Top ten Factions of Middle Earth

Hey guys, princeofdolalmroth here. Today I'll be discussing my top factions to play as for Third Age Total War and Midieval 2 Total War. I'll be listing my top 10 for both games and giving my reasons for each. This post is copied off another blog of mine, and serves the same function as the original; to provide a list of choices for people when they start their Third Age Total War Expirience.
TATW 3.2 Top 10
10: Misty Mountains. The Misty Mountain Orcs have their perks, such as a strong early economy and versatile units, but the main weaknesses I've spotted lie in unit speed, unit diversity, and starting territory. You have to fight both elf factions along with the dwarves in the beginning of the game, which is difficult enough, but is made even more difficult by the overall weakness of Orc units. late game the situation is changed, but early game the only thing keeping the Orc faction going is their massive economic potential, based around mining facilities.

9: Gundabad: Gundabad is easier to explain in my eyes. Units are more diverse than most evil factions, and are more versatile in their roles than other factions, but lack strength in the economy and units until the late game, when access to more powerful units and economic buildings are made available.

8: Isengard: Isengard  has a decent start economy, along with the most powerful starting units of any evil faction in the game, being able to recruit beserkers in the starting building roster. It's main weakness lies in it's position; it is literally surrounded by factions that are dying to destroy it (High Elves, Eriador, Rohan). It starts with an excellent diplomat, which heals this slightly, but to play as Isengard your skill with infantry MUST be beyond expectations.

7: Dale: Dale has the most versatile units of any faction in the game, along with the ability to recruit faster than most factions in the game. The problem with dale is it has to capture all of Rhovanion in a very limited timespan, along with having to fight the most overall powerful Evil faction in the game, Rhun. The economy is excellent, and the units are too, but the main problem lies only in the opening moves made by the player in the game.

6: Eriador: Eriador is very similar to dale, in skill level and start position. Eriador however, has the benefits of having (short of trolls, fountain guard and Elf Units) the strongest late game units available to a faction. It also has the greatest potential of a faction in the game; if you don't engage gundabad until later in the game, or even form an alliance with them, Eriador can basically go anywhere it wants to go.

5:Silvan Elves. The silvan elves rely on very powerful units along with an eonomy to match. TThe diplomatic field is superb for them, being able to form an alliance with the dwarves and dale in the beginning of the game. Their situation is similar to eriador's as well, As soon as dol-gildur is taken, you can do almost whatever you want with the faction without suffering major reprocussions.

4: Mordor: Mordor has a difficult task ahead of it. The economy and army are woefully unprepared for the fight to come until late game, however for the beginning the moves a player has to make are overwhealmingly simple; head west. The simplicity of the early mordor game is stunning. Also just as stunning is the easiness Mordor has in defending it's pre-game borders; you only have to defend two locations. Late game Mordor becomes a powerhouse of production. Uninhibited by the ravages of war, Mordor can produce numerous and powerful units with amazing speed and efficiency. Normally evil factions are unable to do this, with only the Eastern Anduin Factions (Harad, Mordor, and Rhun) being remotely capable of achieving this power with ease.

3: Rhun: As a fan of the lore, Rhun has to have a place on this list, and for good reasons. Not only being the largest canonical nation on the map, it is the only faction in the Hotseat campaign that can support itself economically with it's starting units and buildings. Rhun also is the only faction that can dund its massive hordes and still have a huge gold reserve. Rhun's army is a glamorous as it is powerful; an example of this is that it is fully capable of taking on Dale, Gondor and the Dwarves in a late game duel to the death. It's spear throwing Balchoth are immensely powerful for their starting tech requirements, and later on the Rhun faction gets access to more and more powerful units. on any difficulty it has the advantage, and is fun to play with as well as being immensely challenging to fight against.

2: Arnor: Provided you have passed Eriador's challenge, Arnor is without a doubt, the most amazing faction to play as, both in the 3.2 version of the game, and even more so in the MOS 1.6 version of the game. Arnor's economy is powerful and far reaching, a requirement for it's immensel owerful armies. Arnor's unit roster fills every nook and cranny an army needs. These armies are capable of taking down factions with ease, along with being able to defeat stack after stack of invasion groups. Late game Arnor is only stoppable by a late game Mordor, but coupled with the powerful High Elves, Arnor's power matches that of the Last Alliance, and looks like the army of that day as well. The main reasons why it makes #2 on the list is because there is an option to play as the faction, and is not mandatory, along with an overall weaker economy setup than Gondor.

1: Gondor: Obviously Gondor reaches the top of the list, but the reasons behind it may not seem that way. For starters, Gondor is the easiest faction to play as in the game if you play for fun, but has the most difficult job of any faction if you play for serious. Not only does it have to beat Mordor and Harad at the same time, you also have to have the troops and economy to support the undertaking of it. in these aspects does Gondor show it's metal. It's troops are the finest of any faction of men in the game, both in looks and strength. It's cavalry can destroy units at a time, and the diversity of the units in themselves is breathtaking for new players. In the MOS mod, it has over 40 units to build and choose from, representing the lore to amazing accuracy. The size and location of Gondor matter as well; It, like the East Anduin Evil Factions, only has one way to go at first, and has a hard time going that way. Gondor is the Largest Faction in the game from the start and has the largest population to work with, along with an expanded trade building setup, thus the largest economic potential. These stated reasons are the crux of what makes Gondor the top faction on this list.

Hotseats

                 Hey guys it the Princeofdolalmroth again This is going to be a short post but has some importance to it. If you want a bigger challenge when playing TATW, either on 3.2 or the Mos Mod, then play a hotseat campaign. To do this you go to multiplayer and select the hotseat option. This allows you to either take control of multiple factions at once or play with your friends by switching between people, hence the name "Hotseat". For those seeking the challenge, you can play as multiple factions at once, though it is recommended to play as either one side or the other, because defensive battles are not allowed.
                The economics of hotseat campaigns are the same as in the regular campaign, but certain missions and free units you can get are disabled, or do not function properly. For example, the quest of the one ring does noot function as it should, and I do not know as of now if you can destroy it. You can deliver it, but Sauron is immedeatly defeated. In addition, certain factions have a much harder time of winning their respected campaigns because of the fact that armies attacked between turns cannot be commanded by you and are usually wiped out by autoresolve BS.  However, there are some factors to balance the game for human players. Expirience is much easier to obtain for units, along with a slight boost to the economy to better fight off enemy armies. One last thing before I sign off; playing a hotseat campaign is only reccommended for expirienced players, and should not be taken lightly. I would recommend playing as Dale, the Dwarves, and the Silvan Elves if you want a good challenge. Hope you found this all interesting!

The Dunedain and Middle Earth (Extrapolations and rambling)

           Hey guy's it's the Princeofdolalmroth again. I'm here to talk about a conversation I had with the Sapoman yesterday. It was about the Dunedain and their decline in Middle Earth. The Dunedain were a minority in middle earth at the beginning of the Third Age, representing only about 40% of gondor's population and around 60-80% of Arnor's population (this is all speculation, so feel free to debate these facts.) We said that the population in Gondor was not well preserved, intermingling with other, lesser men and dying off from Plagues and war, leading to most of Gondor's population having some base Dunedain blood in them, but having very few actual Dunedain people left. A few examples of Dunedain families or lines in Gondor still present by 3018 TA include the line of the Stewards, the Line of Dol Amroth (which claimed to have a bit of Elvish Blood in them), the Citadel and Fountain Guard, and the Rangers of Ithilien. Arnor's Dunedain Population was very well preserved, and the citizens all had some Dunedain blood in them, but not enough to be considered Dunedain in themselves.
            Yet the people still inherited some of the traits Dunedain possess, such as enhanced strength and a slightly extended life. That being said, when Arnor fell in 1974 TA, the best chance of a Dunedain recovery from Numenor (a Kingdom where the majority were Dunedain People, or had a majority of Edain blood in them) was lost. Yet the Dunedain population in the north slowly recovered, and by the events of The MOS mod, The north kingdom had mostly recovered from the war with Angmar when it came to the pure Dunedain populace, but the overall gene pool of the north was reduced and diluted from intermingling with Middle-men, though the Rangers of the North avoided them for the most part.
            Tying this arguement back to the point of the blog, the reason why the population of Eriador is so small but has many settlements, is threefold. Reason #1 being that people haven't populated Eriador in large amounts since 1974 TA, when Arnor fell. The reason for the massive amount of settlements is because the old cities and castles of Arnor were never truly abandoned by men, and the majority of the population of those settlements are of a mixed Middle-men/Edain blood. The population is so small because of constant warfare with orc raiding parties and invasions from Gundabad and the Ettenmoors. So when players start as Eriador their general's bodyguards are always of Dunedain descent and are nortoriously hard to kill (maybe for gameplay purposes). The reason for this is twofold; the Individual Dunedain in the Bodyguard units have been fighting orcs and trolls since their twenties. The reason the Bodyguards are of Dunedain descent is because they protect the royal line of kings extending as far back as the First Edain of Numenor and regular men, like those of Rohan, simply aren't cut out for the job.
           Another point I'd like to make is that Dunedain units, besides the Elvish units and the dwarvish units, are the most powerful units in the game. In the 3.2 mod they tie with the Bardians in skill with the bow, and with the Sindar in fighting skill. Not to mention they look absolutely amazing in battle. A full stack of Dunedain units is as terrifying to fight against as a stack of trolls (maybe not as terrifying, but still pretty scary). Hope you liked the read! if you want more information on the Dunedain people, check this link
lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Dúnedain

Dealing with Mordor's Stack Spam on Very Hard/Very Hard With Custom MOS Options As Gondor

             The state of the MOS options in this post is that everything is turned on except for: Immortal Heroes, Immortal Nazgul, Corsair Invasions, Reforge Arnor, and Earlier Invasions.
The Difficulty is Very Hard / Very Hard.

             With the game in this state, Mordor spawns in many forces from nowhere to make the game more difficult and to be more in line with what was happening in the lore. To help pay for these troops in the game mechanics, Mordor gets a one-time king's purse increase and a kings purse increase of 50 every turn. This is all well and good... until you begin your active defense. When Mordor sends out its hordes and you destroy them, it is suddenly not paying for any troops. Its income is now going directly to the treasury, including the increased king's purse. This money will be used in training advanced troops like Dismounted Black Numenorians and trolls, as well as for constructing economic and military upgrades in their settlements. This inevitable cycle will result in Mordor getting much more powerful than you, and that will start a war of attrition. But fear not - I will tell you how to defeat the Enemy.

             First off, you need to have started your game off correctly; this means buying farming upgrades first along with centralizing the capital to decrease corruption (the third settlement north of where Harad would attack from [it is pressed against the northern end of the mountains that are just east of Dol Amroth] works quite well) {{EDIT: I could never remember what the settlement was called when I was on the blog, but I got it now. Tarnost is the best city for your capital when playing Gondor.}} and reducing all tax rates you can to low. This transfer of the capital will cost you 5000 coins, but it is worth it in the long run. {{EDIT: Of course, once you have taken all of Mordor, moving the capital to Pelargir works best, because it re-centralizes your capitol in terms of east and west while being southward to help centralize when you invade Harad.}} Leave Harad alone, and they will leave you alone for a good while, aside from blockading some of your ports for a short period from time to time. Allow them to get away with this, but do build about 5 ships (Palarran, not the wimpy Nurremar things) for later use. Just store them at the crossing right next to Pelargir so that enemies cannot use it (the crossing is one step to the right [and then straight south into and through the river of course] of the bridge on the east side of Pelargir - to find exactly where it is just send a soldier across the river on turn one, then send it back and put your ships where the soldier walked across.)
             Do not try to blitz. You will not be able to afford the half stack you will need to put in every exposed city to defend them. Hold at the river. Cair Andros and Osgiliath are the only places you should take to the west. HOLD AT THE RIVER. Of course take the two settlements to the east, the one just north of Dol Amroth, and Druedan Vilage slightly northwest of Minas Tirith. Now, as you cannot fight out battles in Osgiliath, put your best troops in Cair, and put a horde of crappy troops in Osgiliath. Volunteers must be hired and used in Osgiliath, but **do not let the volunteers die** as they cost no upkeep, cannot be re-hired, and will occasionally auto-refill the unit slowly. once the unit is below 75, put it in Minas Tirith until it is back to full strength. You may end up having to retrain it, which works with the same mechanism as regular units - when the time until next unit availability is at the same percent completion as the percent of troops missing from the unit, you can retrain it. (There are Lossarnach Volunteers, Gondor Volunteers, and Black Root Vale Volunteers. The Gondor Volunteers can be gotten next to Minas Tirith, the others are gotten between Pelargir and Minas Tirith. The Black Root Vale volunteers are excellent archers, second only to the Ithilian Ranger tree of archers. They also carry a powerful two-handed sword for hand-to-hand, but that doesn't mean throw them into the fray once they run out of arrows - it means never send them into the melee because if you're losing a settlement and it comes down to your archers fighting hand-to-hand as a last stand, one full, experienced  unit of Black Root Vale Volunteers is going to turn out better than two full units of Archer Militia. Additionally, the BVB Volunteers carry more arrows, shoot farther, and deal more damage than the Archer Militia, so losing one of them is worse than losing two Archer Militia. Just leave 1/4 of a stack of troops at the border to Harad, with a general. If you happen to acquire an extra one, having two generals with which to counter Harad's forces will be a great help. It will also reduce the need to spend money replenishing the southern forces that could be better spent elsewhere, as more cavalry means fewer infantry casualties, and the general's bodyguard regenerates for free automatically. ***Also, you must definitely have built the Fiefdom Barracks. You must also always complete the missions that give you military units, and they almost always give you cavalry, sometimes even Swan Knights, which are absolutely invaluable against the cavalry-deficient, low armor, weak to cavalry units of Mordor.***

             Okay. Now you have set up your base of operations. For Osgiliath, you cannot fight defensively or sally forth. You must either autoresolve or attack before they besiege you. If you try to fight out a battle with an army besieging Osgiliath, your game WILL crash. If you are not good at offensive battles, you'll need a lot of troops for autoresolving. Don't waste cavalry by putting them there if you plan on autoresolving. Autoresolve looks at armor, melee attack, hit points, and holds unit size as the most important factor, so archers, skirmishers, and cavalry will always perform well below expectations in autoresolves. The next step is dangerous. You must not waste time and money retraining your front-line troops or training soldiers to support them. You must concentrate all your effort on training cavalry, building stable and armorer upgrades, and building economic upgrades, though economics take priority. Forlong must be moved to Minas Tirith, where you will gather your cavalry force. (Just put one of the generic generals you'll have adopted by now into the city Forlong used to govern. Unless the generic general is a better general than Forlong, in which case use the generic general as your cavalry force's leader). *Fear for your cavalry force's general, which lowers enemy moral (honor raises your moral) is useful so the cavalry can break enemy forces as fast as possible for minimal casualties.

             Now, your armies are weakened, perhaps to the point that you have lost East Osgiliath (hopefully Boromir and Faramir are still okay). However, you now have AT LEAST 2/5 of a stack of cavalry and a cavalry general. If needed, use whatever forces you can cobble together to retake East Osgiliath, but don't use the cavalry army for that. (Actually, just don't use it for any autoresolve battles if you can avoid doing so).

             Once you have your border at the river established again, send out the cavalry army. When you see an enemy army, destroy it with cavalry hit and run. In battle, always kill the enemy general first so that their troops rout and you can ransom for more money. Alternately, if you are not hurting for money, execute the enemy soldiers until your general is as feared as executing prisoners can make him. A feared general makes his enemies rout faster, leading to less casualties on your side, more experience gained, and more captures to either execute for more fear or ransom for more money. (For more details on this cavalry army and how to use it, see my post titled: An inexpensive way to hold the line against Mordor on any dificulty, with any custom MOS options).

It is up to you if you want to try to hurt Mordor's economy by letting stacks live as long as possible, but take care that they do not besiege Osgiliath.


             That cavalry army will easily hold off Mordor for a long time with minimal reinforcements and retraining, and will not cost much. You can now disband infantry and retrain as needed, then upgrade your economy to the point where Mordor cannot stop the number of troops you can produce. From there you have two basic options. You can either hold the north river while invading Haradrim territory, or you can attempt the option of invading Mordor, which is the more costly of the two. However, Harad might leave you alone long enough that you can invade Mordor with all your might, as you are effectively only fighting one foe, and that will make the overall game easier. Beware invasion by Harad though, as my cavalry tricks will not work against their armies of anti-cavalry units and their streams of medium cavalry. For defense against Harad attacks, store Pelargir Spearmen (3 or 4), Dol Amroth Marines (1 is plenty but 2 is great), and Pelargir Bowmen (1 or 2) along with about 2 units of cavalry and some Levy Swordsmen (2 or 3 is plenty) at the main access point to Harad (remember that your boats are blocking the other, near Pelargir. Also remember to pay attention to the southern end of the east side of Mordor's mountains, as Harad could come up from there, too, once you push Mordor back).

-Sapoman

The Black Computer is Repaired

Hey guys its the princeofdolalmroth again. I'm here to say that my Black Gateway 2007 computer has been repaired after four months of wait. The question is now this to the readers out there; what campaign should I do for all of you? I had a list of ones that I wanted to do, but I'm open for suggestions. The list I had was for Dale, Rhun, Isengard, The Silvan Elves, Rohan, Eriador (#1 on my list), Gondor, the Dwarves, and the High Elves. Please tell me what'd you like to see me play first. These will go on my channel ONLY, and will be recorded on my time for the most part. these campaigns will also be on the 3.2 mod, and not on the MOS mod only because my computer might not be able to handle it. Along with my solo campaign, we will be working on our first Gondor-Rohan campaign and will hope to wrap that one up in the next few months. well that's that; hope you all have a great week.

A taste of things to come

        Hey guys it's the Princeofdolalmroth corresponding about new things to come for our campaigns online on Sapoman's channel. His name online for youtube is sapoman 221. Look him up and you'll find our campaigns. Here's the basic jyst of things. Our first Gondor Rohan campaign will be put on hold until further notice. Rhun and mordor will have to be discontinued or restarted (sorry guys!) because we can't access the campaign file. The dwarves campaign is permanently canceled because we can't access the files because we switched to the MOS mod around 2-3 weeks ago. Schoolwork is dragging us both down when it comes to recording new episodes, but we've been trying to find time to record an episode or two a week.
         In the MOS Gondor Rohan campaign Rohan (me) will be moving to take Cair Andros along with Dunland. Hopefully Dunland doesn't take too much time. Gondor (Sapoman) will be moving towards the Haradrim while holding north Ithilien with the Redleg Corps (composed of Dol Amroth Squires, Knights, Gondor Calvary, and Riders of Lossarnach.) I will after conquering Dunland and establishing Cair Andros as a Rohirrim base of operations, be moving against either the Misty Mountains and Mordor or be holding my position at Tharbad and Morannon (Black Gate) to deny Mordor a chance to attack Gondor with a significant force. Of course attacking Mordor directly will be a late-game task, but I'm sure we can do it later down the line. One question I had for our readers and watchers is what would you want us to do when it came to moves and strategies? Would you like us to form an army comprised of strictly Dol Amroth units, or fight an ambush with Rangers of Ithilien? We've been looking for ideas for what we should do for the coming months and episodes, but remember that our plans can change in turns, so please don't say anything outlandish, because we don't have time for that kind of crap. Have a nice week!

First 5 Turns of Gondor

Your very first action should be to set the Gondor Fiefdom Barracks to be constructed in Minas Tirith. This enables you to retrain units in Minas that are special to other cities, like Pelargir units or Dol Amroth units. After that, set up roads to be built in Osgiliath, Minas, Pelargir, and Dol Amroth. Once you've done that, set up farming upgrades (land-clearance style and chicken farming style), and roads following that. Then set up military upgrades in the east - barracks, practice range, blacksmiths, stables...
Now start pulling troops. There are settlements in your territory you need to capture - a few squares north of Dol Amroth there is a city you must take. then, gather troops from your 4 most western provinces in your most western province.
There are a mess of provinces in the center of Gondor. Send half of them to your most southern province (it's west of Pelargir) and the other half to West Osgiliath.
Set up soldiers to be trained in your southern and eastern provinces.

Continue gathering your troops.



Take East Osgiliath. Leave a guard of 3 units and follow the river north, where you will take Cair Andros. Send troops from nearby provinces to boster your siege of Cair.



Check your construction - if new farming or mining opportunities have appeared as a result of you building the lower tier of them, add them to the list of things to be built. send your western force to the northwest corner of the mountains, and take the settlement there.


Send your western troops south, along the river, and take Annulond.
Assault Cair, if your reinforcements have arrived.

-Sapoman

MOS Changes

For the first "actual" post of this blog, I’m going to bring you up to speed on some of the changes MOS brings to the Third Age mod. It SERIOUSLY changes gameplay and if you’re coming fresh off of dominating a very hard - very hard TATW campaign expecting to grab a new faction and whoop ass, you are about to be rudely awakened. First off, the latest MOS version changes the map - a lot. Just north of Dol Amroth, in Gondor,  there is a city with a few Bandits in it. Build a few units in Dol Amroth and take it as soon as possible. Also, near the mountains in the northwest of Gondor, there is a settlement Rohan will take after a few dozen turns if you don’t take it. don’t forget to get Annulond in the far southwest of Gondor. The region near Osgiliath has been significantly shrunk. Note that with roads you can now maneuver all around that area in one turn. moving armies between Cair Andros and East Osgiliath to use them as one army is a feasible tactic, but beware, as Osgiliath has no battle map and you must autoresolve its sieges.

To the far northwest, up in the dwarves’ territory, there is a new island. It has a settlement on it. Near the City of Isengard, the gap between Helm's Deep and Isengard has been seriously shrunk.

Nearly all the units have seriously lowered attack stats and upgraded defense stats. 
Mordor can train Black Numenorians right from the start of the game. They are a new and very powerful heavy infantry unit.
On the far west of the map, the dwarves get a settlement to the south of the high elves. Also, directly west of the dwarves most northwestern settlement is a small town that can be upgraded to a prosperous mining city.

The mercenaries in MOS do not cost upkeep. This may be changed in future updates but as of 1.6, you can travel around grabbing foreign mercenaries if your nation is weak. -Sapoman

Aquiring TATW MOS

First, you will need Medieval Two: Total War and the Kingdoms expansion pack.
Once you have purchased and installed both of those (they're available from Steam I believe, but if you get the disk it is better), go to the "normal third age mod" website in the video description.
Scroll past all the pictures until you reach the download spoiler tab.
Once you reach that tab, click the one that doesn't say "3.1/3.2 changelog"
Download all the parts into a folder on your desktop. then, install them in order - part 1, part 2, patch 3.1, patch 3.2. (you may want to install part one as part 2 downloads because they take like 45 mins to download.) ***If you got Medieval 2 from steam, make sure to click the "installation" spoiler and follow the steam-only instructions on the TATW download site***
to install them, just double click on them.
now you've got the base TATW mod, which is loads of fun and is better balanced than the MOS.
If you want all the awesome new content that comes with the MOS, however, you'll then have to go to the MOS download site in the description. download version 1.5 and the 1.6 upgrade. follow the instructions the site links you to.

here is the link to download the normal Third Age mod:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?500418-Third-Age-Total-War-3-2-Released

MOS download site:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?571022-MOS-the-ultimate-TATW-experience-released-1-6-for-Third-Age-3-2-Nice-gaming-summervacation!

-Sapoman and PrinceofDolAlmroth