Have you won/lost the campaign before?

[eugenioso]

I did a thread a long time ago, nearly 2 years or more, where i asked if people had won the campaign. Now, however, im interested in seeing if someone has lost. It can be a slow loss, or a quick loss, or a hopeless loss.

Probably 3 months ago i was playing MOS latest version as the elves of lorien. Anyway, i had my standard campaign: go secure the misty mountains, then (or during the north campaign) go kill isengard and Co., the dunlendings, then mass armies to mordor. The problem was that i unfortunately took too long to siege and take the northern lands. By the time Isengard bit the dust, Mordor was sending regular armies towards my lands, with tons of arty, trolls and mumakil. Even though there was never a realistic chance of them completely obliterating me, i slowly lost ground in rohan, and then the rohan bstards go and die on me after Isengard took Helms deep and their western provinces. Did a nofog cheat and saw that Gondor was almost dead, with 2 provinces on their far left. With no money, no chance and barely replacements, i forfeited that one.

Another one that im still playing intermittently (i dont play MOS often, so when i get the chance i play maybe an hour and stop for a week) is kind of the same: elves of lorien, went to the Misty Mountains but i went ahead and attacked many of the smaller orc settlements instead of wasting time. When my main army came down from the north, i attacked the dunlendings and sent a second army to seize Dol Guldur, before turning south and stemming the constant mordor offensives onto southern mirkwood and one army that sieged Caras Galadhon, but -barely- failed to take it. My main army that killed isengard then went to rohan, and we began a long, 50 turn threeway between useless Rohan, me, and Mordor taking and losing provinces constantly (and me gifting them back to Rohan, because i could get little of those). Finally beginning to see that they were gonna overwhelm me, i take a third army to Gondor from the Vale access, and proceed to attack Harad forces that were about to take the soft underbelly of Gondor. This army then goes north to find Cair Andros and east osgi on mordor control, and retake it and gift them back to Gondor. Going bankrupt and leaving the bare necessary to stall any gondor offensives, i gather a fourth army and push straight south, killing any Mordor army i see, until i siege and capture the black gate. My rohan army, seeing that Mordor stopped their constant army influx to rohan, gifts the last few mordor occupied former rohan lands back to them, and goes to join the fray. Minas Morgul is sieged and taken, and with mordor trapped it took another 50 turns to finally destroy Mordor, though with large losses to me. Now the campaign goes on; im at war with the dwarves (and Dale actually cancelled their alliance with them and joined mine!), and the huge money i get from former Mordor is great for me. Its really fun to pit Dragonslayer armies vs my archer forces.

[Boogie Knight]

Man, those campaigns sound awesome. I've won a campaign once in vanilla TATW as the Silvan Elves. That was a lot of fun. I've now graduated to MOS but haven't been playing it long so haven't had time yet to win or lose.

I've abandoned a couple of campaigns in vanilla before due to tedium, which is often the result of playing a losing campaign. My first was as Dale, and I wasn't so much losing as I was locked in a stalemate with Rhun. No matter what I tried, I couldn't gain any ground against them. It became incredibly frustrating to flip-flop back and forth, trying numerous different strategies but getting nowhere. The Dwarves did nothing to help after taking a settlement to the north-east of the sea of Rhun. They just sat there after that, allowing Rhun armies to pass through their territory and attack mine. Rhun just utterly ignored the Dwarves. If there had been any help from them I might have been inclined to persevere, but I was very inexperienced and decided to call that one a day.

My second was an Orcs of Gundabad campaign on hard/hard. I knew it'd be difficult and for the most part it was fun, but after the Orcs of the Misty Mountains attempted a disastrous siege of Imladris the High Elves started tearing up through my southern flank with their garrison script troops. I'd been *barely* holding my own against the Dwarves in the east and the Free Peoples of Eriador on my south-western flank and it had been fun, but it all got a bit too much once the High Elves got involved. After two failed attempts I finally managed to take Imladris myself, but became utterly bankrupt maintaining the army required to take it. Almost immediately after that Arnor reformed, and suddenly all those mini-stacks I'd been fighting several skirmishes a turn against got a lot bigger and became filled with better, heavy troops. They took three of my settlements in a single turn, utterly overrunning everything - including Carn Dum - in my territory while the Dwarves kicked off again to my east, taking Dain's Halls and advancing rapidly on Gundabad. It was all game over from there, really. Very frustrating at the time but in hindsight it taught me a lot about TATW and strategy in general.

[DrDragun]

If by "lost" you mean save-scumming, then I have recovered from several failing scenarios .

One game I could not recover even with save-scumming. I was Dwarves and I conquered the mountains first and left Rhun alone, big mistake. Dale blew away like a pile of dry leaves. Dwarves simply do not have the means to counter mass stacks of skirmishers, archers, and cav archers. Iron Xbows do not produce fast enough, siege doesn't cut it, Dale Cavalry replenish too slow. I could have tried some gamey way to meet the victory conditions but in spirit the campaign was lost.

[eugenioso]

Save scumming: saving before battle and playing till winning? i dont do that, but i DO save before every single battle thanks to the awful "win-an-amazing-epic-battle-then-CTD" bug. On your campaign @drdragun, did you simply go siege the rhun settlements directly?

[DrDragun]

Well, I save every turn besides the Autosave. If something cheesy happens (like the assassin Random Number Generator kills Glorfindel or the pathing controls make my unit move the wrong way because of a bandit blocking the forest path), sometimes I will scum. If I lose a battle though, I keep the result.

On the Rhun game, there was no way to traverse ground to siege their settlements offensively. Perhaps I could last a long time with a full stack in Erebor and Azanulbizar, but never cross the ground to Rhun settlements. The invading force would get surrounded by stacks, reducing movement speed to 1 tile per turn, and eventually the AI would force a battle in the open field.

[Discord1996]

I wouldn't say that i lost any campaign yet. I did forfeit some of them but they weren't lost. It would just have taken a lot of time to fix my situation.

[ForGondor 68]

I have lost several campaing in very hard difficulty but this time i have no defeat from 3 months (about 10 different game). There is a lot of time where i thought all was lost but in extremis I take advantage again them redevelopped and finally win or hold more time ! There is a lot of things to do with Tatw, the best MTW2 mod

[liburn]

I've won only a couple. Thing is game is very very slow, yet beautiful. But at a point it just gets boring with stacks. What i seek in this game, vanilla or MOS, is huge battles where the few roll out the many, elf style. After 20-30 heroic victories it gets really boring to see other 10-15 stacks of enemies waiting for their turn. You either finish game blitzkrieg way or have infinite patiente and time to dedicate.

If vanilla was spam, MOS its even worse. In my last MOS silvan campaign, by turn 140 Dol guldur is at siege every 3 turns with 2-3 full stacks from mordor. Had plenty of fun defending it with Legolas, and 7 units; 2 knights of ewynor, 1 noble archer, 1 ent, 1 horse archer, 1 unit of javelin throwing wardens and a ballista to get rid of their artilley. Legolas is called The defender of the cities by now. The knights of ewyn have a k/d ratio of like 1/80-100, they're just sick on defending Dol guldur, and ents do they tricks on AI spamming the front gate.

But at a point its the same, no more challenge and no more new stuff. I find myself always at the same situation, Gondor spammed and i'll have to deal with massive armies from the south east. It becomes a matter of who spammes the most then.

As i said, you have to push from the very beggining to finish a campaign as good faction. Relentless and mercieless. But that means you will end game before u get the pro troops, the armored dudes that gives true meaning to this mod. Thats the bad thing about TATW, no turtle, or you lose.

BUT, there's no better feeling than 1 superslow dawarf ring bearer protected by 4 stacks that conquers the black gate and ends the game by throwing the ring into mount doom. The AI doesnt even dare to attack, just tries to block your moving points

[Megas Stevros]

The Dwarves did nothing to help after taking a settlement to the north-east of the sea of Rhun. They just sat there after that, allowing Rhun armies to pass through their territory and attack mine. Rhun just utterly ignored the Dwarves. If there had been any help from them I might have been inclined to persevere, but I was very inexperienced and decided to call that one a day.

Who will you look to when we've gone? The Dwarves? They hide in their mountains seeking riches — they care nothing for the troubles of others

[Boogie Knight]

Who will you look to when we've gone? The Dwarves? They hide in their mountains seeking riches — they care nothing for the troubles of others

Hah! Tell me about it; they were completely useless, and utterly disinterested in pulling their weight in our alliance.

[Matamelcan]

I've won before. Haven't lost yet.

[Steward Denethor II]

I won as Eriador and as Gondor, both times by spamming generals. I lost as Isengard. I conquered Hornburg, but then Rohan got these huge armies and all my good generals were wiped out in Hornburg. I never officially lost but I gave up when Saruman and Ugluk died.

[crazyswagger]

I have lost as OOG in my first evil campaign, my 2 stupid generals choose to die early in a single battle around 35th turn (they got killed by those filthy haflings archers,i suspect or may be it was the rain) starting a mass route. & next turn legolas declared war on me (it was a stupid pointy ear,uber powered sniper, actually they all look the same to me) . Already dwarfs were pushing towards Dain's halls. By 50th turn after a few loses in east & west & more dead generals (with just 2 generals left alive)& war on all possible fronts waging & empty treasury i quit�� , though i know now that i made terrible mistakes as i played just the same way as i played good factions. Defeat was so great & sudden that i spend next day on forum reading about evil factions (& cursing the hobbits as well)
next campaign i played , i killed those haflings the first thing around 55th turn ( got peace with dwarfs early, put half stack near imladris border as well, paid tribute to legolas scum too for a while)
& used & abused my skimisher scums to avenge) also i reduced difficulty to H/H.

[gahar]

Well, I haven't finished yet my first campaign But I want to share.
I'm not quite sure what diff I'm playin lol but I always choose vh/vh in m2 and when I try to start new camp just to check, vh/vh is still there so I guess it's all ok.
I chose Rohan as for my glorious faction and it's really strange game. I mean, it's not a cake walk but battles are pretty damn easy for me, so my territory is "marked" by two swords here and there.
Beginning was good. I had quite a few difficulties with Isengard but comp acted foolish some times. Like Saruman went alone without his stack and I got him really early making his armies losing a big advantage of an op general. It is war from the start so show no mercy, give no quartet. But this annoying Mordor declared a war right after my first battle vs Isengard. From this point I have been struggling with two front wars ever since.
Crushed Isengard eventually but things haven't got any easier. I just had to make alliances with all good factions, it wasn't easy even with amidable relations, very reliable reputation. 5000 gold has done its job but it was a blow for a moment. So my south and north borders are secured. I can focus on invasion. Unfortunately stupid orcs attacked me so I had to dispatch one army to protect my growing cities. With one army I couldn't move farther than Minas Tirith, Mordor is spamming stacks like crazy at this time. Even if they lose ever battle with low casualties at my side, it is hard when after every turn you need to fight them off and replenish your forces constantly.
When I though I got my big break, "crusade" came up. Now all bad factions are marching with chosen stacks to conquer Isengard. And, all of those armies have ultra bonus to moves on the map. So Orcs reached Isengard really quickly but I crushed them. Then suprisingly, those Rhun, Harad and Mordor army, before that win of mine standing in my territory are now gone to their homeland. So when second crusade came up I decided to let it go... Even though it was my best earner.
Thing got worse. Mordor got ridicolously strong, 2 stacks attacking me and in the same time 3 stacks crushing Mordor. They got Minas Tirith and it was for the first time when I felt cold sweat... It got serious, my liege. What shall will do?
, I was tired of constant defending on both fronts. First I decided to get rid of orcs but then I changed my mind. Orcs stopped their attacks and Mordor was a big threat so it could be only one decision: throw everything at the Dark Lord! No other option. If not, Gondor will fall and I will follow soon.
So I ignored the fact that my border town was besiged and went to aid my comrades. I used this tactic. Split my huge army into 3. First, the most important, full of cav commanded by Theoden, my biggest one mean general with op traits and no negatives and ofc full starts. Second, contained only of infrantry and Third full of generals only with king on the top xD. I march hand by hand so Mordor can't wipe one of them out and I decided to test one thing. In battles, I don't command all of them, I give those two weaker armies to AI. Suprisingly, comp is doing a nice job. I don't know if it's cheating or not but still I would do it better than AI, I'm just too lazy after all of those clashes.
So now it's my time. Broke through the river and I will go into the depths of Mordor tommorow. I hope I won't encounter there an army of 100 trolls...

[eugenioso]

Well, I haven't finished yet my first campaign But I want to share.
I'm not quite sure what diff I'm playin lol but I always choose vh/vh in m2 and when I try to start new camp just to check, vh/vh is still there so I guess it's all ok.
I chose Rohan as for my glorious faction and it's really strange game. I mean, it's not a cake walk but battles are pretty damn easy for me, so my territory is "marked" by two swords here and there.
Beginning was good. I had quite a few difficulties with Isengard but comp acted foolish some times. Like Saruman went alone without his stack and I got him really early making his armies losing a big advantage of an op general. It is war from the start so show no mercy, give no quartet. But this annoying Mordor declared a war right after my first battle vs Isengard. From this point I have been struggling with two front wars ever since.
Crushed Isengard eventually but things haven't got any easier. I just had to make alliances with all good factions, it wasn't easy even with amidable relations, very reliable reputation. 5000 gold has done its job but it was a blow for a moment. So my south and north borders are secured. I can focus on invasion. Unfortunately stupid orcs attacked me so I had to dispatch one army to protect my growing cities. With one army I couldn't move farther than Minas Tirith, Mordor is spamming stacks like crazy at this time. Even if they lose ever battle with low casualties at my side, it is hard when after every turn you need to fight them off and replenish your forces constantly.
When I though I got my big break, "crusade" came up. Now all bad factions are marching with chosen stacks to conquer Isengard. And wtf, all of those armies have ultra bonus to moves on the map. So Orcs reached Isengard really quickly but I crushed them. Then suprisingly, those Rhun, Harad and Mordor army, before that win of mine standing in my territory are now gone to their homeland. So when second crusade came up I decided to let it go... Even though it was my best earner.
Thing got worse. Mordor got ridicolously strong, 2 stacks attacking me and in the same time 3 stacks crushing Mordor. They got Minas Tirith and it was for the first time when I felt cold sweat... It got serious, my liege. What shall will do?
, I was tired of constant defending on both fronts. First I decided to get rid of orcs but then I changed my mind. Orcs stopped their attacks and Mordor was a big threat so it could be only one decision: throw everything at the Dark Lord! No other option. If not, Gondor will fall and I will follow soon.
So I ignored the fact that my border town was besiged and went to aid my comrades. I used this tactic. Split my huge army into 3. First, the most important, full of cav commanded by Theoden, my biggest one mean general with op traits and no negatives and ofc full starts. Second, contained only of infrantry and Third full of generals only with king on the top xD. I march hand by hand so Mordor can't wipe one of them out and I decided to test one thing. In battles, I don't command all of them, I give those two weaker armies to AI. Suprisingly, comp is doing a nice job. I don't know if it's cheating or not but still I would do it better than AI, I'm just too lazy after all of those clashes.
So now it's my time. Broke through the river and I will go into the depths of Mordor tommorow. I hope I won't encounter there an army of 100 trolls...

Smart man. Rather than fighting the enemy stackwhoring, you go for the source. Good story by the way. IMO, its always better to feel like you have a legitimate chance of losing despite your best efforts rather than romp through the enemy forces every time.

[gahar]

it. I couldn`t do it. This whole campaign is a draw, I can`t break them and they can`t break me. Had three big armies. Two of them on Mordor front, one securing borders with orcs. But those stacks coming every turn is impossible. I see what mistakes I`ve done. Turtle style is bad way. Now I restarted campaign and going for Blitzkrieg. Hope I will get rid of those orcs pretty fast. Sad thing is, allies suck here. Every faction of the light has been going down from thebeginning and enemies were growing stronger and stronger. Maybe I would win that campaign if Dale wasn`t almost wiped out, Eriador on its knees, Gondor besieged by op Mordor and Harad.

[ElvenKind]

@ gahar, in your last three posts you`ve tried to bypass censored words. Don`t do it again.

[EllEzDee]

Never won, never lost. I remember giving up 2 Gondor campaigns because of Harad trollmen, though. Before i learnt to abuse the ever loving out of general cav charges, they basically used grind my troops down turn after turn until i quit. They'd bash a wall down, climb through, then cut their way through 4-5 Gondor militia before finally dying. Next turn, new army of trollmen show up to do the exact same thing...and again...

Now whenever there's a high-hitpoint unit, i just roll up behind it with a general and smash it a few times before it comes anywhere near my line. Cheap, but then so are most of those unit types.

[MaximusTheGreat]

Wow. Very impressive reading from everyone! But much like EllEzDee, I don't think I've ever actually won or lost a campaign, get bored after a while and move on. I've gotten really close with my most recent High Elves camp. Moved in and took Barad Dur with Elrond and Glorfindel, and destroyed the ring, but haven't yet mopped up the remnants of Mordor.

Currently I'm running with Eriador, and fighting an increasingly irritating stalemate with Gundabad for Fornost, Allthir (sp?), and Coldfells... Will keep updating...

[Patronus]

Lost a SE campaign (Vanilla TATW)...well really I restarted from scratch because I knew I was either go to stalemate or eventually go bankrupt and lose my kingdom.

Built up a healthy kingdom in the traditional SE area of Mirkwood and Lorien. Alliances and trading rights and map info with nearly all of the good factions. Took out Moria by the mid-game and gained their mountainous regions, assisted Rohan with finishing up Isengard by about the same time...the problem was that by the time I was ready to take on the evil factions in the east, it was the late game and Gondor and Dale had been totally blitzed and destroyed by Mordor/Rhun/Harad and Rohan was on its way. Dwarves were sitting still in their rock huts, HE and Arnor had no borders with my enemies so they sat still....I was essentially trying to handle stack spams (including armored trolls and mumakills) from 3 different factions.

I ended up capturing the town just south of Dol Goldur and some town in eastern Rohan, where I fortified them with full stacks to withstand these assaults...it worked, but the stacks just kept coming, and I couldn't afford to build any additional armies to start my own offensive...so I called it quits rather than try and turtle up for dozens of turns.

Then of course, there is the SE campaign were I attacked Moria and Isengard early and succeeded in taking out Rhun (with Dwarven help this time) by the end of the mid-game...that left only Mordor and Harad for the final late game battles...still a pain in the butt, but I slowly but surely carved into their territories (and raided some other ones that I knew I couldnt hold...so much fun). I actually met the victory conditions for the game, and was in the process of finishing off the remnants of Harad when HE and Arnor summarily decided to break their alliances with me and started attacking my towns in the Misty Mountains...technically I won the game, but inside I felt I lost...I didn't even bother trying to sue for peace or fight back, I was so said that my elven brothers and Dunedain friends had turned on me, so I quit