Army Composition Idea

For a while I've been experimenting with archers. They seem to absolutely devastate enemies when they shoot in a straight line right into the enemy units. So here is what I came up with...

Form a half stack army made entirely of archers. do not autoresolve with this army as the autoresolve engine does not favor archers.

When using this army in battle, set it up in this way: a third of the archers form a line 2 soldiers thick. The other two thirds divide in half and angle off the initial line at about a 45 degree angle OUT from the first line, forming a crossfire zone. These lines should be 3 or 4 units thick. This setup ensures that no enemy soldier will avoit being hit by an arrow, regardless of their formation. This is good because every time a soldier is hit with an arrow, he stops moving, even if he survives. So by hitting every soldier, you can slow the unit enought to kill it before it hits your lines.

This tactic is obviously best for the elves, and works best for the Lorien elves and worst for the Mirkwood elves (only including elf factions). The High elves are not able to recruit enough archers fast enough to make this tactic very viable, although their archers are well suited for it, and they cannot recover from the losses their army would sustain if the enemy reached their lines.

If you manage to kill the enemy general, turn on fire arrows. The sheer number of archers you have will route the enemy.

-Sapoman

A simple, inexpensive way to hold the line against Mordor on any dificulty, with any custom MOS options.

This strategy was discussed briefly in my post about dealing with Mordor's stack spam.

Basically, you are creating a roving army of cavalry. Obviously, this means you cannot have Boromir, Faramir, or Denethor commanding the army. You can either use a general you already have or you can send it out without one and get a "The Man of the Hour" popup.

To make this tactic effective, you must always use underhanded tactics. Kill the enemy general as early as possible, and hit their units one by one until they rout. Then capture them. Executing the prisoners after a battle will make your general feared, which will make the enemy rout faster, which is good. So execute prisoners.

That's about it. See, it isn't all that complex, but it works. It is best used for intercepting and destroying attacking or approaching armies.

-Sapoman