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