Army composition & battle tactics

[CountMRVHS]

Now my pride kicks in and I'll do that manually. I don't want that but... the force... is too strong...

I know that Adunabar can get by with its Dunedanic roster, but I find the temptation of all the neat Cultic units to be too strong. When I play Adun., I go for Olog-Hai and Uruks as soon as I can, and Wargs too ... eventually.

Of course, it's a good idea to keep training Mannish units as well, because any Orkish units below Champions are easily beatable by most other factions. One exception here is Rhun, who you're bound to come up against sooner rather than later: their infantry units are mostly weak, so it's actually pretty cost-effective to send some low-ish tier Orcs into the East - supported by some of your basic Mannish units, like militia, swords, bows, and cav. Keep your Longbowmen and Royal Spearmen in the West, where you'll need them against the RK. Of course, if you have a few Mannish elites to spare, they can do a great deal to help defend against Rhun.

Even if you plan to go all-Orkish, though, you'll still need some support units - especially the Royal Longbowmen, and cav (eventually you'll get nice, scary Cultic cav which will be a nice upgrade). Swords of the Shadow are good infantry of the line, but I never train enough of them to make up the majority of my armies - usually I have a couple units flanking a line of Uruks, either Uruk Swords or Uruk Spears. IIRC both Uruk units are fast and/or have good stamina, making them surprisingly mobile additions. The big advantage with these Uruks is their unit size and decent defense, which means they can do surprisingly well in an "anvil" role, while you circle around to warcry & charge with Champions or cav.

Down the road, Adun. gets some nice niche units - Uruk Berserkers and Halberds. Berserkers are what you'd expect - some people don't have much use for 'em, but I like to have a couple units for the fun of it, and to cause chaos in low-tier enemy lines. Halberds are great IMO, but they have to be used in sufficient numbers and in the right situation. I have had great results using them to bar river crossings in the northern Anduin against Rohan. Just let the cav come across, and chop 'em down with your Halberds (after they've been shot up with your Longbows, of course). I haven't used them against infantry-heavy armies, but I imagine the results would be poorer, which would make sense.

The "beasts" are a lot of fun too. Olog-Hai are the signature unit, and great against RK, which can usually field stronger infantry armies than you. Send in the trolls, let them smash a bit, and then run them around through the enemy ranks before they get surrounded and cut down. In a battle line, you want them on the flanks so it's easier for them to cause chaos without trampling through your own guys. Remember that they need support; a great tactic is to follow up with a charge of Shadowriders (or other swift units) immediately after the trolls have sent the enemy flying. Meanwhile, move the rest of your army to engage, and with a little luck you should have a rout.

Wargs are a very late unit, but good against the factions you'll be fighting by then - probably Rohan and Harad, both of which field cav regularly. They also add a measure of mobility to your (somewhat) footbound forces.

Strategically, I like to build up for awhile so I don't cripple the RK too early. I play defensively, with lots of forts and armies at river crossings, which works great for Adun. and allows me to choose how I expand. It's possible to hold off Rohan, Rhun, and Harad simultaneously while you're wearing down the RK - and you'll probably have to hold them all off, since you're a big purple target in the middle of the map. My usual pattern of expansion is to first head west (I actually like to bypass MT and take out Pelargir and surrounding towns, leaving the cities of MT and Dol Amroth for more epic battles later), then head East into Rhun (for the Cultic axemen you can get there) and North into Rhovanion (for the Wargs). After that, I'm either targeting Rohan or Harad, depending upon who's more annoying (usually it's Harad - you have to fight a zillion bridge battles on the Poros to keep them out of Ithilien).

The great thing about Adunabar is that you feel as though they really *could* aim to totally conquer the map, unlike with some other factions. Plus their great - and deep - roster keeps you interested for long enough to make that a more feasible option.

[Nehcrum]

For RK:

Lots of Kings longbowmen
A mounted general or other cavalry unit.
A unit of men at arms just in case you may need them for a siege or something.

The same thing works for Adunabar as well.

Kings/royal longbowmen are the best unit in the game, simple as that.
They are the best archer unit, that together with a few others have the longest range in the game, they are on of the hardest hitting archer units and they have one more point of armor and the same melee attack as gondorian swordsmen. They only lack a shield, and have a little lower parry, which gives them slightly lower total defense, but they are still more than a match for almost any non-dunedanic infantry unit in a melee.
Quite simply, they have no weakness and can hit anyone and anything very hard.

Get lots of them, put them all up in a line and turn off skirmish.
Anything getting close will be decimated by their arrows before getting within melee range, and once in melee range they will be hacked to pieces.
The only think that could possibly deal with them are lots of heavy cavalry charging into them, but even then the archers are good enough in melle and numerous enough that they can overwhelm them.
And they won't run since they got better morale than both kings spearmen and gondorian swordsmen.

If there are lots of enemies, specifically lots of cheap infantry, just set them to fire arrows, which does great damage to the enemies morale. Normally, a single unit with fire arrows won't do much difference, since their morale will be able to recover between the volleys since fire arrows fire slower so faster volleys means more casualties and more morale loss that way.
But with several units firing fire arrows, they won't ahve a chance to recover and will break much sooner than they would from casualties alone.
And once they start running, they will spread panic to other units and soften them up even before the fire arrows hit them, and you can rout a large horde infantry army before it even reaches you.

Also, the battle AI is decidedly dumber than dumb when it has to command all-cavalry armies...

Also, the AI does auto-resolve, which only calculates a point value of the unit and doesn't take it's actual role into account, so a well-composed army means nothing for them.

Yepp, I always use spearmen to get that battering ram to its target on the wall or gate. Though I gotta admit that heavy cavalry is the best to push into the gate in my eyes. Sieges are so-so for me as my own and my enemies pathfinding in the city streets often leads to very strange outcomes of the fight and I sometimes wonder how I lost so many units against so few.

If the city gate is like

______..............______
|Tower|..............|Tower|
¯¯¯¯¯|..............|¯¯¯¯¯
|..............|
|_______|
|Gate|
¯¯¯¯

I prefer taking out a wall as you'll have a bigger opening and the pathfinding of the AI is way better than on a gate as they get stuck easily and pushed out if they face spearmen and heavy infantry. If that is happening I really like to have one or two stacks heavy cavalry. Even if they die, they are strong "pushers" and break enemy formations in front of the gate to give greater access to your troops. Plus, if you are lucky and got tunnels (are there tunnels in Fourth Age anyway? I don't think I used any up to this point - didnt manually besiege stonewalls so far, I think), heavy cavalry is the best to storm right into the newly opened hole and taking the wall and keeping some defenders busy with skirmish tactics while your infantry approaches. Once inside it shouldn't be much of a problem if there isn't any big garrison.
If I'm unlucky and there are 1000 well trained men with their backs on the wall awaiting me, I'd take a second army stack with me anyway. *cough*

I never go through the gate, except on cities with wooden walls where I might need those walls intact to defend from a enemy counter-attack before my next turn.

Walls clump my units up too much, and is a narrow chokepoint where the defender can utilize larger numbers since you walk through it slowly.

And for stone walls, I always go with siege towers.
Rams are just plain bad, since the gatehouse will pour hot and nasty stuff on you, and breaking a hole in the wall leaves the units on the walls and the towers intact so they can shoot at you.

No, build siege towers and find an angle where the towers can't shoot at you (most cities has such an angle, since the walls are often poorly planned out) and roll it up to the wall, have your infantry pour out and beat his infantry and then run them along the wall to capture towers and gatehouses and you can then turn his own towers against him and have your units march through a captured gatehouse where the doors will open and the towers will shoot on his units instead of yours.


Stone walls are usually ridiculously easy to take, the only real problem is time, since going at it slow and methodical means you'll be pressed for time on the really big cities with a maze of streets and a large army waiting for you on the inner square.

I know that Adunabar can get by with its Dunedanic roster, but I find the temptation of all the neat Cultic units to be too strong. When I play Adun., I go for Olog-Hai and Uruks as soon as I can, and Wargs too ... eventually.

Of course, it's a good idea to keep training Mannish units as well, because any Orkish units below Champions are easily beatable by most other factions. One exception here is Rhun, who you're bound to come up against sooner rather than later: their infantry units are mostly weak, so it's actually pretty cost-effective to send some low-ish tier Orcs into the East - supported by some of your basic Mannish units, like militia, swords, bows, and cav. Keep your Longbowmen and Royal Spearmen in the West, where you'll need them against the RK. Of course, if you have a few Mannish elites to spare, they can do a great deal to help defend against Rhun.

Even if you plan to go all-Orkish, though, you'll still need some support units - especially the Royal Longbowmen, and cav (eventually you'll get nice, scary Cultic cav which will be a nice upgrade). Swords of the Shadow are good infantry of the line, but I never train enough of them to make up the majority of my armies - usually I have a couple units flanking a line of Uruks, either Uruk Swords or Uruk Spears. IIRC both Uruk units are fast and/or have good stamina, making them surprisingly mobile additions. The big advantage with these Uruks is their unit size and decent defense, which means they can do surprisingly well in an "anvil" role, while you circle around to warcry & charge with Champions or cav.

Down the road, Adun. gets some nice niche units - Uruk Berserkers and Halberds. Berserkers are what you'd expect - some people don't have much use for 'em, but I like to have a couple units for the fun of it, and to cause chaos in low-tier enemy lines. Halberds are great IMO, but they have to be used in sufficient numbers and in the right situation. I have had great results using them to bar river crossings in the northern Anduin against Rohan. Just let the cav come across, and chop 'em down with your Halberds (after they've been shot up with your Longbows, of course). I haven't used them against infantry-heavy armies, but I imagine the results would be poorer, which would make sense.

The "beasts" are a lot of fun too. Olog-Hai are the signature unit, and great against RK, which can usually field stronger infantry armies than you. Send in the trolls, let them smash a bit, and then run them around through the enemy ranks before they get surrounded and cut down. In a battle line, you want them on the flanks so it's easier for them to cause chaos without trampling through your own guys. Remember that they need support; a great tactic is to follow up with a charge of Shadowriders (or other swift units) immediately after the trolls have sent the enemy flying. Meanwhile, move the rest of your army to engage, and with a little luck you should have a rout.

Wargs are a very late unit, but good against the factions you'll be fighting by then - probably Rohan and Harad, both of which field cav regularly. They also add a measure of mobility to your (somewhat) footbound forces.

I build the orc buildings in those three settlements where they are possible immediately, since their economic advantages are so huge.
And I build up other cities for unit production, most importantly Emyn Arnen and the one in the East by the lake whose name I cannot remember. And once you capture MT, you got enough mannish troop building capacity in the west that MI is not needed for that purpose.

And the orc champions do a good job of being infantry, and while the uruk aren't bad, I think the mannish troops fill that role better and that champions are better than uruk swords.

But other orc units have their uses too. There are orc band and orc hunters, which are utterly worthless, but champions are pretty decent for when you get them and for their cost, having a nice attack with armor piercing and decent armor, kinda like a budget version of lossarnach axemen, but much easier to get and much cheaper.
Then there are the snaga archers, which are good for the simple reason that they are the cheapest unit in the game when it comes to recruitment cost and upkeep, compared to unit size, making them perfect garrison units and excellent for populating cities due to their 0 recruitment time, easily putting settler units to shame.

Orc raiders also has their uses, they are a slightly bigger unit than snagas, but a little more expensive, and their stats aren't that bad, with the exception of their horribly low morale.
But you can recruit a thousand or so of them, in a single turn for a very low cost, so they can be mass-recruited and sent out as sacrificial sheep if you want to slow your enemy down or be used as cannon fodder to save your more valuable units from enemy archers when there is a need to push a ram. Or just to send out against the enemy to tire them out a bit before you hit them with your real units.
As long as you don't count on them to decide the battle for you but are there just to boost your numbers, they can be quite useful, especially since they take no time to be recruited but can be recruited at the same time as you are building some more valuable units. And they are built in cities where population is plentiful and easily replaced.

The only real elite "orc" unit is of course the olog-hai, which is in a class by itself. But the uruk berserkers are also good, far better than what their stats may indicate, since that berserk ability makes them into unstoppable killing machines.
Their only problem is that you can't stop them either, and they'll get exhausted if they have to run around too much, so take care to position them properly and then they can hack through almost anything.

As for the other cult units, I never seem to use them, the adunabar building tree is just too costly for them and regular mannish units are good enough that you don't really need the shadow riders and swords of the shadow, other than for flavor and if you got nothing better to spend your money on.

[Thangaror]

For RK:

Also, the AI does auto-resolve, which only calculates a point value of the unit and doesn't take it's actual role into account, so a well-composed army means nothing for them.

Aradan has greatly improved auto-resolve. Go and compare, auto-resolve a battle with an army that has some bowmen in FATW and vanilla. In FATW the bowmen will have some losses, in vanilla they'll be slaughtered.

And for stone walls, I always go with siege towers.
Rams are just plain bad, since the gatehouse will pour hot and nasty stuff on you, and breaking a hole in the wall leaves the units on the walls and the towers intact so they can shoot at you.

Oil has been disabled in most mods, as in FATW, too.

No, build siege towers and find an angle where the towers can't shoot at you (most cities has such an angle, since the walls are often poorly planned out) and roll it up to the wall, have your infantry pour out and beat his infantry and then run them along the wall to capture towers and gatehouses and you can then turn his own towers against him and have your units march through a captured gatehouse where the doors will open and the towers will shoot on his units instead of yours.

DO NOT FIGHT ON WALLS! Never! It simply sucks. If you try to capture the cities, you'll have to enter the walls, to capture the towers and secure your approach. But try to do it as seldom as possible. Fighting on walls is simply awkward and the mechanic is pretty much screwed due to the "fight until death" issue.
Especially as RK, bring catapults along and shoot these silly towers to pieces. Break the walls, done (attacking simple stone walls, the catapults have enough ammunition to destroy a wall section, the gate-house and about two towers).

I don't even defend walls. Depending on the situation I'll put my bowmen on the walls, but I'll retreat them as soon as the enemy is close to the walls. Then all my units retreat to the plaza. It'll take some time until the enemy actually overcomes the walls, but just in case your infantry and cavalry should back up the bowmen's retreat. At the plaza I'll block the streets with two units of infantry, bowmen behind and wait for the enemy. This tactic is most successful, even when you're outnumbered, since the AI is simply too stupid and unable to avoid the walls, being shot down by the towers, and to attack the plaza properly from two directions.

But other orc units have their uses too. There are orc band and orc hunters, which are utterly worthless, but champions are pretty decent for when you get them and for their cost, having a nice attack with armor piercing and decent armor, kinda like a budget version of lossarnach axemen, but much easier to get and much cheaper.
Then there are the snaga archers, which are good for the simple reason that they are the cheapest unit in the game when it comes to recruitment cost and upkeep, compared to unit size, making them perfect garrison units and excellent for populating cities due to their 0 recruitment time, easily putting settler units to shame.

Orc raiders also has their uses, they are a slightly bigger unit than snagas, but a little more expensive, and their stats aren't that bad, with the exception of their horribly low morale.

I often recruit orc-only armies, especially when playing Dunland. Snaga archers, Raiders, two Orc-bands and two Champions, sorta like this. They are funny and have some use. First, they delay armies reaching your main army. Second, they weaken them. Third, (and this is the most important point for Dunland) you can use them oblivious to casualties and send them deep into enemy territory. If they die, it doesn't matter. And actually, due to their numbers, they can cause quite some casualties.

Plus, if you are lucky and got tunnels (are there tunnels in Fourth Age anyway? I don't think I used any up to this point - didnt manually besiege stonewalls so far, I think), heavy cavalry is the best to storm right into the newly opened hole and taking the wall and keeping some defenders busy with skirmish tactics while your infantry approaches.

Yes, there are tunnels, but only Dwarves can sap.

[Themea]

I love fighting on walls. Unless an enemy unit, or usually one guy, gets stuck in a tower

[Thangaror]

Why so?! It causes embarrassing losses to your army for no reason. You'll win anyway

[CountMRVHS]

There is a "coolness" factor to fighting on walls.

I actually don't find wall-fights to be that wonky, but I never play harder than Hard battle difficulty. I do remember a few occasions (I think in vanilla) when units seemed to under-perform quite a bit on the walls, but for the most part things seem reasonable.

I agree that plaza-camping is usually the most effective way to defend cities, but I don't like it because, as you said, the AI will just march along underneath the towers and get shot to pieces. Plus they'll exhaust themselves, alternating between running and marching. I try to only exploit the AI's stupidity when I'm in danger of losing.

An exception to that is when I'm defending "barbarian" settlements with wooden walls. Usual tactic there is to set up a battle-line on the crest of the slope leading to the plaza: spears in the middle, just downslope (so archers can fire overhead); general behind; lighter troops/skirmishers/flankers on the flanks. It's not really a plaza defense as I don't have any units actually in the plaza (unless I'm getting attacked from multiple directions), but it's far better than fighting a dozen one-on-one mini-battles at gaps in the walls.

[Thangaror]

I agree that plaza-camping is usually the most effective way to defend cities, but I don't like it because, as you said, the AI will just march along underneath the towers and get shot to pieces. Plus they'll exhaust themselves, alternating between running and marching. I try to only exploit the AI's stupidity when I'm in danger of losing.

Whether the AI is slaughtered by the towers or by my men, does it matter?

Seriously, the wall fights are simply too unrealistic. There are no possibilities to enter/leave the walls in a fast manner. It takes ages for the men to walk through the towers (in reality there'd be vast ramps were men men could run down). Units often refuse to run on walls. You're unable to set them up in a right way (facing the enemy) and formations are disabled. And they will ALWAYS fight until death, which is stupid. Yeah, alright the attackers do not have a possibility to run away, but the defenders should.
Then, if you fight behind the walls, your own men will be shot by your own towers. It's simply annoying.

[Stark1]

Well letting enemy march it's troops to your plaza while being shot by towers while you just hold the plaza is gamey as hell. What sane commander would defend his city by stationing all troops on central square and waiting there?

[Thangaror]

The whole city setup is gamey as hell. Towers shooting arrows without someone being inside. Undestroyable ladders. Towers able to shoot to the INSIDE of the city! No sane commander would allow such towers to be constructed. And on top of it the terrible pathfinding.
I avoid sieges as often as possible. Also the AI is often reluctant to attack when sieging, so I usually sally forth anyway. In those cities that are besieged often, I have an army of bowmen so I really don't have to fear anything.

If I want to besiege and defend castles I'll play Stronghold.

[Stark1]

You have a point. But I still like to meet enemies on the walls. Less work for me as well. Although I always play on normal.

[Nehcrum]

Whether the AI is slaughtered by the towers or by my men, does it matter?

Seriously, the wall fights are simply too unrealistic. There are no possibilities to enter/leave the walls in a fast manner. It takes ages for the men to walk through the towers (in reality there'd be vast ramps were men men could run down). Units often refuse to run on walls. You're unable to set them up in a right way (facing the enemy) and formations are disabled. And they will ALWAYS fight until death, which is stupid. Yeah, alright the attackers do not have a possibility to run away, but the defenders should.
Then, if you fight behind the walls, your own men will be shot by your own towers. It's simply annoying.

Depends how the walls were constructed, far from all of them had large ramps for you to run up and down, most had narrow stairs, some inside towers, some simply along the inside of the wall.
After all, you expect to have your men in place, and being able to run about freely in large numbers would usually be something that would benefit your enemy, as a defender you want chokepoints since in medieval times the attacker always had a huge numerical superiority (noone would attack a fortified city or castle without it).

Units will run on the walls, but you usally have to click the symbol rather than just doubleclicking, and that formations are unavailable makes sense, if you consider the fact that shield wall was added in a later version and testudo and phalanx would be a bit too powerful on the walls and not very realistic. Facing doesn't matter all that much either, since you can't be charged in the back and they will turn to the side they are fighting. If you want, you can simply think of it as units having no facing when they are on walls.

And while they fight to the death, they will actually often break and stand still and get cut down, think of it as illustrating the problem of tring to flee when fighting in cramped places.

The whole city setup is gamey as hell. Towers shooting arrows without someone being inside. Undestroyable ladders. Towers able to shoot to the INSIDE of the city! No sane commander would allow such towers to be constructed. And on top of it the terrible pathfinding.
I avoid sieges as often as possible. Also the AI is often reluctant to attack when sieging, so I usually sally forth anyway. In those cities that are besieged often, I have an army of bowmen so I really don't have to fear anything.

If I want to besiege and defend castles I'll play Stronghold.

Towers shooting arrows without someone inside is kind of a fix, since otherwise you would somehow either have to crew the towers or have worthless towers.
And towers shooting inside the city isn't all that strange, since all you need in order to fire is an opening to fire through, meaning you'd then have to build towers with limited vision. Or simply realize that you can't let your enemy gain control of your walls.
Because if they did, you were screwed either way, with or without towers hat could be used against you.
And you'd actually want towers that could do that, since the walls were the most important part of the defense, not some open square in the middle of the city, because as long as you held the walls, you could take back the openings the enemy had managed to make and thereby trapping the forces that had made it inside.
Because it is only in games and movies that victory is decided by raising your flag somewhere, in the real world, that is usually something you do after you have already won and not something that makes you win.

But of course, in the real world, the towers usually had doors, so you could block off the enemy and not let them run around all the want just because they got a ladder up and captured a portion of the walls. And towers would also be able to fire alongside the walls, not just in and out but also against those trying to enter the tower in question, essentially making every tower a small fort in itself, making it more difficult for an attacker.

And the pathfinding is terrible, but that goes for pretty much the entire game, unless it's an open field without obstacles.


And stronghold was a nice game, although a bit too narrow. It did right in pointing out however, that siege machines were usually built at the site, rather than having the army dragging them around along with them all the time. And that the defenders could have siege machines of their own, positioned on the walls and towers.
Sieging larger fortifications was an art in itself, just as advanced as the architectural and tactical skills of those that had constructed them.

Trying to do a bum rush with ladders and rams usually only worked if you had many more than ten times as many men as the defenders or the defenders were too weak to hold the walls (not enough men to protect the walls from all sides, or ravaged by diseases and such).
Diseases and sickness were usually the big decider, any attack on strong fortifications was a big gamble, and most just sieged them and waited for starvation and sickness to set in, which affected the besieger as much as the besieged, and it became a race to see who would first crumble under the pressure of lice, rats, fever, diarrhea, typhoid, malaria and all the other nasties that killed far more soldiers than any battle ever did (it took until the 20th centure before more soldiers in war died from combat-related injuries including infected wounds, than from diseases).