Total War: Medieval 2 - Scotland Campaign - The Set Up

Medieval 2 is one of those Total War games that I love to play and then find something irritating or I start playing Helldivers and forget what I was doing. But not this time - this time I'm committed to finishing a campaign. But which faction to choose to play as, because you get so many to choose from. And then it hit me: Scotland. I have Scottish heritage and they are possibly one of the weakest factions in the game, as they have no great cavalry to speak of, their positioning in terms of trade and money is ridiculous, and they have the English longbows and Frankish knights staring down at them. Perfect.

With that in mind, let's get this baby started. Here is my game plan. Take the British Isles by securing Ireland, Scotland and Wales first, then we can work on kicking the English off. Anticipating war with England and France, it's important to secure good trade partnerships so we'll head east to Denmark and then maybe the Holy Roman Empire? That's thinking very far ahead. Anyway, here we go!

We start with two minor armies, one town with the undefended village of York to our south and the garrisoned castle of Inverness to our north. The first steps is to get our troops moving around, taking both York and Inverness so we have access to a castle for troop recruitment. We take York and then the English offer us some trade rights which we will accept for now as a cash flow as well as sending our diplomat across to Denmark where he makes a trade deal and then heads south to the HRE because that's what our council wants. For now though, our set up is almost complete and we can start looking at Wales and Ireland which are slightly obscured by the fog of war. The castle in Wales will be great to make troops when we start taking on England and France and Dublin will be taken because it can be left alone afterwards to make money.