Economic and Military analysis of Dol Amroth.

Dol Amroth, the city by the sea, and the home of my people, was a massively important city during the War of the Ring, and it holds that importance in MOS. In 1.6 it stands as the de facto land trade center for Gondor, bordering most of the fiefs of Central Gondor, and serves as center of the maritime trade lanes between Pelargir, Harandor, and West Gondor. There are no major mineral exports like gold or silver, but enormous quantities of fish, grain, and iron serve as its main exports. It's military boasts the most powerful early-game units gondor can field, being the Squires, Marines, and Guardsmen of Dol Amroth, and in the late game holds the honor of fielding it's most powerful cavalry and swordsmen, the Swan Knights. How should the average Gondor player exploit these advantages and strengths?
         For starters, it's essential to realise the above statements to the fullest. Next to Minas Tirith, Dol Amroth is the city you want to develop quickly. In 1.6 the city is capable of accessing most of it's economic potential fairly quickly, and here's how you'd do it. Firstly, build the mines in Ethring and Dol Amroth, though the roads for Dol Amroth should be constructed first, as it brings a solid 400 extra income to the city. in addition, lower the tax rate to low to boost your trade potential and to boost your population growth. That'll provide a base income for you to work from to build the next markets and paved roads. From there bring Duillin and Imrahil's starting forces near Erech  and take control of Eethelond, the city just to the north of Dol Amroth. You don't need to build any new units to do it, and once Eethelond is under your control begin building a Dol Amroth Army if and only if you can afford to do so, but leave Imrahil in Dol Amroth as he brings 400 gold to the city income by himself. Eethelond's capture expands the amount of ports you control, and adds another land link for Dol Amroth to trade with. Next your Amrothian attentions should move south, toward Harandor. This is where Dol Amroth's maritime center will come into play.
      This part is one of the most crucial to realise Dol Amroth's economic potential quickly. You need to either expand Dol Amroth's trade fleets by constructing the merchant's wharf, which will break the bank for Gondor's general economic growth in the early game. You can do that or expand the maritime network by moving along the coast. I prefer the latter, as it expands Gondor's economic network. Move the armies you might have assembled near Linhir and the one you've hopefully built in Dol Amroth and move to take Barad Harn and Gobel Mirlond. Isla Tolfas can wait for a different time, it isn't important. If you capture Gobel Mirlond quickly, expand and establish a southern border by taking inland Harandor and Harad's capital. In addition to balancing the checkbooks, it greatly expands the ports, and therefore the import and export network that Dol Amroth has access to.
       The final phase in the Amroth plan takes place in the mid-late game (turn 50-100). It involves the sons of Imrahil.

Note: this here was written by Princeofdolalmroth and never published. I dont know if it was ever completed,  but here it is.

Trader Nations and the idea of Combined Arms.

Prince here. As a generality, I rarely ever post on this blog, but when I do and have, I try to keep it in a general frame of ease to read and understanding and time. It takes me a while to find anything worth writing about, but I've stumbled on a few points I wanted to cover.
         Firstly is the idea of what I'd like to call the trader nations (IE, Gondor, Harad, Dale, Rhun, and Late-game Arnor). These nations focus a relatively extensive amount of their building roster and Economic Power to the promotion of trade, rather than farming or mining. Gondor, Harad and Rhun's late-game economies depend on keeping their ports open or their trade lanes safe. Yet they don't trade with other nations so much as between their respected cities. As the number of ports you control (in Rhun's and Harad's cases cities will do the same) rises, your overall economic strength drastically improves. It's one of the main reasons why Gondor, despite being smaller than either Mordor or Rhun mid-game, drastically out-preforms their economies. While farming and mining are good-sized portions of the economy, Gondor is far less reliant on either to succeed. You will find, that as you play Gondor, keeping your port cities open and blockade-free will keep you alive, especially on VH/VH difficulty.
        The second point I wanted to cover is that Combined Arms in MOS is absolutely crucial to victory. In a game where close support between Infantry, Cavalry, and Archers can mean victory or defeat on the battlefield, mastering their uses and strengths is essential. For the average MOS player, this is a no-brainer. If you can't competently command an army, you're not going to win unless you cheat. But wait, on our campaign we rarely ever fight with infantry and archers, and we do incredibly well against armies more than three times our number (if you haven't been following the Gondor and Rohan Campaign on youtube, Ithilien has been covered in historical battle markers and we've only been using around 200-650 cavalry to hold off literally tens of thousands of orcs). Why are we the exception? The actuality is we're not an exception. We plan our moves ahead of time in between recordings and we always make it a point to hide the Gondorian army we fight with to prevent it from being autodestroyed (you can't fight defensive battles in a Hotseat Campaign). Also Rohan (the Faction I command) has been and relied on combined arms to defeat Isengard and Dunland to follow. There have been few battles on the Rohan Front that weren't won by using Combined Arms in one way or another. In addition, Cavalry is overpowered as $#!T in MOS, and we can't afford to pay for a stack of infantry and archers and keep it around half/full strength. The retrain costs would be murder. So we use as little troops as possible to make the biggest impact as possible. And as any viewer of the campaign has seen, I'm more than capable of devastating enemy armies with ease, no matter their size. After a while you know what to do with cavalry. Kill the General, then hit the enemy as hard as you can with everything you've got in a series of sledgehammer blows. Just Today I managed to completely wipe an orc raiding party by killing the general and then literally a second later smashing their line open with my Bodyguard, and two Swan Knight companies I got from completing a quest (immedeate rout when the swan Knights hit, lost only one man out of about 230v1000). Of course we'll have the occasional hater that says "You can't do that! It's unfair to the AI if you kill off their general first every time you play a battle." Remember that the AI plays dirty too by spawning in literally stacks to retake cities on VH/VH. If they play dirty, who says you can't?
      Lastly, remember a few things. Late game you can order your allies to commit all of their forces to attacking a singular faction, or defending from it by forming a sponsorship with the ally. it's shown on the control panel. Proximo's meetings can be called by simply tapping F2, though once one is called you need to wait around 15/25 turns before you call another. To survive troop shortages and spare yourself some recruitment costs, buy volunteers every chance you get since they are free upkeep units and are as good or better than their upkeep versions. Remember to get the fiefdom retinues in conquered territory. The List of Fiefs is in the game files bundled in a word document. Finally, remember to understand and work toward improving the economy before you improve the army. An army is only as good as the economy that supports it. Cherrio!

BTW: If you want to contact me on War Thunder just send a message to QuackCannon272 (Quack Cannon I got from the German Plane known as the Duck, which has a 50mm cannon on the front).

Dale - How Do I Use These Crappy Starting Units?

Well, first off, you're going to notice that the Dalesmen unit is superior to all your other units. The second thing you should notice is that you have cheap/numerous archers of semi-good quality. The third is you have a lot of skirmishers and cheap meat-shield Watchmen. The fourth is that you really have no cavalry.

Start your campaign going for economy. I have a post you can read on how to do that with precision - just go to the homepage, and on the right hand side there is a search option and an archive you can use to find it.

The Dalesmen are expensive. While you'll want a leavening of them throughout your major armies, don't attempt to make them a primary component, nor should you be getting them whenever possible. They are not worth it. Instead, get Hearth Watchmen and Rivermen. You should get Watchmen and Rivermen whenever possible, and in close to the ratio of two Watchmen units to one Rivermen unit.

You will use these in a standard battle line like I have described before - A thick line of infantry with ranged units behind. Generally, here, a 5 thick line of Watchmen with a 3 thick line of Rivermen will stop an enemy force in its tracks. If you have Dalesmen, put them on the ends, but behind the Watchmen, sort of next to the Rivermen, so that they can counter any flanking maneuver. Being slightly tougher will help them succeed, especially since flanking attacks can sometimes be made of more than one unit.

If you just cannot fit all your Rivermen behind your Watchmen in the above formation, try reducing the Watchmen to a line 4 men thick. If you still can't do it, don't increase the thickness of your Rivermen line. Instead, start a new line about 3 men-width behind the front line of Rivermen.

If you have archers, line them up behind the Rivermen in the same manner, a three-man thick line with more lines behind it if needed.

You can get some very bad cavalry by going into the traditional Rhovanion area (that big rectangle of territory north of Mordor that's all grassy plains) and recruiting mercenaries. I believe there are some infantry mercenaries as well.

As tempting as it is to try to cut off the Dwarves and take all the territory for yourself, this will make your game much harder. Instead, try to focus on pushing west south of the river. Rhun and/or Mordor will take it if you do not, and they will be more difficult to eradicate than rebels. You can go into Mirkwood and pick up some extraordinarily powerful (compared to your units) Silvan Volunteers, which are swordsmen, but try not to piss of Mordor too much, and also try not to cut off the Silvan Elves.


Your main advantage is your disposable Watchmen front line shielding the massively damage-dealing Rivermen line. The key here is DISPOSABLE. Hit Rhun, and don't stop. Don't leave three men behind to guard. Leave one if you must and keep steamrolling as you constantly train new units and bring them down.

Speaking of bringing down troops... YOU CAN PUT BOATS ON THE RIVER! Get three or four boats and form a chain, either one boat to the next or always having one boat ready to take units for retraining while one is always ready to bring new ones down, with one or two in between.

Let me know how this works for you. It worked for me, playing with everything as difficult as possible aside from deleting the Garrison Script.

-Sapoman

Back to Basics: Lets Talk Unit Strength

Hey everyone. I hope you had an excellent Memorial Day weekend, filled with gaming and friends and remembrance of the soldiers who have sacrificed for your freedom. Even if you don't live in the USA - I hope your weekend was great. Mine was, played a lot of World of Tanks and developed a new strategy for Safeguard mode on Call of Duty: Ghosts. If you want to play with me on Xbox Live or on World of Tanks, my usernames are Sapoman221 and Sapoman, respectively.
Now. On to the post!


First, I want to do a brief introduction of what I know about Autoresolve, and how the MOS effectively changes it.

Autoresolve uses a number of factors, but I remember from old research that the two most important things are Defense (especially the Armour stat) and Unit Size (how many guys are in the unit, not the size of the soldiers xD ). Followed by that is the melee attack. Charge bonus and ranged damage/range of missiles are NOT included. This means that cavalry/archers/skirmishers SUCK in autoresolve, hurting AI vs AI battles for factions such as Rohan or Rhun, who rely heavily and cavalry and, for Rhun, skirmishers. The command of the General is a little bit complicated. I have no outside research for this particular stat, and no personal research for it outside of MOS 1.6, as I didn't pay attention when I was playing regular TATW. It seems that the command of the General has an increasing effect based mainly on the size of the army. Increasing the average defense and/or attack without a general seems to have the same impact as with a general, but increasing the size has a slightly greater impact when you have a general, it seems. However, having a higher average defense (which usually comes with a convenient boost in attack as well) has a greater impact generally than increasing unit size anyway - replacing one snaga skirmisher unit with a Heavy Goblin Infantry (reducing army size by a small degree) has slightly more of an effect than does adding two snaga skirmishers (increasing army size by a bit - net of about 400 more than would have been in army after HGI replacing the snaga skirmishers) would have.

How does MOS affect this? Well, in MOS, the attack of most units was dropped slightly, and the Defense of EVERYTHING was really buffed. As in, the Orc Band has a Defense of around 20 now, which used to be Fountain Guard type defense. As all the defenses are so high up, and increase of one defense point is a small percentage increase, and since defense is the most important stat for autoresolve, this sometimes makes it hard to alter autoresolve chances. This increased defense is also a pain in the ass for archers - Mirkwood Archer Guard, for example, is one of the most powerful archer units in the game. But the defense of Orc Band is so high that it surpasses the ranged attack of the MAG to a great degree, resulting in sometimes needed 5 or 6 arrows to kill one Orc Band soldier.





There, that was some autoresolve information. Now, what are the best kinds of units for you to use in fighting out battles?
Well, that depends on faction and terrain. I may edit this one or create a separate one to detail this, but it would be helpful if people would post the factions they need information on, so I could get to those first.

-Sapoman

The SIlvan Elves (and some notes on generals)

Recently I've been bored with my "Let's Play"s (sorry viewers :( I will be back to them soon I hope!).
Thus, I started a Silvan Elves campaign. As usual, the difficulty is on Very Hard Very Hard, and all the options are turned on except for: Corsair invasions, earlier invasions, Sauron's counterattack, immortal Nazgul, immortal heroes, and Mordor's call.

My discussions on generals here apply to the generals of all factions. I'll make a generals post after this one, but until then, trawling through this will yield good information on generals.

At first, I was kicking butt. I felt like a superpower - Mordor quickly disabused me of this notion. There is a reason most factions have a might of "supreme" and you do not. You CANNOT carry the map like you can as Gondor or one of the other mega-powers. You are tough, very tough, stack for stack but you start with no big cities and your units are EXPENSIVE. You absolutely must buy the stables in Thranduil's Halls on the first turn - they take like 10 turns to regenerate, and 3 turns to build (after you build the stables you must wait 15 turns to build your first unit of Silvan Horsearchers). These are the only cavalry you will have for most of the deciding stages of the game (they determine, with the settings I play on, whether or not you will have allies to fight Mordor with). You MUST get them. After you get that, follow my guide on building up an economy while aggressively expanding to get as much territory as possible. The territories inside of Mirkwood and Beorn's Halls are good to get - Mordor will get Roshgobel (or however it is spelled) long before you can. You will have to train soldiers for this, although it will slow your economic growth. Make sure all your tax rates are on low - you desperately need more population. ***Do not settle for bad governors as husbands.*** Accept adoptions, but husbands will keep appearing. Generals are cheap, a dime a dozen, easy to level up - Bureaucrats are rare and are very difficult to level up unless they start with some of the traits for them. Only accept husbands with good governor stats. High obedience helps you get good governor traits even more than loyalty - husbands MUST have higher obedience than 4. Don't let your generals stagnate, either. Every 5 or so turns, move them out of the city a few squares then put them back in. This helps them feel appreciated, and you will NEED this. It is also very easy due to your low number of generals. Remember, continuing the battle once all the enemy is routing will get you traits like "winning first" while not chasing routers and not continuing the battle will get you traits like "noble in battle." Because you're always going to be seriously outnumbered, you need generals with high Honor to prevent your men from routing in bat situations - while you know each elf is worth 5 or 6 orcs, and that holding the line when in trouble means victory with big casualties, your men don't. If your general doesn't have enough Honor, they may rout and cost you the battle.

As an elven faction, it is critical that you fight defensive battles as much as possible. Make the enemy come to your hail of arrows. Now, the high ground. fighting enemies who are downslope from you gives your men a combat bonus.  Because you don't really have men to spare and you will be fighting mainly defensive battles, you must get your infantry on the slope. Near the bottom of the slope. This is so that the enemy unit will largely extend out from your men without going very far down as well. Your archers, well upslope from your infantry, can now shoot in a straight line down at the enemy, resulting in devastating accuracy and damage. Also, being up on a hill results in greater range and damage. Sadly, on very hard very hard even Orc Band can sometimes take 5 or 6 arrows, but your men carry enough arrows to handle this usually. The hill will help reduce this.

Now, elves are primarily archer forces, although your Mirkwood Swordsmen are slightly better than Mordor's Uruks soldier for soldier, though unit for unit and being specialized for different situations means a unit of Uruks is about the equal to your unit of Mirkwood Swordsmen (as an example of your tier 2 units being as good as Mordor's top tier aside from trolls and stuff). The Mirkwood Stalkers are worse than your spear-man unit (whatever it is called, I'm typing this in school) and the Stalkers are more expensive, so don't build them anymore once you've got some forces around (once you have about 1.5 stack total troops).  Due to the toughness of your units, a line 3 soldiers thick is the perfect holding line. In battle, select all your melee troops and have them form a line 3 men thick. Then line up all your archers behind this line. Try to make it two men thisck - you will probably need multiple layers. the front layer should be your worst archers, the back your Mirkwood Archer Guard and your generals. Don't put your front men on guard mode, though you must take your archers off of skirmish. In guard mode, your men are hesitant about moving to engage the enemy and so men in a unit won't actively move to help their buddies in the same unit who are fighting. Elves don't have men to spare for this bullshit - leave guard mode off.

Orc factions (especially Mordor) love catapults. Being that you're an archer-based faction who loves fighting defensive battles (another reason you can't carry the game in the same way as you do as Gondor - your faction is designed to drive Mordor out of Dol Guldur and then camp in Mirkwood), catapults are going to wreck you unless you deal with them swiftly. They have more range than most of your archers and have enough units that taking them out with archers is a long process. These catapults will wreck your Mirkwood Archer Guard that you should have been jealously protecting from damage. Remember what I said about the Horse Archers? If you didn't get them, you're gonna have a bad time. If you did (well done), hold the alt key to make them use their alternate weapon (swords) and charge them int the catapult men from behind. They will ditch their catapults and draw swords. Hammer them until they are all dead. Now, for all of you fools who didn't get the cavalry, here is what you must do. Take two units of Swordsmen and flank VERY wide with them, one to each side of then enemy formation. Attempt to get at least one to hit the catapult crews - this is likely a suicide mission, but you may be able to save the unit (by a dozen soldiers or so) if you act fast once you've defeated their main force. Your Swordsmen are so tough that if you keep them hooked on the catapult crews you should finish them off, though by the time you hit them they'll have gotten off a volley or two.

Evil faction archers are garbage, absolute trash. However, each unit has like 252 men, and the OOTMM have hordes of skirmishers. You will take large casualties through sheer number of projectiles. Hammer the archers with yours before theirs have a chance to get in range and spread out. The skirmishers have slightly better missile damage than the snaga archers and a slightly better hit chance as well. Smash the skirmishers with your archers, but remember to shift archer focus to approaching infantry when they start to approach. The AI archers and skirmishers are on skirmish mode 99.9% of the time. A good way to mess up their lines and temporarily push the ranged units back into the melee units to increase the number of your arrows that find a target is to run some cavalry in front of their lines, abusing the skirmish mode to make their ranged units fall back for a few moments.

The Lorien Elves are your biggest ally in the north against the OOTMM and Mordor. As tempting as it may be, they cannot afford you getting a truce with the OOTMM, although you may be able to get a temporary truce with Mordor (though this will really hurt Gondor and Rohan). Take the OOTMM's territories from the north down, as hitting in the middle will force your men to sit and defend the settlements, which will grind your advance to a halt. Watch out for irritating Giant Spider rebel armies in Mirkwood. These are usually led by generals with good ambush stats - you'll need a fair number of spies anyway, so make a bunch of spies and have them scout the paths before you send an army through. setting up watchtowers is very helpful as well.

Watch out for Trolls and Mumakil. They will mess you up unless you shred them with arrows before they reach your lines.
I think the Mirkwood Stalkers have a bonus against armor. Keep that in mind - if they do, send  them against Mordor.

I'll continue this as my campaign continues.
-Sapoman

Back to Basics: Recruiting Mercenaries

Recruiting mercenaries in TATW and the TATW MOS can sometimes be confusing. Here I'll explain the mechanics behind them.
This post mainly deals with the MOS mechanics, but the basic "how to" functions are the same. the differences are in some specific territory names and some mercenary names.

First off, to recruit a mercenary, send a general to a territory where mercenaries are available and click the unit button while the general is selected. This is the button on the lower right that, when in a city, shows a preview of what is currently being trained. It is next to the button that when in a city shows a preview of what building is being built, which is coincidentally the same button used to build watchtowers when selecting a general. If a mercenary is available, the "unit" button will be colorful and there will be like a bag of gold coins on it.

Now, how are you going to know where you can recruit certain types of mercenaries, and when will they be available again? There isn't much of a way to predict where mercenaries will spawn. Usually, a unit will be available in the province of your starting capital. Mercenaries regenerate very slowly, and I think that it might also vary. The only way to be sure of whether or not they have respawned is to send out a general to see if any can be recruited. Mercenary pools are NOT province specific. Several provinces can and do share the mercenary pool. examples of this are the Lossarnach Volunteers and Black Root Vale Volunteers in Gondor. Nearly the entire interior of Gondor can recruit these mercenaries, but it is all one pool. Recruiting them in the region between Pelargir and Minas Tirith (where Forlong starts) will expend them for the entire pool, meaning that you will not be able to recruit them up near Erech until the pool regenerates again, even though it is a different province.

To retrain a mercenary, send them into the city of any province in which that type of mercenary can be recruited. Mercenary retraining works just like standard retraining: when the percentage of turns remaining until the next recruitment is within the percentage of troops remaining in the unit (there is of course a certain tolerance, but I don't know what it is), you can retrain them. The recruitment timer will be set back by the same % of turns it takes to fully refill the recruitment as the % of the unit was missing.

In MOS, there are a large number of different mercenaries, and I believe that a few of them are faction specific, like Mordor cannot recruit Lossarnach Volunteers, whereas TATW mainly has Bandits, and I believe any faction can recruit so long as they have a general in the recruitment pool area. In MOS, mercenaries cost no upkeep, but in TATW they cost upkeep.

I made this post because I saw that someone accessed the page through a search for "how do I recruit mercenaries in TATW?"
If you want to know how to do something, post a comment on my blog. I WILL get back to you.

-Sapoman

What Order to Build Things in to Properly Construct an Economy - Trade Opportunity and Trade Potential

The title generally says it all: what order do you want to construct buildings in in order to maximize your economy's potential? When is it appropriate to interrupt my economic growth to construct military buildings?

By the way, I apologize for the incredibly long period of no posts - I didn't realize that this became the top hit for MOS strategy style searches, and figured nobody was reading them. The guide will now be regularly updated. If you have questions on how to do something, are stuck in a jam or are getting overrun, or even if you need help winning a battle, leave me a comment and I will see what I can do.

Details end up being quite country specific (especially decisions on when to construct military buildings), but I can use my understandings of the mechanisms to give a general plan. If you have been following me, you know that I mean relatively general - my analyses are always very complete.

If you are not building a diplomat at the start of the game and trading around map information and trade rights with everyone, you're playing the game wrong. All of my guides assume that you are playing the game right in that regard.

First, a discussion on theory. Farm buildings provide increased crops, both for selling AND for population growth at the same time. Markets and fairgrounds and the other stuff in that tech tree, where what they do is "Increase amount of trade-able goods" increase your Trade Potential. This is how much you can sell if you have unlimited Trade Opportunity. Think of it as your factories. This is how much stuff you actually create that can be exported. Keep in mind that the net increase in trade from these buildings is more than is shown in the city statistics window, as it will also have an impact on the trade in your other cities (how much depends on road/shipyard status and distance). Population matters significantly in Trade Potential. Although more population will decrease the amount of food that can be sold, it will increase the number of people you have working on the farms and producing products for trade. In general, increasing population results in increasing trade income and increased tax income.
Roads, Merchant Wharves, Shipyards ect... improve your Trade Opportunity. This is how much trade can actually take place. Think of it like as how easy (and thus how encouraging or discouraging of trade) it is for merchants to get to and from your cities, and how fast can then buy and sell goods, and then leave to go home and restart the journey. Keep in mind that the net increase in trade from these buildings is more than is shown in the city statistics window, as it will also have an impact on the trade in your other cities (how much depends on Trade Opportunity statuses). Population matters little to Trade Opportunity.

These ideas combine to decide how much trade you will effectively get. In order to do ANYTHING with Trade Potential, you need Trade Opportunity. (Though due to balancing, an increase in Potential after you have exceeded your Opportunity will increase trade revenue very, very slightly [often taking 100 turns or more to pay for itself]). You cannot sell your goods if there is nobody to buy them.

Increasing your Trade Opportunity once it exceeds your Trade Potential will still provide increases to trade, because foreign merchants might sell something to local merchants who then sell the item to a different foreign merchant for even more money, or foreign merchants selling to one another and you taxing the exchange. The increase in funding will be minimal, although roads will still provide vastly increased movement and Trade Opportunity.

 (Roads provide diminishing returns to both trade and movement. Dirt roads are far better than traveling in the wilderness, but gravel roads are not that much better than dirt roads, for example.) Dirt roads provide the largest bonus over what was previously there. Gravel roads provide a smaller additional bonus than the dirt roads did but it stacks with the dirt roads, and paved roads add more bonus than the gravel but less than the dirt roads, and they stack with both the dirt roads and the gravel roads. Thus, the dirt roads, also being the cheapest, are by far the biggest bang for your buck, although the increase in trade, if you have extra Trade Potential so that you can make use of the extra Trade Opportunity, will quickly pay for itself.

Ideally, you will try to balance your Trade Opportunity and your Trade Potential. Remember, a province with roads  surrounded by areas with no roads will provide vastly inferior improvement compared to a network of roads connecting to another nation. Build your roads accordingly, to ensure that roads bring merchants into your country.  You can gain an idea of your Opportunity/Potential balance by flipping around your nation checking the relative income increases from Potential buildings and Opportunity buildings.

Of course, you should absolutely prioritize farming buildings and other population increasing structures. As population is a percentage growth, the earlier you start it, the bigger and faster it will grow.
Generally, it is best to build road networks first (secondary priority to population increasing buildings, of course). Make sure you connect as many provinces as possible with dirt roads before you go around spending money on gravel roads and paved roads - you could build 2 or 3 dirt roads for the price of one paved road, and the dirt roads would give you 5 times the benefit plus the benefit of connecting your provinces. After that, you should go for Trade Potential buildings in your largest cities, and (as a secondary priority to the Potential buildings) shipyards/wharves in your coastal cities.  Finally, start on the advanced roads in your biggest cities. Finally, you can start on Potential buildings in your smaller cities. If you really want to, now you can put the advanced roads into your small cities, but by this point, your military capability is seriously behind, and you should start building the military buildings in your larger cities.

I'll probably come back and add more to this post. If this wasn't comprehensive enough on the build orders, come back in a day or two.
EDIT: Yeah, I think I'm done with this post. If you want a guide on economic buildup for a specific faction, let me know, and I will make it.
-Sapoman

How to Play an Evil Faction

This post will deal with all of the evil factions in turn, giving specifics where warranted. Note that with all evil factions, family members are an issue and so you need to accept general and adoption proposals every time.

First Harad. Harad plays much like a good faction, but you have zero economy. your troops tend to be slightly worse than Gondor's, but you make up for this with several extremely powerful units (troll men, mumakil...) and your massive bodyguard size. The bodyguard is about as powerful as a Gondorian bodyguard soldier to soldier, but contains more than twice the men, usually. Your only hope is to rush and take South Gondor, the area south of the Anduin. This makes your strategy different from most factions - build as many soldiers as you can in the first turn, as you cannot build enough economy with your starting funds to have a positive budget. Let me repeat that, as it is your defining characteristic: You cannot acquire a positive budget using your starting funds. Thus you cannot turtle or wait to build your economy. Rush South Gondor, bottle up Gondor at Fannuland, and then start up into Ithilian. Do not take Henneth Annune or the settlement closest south of Osgiliath, or you risk making Mordor stop attacking Gondor. Now, disband those soldiers you can spare and build up your economy.  Go from there. You will need a navy. Raiding Dol Amroth and Pelargir to demolish all the buildings can be helpful, as, although the AI uses stack spam, many of their soldiers come from being trained, and although they get free money, they don't get instant building. You'll get some money from the demolishing and they will get a delay in troop production. You can exterminate the population when you invade, but keep in mind that you might actually be able to hold on to the city for a little while, and exterminating will only reduce your monetary gain over this period. If you're playing with the garrison script, don't bother. You'll lose more men in the raid than the buildings are worth, though perhaps destroying the buildings and then exterminating the population, and then evacuating or going on a suicide rampage through the weak interior of Gondor could make it worth it.

Gundabad can be tricky. You want peace and trade for as long as possible with Eriador and the High Elves. That being said, you need territory. Build a few units, but mostly use your starters to conquer Eriador's traditional caps as fast as possible, before they do, while putting most of your money into your economy. *** Your faction leader is an excellent general, and is far more effective than the "lieutenant" general you are given to lead your armies. Maneuver these two characters so that you can give the governor-type retinues to the "lieutenant" general and the remaining retinues to the faction leader, and then have the "lieutenant" govern Carn Dum. Note that you only really need generals in Carn Dum and Gundabad. The guy who starts in Gundabad should be left there - as a mountain settlement, if he stays there for a sufficiently long uninterrupted number of turns he will gain a retinue called Vivarium that provides +1 to farming output, which directly boosts trade income, tax income, and population growth. The population growth obviously also eventually helps income. Cameth Brin is a must have, in the trollshaws northwest of Rivendell. The trollshaws provide vast armies of mercinaries - keep a general here to get them as often as possible, as you will need them. I think that the mercenaries might only be available if you enable the Rhudaur submod - you should enable this. The monetary increases do not actually come into play when playing as Gundabad in single player mode, so your kings purse will be static ( I don't know if it affects the OOTMM when you are on single player and playing as Gundabad - I expect it still does), and you will not get the bonus stacks. All it will do for you is provide the ability to recruit the mercenaries. There is a rectangular province over by the Dwarves that has a wooden castle in its center and four watchtowers around it. Nearly the entire province is already under line of sight - you will see most enemies two turns before they reach you there. This province is essential for a forward military base in the west, as you will find no other. It also lets you hold off Eriador and the Dwarves with one large army, rather than needing two small ones for the same job. Once you have taken all the rebel settlements, create a diplomat and get trade rights with Eriador, try to get their map information (giving them yours in exchange for theirs helps with this), and then gift them something around 25 gold a turn for around ten turns. You need Eriador complacent. The trade with Eriador will make you rich - build up population buildings and money buildings (the temples in Gundabad increase population growth!) to become even richer. You don't have any natural enemies but the Dwarves - an army in Gundabad and an army in that rectangular province will negate them, and then put a handful of units in each border town with Eriador (NOT more than 4, or you will frighten them) to avoid looking like easy pickings. Once you're filthy rich and have built all the money buildings, build military buildings. The ballista maker leads to the catapult maker, and you NEED catapults.  Don't neglect the snaga stalkers - build the armorer buildings. Snaga are cheap to build but cost more than goblin band in upkeep, but they have very decent defense. they aren't going to kill much, but a quarter stack of snaga with armor upgrades is going to take most armies from "fresh" to tired and/or exhausted. That is how to play with most evil factions - trash units to wear down the enemy, follow with the deadly units. Do not use heavy goblin halberd as shock infantry - your orc marauders are your real shock infantry, and your heavy goblin infantry come in a close second, being slower but with more mass, but the halberds are very slow even when not in spear wall, and are very expensive. save them for countering enemy shock infantry, and for destroying cavalry units - Dunedain bodyguard dissolves under the might of two or three units of HGH in offensive mode (not in spear wall).

OOTMM is much the same as Gundabad, with one difference - you are surrounded by hostile factions. Your primary move should be to build mines everywhere you can as often as you can. Your troops need to take all the open spaces to the east of the mountains, between you and the river. You can sometimes trade one of these early on to get peace with the high elves and then buy it back (or bribe it back) from them in a few turns, as they will not be able to get troops to it and it will lack culture (and the ability to build culture buildings), resulting in cultural disorder and no troop buildings.  Dain's Halls is a controversial settlement - I reccomend keeping it. Build a good half stack of troops there and play it as an autonomous settlement - turtle it. The Dwarves and Elves will try to take it but with a solid army you will succeed on the defensive. The Elves of Lorien will be a massive problem if you let them. Build your military building right after you build the mines in Moria and grab the HGH and HGI (Heavy goblin halberd/infantry, abbreviated from now on). Also make sure you are building troops here. Snaga are used the same way as Gundabad, but keep in mind you have the skirmishers now. Skirmishers have worse defense than the stalkers but each unit can throw several volleys of 250 javelins. When units get bloodied but only have one hit point, it means they were wounded and their effectiveness goes down, as does their stamina. Use stalkers to wedge the foe in place, hit them hard with skirmishers, pull the skirmishers back and charge in with everything else. Lorien has only three generals at the start, all family members. their non-governor general likes to mill around by Moria - build a few units and swarm him. Do NOT attack with your starting units, as he is very very tough. Each of his unit will get three or four kills as an archer and then four or five more kills as a swordsman. he himself will get over a dozen kills even after his bodyguard is all down, meaning he will probably kill 50 or 60 units total. Lorien will rush to expand South into what used to be the Limlight Fort and across the river to some town south of Dol Guldur. I believe they can build troops in the town to the West, but they cannot in the Limlight Fort, so leave the fort for last.  When you take the settlement closest to Moria, they get a free quarter-stack of their top-tier units, so be ready with hordes of snaga for the taking of their next starter settlement. You won't be able to take it early on if their quarter stack is in there, however, as they will be boosting up their defenses. Beware the paths in Lothlorien, as the routes are only one unit wide and the Elves LOVE to ambush you after  they've lost a settlement. Clear the paths with a waste unit of snaga before you go down them - scout, essentially. By the time you've deal with both of these settlements, your troops from your other cities should have taken all the rebel territories, you should have gained peace with the High Elves by trading them one of them (you cannot spare enough troops if you must fight the HE), and you should own the corner settlements up by Dain's Halls and Gundabad. Elves are epic on the defensive, and because the majority of their units should be bottled up in their two remaining cities, siege the western town out until they are forced to come out. Snaga stalkers in the front to soak up arrows and tire their units, snaga skirmishers right behind them, HGH flanking the skirmishers and HGI behind the skirmishers. Mix the rest of your varied units into the very rear of the snaga stalkers, so that when the enemy crunches through and breaks the stalkers you have time to pull out the skirmishers. Use your halberds (NOT in spear wall, you need them able to run) to catch any cavalry flanking attempts. Your assorted units will further weaken your enemy. If they appear to be holding just fine, flank with your HGI. If they seem to be having some trouble, tell the HGI to go through them, so that they will shove through your troops to the front line, and then have them engage the Elves. The HGI have better stats, so their being on the front line will help decrease the foe's moral while the other units' presence will add size to your army in decrease enemy moral further. Flank with the HGH and they should start breaking. You know where to go from there. As with Gundabad, you have the potential to become an economic powerhouse. Do so early - the earlier you start growing the economy and populations, the bigger they will eventually get.
This brings me to another point -  your armies have "weight" based on how many troops are pressing up to the front line, and this affects enemy moral.  as orcs, you have massive numbers - press your troops up against the front line even if they can't all reach the foe and even if some of them are weakling archers. This will help break the enemy.

Isengard, starting with only one city, and thus VERY few family members, is a unique challenge. It can be very tempting to rush Rohan - do not do this. Take Gineard and that little fort settlement in order to form a choke point, blockade it, and then just sit there. Build roads and economic buildings as early as possible, build troops as often as possible as priority over buildings, and swarm to the West, taking everything possible, but do not cross the river into Eriador/Dwarves/Elvish range. The ability to build advanced roads is something that few evil factions have, and is one you should take advantage of. Isengard can also build a special building called a furnace, or factory, or something like that, in a few settlements. Build it when you can, it helps. When you reach the ocean, carve south into traditional Gondorian territory, taking as many rebel settlements as possible. You may want to trade them one of these settlements in a generous deal to save yourself trouble, as a war with Gondor at the same time as a war with Rohan in the early game is a disaster. You're gonna need wargs, so make sure you build the prerequisite buildings for them even though they provide no returns until turn 40.The Uruk-Hai infantry will be your main units, but the crossbowmen will be crucial assets later. Do not neglect your archery ranges. Also, try to let Dunland handle the north. It might be tempting to push northwest, but don't do it. Your family will be a big problem. You can use Saruman as a general rather than as the governor of Isengard, but this is very risky - if you lose him, you're going to start having a lot of trouble. Keep him as governor or give him a cushy detail taking rebel settlements in the west.

Rhun - I've never played them, but when I do I'll give you an update here.
Dunland - same as Rhun.

Mordor has the ultimate turtle situation. The Black Gate (Now known as Morranon) and Minas Morgul are the only ways in. Behind Morranon, there is another line of mountains, only passable by another of Mordor's castles. Minas Morgul, when defended by a player, is nearly uncrackable, especially when the player has archers. Behind Minas Morgul lies a town whose name I cannot remember, but it is nothing special - not the easiest to either attack or defend. Strengthening this position, however, is the castle Durthang up by the castle behind Morranon, and its one-unit wide passage that leads to the space between Minas Morgul and its sister city. Any foe that manages to breach Morgul will have to deal with armies coming from the north and the east, and an army besieging Morgul's sister will be vulnerable to an attack. Even if they break through both cities, one can send troops through Durthang to retake Morgul, which will undoubtedly be lightly defended at that point, trapping the remaining enemy invaders. They will then be easy meat. Although Morranon does not have this system of overlapping reinforcement passages, it is still very tough. The Black Gate itself is very hard to attack, especially if the defender puts a good deal of archers on the Gate and then makes a solid wall of Morranon Guard behind the doors, with Orc Raiders on the flanks/on the wall to prevent enemy troops from getting up and destroying your very weak archers. Due to better archer setups, if one has a vast arsenal of archers Morranon can be defended at least as well as Morgul, although depending on the units being used Morgul can become harder to crack than Morranon ever can. If the enemy breaches Morranon, they only have one place to go (unlike at Morgul where they might attack Durthang), and this second layer is tougher than either Durthang or Morgul's sister alone. The main issue here is that you've lost a significant source of Morranon Guard (these two locations surrounding the Planes of Morranon are the only places you can build them) which are your only potent defensive force until you acquire the Uruk Halberds.
Noting that I play on Very Hard / Very Hard, and only turn on the scrolls that make the game more difficult for me, I recommend a turtle strategy. Taking Gondor's settlements results in massive top-tier stack spam, regardless of what turn you do it on. You might be able to quickly eliminate Faramir with the troops around Ithilian, but if you cannot do it in the first 5 turns, pull back. Set up most of your troops at Morranon and Morgul. Keep a unit of raiders and two units of band in each of their backup cities. Put that in Durthang, too, along with a unit of Morranon Guard. Cavalry are useless in Morgul, so don't bother having more than one Nazgul in Morgul. Morranon doesn't get hit very much, but two Nazgul there can be swung around out of the gate to do some serious damage to an attacker. Keep the Witch King in Barad Dur and distribute the Orc generals around as governors. The rest of the Nazgul should break into two groups. The two with the worst command should go north to defend Dol Guldur. The rest should form a roving band that destroys Gondorian and Rohan armies as they approach you. If needed this band can just go defend Dol Guldur.
Your starter troops are plenty for the early turns, and you should be focusing on your economy, NOT on the Black Numenorian Barracks. You shouldn't need any of them early on and the barracks costs too much that could have been spend on the economy. So, build population buildings first, then roads, then trade buildings, then armorers and military buildings. The only exception to this rule is that sometimes an early archery upgrade OR a barracks upgrade can help in Morranon and/or Morgul. You shouldn't need to train new units until after you've beaten back several attacks, because your starting units are numerous enough to overcome enemy attacks and absorb the losses. Once you hit turn 40, grab the troll buildings everywhere you can - your now powerful economy will help. Build a large number of trolls, form an army consisting largely of uruks and trolls with 3 Nazgul, and ramage through Rohan. They will likely be a much softer target than Gondor. During this time, minor military upgrades should have been being constructed in Dol Guldur and perhaps the settlement to the Northeast of Dol Guldur, tucked up in the forest and nearly inaccessible without passing Dol Guldur, should be taken. Once you've got your army attacking Rohan you can use your slowly built-up Dol Guldur army and your northern Nazgul to seriously hammer the Lorien elves.
You can take it from there.

-Sapoman