No big deal if i loose a town?

[Deedlit]

I always seem to get so pissed off at the ai and cheat to gain a town back whenever i loose one. But what im trying to do in my new game is instead of putting all my units in defending towns. Im keeping them only with 1-2 units in and keeping my main force moving around attacking things before it gets to my towns.

And if i loose a town then i just meh i'll retake it in a few turns. So what im saying is loosing a town is no big deal right?

[Mikail Mengsk]

Well, it's better not to lose them at all, it depends on what town do you risk to lose.

[Deedlit]

But is it normal to loose battles? Or should i go throgh my game expecting to win everything.?

[scouter535]

As Mikail said it depends on the town. Obviously some towns make alot of money and are worth keeping but some of the smaller towns only make a couple hundred gold per turn max and just aren't worth the cost of constantly defending with very many troops. Overall I try to keep them all but a small town isn't at all game-losing.

[Nikolass]

interesting, i have been playing TW serials since the first shogun and i never ever lose a city. not because i am a genuius but because i load and save until i get it my way. i now that it ruins game but i can help myself

[Bladvak]

Winning battles is nothing, winning the campaign is everything !

So even if you lose some battles or some cities keep on doing best for your faction and try to win the campaign. And losing a town is nothing, you are right there

[Hermes Trismegistos]

I would say later in the game you usually can't defend everything and attack at the same time. So I prefer to only use small garrisons and mobile forces that try to attack and intercept enemies. But as Mikail Mensk said some settlements are more important to protect than others and some troops as well. If the enemy defeats militia armies and captures small border towns it is not a big thing and you should expect that, but if he captures main recruitment centers or kills good generals it can be a quite a blow (especially since usually buildings are destroyed). It should be possible to avoid that though later in the game (when you have defeated your first main enemy) you will survive even that.

[Soul Reapir]

I have this mentality that whenever I loose progress, like a town gets taken, or an army I just spent 10 turns building gets killed right away, I get really angry. I don't know why. I just HATE loosing progress, I want to keep moving forward, always moving in the right direction. So I'm very tempted to load when it happens but have been good lately letting the AI keep its victory, knowing soon I will have my revenge.

[Gallus]

how does one loose a town?

[Incredible Bulk]

I always lose between 10-20 battles on a long campaign, I win towns I
Lose some. I might get them back I
Might not. If they are not required for to win the game I won't waste my time. You will
Lose but like it was mention you may lose battle just make you win the war. So yes it normal to lose battles/towns

[joshko]

The best defense is a good offense. Keep the pressure on them and your towns wont be attacked, in my experience.

[Son of Mars]

The best defense is a good offense. Keep the pressure on them and your towns wont be attacked, in my experience.

definitely right there. I do get angry when I lose towns and good armies, but as my name indicates I have a Roman stubbornness about me: I always send another army at them because eventually I will prevail. What really gets me is when a good army is pretty beat up, but far from recruitment centers so I can't retrain them and throw them back at the enemy. Retraining units in Medieval II is such a pain! Fighting Harad as Gondor is always a real quagmire for me.

[Earl of Memory]

During my gondor campaign I lost quite a few settlements *which I had conquered* to harad many times, and it did angered me but it was satisfying to know I could actually lose in a tw game for a change. Long recruitment times and lack of spearmen did the trick, the haradrim cavalry is pesky, annoying and if you don't watch your back can sneak and kill your archers...

[Mikail Mengsk]

The best defense is a good offense. Keep the pressure on them and your towns wont be attacked, in my experience.

Not always. Sometimes it's better to just keep defending a strategic position, drawing attention from the AI, and strike elsewhere with another army. I mostly use this tactic when i intend to launch a "scorched earth" offensive.

[necroproject]

I add my experience to those who say it mainly depends of the settlement.

Your final goal is a strategic one. A good strategy is to make your enemy the weakest you can. So better to take/destroy enemies big cities and loosing some of your villages.

For instance, as Gondor, you can easily loose all the Ithilien or even Linhir if it makes you able to take Umbar because this city is crucial for Harad. If you can't then hold it, just destroy all buildings.
Nowadays, I'm playing Rhun and often loose, then re-take the Dale towns near Erebor, just because i can't replenish. But that's no problem as Dale is weakening more and more...

It's also often better to sacrifice a far town (Dol Guldur, Imladris) if it makes you able to win against your closest enemy.

So, except for crucial ones, like Minas Tirith, Moria or Isengard, do not care too much. The best you can do is to avoid your army sacrifice by detecting a too powerfull enemy far from your town.

[mondpeiler]

But is it normal to loose battles? Or should i go throgh my game expecting to win everything.?

what the ?
hea, if you fight, you can win, yes.
but you can also loose!

My garrison for example consists of exactly as much units as a town supplies free of costs. that are
two till five units, depending on expansion stage. if an enemy stack marches onto one of my towns,
I try to beat them with one of my field-armies, but sometimes my settlement is out of reach for them.
then surely the enemy wins. what can I do with an average force of 400men against a full-stack, so
I loose the town and retake it sometimes later.
that's the normal way. cheating is
even if it is an important town!
If you cheat your progress, the whole game gets a bit boring, doesn't it?

in my current campaign I'm winning and loosing towns against Harrad since so many turns... it
slightly goes into Harrads direction, but everytime I take three towns of them, they surely take two
of mine in reverse...
that's war you are playing here not defenceless colonisation!

[Holy Harry]

Typically, on my frontiers, regardless of what faction, if I'm not planning on progressing further, I build a network of spies and watchtowers. The spies go in the enemy territory ahead of the watchtowers to give me even more advanced warning. I then, if possible, will keep a defensive army garrisoned across several settlements to it costs me no upkeep. If my spies see an enemy army, I have atleast 3 turns or so warning. Once the watchtowers see them, its likely that they will attack you, so I then combine my garrisons in a meeting point, then send them to meet them. The best place I've found for this is Gondor, around Minas Tirith. There's 3 fortresses, a huge city and a large city which can garrison units all very close. This means you can garrison a full stack for no money, which in turn means you'll never lose one of those towns. Its harder to do in some areas, but advanced warning is incredibly useful. If an army is too big for you to handle, and the town is not of vital importance to your immediate strategy, pull back, and maybe leave a small garrison you can afford to lose and aim to do as much damage as possible to them. If you're planning on taking it back straight away, don't destroy any buildings, but if it looks like you've lost it for good, raze it to the ground.

[Gongsunzan]

I tend to try and keep all my towns unless losing one gives me the ability to strike a hard blow on the enemy. Though one time as ootmm i was trying to take imaldris but got goblin town taken by silvian elves i thought it was a good trade off but i couldnt retake goblin town as ootmm has so many damn fronts and so many places to be attacked from. Ended up losing the whole mountain range to silvans except for moria.

[KIHEV]

Losing border settlements of unimportance in terms of recruitment (even if they're economically quite a good income) doesn't really matter.
You can always come back a few turns later and besiege it by the time they don't have any garrison in it anymore (just like you did before).
I remember in my Gondor campaign that I kept losing and reconquering settlements on the eastern banks of the Anduin river, that kept Mordor busy and in the meanwhile I could just concentrate on conquering all of Harad.

[iffi]

I tend to try and keep all my towns unless losing one gives me the ability to strike a hard blow on the enemy. Though one time as ootmm i was trying to take imaldris but got goblin town taken by silvian elves i thought it was a good trade off but i couldnt retake goblin town as ootmm has so many damn fronts and so many places to be attacked from. Ended up losing the whole mountain range to silvans except for moria.

On of my favourite tactics is to create rebel buffer zones when possible. In the current Ootmm campaign I let Dain's Halls rebel to keep the dwarves off my back for a while (100+ turns ago and still rebel-controlled). Then I liberated Beorn's Halls/Upper Anduin vale from the elven oppression and let it rebel. The elves have been so busy with Mordor that it has been under rebel control for the past 75+ turns. I also took Wrakyaburg from the rebels early on and let them have it again, which more than doubled the rebel garrison there. Also the village east of Mountain Fort has been rebel-controlled for a long time now.

This way I could concentrate most of my forces to taking the Golden Wood, while keeping a small garrison in the mountains to keep the other elves from taking any settlements.

I of course lact the couple of thousand in money per turn I would get from controlling those settlements, but that money would just go into supporting an army that has to keep the enemy from trying to take them from me. Another benefit is that there are less defensive minor battles so I can concentrate on my personal goals.

This tactic seems to work better in 3.1 than in previous versions, probably a campaign AI tweak.

This was also my first campaign with RC/RR at VH/VH. The RC really made me feel what it is like to be a puny goblin going against the elves in their shiny armor on the battle field.