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.
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Monday, June 2, 2014
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).
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
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
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
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
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
Thursday, May 22, 2014
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
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
Monday, May 19, 2014
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
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
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
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
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.
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
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