Sometimes you just want to pick up a pilum, don some scale mail, and go and invade Celtic-era Britain. It’s just one of those “coming of age moments” everyone has. Unfortunately, we are all a couple of millennia too late, so it’s not really possible. Thankfully, Darkmatter Games has us covered with Warlord: Britannia.

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Warlord: Britannia is a unique mix of first-person survival, kingdom management, and real-time combat. It’s your job to build a legion, subjugate the locals, and push north until there is no north left to push into. A lot is going on when you first start, and it can get a little bit hectic if you aren’t prepared to learn on the fly. That’s where we come in.

Set Up Your Camp Near Key Targets

One of the first things you’ll learn is that Warlord: Britannia is pretty darn huge. You’ll then discover that the game has no fast travel system. This makes getting around a bit of a pain, especially if you have your camp set up on a random beach on the southern coast of soon-to-be England.

Having to travel - by foot - across vast swathes of land is going to take a long time. The best way to avoid unnecessary downtime is to place your camp in the middle of a busy area. If you can be within a stone's distance of a waystation, a couple of farms, and maybe a hamlet, then you can effectively mount raids without having any downtime. Just make sure there are plenty of trees nearby.

Move Your Camp Often

Following on from that, don’t get attached to your camp. Instead, you want to break it down and move it regularly. Once you have claimed the territory around you, you should pack up and move to a new dense area. Staying in one place is simply ineffective.

To break down your camp, all you have to do is disband your current legion, go to your Camp menu, and click ‘Relocate’. Confirm you want to relocate, and you are good to go. Go to the new location, plonk your flag down, and then get to work. You will have to rebuild the entire camp from scratch, but that won’t take too long considering the game’s build speed.

Always Return To Your Camp After An Engagement

It may be tempting to take your Legion and go on a sweeping advance across the English countryside, but this will not end well in the long run. Why? Resources, damage, and attrition. Whilst Warlord: Britannia doesn’t have a fatigue system, it does have persistent damage and ammo restrictions.

If you want your soldiers to be fighting at their best, aka, with a trusty Pilum and a full health bar, then you need to head home to restock. Not only will your units instantly heal once they are disbanded, but they will also grab a fresh spear. Your character will also replenish their health, arrows, and Pila. Always go into battle fresh and fully armed.

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Remember To Save

Warlord: Britannia can get pretty exciting. Going from town to town killing heathens, or ambushing convoys can eat away at your time. The thing is, the game doesn’t autosave. We mean it doesn’t autosave ever. If you mess up and you haven’t saved since the start of your session, then you might just lose all of your progress.

Saving isn’t exactly easy either. You can’t just save before combat, or whilst you are out and about. No, you need to return to camp and fully disband your legion. Once all of this is done, you can open the menu and save. You want to save every time you return to camp, and as we said before, you want to return to camp frequently.

Watch Out For Raids

As you progress through Warlord: Britannia, you will start to gain the attention of some rather unsavory folk. Villages will eventually start sending Raiding Parties in your general direction, and these cannot be ignored. Whilst they start small, so does your army. The last thing you want is to be locked in combat with a settlement, only for a raid to crash into your flanks.

Raids are announced on the Event Tracker and can be seen on the map screen (Tab). Once you spot a Raid, you want to immediately prepare for the worst. Raids can get very large in the late game - potentially having over 100 men crashing into your ranks. Find a good spot, set up a defensive line, and get ready for a fight.

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Don’t Over Expand

As you progress through Warlord: Britannia, you will be able to grow your Legion - one Century at a time. Soldiers are expensive, and invading a country is even more so. Throw in unit upkeep, and you could find yourself not having the money to afford the army you’ve recruited.

The end goal is to have a full Legion, but getting there will take time, and rushing it will only get you into trouble. Check your finances in the Manage screen, and make sure your income from Settlements is always higher than your Upkeep costs. It’s very easy to push your treasury too far, and the game won’t stop you from doing it either.

Soldiers Are More Important Than Upgrades

There are two ways to gain power in Warlord: Britannia, more troops, or better armor. You may be tempted to invest in additional defenses for your units, but this is not advised in the early game. No, instead, you should focus your efforts on having more soldiers.

More soldiers mean you have more swords attacking enemies. The more swords you have, the quicker the enemy dies, and the less damage your Legion takes. Not only that but the money saved can be used to invest in officers to expand your Legion - making it even more powerful. In the beginning, only spend money on armor upgrades for your officers. You don’t want them falling in battle after all.

Taxation Is More Important Than Loot

When it comes to subjugating the population of Britannia, you have a bunch of options. You can loot their stuff, enslave their people, and enforce unfair amounts of taxation. Doing any of these things will likely annoy the locals, and this will lead to unrest, and eventually, raids. You can't win this war without some sort of income and balancing how you treat people, and how you fuel your war effort, can be tricky. Well, it can be tricky if you put too much thought into it.

The best way to keep unrest low and income high is to avoid looting and to hold off on slavery. If you focus on just Taxation - by which we mean the maximum amount of Taxation - then you will be rolling in money whilst keeping the population mostly subdued. You will need loot and pillage from time to time to hire recruits, but as a general rule, you just want to tax people into oblivion. It is the best way to rule.

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