Being Dale

[BeingDale]

Being Dale


Although there is a scattering of advice about Dale on this forum after reading page 6 onwards of the Rohan in Need thread I decided it might help for there to be a conclusive guide to Dale in one place. This is certainly not going to be it but is rather a number of my experiences in playing Dale condensed into one place.



Dale can be a loving, responsible faction who makes all your third age wishes of defeating the Dark Lord come true, or the spoilt, unresponsive brat who frustrates your efforts at every turn and guarantees victory to your enemies. It all depends on your opening moves and a bit of luck in fighting Rhun.


Why Dale?


Firstly I have a love hate relationship with Dale which sums them up as a faction:
·
I hate their lack of solid cavalry – you are basically going to be using Yeoman’s who can’t be relied upon for anything including following your orders
· I love their strong economy – you should never have to go into the red
· I hate their distant staring position – you move your capital between turn 20-40 to prevent corruption and it is 5K I would rather spend fighting Rhun at this point
· I love their archer units – who doesn’t want an regenerating archer army
· I hate how easily their generals die – in one battle I had 3 generals fling themselves into the void before any serious fighting had got underway


Fortunately the two things you are going to use alot of in this and any campaign is archers and money and Dale has these in abundance and adoptions are every other turn and I didn’t like their pictures anyway. Overall I love Dale because as a campaign it can provide a good pace of play that isn’t overwhelming depending on how you deal with Rhun. Also there is room to actually build a good few things instead of just churning out units and going bankrupt.


Early army/s


This should be all the generals, any other archer units and infantry you can muster from your starting villages alongside a few supplements that you can build before you get too far away. As soon as possible get a few cavalry in there.


Actually Fighting Battles


At this stage probably good to give advice on how I fight a battle. Later a my full stack are 7-8 archers (3-5 generals), 4-5 cavalry and the rest infantry. Play defensive battles as much as possible and use FIRE ARROWS. 4 archers on fire arrows and 4 normal and you have a death storm of morale sapping destruction which just needs a well timed cavalry charge. Mass routs are very easy to achieve with Dale and is one of the many reasons you should love/hate them too.


Economy


The usual stuff; build farms, roads and anything else that will repay itself in 10-20 turns. Hold back on going unit crazy I personally prefer to adopt a few candidates early as despite high maintenance they are probably going to be a solid unit and are ‘free’ to recruit.


Spies


Use them and lots of them to see where the enemy units are and going and actually use this information, spies are not there so you can just see more of the nice terrain.


Starting Moves (turn 0-20)


Conquest
There are 4 towns you need to capture fast:


· Araw
· Dolwinion
· Kugavod - give to the Dwarves as a buffer against Rhun in the north
· Uldonavan – key to defeating Rhun


This can be a bit of a challenge and getting there before Rhun is important but not essential in the case of Uldonavan as you should be able to rapidly take it off them. Either way your guys are going to be running their little rendered boots off.


Next Stage (20-60)


Conquest
You are going to start pushing into Rhun, Uldonavan will supply most if not all the reinforcements because it can and no one will tell it otherwise. If you can fight a good battle you only really need one good stack to have Rhun on their knees and begging for ceasefire around turn 50-60. So the next set of key towns you will hopefully be able to take in this time are:


· Burh Ermanarikis – 2 bridges are an important defensive position and good fall back if things go wrong
· Mistrand – the capital, garrison script but is a money maker
· Mattaram – good for tying up any relief armies coming from the south
· Rhomen – garrison script
· Kelepar – I left this until after Rhomen as I wanted to knock out the garrison script town first but that is personal preference


Note that the AI will nearly always attempt to relieve its cities under siege over taking back ones they have just lost. Garrison accordingly. Wrap up what is left anyway you see fit. When you have taken most of the cities listed above consider moving your capital it will save you around 1000-1500 in corruption a turn, I chose Uldonavan as it was going to be fairly central to what my kingdom would become once war with Mordor begins.


Mordor and Onwards 60-120


When you are between 10-15 turns away from destroying Rhun it is a good time to consider building your armies to attack Morder. At this stage you should easily be able to support 3 stacks.


· 2 in the North to move down to the Black Gate – one starts at Dol Guldor and the other at Tirith Toron
· 1 from the East – this will probably be the army that finally crushed Rhun, reinforce and move to Nurnen and towards Barad-dur


Kill the Nazgul early and this becomes alot easier, also if you are lucky an Invasion will be called to somewhere and a good amount troops will walk off to foreign lands. FIRE ARROWS are battle winners when fighting Mordor armies, Orcs really don’t like them. As a point of reference on the run through proceeding this guide I had completed the game objectives by turn 150. I did take a number of attempts of less than happy sailing to perfect playing as Dale. After Mordor if you are really having a good time there is always Harad.



Units


After looking at a Gondor guide I thought was particulary good here are the units of Dale and what, if anything, they are good for (Green - Useful, Red - Never Used, Blue - a time and a place):


Hearth Watchmen – early holding units not too bad but not reliable
Dalesmen – slightly better than Watchmen/same use

Rivermen – rarely if ever used
Rhovanion Gadraughts – found a useful and reliable holding unit however an AOR
Dale Swordsmen – stock infantry as game progressed
Dale Swordmasters – had one unit to start with and by turn 150 still had one unit
Woodsmen – useful early on, replace with longbowment asap
Longbowmen – see above
Athala Rangers – see Dale Swordmasters
Bardian Marksmen – general unit type and therefore the backbone of most of my armies
Barding Hird – not unlocked by turn 150
Yeomen – stock cavalry
Aihwothiuda Horseguards – didn’t know existed until I looked at custom battle units and not unlocked by turn 150
Earls of Dale – see above


Overall Dale can take a bit of getting used to but if you get it right they are certainly one of the more rewarding factions in the game in terms of getting a balance between pace of play, city building, battles and game challenge.


Thankyou for reading.

[Mhaedros]

IMO the Rivermen are one of the better units in Dale's roster. Capable of bringing down most things and recruitable in the crappy starting villages.

Great first post tho.

[Jean=A=Luc]

Dale has 4 cavalry units two of which are "heavy", I wouldn't say they lack in this department. Of course you need to develop your towns to get them but that goes for every unit. If you capture Uldonovan it shouldn't be much of a problem.

[Incredible Bulk]

Does not Dale lack heavy infrantry units?

[StealthFox]

Nice guide, and welcome to the forums!

Are you building up your barracks? You should have all of Dale's elite units before turn 100.

[Incredible Bulk]

btw nice guide. I'm telling you we should take all these guides people write for each faction and make a printable players guide book, that's would be awesome

[BeingDale]

So in reverse order:

Isais1 - I found they have some fairly solid infantry although it is their archers that are battle winners for me.

StealthFox & Jean=A=Luc - I didnt unlock them even though I wouldn't say I neglected military buildings by any stretch of the imagination. Therefore as a result I went through the campaign with a highly suspect cavalry roster that was the weakest part of playing Dale. I did forget Dale cavalry which are a slight improvement on Yeoman cavalry.

Mhaedros - I would agree Rivermen are a good unit I just never found a permanent place for them in my army roster during that campaign and never felt that I was missing them when I didn't have them.

[Keyser_Soze]

Nice guide, and welcome to the forums!

Are you building up your barracks? You should have all of Dale's elite units before turn 100.

Not turn 100. Dale needs to hit 26,000 population. That isn't doable by turn 100. 200, probably, but definitely not 100.
Then, there's the aiwothiuda horseguards, which are a pain to make recruitable as you need to upgrade a rhovanion city to quite a high tier, or uldonavan to fortress, which takes forever.

Dale's one of the more time-consuming factions for unlocking units. Dale's a small place to begin with, and its growth isn't rapid in any way. On the bright side, you probably don't need powerful infantry against Rhun, who never recruit anything other than balchoth clansmen, or Mordor, who are pretty easy with the exception of nazgul and olog-hai.
Once unlocked, dale's late-game infantry is excellent, especially the barding hird and earls. However, they're difficult to get, and there are so few settlements to get them from, really. Dale, Esgaroth, and maybe uldonavan late-game.

[Jean=A=Luc]

Does not Dale lack heavy infrantry units?

There is very little that Dale lacks actually. They have good cavalry and archers and pretty capable infantry whether it's light, medium or heavy.

Their only restriction is that their medium spearmen are AoR units while the Hirdmen might not be so good at receiving cavalry charges (halberds are kinda short and wonky).

[Incredible Bulk]

There is very little that Dale lacks actually. They have good cavalry and archers and pretty capable infantry whether it's light, medium or heavy.

Their only restriction is that their medium spearmen are AoR units while the Hirdmen might not be so good at receiving cavalry charges (halberds are kinda short and wonky).

Yeah your right they are very balance I guess my biggest negative with them is lack starting settlements only 4 even they started with 5 that will be a bigger help, more income coming to recruit more men because Rhun will sweep you off the map

[Shingen]

I use most of my generals as govenors. So the city grow faster and generate more money.

If you do it right. -> http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...light=traits#6

[MasterBigAb]

Moved

[BeingDale]

Lack of starting settlements is really not the problem with Dale you can quickly up the number to 6-7 in the first 5-10 turns or if you decided to hang on to Kugavod/get there quick enough and want to defend it, 8.

Fighting Rhun is where most people have the difficulty it seems as they are a potentially very difficult faction to deal with but the map gives you some important choke points. If you keep Kugavod (not recommended) then there is a bridge right next to it. A half stack of archers, rivermen (my one use for them was in bridge battles where a volley before the units get off the bridge can do some major damage) and some light cavalry to mop up the survivers can hold far superior forces if used right. Then there are the bridges at Bruh Ermanarikis where you can get away with the same for a while. Also Rhun generals dont have a sheild so they can be cut down in quick order with some focused archer fire. They also field alot of javilinmen and a well placed cavalry charge is all they really need. Dont forget your fire arrows which are necessary when everyone has good to excellent morale.


Dale also offer a real mix of opponents as the game goes on, which need you to adjust slightly your tatics, you are going to fight Rhun and Mordor, two very different factions to finish the actual objectives. Then you can move on to Harad which are a different kettle of fish again. With the Dwarves for example you are basically going to be fighting Orcs and maybe a defensive action against Rhun much later on. Orcs often fight a very boring brand of warefare and have some of the most disappointing unit rosters, equally the Dwarves themselves are infantry based and this means you are going to be fighting alot of meat grinders.

The main dissapointment is that you dont get the really elite and special units until turn 200 and by that stage you should be so far away from Dale and Esgaroth that they aren't really worth the 20 turn walk to the front never mind the slow rate of re-recruitment.

Is there any good Let's Play of Dale on this forum.