Isengard Strategy

[Black Jack]

Hey everyone, longtime lurker, first time poster.

Following a piece of advice I found on this forum, I've both blitzed The Hornburg with my initial army around turn 8-10 (captured it, massacred the population, burned all the buildings, and left a unit of Snagas to garrison), or called an Invasion on it on Turn 2. Either way, I'm drowning in half stacks of Rohirrim by turn 20.

In my most recent attempt, I called an Invasion (on the Hornburg) at turn 2, then took Tharbad and Talsir to boost my economy. Then I sat back for 10-15 turns and built up economic infrastructure, and focused on Wargs and Ballistas at Isengard, rather than Uruks. A full Invasion Stack from Harad killed off the Hornburg around turn 22, but by that time my armies were whittled down to a nub and I was 4.5k in the red with three more half stacks incoming. I quit at this point.

So how do you get Isengard off the ground?

[Jackie_fish]

i normally just leave rohan till later I find it funner that way i go fight the elves or arnor for a bit

[jinjo]

i played vh/vh, but didn't have problems. i didnt blitz rohan i just destroyed it step by step. after destroying rohan it's easy to crush high elves and eriador
i just had some problems vs dwarves but this was late game and i had bersekers and other late units so i destroyed them too

[Lord Butters I]

I don't go to war on them at the start. I keep my army to a minimum and capture all the rebel settlements around me until like turn 20-25. By then the Orthanc has its unit production capability maxed out and I've got upwards of $40,000, so after that a war against Rohan is much easier.

[Scouten]

i stayed out of pity affairs of the lesser realms until the first invasion was called after that i blitzed rohan taking 80% of it within around 10 turns

[el Cid]

Indeed, don't go to war. First build up your economy by grabbing rebel settlements.

[NSFW]

When I played Isengard I used the two fords across the Isen as choke points to hold back the tides of Rohirrim.

After taking the rebel provinces around Dunland, I teched up a little, and let troop pools and cash build up, mostly only recruiting when a useful unit type's pool maxed out.

I then looked at building a couple of small stacks to hold the Isen's fords. (Initially they were something like: general, guards of orthanc, 2 Raiders, 1-2 Reavers, 2-3 Uruk Archers.)
Once I had those stacks I waited for a time when most of Rohan's forces were east of the Isen and then took the fords. This forces Rohan to declare war if it wants to reinforce its western regions while the rest of of Isengard's forces muster, which is a little bit of a general diplomatic bonus.
In the meantime, while those stacks were getting into place, I built an assault half stack whose job it was to clear out Rohan's western regions (Gineard, Adorn, Derwath, and usually Lond Angren) and then a small strategic reserve (mainly as reinforcements for the three main stacks but also as a quick reaction force should rohan manage to threaten Talsir.)

I'd ignore the first invasion called on Edoras, but with Rohan so distracted it's a good time to launch attacks on their western regions. With luck your conquest stack can have done it's job and be back to help defend the Isen fords before Rohan's done with mopping up the mess the Invasion causes.

The regions gained from Rohan obviously help economically, and with only two river crossings to hold you should be able to hold off most anything Rohan can throw at you while you consolidate/build an army for invading the rest of Rohan.

It should be said that I had alliances with both Eriador and the High Elves, which helped masses, the alliance with Eriador actually cost me Tharbad, but given what a dump it is it seemed like a small price to pay for a (relatively) secure northern border.

These experiences were with a 1.4 RR/RC varient, so they may not be as effective in 2.1, but I'd imagine that the general strategy of hitting them where they're weak & when they're distracted, while holding off the bulk of their forces at a pair of river crossings, should still be fairly sound.

[Norkus]

I am currently trying my luck as Isengard in 2.1. It is tough but fun and money is always in short supply.

What I am wondering is how you can secure peace and even alliances with Eriador and the High Elves when you don't have a diplomat?

[Hounf of Culan]

I am currently trying my luck as Isengard in 2.1. It is tough but fun and money is always in short supply.

What I am wondering is how you can secure peace and even alliances with Eriador and the High Elves when you don't have a diplomat?

In my experience Eriador and the High elves were so busy fighting Gundabad and Moria that they never attacked me until I had already conquered most of rohan and I was nigh unstoppable by then.

[TREG]

i thought fighting rohan was very easy, even on vh/vh. just don't piss them off too quickly.

[Whitewalls]

Everytime I use Isengard, Rohan builds up really quickly and takes most of the area before I can do anything. By the time I have a decent force they're overwhelming

[JinShepard]

Played(ing) Isengard too, at turn 10 they already have two full stacks and by turn 20 3-4 full stacks.. Rohan is amazingly quick in building a huge force, then when the invasion is called it is a dangerous road to go to war with them, especialy since there stacks are huge, and they often don't defend there city that is attacked resulting in a easy take over and I am then in war with them against 4-5 full stacks before turn 25 xD

Not to mention that I cannot guard my borders against the High Elves and Eriador, very challenging indeed!

[Whitewalls]

Rohan likes to leave their cities empty so I send a small/medium force to go conquer it, thinking it'll be easy, until a full stack or two decides to defend, and wipes out my force completely because I cannot retreat because the AI has more movement points

[eugenioso]

first of all, take your time. blitzing rohan with your puny empire only results in a long drawn out war at best and a total rout at worst. first of all, expand west into all those rebel settlements. though i dont ever ally with any good forces in middle earth, it doesnt mean that i have to break a truce on purpose, so simply by staying away from eriador and the elves you will do a good job of surviving.

take the rebel settlements to the west, and when Sauron calls for an invasion of Edoras, its best not to join it. he calls it in the 13th turn almost always, and your economy is just beginning to pick up as well as the fact that any evil armies marching to edoras will take several turns to get there. keep neutral with rohan as long as possible. also remember to never boost your army until after you have lowered all taxes to low and you have built all the economic buildings. after this is done, begin to build an army.

as tempting as it may be to build an uruk hai only army, forget it. they are high upkeep troops, and you will need more than uruks to outnumber your enemies, so dont be shy to use as many orcs as possible. just be sure to mix the forces up rather than just focusing on one unit type.

focus on building 3 armies: one will go to the eastern rohan settlements through fangorn forest, one will sally forth from isengard straight south to capture helms deep, and the last one should focus on the 3 or 4 rohan settlements that lie to the west of helms deep (hornburg for you guys who know about LOTR). fill them up with orcs and make sure that each one has a family member leading them. orcs are cowards and uruks are no exception, especially against rohan's cavalry charges. your ability to win will rely on your ability to take the full brunt of rohan's cavalry charges and not breaking, and afterwards killing them in melee. keep the uruk hai on the front lines and your orc skirmishers on the second, as well as orc raiders ready to plug any holes that rohan might make. amazingly, uruk archers are excellent long range units for evil armies, and you should always keep a small group to snipe important units. they outrange low and mid tier rohan ranged units, and they can cause important casualties to rohan's cavalry units. if you can get them also, uruk crossbowmen are good units to use as snipers as well, but they have a lower rate of fire, so mix them up with uruk archers so they can provide each other covering fire. siege weapons are completely dependant on the player. sometimes i like to take them and launch a quick attack against a town or to cause terror with ballistas armed with fire arrows, but they slow down your armies, and you dont want that. your ability to win against rohan will be determined by your speed rather than your might. only siege settlements that are well defended. anything with 3 units or less should be assaulted immediately. lower the taxes to low and leave a single orc unit to defend. sack the settlements to get more money.

if you see rohan has an army in the area attack it and destroy it first. small groups of cavalry can be safely ignored. as soon as possible begin to build orc units in the captured settlements to stop any rohan attempts to recapture them. if the plan went well then rohan should have been reduced to maybe 4 settlements and you should have enough money to make more reinforcements in isengard for your armies. theres no need to rush now: take your time in sieging edoras (if it hasnt already fallen to the invasion ofc) and the remaining settlements. a word of caution though: ive seen that sometimes mordor might send a small army north and take one of rohan's far eastern provinces, but this is somewhat rare. just in case, march quickly and seize the settlements there.

from now on, you have total freedom of action: you can march straight up north and battle eriador as well as the high elves, go northeast and fight the silvan elves, or go south and attack gondor in the rear. another word of caution though: despite being your "ally", mordor will eventually declare war on you if you begin to march onto gondor's lands south and get in his way, so i recommend that you march north and take out eriador and the high elves, securing your flank for an eventual war with mordor.

[Kamnik]

You need to play an economic game the first 50 turns and build up Isengard to have stronger units. Your starting units simply won't do against Rohan. (on VH/VH that is)

Then you need to call an invasion on Edoras and attack when AI takes it.

Isengard is quite hard to play, remember that.

[JinShepard]

Thing for me was, I knew about the 2 not so high stacks in the west of ROhans territory, so I assaulted it with a little larger stack, what happend? Two full stacks spawned on the settlements >< Result, failed assault, they gained 2 more full stacks to there army!!!!

I am playing quite passive now, at my current game however I did join the early Invasion, however the difference now is t hat I aint focussing on the town, but on all the large stacks! Used a army with many archers to burn as much down from range as I can, then charge!!!

How do you call a invasion yourself as Isengard, I must have missed the button for it?

[Kamnik]

Thing for me was, I knew about the 2 not so high stacks in the west of ROhans territory, so I assaulted it with a little larger stack, what happend? Two full stacks spawned on the settlements >< Result, failed assault, they gained 2 more full stacks to there army!!!!

I am playing quite passive now, at my current game however I did join the early Invasion, however the difference now is t hat I aint focussing on the town, but on all the large stacks! Used a army with many archers to burn as much down from range as I can, then charge!!!

How do you call a invasion yourself as Isengard, I must have missed the button for it?

"Dark lord" tab has a button for it. Look at the other tab by the diplomacy.

[Beregond]

eugenioso, you've written a nice strategy here; unfortunately smth like that has blown in my face when High Elves attacked me early.
And without high-tier units there was nothing I can counter them with. Ah, I suppose I waited too long before declaring war on Rohan, so I had few settlements and no real income. No money=no army=defeat
I'm better at playing good guys

[DeadlyPhoenix]

Ugh
Not quite sure if I can post this here, but assuming that it's about the same subject and/or an addition to the first OP's questions => Heluuuup xD

I think I'm stuck.
Started a campaign as Isengard, started building an army, rushed over to Rohan..died. Then I came onto this thread and saw all the nice tactics so this is what I did:

- economic buildings only
- going north-west of Isengard with the existing and given troops from start to conquer the rebel towns
- Conquered about 3 or 4 rebel city's, kept focusing on economic buildings while once in a few creating one of the stronger Isengard guards at the capital, along with orc raiders

The dark lord asked me to join in the 'Invasion' against Edoras, as mentioned above it would be better to skip that one and so did I. Luckily enough Mordor captured Edoras before the end of the Invasion and I did not lose any reputation with the Dark Lord.

So far so good. Around 6 cities now, currently no wars, didn't lose reputation with the dark lord and my army in Isengard is rising quite strong and above all... my money is quite above 0.

Not a problem you would think? Read on..
1 Turn after Edoras got captured by Mordor, Rohan enters my borders and starts the assault onto me, taking Gondor on his leash so I end up being in war with 2 factions right ahead. I gather my army's and start a counter attack, slaying couple of Rohan's army's and dodging their attend on taking over a town of me. Then I get asked to capture a city of theirs (right under Isengard), so I take out Saruman and the rest of his army and go in an attack as there was only 1 unit in Ferl..whatever name of that rohan's town is.

Suddenly, out of the blue, the next turn (while i had the city under siege), it fills up full stack of an army (where the heck did that come from?). I defeat it, though with quite a few cassaulties but at least the city is mine and so are the rewards (3 isengard guards). Now suddenly there are 3! full stacks of rohan armies, coming out of nowhere. . attacking me.

Where do they come from? How can they create that many men in such a short time (I'm at like turn 25, take or give a few)? Even after I've already slain like 3 stacks of the before?

How come armies can "spawn" out of nothing, I'm not even playing on h/h, but m/h.

P.S.: I'm having this mod on it: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=390535
P.P.S.: Total Recruitment is "OFF", so that can't be the problem, can it?

I'd really like some feedback onto this, because it kind of kills the fun if the AI can just generate armies way bigger than they should be able to afford, and above all, that they can spawn them while there weren't even any armies in the surroundings when unleashing the not-so-mighty-orcs-of-Isengard.

Thanks in advance.

oh and edit: Is it also normal for not being allied with any of the dark forces when playing as Isengard? Shouldn't I have an alliance with Mordor or the northen orcs or whatever orcs? Seeing as we fight for the same purpose? At least..in the beginning

Second edit: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=429124
Perhaps this is a solution? Though I'm quite new, got to find the original FAQ thread and that is about... 100+ pages long, yay *-*

ok another one: I deleted the garrison script, but this only raises questions as the town I sieged was NOT listed in the "spawn unit aka garrison script", how, what, when and why?

Also, if i'm not mistaken, it is impossible for the AI to go too far in debt as they get 10 000florins when they go into -1000, but it is also impossible for them to have more than 40000 as they get a -5000 penalty if they go over it; if I'm correct on that, they can never go broke and thus keep on recruiting / building.. hmm

All what I'm really concerned about is, how come they can build that huge stacks of army while it is impossible to do so myself? Especially since I also have to wait on the right populations in my towns to upgrade them for stronger units (and apparently the AI doesn't have to bother with that?)

[Lemoniser]

other than garrision script i cant think of anything. But is this a new campaign or not as deleting the garrision script isnt saved game compatible. Also the scripted armies have units from all eras (I believe) in them so this may be where those high tier units are coming from.