men-at-Arms (this will make the Peasant Cap 8/8). Do whatever Diplomacy you can, try to get trade agreements, and try to get the AI to pay you for trade agreements or non-aggression pacts. End Turn.

Turn 2

Change Repanse's stance to normal, move into Copher, then back out of Copher toward Martek, have the 2nd Lord give his troops to Repanse (especially since he cannot afford the knights yet) and have her start recruit 4 Knights Errant units to get her army to an 18 unit stack. End Turn.

Turn 3

Move your 2nd Lord near Martek first, then attack Martek with Repanse, win, then sack Martek (I tried just occupying it, but Martek was still reduced to Tier 1, so might as well boost your treasury). At this point with my losses and combinging a unit of Men-at-Arms, I was 4/10 Peasant Cap. I recruited another Lord, so my projected income was 155. Too low to recruit Knights Errant. Recruit 4 more Men-at-Arms in Repanse's army. Build a Weaving House in Martek. End Turn.

Turn 4

Attack then Sack then occupy Al Hakik. Confederate with the Knights of Origo when the dilemma pops up (choose Unite Together). The Lord you get from Origo can be the 4th lord in your posse. Decide which units in Origo's former army you want to keep and which to disband, you have to at least get down to the Peasant Cap which will now be 14. I'd disband the Polearms but keep the trebuchet.

Turn 5 and beyond

Send a Lord to colonize Bel Aliad before the Dwarves take it (it has a Gold Smelter!). Move Repanse and her posse west back toward Copher and then south to the Wizard's Caliph Palace. Capture it, which will cause the Knights of the Flame to confederate with you. You will also be able to make non-aggression pact and trade agreements with the Dwarves. Then take out Snikch asap. Take out Sudenburg to complete control over El Kalabad's province. You now have a nice base of operations, take the fight to Khemri and the other Tomb Kings, and win. Be careful fighting The Sentinels, I don't think they attack you until you attack them, but once you declare war on them, they will totally come after you hard.

Get Repanse's skill that give her army fire attacks. This will make fighting the Tomb Kings much easier.

Tech to "The Southern Guard", then tech to "Rally the Peasants". After that, focus on your economy tech. Ignore the Diplomacy tech or the other +Chivalry for Victory tech, they are not worth jack in this campaign.

In your starting province with Al Hakik, you are going to want to end up with a Tier 5 Stables so you can recruit Royal Hippogryph Knights to give to Repanse to fight the Errantry Battle with.

If you are going to use Peasant Bowmen, use Bowmen (Fire Arrows); they do +4 base damage in comparison to standard or Pox Arrows, and fire damage is brutally effective against Tomb Kings which will be your most important foe in this campaign.

Vows & Troths

Vows and Troths are basically the same thing, Lords and Paladins make Vows, Prophetess make Troths.

Notes

• Once you select a Pledge for a Vow, there is no undoing it; you must complete that pledge to complete the Vow, and you must do the Vows in order.
• Do not forget to select a Pledge asap. It would suck for your Lord or Paladin to complete a number of the required actions only for you to realize who never selected a Pledge...
• The grail vow gives your lord or paladin immortality.

Knight's Vow (Troth of Protection)

• Pledge to Duty = Research 5 tech while leading an Army (for Paladins, this is "Perform 5 agent actions Successfully").
• Pledge to Order = Be present when 5 building are completed in a region.
• Pledge to Chivalry = Rank up 5 times after making the pledge.

Questing Vow (Troth of Wisdom)

• Pledge to Campaign = Win 1 Siege Battle in a Desert or Jungle Climate (must be against a major settlement).*
• Pledge to Manaan = Win a Battle at Sea.
• Pledge to Protect = Defeat a Beastmen, Greenskin, or Dark Elf Legendary Lord.

Grail Vow (Troth of Virtue)

• Pledge to Untaint = Defeat a Legendary Lord of the Warriors of Chaos, Skaven, Vampire Counts**, Vampire Coast.
• Pledge to Valor = Kill 5 enemy Lords in Battle (settlement defender's leaders do not count).***
• Pledge to Destroy = Raze 5 major settlements.

• * - Important trick! Again, siege battle must be against a major settlement. Have a bunch of lords who need to complete their Questing Vow present. Only the attacking Lord will complete their vow by winning the siege battle; However, here is the trick... If you sacked the settlement with your attacking lord instead of occupying or razing it... You can have every lord you have nearby click on the settlement, which will give the option to "Occupy" or "Do Nothing". Do Nothing. Your Lord will complete their Questing Vow, and then you can have another lord do the same thing. Every lord neary who has already completed their Knight's Vow but needs their Questing Vow can do this to knock this vow out real fast.
• ** - Currently there is a bug which means that you must literally defeat a "Vampire Counts" Legendary Lord (Mannfred for example), and other Vampire Counts factions do not work. So if you choose Pledge to Untain at the start of Repanse's campaign hoping to get the Grail Vow from killing the startin vampires, you will be disappointed. And I don't think there is even a Warriors of Chaos faction you can fight in the Vortex Campaign.
• *** - Disbanding a lord counts as a kill for this. So you can get a bunch of Lords who have completed their Questing Vow, and then have 5 non-Immortal lords or prophetesses disband, instantly completing the Grail Vow for a bunch of your lords.

Which pledge to choose

• Knight's Vow - I recommend either Order or Chivalry depending on how much fighting you will do with that lord.
• Questing Vow - In Repanse's campaign this was an easy choice, Pledge to Campaign, since The Southlands are either desert or Jungle. For regular Bretonnian factions, this vow might be a pain to complete if it is not different in Mortal Empires.
• Grail Vow - I would choose Pledge to Valor.

Sacking vs Occupying

Note: Once you reach 2000 Chivalry, I think the game removes the option for you to sack; you will only be able to occupy or raze at that point!

If you Occupy, you suffer no Chivalry penalty, and the occupied settlement should only be reduced by 1 level.

If you sack a settlement, you reduce it by 2 levels, and if you do this a certain number of times, you will gain a trait that gives +sacking income but -50 Chivalry. If you keep sacking with this Lord, that -50 Chivalry can grow to -200 as the trait gets stronger.

This is important, because you can gain huge sums of money for sacking, especially against a Major Settlement; but do you really want to reduce a Tier 5 Major Settlement to Tier 3 instead of just Tier 4 if you plan to occupy it?

No Supply Lines

Bretonnia does not suffer from supply lines penalty. So each Lord you recruit only costs you their own upkeep, and then the upkeep of whatever units you add to their army.

This means that when you have a full stack army, that army should be followed by 3 other Lords fighting with your main army. As you get the money, you can then add 17 units to 1 of those 3 supporting lords, to have your main stack reinforced by a 2nd stack with 17 units + 2 Lords as reinforcements. Why only 17 units in the 2nd stack and none in Lord 3 & 4? Because the cap on units in battle is 40 units. So main stack is 20, 2nd stack is 18, + 2 Lords = 40.

This also means that you should send out approximately 4-5 lords to go treasure hunting in the great ocean. 1 to go Northeast around Ulthuan and then west to Naggarond; 1 that will go up the left side of Ulthuan and then turn and explore the east coast of Naggaroth (North America) all the way down past east coast of Central America (Hexoatl area) and then easy across north coast of Lustria; 1 to go south hugging the west coast of The Southlands (Africa) and go all the way to where the islands and Kroq-Gar are and explore that sea; 1 to go west to the coast of Lustria then south hugging the east coast of Lustria and then around the bottom of Lustria and all the way back up the west coast of Lustria all the way up to Naggaroth and the far north; and 1 to quickly explore the middle of the great ocean around Galleon's Graveyard and fill in wherever another misses. Once they have explored the map and gained you lots of money from treasure hunting, you can disband then to return them home. Also, if they finish their movement in range of an Ocean Rogue Army, that Rogue Army will probably attack your lord and kill him, so you should probably disband him before they do that.

Peasant Cap

Each region you capture gives you +2 to your Peasant Cap (P.Cap). This can be increased by 1 to +3 with the "Water Pumps" technology. "Rally the Peasants" technology gives a straight +15 Peasant Cap. So if you have 20 regions you would have a Peasant Cap of 40, 60 with the "Water Pumps" tech, and 75 with "Rally the Peasants" tech.

If you have a P.Cap of 20, you can have exactly 20 peasant units and still get the bonuses. The Bonuses from being within P.Cap are:

Farms work as full capacity, meaning they get 100% of the income they say they provide.

• -100% upkeep for Peasant Mob units (so Peasant Mob units costs nothing to keep in your armies; they each cost 50 upkeep if you are over the P.Cap).
• -10% upkeep for all other non-knight peasant units.

If a unit card does not say "Knight", it is a peasant unit, Foot Squires, Trebuchets, Mounted Yeomen and Grail Pilgrims included. Heroes DO NOT count toward P.Cap.

The Negatives of Exceeding The Peasant Cap

If you go even 1 peasant unit over the P.Cap, you lose the -% upkeep bonuses entirely, and a varying negative modifier is applied to your farm income. You could have as low as -1% farm income applied, to -100% farm income.

• At -79% farm income, there is no other negative beside -% farm income.
• -80-89% farm income adds a new negative, -50% replenishment rate for all non-knight units (peasant units).
• -90% + farm income applies a -90% replenishment rate penalty for all non-knight units.

Farms or Industry or Mixed?

Key Terms: Province = the entire Province and all settlements in it. Region = individual settlement and the "region" around it. Tier = the building level

Notes

• The negatives that Max Tier 3 Farms and Industry cause only apply in the region they are built in. So if you have a 4 settlement province with 2 regions that have trade resources, you could build Industry in the trade resource regions and Farms in the other 2 regions and be fine.
• Tier 3 (T3) Farms appear to remove all income from Resource/Trade Good buildings in that region! So if you build an "Iron Smelter" in a region, which would give 200 gold and the iron resource for trade, if you build a T3 farm in that same region , you would lose all income from the Iron Smelter.
• Ports do not appear to be considered Industry or Farming buildings (they may possibly be settlement buildings?), so should be un-affected by either.
• I have only actually tested Landed Estate reducing trade good building income to 0 on the Iron Smelter. I presume it would be the same for Gold, Diamonds, Lumber, and presumably everything else, but it "may" be possible that Farms would not affect something like Exotic Animals or Spices, etc. If anyone can test and comment, would be much appreciated.
• Industry income is not affected by the Peasant Cap. Simply put, if you go all Industry and never build a single farm, your income will never be affected by the P.Cap. Exceeding the P.Cap does still mean you will not get the -% Upkeep bonuses from staying within the cap; and if you reach 180% of the P.Cap (so if your P.Cap is 100, having 180 peasant units), the -Replenishment modifier would kick in; see the Peasant Cap section for more info about that.

Max Tier Farm (Landed Estate) and Max Tier Industry (Tailor) are effectively mutually exclusive in a REGION, because Tier 3 Farm causes -100% income for Industry, and Tier 3 Industry causes -100% for farms. I mean, you could build them both in a Major Settlement, but it would be stupid to do so.

• Landed Estate + Water Wheel gives 900 gold.
• Tailor + Storehouse gives 600 gold.

Note: Technology can buff Industry by 55% so that Industry income becomes basically as good as Farm income later in the game.

Pro's for Farms:

• Farms allow you to recruit Peasant Mobs and Fire or Poison Arrow Peasant Bowmen.
• Water Wheels gives +10 Growth and +5 Growth in all adjacent provinces.
• Farms are a lot cheaper to build: T1 Fields costs 500 but gives 300 income while T1 Weaving House costs 1000 but gives 200 income.

Pro's for Industry:

• Storehouses give +15% Campaign Movement to armies starting their turn in Region, +2 Siege Holdout Time and +50% ammo when under siege.
• Both Water Wheels and Storehouses give +2 local recruitment capacity.
• A 4 settlement province with a Storehouse or Water Wheel in each settlement and the +2 recruit commandment = 19 recruitment slots.

What Do I Do?

The ultimate question you must answer is: Are you willing to build your Army Build and War Strategy around not exceeding the Peasant Cap?

• If no, then build Industry everywhere! If you build a farm at all, it would only be in your main recruitment provinces to recruit Peasant Mobs or Bowmen, basically being treated like a recruitment building that gives no income (I would get the farm to T2 then delete the windmill so it only takes up 1 build slot).
• If yes, then you can build farms where it is suitable, and industry where it is suitable, and be fine. In Regions with Gold or Diamonds, you would definitely want to build Industry because a Gold Smelter gives 1200 income, and it would suck for a farm to reduce that to 0. There is really no downside to building industry where it is more profitable to do so, other than less Growth from the Water Wheel, but that is not that important and there another great way to get Growth anyway.
• If you have a minor settlement region with no port but has a Resource/Trade Goods building, but you would rather build a different building than the resource building in the 3rd available slot (such as walls or a Tier 3 Stables to get an extra Paladin, etc); then Landed Estate + Water Wheel probably gives most income.
• If: You have a minor settlement with a port, Landed Estate + Water Wheel would most likely provide the most income (unless that port region also had a gold mine, but I don't remember seeing that anywhere)
• If: You plan to win the campaign quickly and just want as much money as quickly as possible, without worrying about trade income, Landed Estates + Water Wheels almost everywhere (although again, Industry in Bel Aliad for the Gold Smelter, that Gold income is just too good)

Lords & Heroes

At the start of your campaign, I would choose your "Lord" lord over the "Prophetess" lord almost every time (see exception).

The Bretonnian Lord is a combat beast, especially once he reaches Level 14 and gets the Hippogryph mount (be sure to get Basic Training and The Blessing of the Lady). Leveling up the Yellow Combat line just makes him absurd in combat.

However, the main reason to choose the "Lord" over the Prophetess is that he is awesome in combat right from the start (whereas the Prophetess has to level up her spell line before becoming remotely useful), which means that you can hold off on the Yellow line, and instead level up the Blue and/or Red line(s) first.

See my section on Blue Line and Red Line strategies for details.

Exception

I suppose you could bring a Lore of Life Prophetess as your 4th lord in your 4-lord army posse. Get Route Marcher first, then 1 point in Awakening of the Wood, then max Earth Blood, max A Shield of Thorns, Evasion, Magical Reserves, Max Regrowth, point in The Dweller's Below, Arcane conduit, then finish maxing Dweller's and Awakening. Get the Royal Pegasus as soon as you can.

I suppose you could bring a Heavens Prophetess with the crew to buff Repanse's army or debuff the enemy, since Lore of Heavens has some nice buffing and debuffing spells. Problem is that Heavens' spells are expensive.

Prophetess

The Prophetess as the start of the campaign sucks because she doesn't have her skills unlocked yet. Once you reach the point in the campaign where you can recruit Level 14+ Prophetesses then she can start to shine, but even then, you have to choose her Spell Line first over the Blue or Red line, otherwise she isn't worth bringing.

Damsel

At the start of your campaign you won't have any Damsels. Get Fyrus asap and level it up to T3 and then build the "Holy Monastery of the Divine Origo" that will give you +500 income and +4 rank for Damsels. Recruit 4 Lore of Life Damsels asap. Hopefully you've gained a bunch of +10% research rate attendants to add to your Damsels and Paladins. Max Specialist and then Steal Research on your Damsels. Go spam Steal Research on a Tomb King settlement until you have about +300% research rate. Keep that up until at least you have gotten the most important tech you need. Doing this should also have allowed you to get your Life spells and Arcane Conduit etc, so once you are done boosting your research, you can go put those Life Damsels in your armies to heal your units.

Paladin

Paladins give 30 experience per turn to their armies base, which can be increased to 55 by maxing Training. I was a bit disappointed with how long it was taking to get my knights units ranked up despite having 4 Paladins in their armies, but still, probably good to put points in that skill at the start of their career.

I wouldn't bother with any other "Campaign" skills on the Paladin, your Paladins are going to be embedded in your armies killing your foes, not assaulting garrisons.

Blue Line Strategy

A TL;DR Summary:

Get Router Marcher, Max Bonded Service for -15% Recruitment, put 1 point into Tenth-Share, get Irrepressible Spirit, Max Steward of the Realm, get Lightning Strike, and then maybe Bailiff and go back and Max Tenth-Share depending on your economic strategy/whether you have a ridiculously rich region like Khemri.


All skills will be listed with their maximum benefit from putting however many required points into the skill

• Router Marcher: +10% movement (always get, duh)

• Justiciar: +3 Control
• Bonded Service: -15% Recruitment (Lord's Army)
• Tenth-Share: +10% Farm Income, +5% Industry Income (in Local Region)
• Devoted of the Goddess: +3 Untainted

• Irrepressible Spirit: Casualty Replenishment Rate +30% for Lords in Lord's army, -1 Wound Recovery time

• Lightning Strike: Prevents reinforcements from reinforcing when you attack (at your discretion)
• Steward of the Realm: +36 Growth in Local Province
• (Crap Skill)
• (Crap Skill)

• Bailiff: +10% Industry Income (in Local Region)

The main goal of the Blue Line Strategy is to get max Steward of the Realm for the +36 Growth. Even with just a 4 lord posse moving through a province, that is +144 Growth each turn they are there. With 10 such lords, +360 Growth per turn (not including growth from buildings)

You want at least 1 lord to have -15% recruitment, since Knight units are expensive.

Tenth-Share is good either way because at worst it is helping to offset the cost of your lord's upkeep however so slightly. If end up deciding to try make tons of income, you can put your lords in your most profitable Region to boost that Region's income significantly.

I don't think I needed Untainted as much as I thought I might in Repanse's campaign, but it may be very useful in a Mortal Empires Bretonnia campaign.

Control could be useful if really struggling with that, but I never needed it in my Repanse campaign.

Khemri can build a Tailor and a Gold Mine. I put 7 Bailiff Lords in Khemri, and I think 5 out of the 7 had the Tollkeeper follower (+12% tax rate) in their retinue; the income in Khemri jumped from 2700 to over 5600. Now, 7 lords cost $1750 in upkeep cost if you dismount them (250 upkeep). So that is only an $1150 profit over not having those lords disbanded. But the point remains, a "Tenth-Share + Bailiff" lord can boost the income in a region, perhaps enough to at least cover the cost of his upkeep.