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).
Monday, June 2, 2014
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
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
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