Campaign Reports

[Stark1]

Another exploit that can ruin the game is getting protectorate ove Shire. I did it to see how loaded are they (with force diplomacy), and next turn I got around 1.200.000 in gold

And speaking of that, their money bug doesn't manifest itself if player conquers Shire, right?

[webba84]

No, the player gets normal income from the shire. The provinces are quite wealthy though.

[SnuggleBunnies]

So I've played a decent chunk of three campaigns with this release and here are my observations.

First, Dale:

Early on, I clashed with the Beornings and seized the Vale of Anduin. After that, I allied with Rhovanion and Dorwinion, and fought North Rhun. Dorwinion lost their capital, which I then helpfully took custody of. After I managed to take and hold Gargaul (admittedly cheating, using process_cq so I could have my alignment building actually get finished in time) North Rhun gave up on attacking me and has been static ever since. With Rhovanion protecting my southern border, I turtled until I could build no more. At this point, I have recruited 5 stacks of armored troops, and am preparing first to betray my fellow northmen, and then battle Rhun, which has destroyed Adunabar in the south and is invading Harad.

Speaking of Adunabar, they lost the south but dominate much of Eriador. They still have one province left in the south, Lathron, and they have a stack and half holding it, which as many troops as I have seen them field in the entire north. They managed to seize the orc-holds in the mountains, but their domination of much of the north leaves them aligned to MotW, so I feel I have little to fear from them. Really, after my initial battles against the Beornings and North Rhun, I have seen almost no combat the for the whole campaign.

The Dwarves:

I'm looking forward to this getting harder in the next release. Basically, I took a few mannish settlements at the start of the campaign, and then did nothing but build to my heart's content. Rhun attacked me early, and Dorwinion later piled on, but I had nothing to fear from them. Both factions attacked my isolated south eastern settlements, and both couldn't make a dent. My Dwarven city held out with 3 units against full stacks from Dorwinion; internal tower fire inflicted severe losses, and the timer had almost run out by the time the survivors had taken the winding paths to the city square. Rhun hurled a full stack every few turns against the mannish settlement I held to the south, and I never suffered more than a score of losses. My garrison consisted of a few watchmen in defensive mode, 1 FM, and several mercenary slingers/archers. Because the settlement has no walls, every assault would consist of a full on charge down the nearest street by the entire enemy army, which would inevitably get mowed down by missiles and smashed in the face by my single unit of Dwarves.

Adunabar collapsed both in the north and south, so my final war to gain victory will be against the new hegemon in Eriador, Tharbad. With 200,000 in the bank, and making 15,000/turn, I should be able to recruit full armies of Dwarves in the Blue Mountains and the Dwarrowdelf with which to crush them.

Reunited Kingdom:

This one was frankly way too easy after the first ten turns. In my first turn, I gathered whatever troops I could and besieged Minas Ithil. After I crushed Adunabar's initial armies, fighting in the south was just mopping up: Minas Anor and Minas Ithil were held by single unit garrisons, as their towers left them nothing to fear, freeing up troops to push into Mordor.

In the north, I lost Amon Sul but held my other cities in a series of defensive field battles with a scraped together stack of militia, swords, mercenary bowmen and my few elites. Eventually, Adunabar ran out of manpower in its attemps to attack me, and I took their northern territories without resistance. They never took any of the orc-holds in the mountains, so after their initial forces were destroyed I faced only men.

In the far south, I had to organize chevauchees to burn Harad's coasts to slow them down, saving Harondor. Harondor showed its thankfulness by attacking me, leaving RK-Harad-Harondor in a 3 way conflict. At this point, I held the north, and Adunabar had a few provinces in eastern Mordor/southern Rhovanion buffering me from Rhun. I then marched south and took all of Harondor's provinces but the one bordering Harad. After this, I achieved victory by pushing into Dunlending territory.

This was made very easy by the fact that Rhun never attacked Adunabar, leaving my eastern border totally secure, and Harad never attacked Harondor's final province, leaving the south secure. At one point, Harad has 8 stacks lounging on the border with Harondor, but they never made a move. Thus, all my resources were free to be used against the Dunlendings, who aren't really any kind of match for a late game RK army.




So in my 3 games so far, Adunabar has been little threat, though in my RK campaign that was primarily due to the ballista towers in two cities freeing up my early game manpower. I'm not sure who to play next - Dunland and Rohan both interest me, but both would be more fun when the Hornburg can be used. The elves are my favorite, but they seem likely to see radical changes soon. Tharbad, maybe?

[CountMRVHS]

Interesting, thanks for the report. My experience with RK is quite different, but perhaps that's due to using the slightly different dev build. While I was able to handle the Ithilien situation well enough, Adunabar kept throwing things my way from Nurn and Emyn Arnen (which I left alone so Harondor would be less inclined to attack me). In the North, Adunabar took Carn Dum as well as other settlements (Mannish and Orcish). Just when I thought I had taken them out for good, another army of Orcs would be heading my way. As for cities, MA was never besieged, but I came very close to losing MI a couple of times, as Adun. would be quietly training troops in EA and then lay siege when my troops were committed farther east.

[Stark1]

In my current game they did train a bunch of Orcs in the north. I'm not sure how much time they got for that compared to your campaign, perhaps they just need more turns?

Also, it might be a good idea to give an AI Adunabar some orc hold at the start so they start churning orcs right from the start. Helps to make them feel more like an evil cultist empire.

[webba84]

We have already done this. They also get higher population growth in orc holds than the player does.

[SnuggleBunnies]

Is it easy to modify the files so ai Adun is always cultic, or is that actually a lot of work? I ask because in my Dale campaign, they took the passes in the mountains, but aren't much threat because they have gone motw and can't recruit orcs there anyway.

[CountMRVHS]

Is WotW Adunabar a significantly lower threat than Cultic Adunabar? I've heard from other players that it's the other way around. It's true that the Orc-holds will give WotW Adunabar little benefit, but their Mannish troops are quite capable, aren't they?

[SnuggleBunnies]

True; I guess it's personal preference, to a great extent. Playing as a 'good' faction, fighting cultists and orcs feels right. When that enemy suddenly starts recruiting dunedainic forces, it feels a little weird to still be fighting them; but that's just me. I do think the ai is more likely to attack enemies near its recruiting centers, and the orc-holds in the mountains are much closer to the Vale than any of their other settlements.

[CountMRVHS]

I know what you mean about fighting orcs & cultists. You could think of the WotW Adunabar as being the arrogant, Ar-Pharazon-style Dunedain. Even if they're not Cultic, they still think Middle-earth belongs to them!

[SnuggleBunnies]

Fair enough. So I take it there is no simple way to disable ai motw?

[CountMRVHS]

It is possible to do - at one point we were discussing the pros and cons of having AI Adunabar be able to convert. We went with the 'possible to convert' option I think to keep some potential variety in the campaigns.

But I don't think it's a simple change. I think it involves the weapon tech designations. And probably a bunch of stuff in EDB. (This is the equivalent of me peeking in your smoking engine and saying, "Could be the carburator")

[demagogos nicator]

Actually, I like the idea that Adunabar is able to convert, I did not even know it until now as in my campaigns they always remained cultic.

[webba84]

Actually it is quite straightforward to have them only cultic. They are already set to destroy all WotW CC buildings when conquering a settlement (with a random chance of what they will rebuild). All we would have to do is make the WotW CC buildings require the existence of a building indicating that the player is Adunabar (such a building exists), and the ai will be unable to build them.

We decided, as Count says, to allow the AI the possibility of converting to improve re-playability (by having some randomness).

[SnuggleBunnies]

Okay. In my campaigns they have always gone wotw after expanding, but I'm glad to hear it can go both ways.

[SnuggleBunnies]

Continued my Dale campaign. I betrayed and conquered Rhovanion and Dorwinion without too much difficulty. Having been used to fighting early game Rhovanion armies, I wasn't prepared for the quantity and quality of their March Wardens; my armies were mostly built to fight the infantry heavy Easterlings lurking behind my fellow Northmen, and I suffered severe losses as a result. One of my full stacks pulled off a victory with five units left: 2 men in the General's Bodyguard, 30 slingers (out of stones, using knives), 19 Dale Longbowmen (out of arrows, using swords), and 50 Crossbowmen (out of bolts, also using swords), and 30 Hearthsmen. The crossbowmen in particular were useful late in the battle for breaking up charges by the March Wardens, until they ran out of bolts.

Once I did take the fight to Rhun, I received a pleasant surprise - above I mentioned being a little disappointed both in Adunabar's poor performance (ie, elimination) in the south and conversion to the Ways of the West in the North. Well, Rhun at this point holds Mordor, so I found myself facing large stacks of Cultic Easterlings! One of the things I've always wanted to see in the mod is a greater sense of the Cult as a world-threatening menace, and armored, hard-hitting infantry have been giving me a hard time.

[webba84]

Its nice to see some of the changes we put in place having the desired effect .

[Wambat]

Slow going, as always, with my RK campaign. Having restarted after 18 turns, I am now at turn 14. I have been very careful diplomatically; with the result that everybody hates me. Nevertheless, I am happy with the way things are going. I have been reacting more than planning in this campaign, and have been taking more time in my advances.

I decided early on to advance from Thoronburg Keep. I had hoped to capture Erindol, secure the ford to Dunfreca, and get a ceasefire form Dunland. I have only succeeded with the first two, I must have really pissed them off taking Erindol. This is tying up a considerable force that I had hoped to use to take Caew-en-Druin and then send on to an important front. As it is I may just have to take Dunfreca and hope Dunland keeps Rohan busy enough that they don’t mind.

To that end, I have been obstructing Rohan’s war effort, placing my units at their choke points. I was too late to prevent their capture of the Dol Baran, but they have taken no major settlements. So far Dunland has been aggravatingly timid, with large stacks in place near the fort, but never laying siege despite the small garrison. I am leaving the way open to the Brown Lands, hoping Rohan will expand in that direction and provide a buffer; no bites so far.

I have been avoiding open conflict with Harad in favor of selling them ceasefires; which was very profitable until I was forced to destroy the marauding Harad stack at Dol Amroth. They dropped a second force of just three units on my coast, but have been too bashful to attack anything.

Harondor has been holding its own against Harad so far. I left Harlorn alone and Harondor eventually did take it, though they took their sweet time. Both have failed to take each other’s continental holdings. The exciting news is that, at turn 14, both Far Harad and Khand have declared war on Harad and have two of Harad’s eastern settlements besieged. I had been waiting for Harad to declare war on me again, but if this coalition starts making headway against Harad I may have to take initiative to grab the wealthy coastal cities and, I hope, make what is left a protectorate.

I have been far more opportunistic in the north, rather than following a strategic plan as previously. As a result, opportunity led me to capture Threeways early on. This has me in contact with Tharbad. Fortunately, my aggressiveness seems to have flustered Adunabar, which made no acquisitions in the north, despite having large stacks near Angmar and Mount Gram. I captured their Last province in the north on turn 14. I have to say, I was quite impressed with the Elven settlement battlemap, and fortunate there was only one unit defending.

Despite My best diplomatic efforts, war with Tharbad could not be forestalled for long. They attacked turn 12. Fortunately, I kept my King's Spearmen out of the fight with Adunabar, since they could not be retrained, and sent them down as garrison/border patrol for Threeways hoping their high value on paper might help deter Tharbad. Maybe it did. I did have just enough time to supply Threeways with units to mount a successful defense when the inevitable attack came, and carry the fight to Tharbad city itself by turn 14. The King's Spearmen gave me enough (just) front line troops to be successful against Tharbad's all infantry forces. I suspect if they had had even one unit of horsemen things might have gone ill for me.

I have gifted both Langwyke and Rivendell to the Elves, needing to throw in only 1300 mirian in each case to seal the deal. This gives me a nice secure border between Greenwood and the Misty Mountains, and should prevent Rohan stomping on the Beornings.

I expect this is the end of this campaign as I shall be wanting to start on my Elven empire with the new release.

[SnuggleBunnies]

I'm interested in how your elven campaign goes; I always found them economically challenging early on, and I'm curious about how the addition of rebellion will effect that.

[CountMRVHS]

I like how different the RK campaign feels from just about every other faction (except Adunabar). The campaign is rather frontloaded, so you will have lots of crucial battles in the early turns. With other factions, you wouldn't be facing so many battles - and such large battles - until 10-20 turns in, but the RK has to play those out immediately.