Silvan Elf Strategy to win.

[nepereta]

On the field:

I discovered how to fight with these guys effectively this strat beats dwarfs and Misty Mountains handily enough I guess it will work vs mostly infantry armies.

In past I used these guys like an Agincourt english long bowmen type thing I missed the other great ability these guys run like athletes they hardly ever tire. If you are fighting a fairly slow infantry army:

Use archers lots of archers stretch them out into a very long line (if we face many enemy archers I loosen the formations ) I then hit the '-' button a few times to turn these guys into squares you may have individual use + and - for the larger and smaller archer groups. ( yes those that have studided the great treatise on the horse archers this will sound familiar) Make sure every archer unit has skirmish switched on. Some strats say keep rolling back as far as you can. I say get in as tight as you can without attracting too much enemy fire wrap yourself around the enemy. Zoom and adjust the mini map so you can manually skirmish effectively and keep your eye on the whole situation.

When not attending to manual skirmishing ( your number 1 concern is to reduce elven loss due terrible ) try to manually select targets so you hit them from the sheildless flank or rear.

With regard to the skirmish be very aware of the edges.

The only other problem other than spear chuckers and archers is watch out for the cavalry hit them really hard with focus fire. The wargs and Dale cavalry can't withstand a hail of arrows. Just make sure you remove the skirmish and cancel the focus fire as the cav comes in let your sword play finish off the last half dozen or so.

On the campaign map:

I went north from Lothlorien to attack the settlement due north. I went south from greenwood. I left Thrandruil and Celeborn as leaders of the two main settlements. Every time I got a mission I made sure the capital was that city that produces sentinels. I would use 2 diplomats and park them next to next unknown and wait for the mission. I cleaned out Greenwood making trading pacts with whoever I could. I managed a good 9 or so sentinels from missions and avoid buying any early on. Making do with what I had. I then joined the Lothlorien and Greenwood force to rid myself of Dol Guldur. After that I went up the vales of the anduin and then started work on going down the mountain chain. Eventually as you mass up take out Moria use your troops near the Balrogs to distract them although Balrogs are strong they are not fast and can be distracted whilst 2 units of Ballista butcher them. The dwarves will eventually declare war laugh when they do this the dwarven faction will be beaten by strat I mention above. I have knocked out dwarf armies with tiny silvan armies. Keep them close but not too close and shower their backs with arrows. The stumpy little runts can't catch you the will have the odd cross bow unit and dale cav but this is no biggy tbh.

Defensively I only really did focused offensive builds in Lothlorien and Greenwood. However due to the fact that the area you are in is huge and unnavigatable you will need to set up some tier 1 archery spots elsewhere. Use lots of watchtowers so you can have an idea of what is coming. However keep Lothlorien and Greenwood covered neatly.

[Ozzmosis]

Also if you avoid building roads in Lorien, you keep very valuable bits of forest great for ambushing the stacks that come from moria.