I have some questions about the HE in the early-ish part of the game (vanilla TATW).
I hadn't seen Flinn's "Isengard first" strategy above, so I've kept the peace with them so far. Since my best recruitment center by far is Imladris, trying to take out OotMM first seemed more logical. Isengard would be a broad and very poor front - Mithlond can make a cavalry unit every four years, otherwise it's only the basic bow quendi and sword quendi anywhere in that part of the world. Taking Tharbad, Lond Angren, the rest of Enedwaith, and Dunland with such limited resources and long supply lines (and defending Lond Daer, Argond, and possibly Eregion) seems like a tall order...
On the other hand, there's one glaring exception to this statement - what the heck are the HE supposed to do about trolls in the early game? I tried asking in the "Best ways to kill trolls" thread but no response so far. I'm up to around turn 50, and Rivendell is several turns away from finishing the barracks allowing Eldarinwe spear/sword units (let alone the Eldarinwe archers or cavalry). So far I've taken Eregion, then trashed the place (except for the Gwaith-i-Mirdain obviously) and left when a half stack with one troll unit came out of the fog of war, and eventually retook it when it remained in rebel hands for a while. In the north I've crushed a full stack of goblin infantry and took Goblin-town, then trashed the place and abandoned it when a full stack with a general, three troll units(!), and two warg units came by. For some reason that stack turned around and then came back again, so I still own Goblin-town for now. If the AI wasn't so fond of aimless marching back and forth, OotMM could probably threaten Rivendell.
I don't really see what the HE can do about an army like that, until (perhaps) far in the future we can field our own full-stack army with elite units in it. Without trolls, no problem, a modest (6-8 unit) early-game HE army can kill a full stack of goblins. With trolls, the archers can kill two of the 36 individual trolls before they slam into the elven lines, backed up by 3000+ goblins who the archers didn't get to mow down because they were shooting at trolls... (Or leave trolls untouched, shoot lots of goblins, and the same net result).
Unlike Shiakou's game, Eriador seems to be holding its own against Gundabad and Isengard simultaneously. They're not gaining anything, but they're not losing ground either. Dwarves have taken Mt. Gundabad itself from the east, so that probably helps.
Silvans don't seem to be doing a whole lot. They lost the Gladden Fields when those OotMM trolls first showed up, but have retaken it just like I did in Eregion.
Question about HE buildings - are those Sculptor's Workshops a trap? Scrapping the buildings in Goblin-town gave me enough cash to build one in Mithlond; figured why not, first game with this mod, let's see what happens. Apparently I spent about 7000 gold for the right to spend another 4000 gold for a Historian's Guild that increases pop growth by 0.5%. That seems ... a bit steep, to put it mildly. Are there other benefits that make it worth about five turns worth of net profits?