So after so much writing and thinking, what's the real feedback?
Basically in this section I’m going to give a brief evaluation to each faction in TATW/MOS about how hard and how much fun is to turtle with them. As usual my considerations are based on a VH/VH game.
Eriador/Arnor : Hard and Not so Fun – turtling with Eriador is pretty hard, as you really lack choke points to effectively hold your main enemy, OOG. Furthermore on the east you can become a target from OMM (but they usually give up soon) and in the south you might have to face Isengard (and Dunland in MOS). As you can see all the borders north, east and south are completely opened to enemies, so with the average economy of Eriador, it is going to be hard, especially in MOS where Dunland will surely aim at your southern settlements. Things will improve much if you’ll manage to destroy or reduce to the minimum OOG but basically you can’t simply sit there and wait for them to come at you, at some point you have to go on offense within the first 30 or 40 turns. If you start with Arnor or re-forge it, your rooster will be greatly improved, so the ratio power between you and your enemies will improve on your favor, still it is not going to be easy if you don’t manage to get rid on one of them at least. Said the above, from lore point of view being on passive is proper to Eriador and if you are looking for a “desperate” defense campaign it can be funny, though not so much.
Orcs of Gundabad: Hard and Not Fun – pretty much the same considerations valid for Eriador, you really lack choke points. Even though Eriador rooster is not that great, AI will spam more stacks than a player, which basically means you’ll have to run around the map to hold them and preventing them to come close to your main settlements. Dwarves will come at you from west soon (though not with much troops) and both High Elves and Silvan Elves will soon bordering you. Honestly I don’t really like to turtle with them, I tried twice but I always have to go offensive pretty soon in order to save the day, not really fun in general.
High Elves: Easy and Very Fun – those buddies are probably the best choice for turtling, in particular for newbies to the mod. Starting position is really good, as on the west you are surrounded by good factions and it will take a while before you’ll get in contact with any enemy (basically when you’ll get south and meet Isengard or Dunland (MOS)) so defending will be really easy. Your enemies are no match for your troops, even 1
st tier HE guys are better than the average of Dunland and Isengard and when you’ll get your higher tier troops they will be less than training for them. On the East though OOM can be annoying if they start to focus on you, but honestly defending the two fords/bridges you have in Imladris is pretty easy, considering how powerful are your archers. Basically, if you don’t care very much about rushing to give a help to Rohan and Gondor, it is going to be fun to watch your enemies pinched by your archers before they even get at you, and you can really be passive with HE.
Dwarves: Easy and Fun – as for the HE your kingdom is split in two. Honestly on the west it not going to be hard to completely avoid bordering OOG, but even if they come at you they will not use much troops and your 1
st tier infantry can easily hold the line against any infantry OOG has. They can be annoying due to Wargs and Rhudaur cavalry and if they have those pesky Snagas running around the battle map, but honestly half a stack of warriors and axe throwers is usually enough to win the day. Just invest on economic improvement on the west to repay those half stack you might need to use there. On the east, where is your core kingdom, your potential enemies are OOM and Rhun; honestly if you don’t go on offense it is unusual that OOM will come directly at you (there is both Silvans and Dale in between), so no worries from this side; Rhun, if they get the edge over Dale, can be problematic due to their huge amount of skirmishers and heavy chavalry (not to speak about horse archers). If they become to push at you, wait for them on the mountains and if possible fight on defensive sieges, this is going to be really funny and those 4/5 battles you can have on your customized settlements are going to be the best ever and worth to wait for during a whole campaign!
Orcs of the Misty Mountains: Hard and Not Fun – pretty much the same situation with OOG, and to further worsen the overall setting, your kingdom is stretched and opened to enemies which are all much better than you in terms of troops: HE, Dorfs and SE (plus Lorien with MOS) will all come at you soon or later and they will smash you, for sure. You really neead to work around a way to cut off at least one (HE) or better two (HE and Lorien with MOS) to give stability to your kingdom and get the time to build up and army with heavy goblin troops and possibly the Balrog. I tried various time to be passive with them but it’s not funny at all to be always forced to Pyrrhic victories (if you are lucky, often you can lose). That’s probably the worst faction in both TATW and MOS to turtle with.
Dunland (MOS): Medium and Not so fun – the economy of those guys rocks, the troop roster sucks, that’s it. You can field 3 or 4 stacks of their 1
st tier units and support them with just the starting settlements you have without much problem, so basically it could be considered easy to turtle, but the level of their troops is averagely so low that when the HE and Eriador will really start to push at you, you are doomed to fight plenty of battles in which you will lose 70/80% of your army to win. The problem with those guys is that their higher tier troops are really nothing special too, so it becomes pretty boring after a while to repeat over and over the same strategies on the battle field. I found relaxing to play them and not very stressing at the beginning, but not so fun too.
Isengard (TATW): Hard and Fun – in vanilla TATW Isengard starts with Dunland regions which give to it a good economy back up to spend money in Isengard for recruitment, but won’t prevent the fact that your main enemy (Rohan) will smash at you continuously and that they have much more troops and those damned scouts which costs little and have an insane high value with charges. It is going to be hard to turtle with the White Wizard, harder when both HE and Eriador will come down at you, but it can be really fun, especially in the south you can fight great battles against Rohan at Isen’s crossings and in Isengard itself. If you want to survive would be useful to try to be in peace with the HE and Eriador, but it won’t last for much…
Isengard (MOS): Very Hard and Not so Fun – not having the Dunland regions is going to be a big problem for you for the economy, and it will also impact negatively your military (no money, no Uruks). I tried only once, managed to survive for about 25 turns, but only surviving, Rohan was continuously knocking at my door. The only way to survive is to sign truce with them, something I don’t really like to do a I usually prefer to follow lore.
Rohan: Easy and Fun – Rohan is one of the easiest factions in general, due to the availability of cheap light cavalry and very powerful heavy 2
nd and 3
rd tier troops, so turtling won’t change much at all. Depending if you are playing TATW or MOS there might be some differences due to the presence of 1 or 2 foes in the north; in Vanilla game you’ll get only Isengard (but they will get more troops), while in MOS you’ll have also Dunland (which usually focus more on Eriador anyway), but basically your main enemy is Isengard: if you are just but good at managing economy you’ll get enough money to have 2 half stacks of cavalry to keep them at bay, not that hard, but honestly soon or later you’ll get boring of repelling them. On the west Mordor will usually send half to full stacks to cross the Anduin and to attack the Eastfold, so you’ll need some more cavalry there too. If you are good with cavalry units, a turtled Rohan is going to be a great fun, plenty of battles against infantry based enemies that will come at you in a continuous flow, plus you’ll get the chance to fight in places like Hornburg or Edoras, both great customized settlements, the only cons is that you are usual target for the first Invasion, but it can be managed if you don’t pretend to stop all those stacks coming at you.
Gondor: Very Hard and Very Fun – so Gondor is probably the most challenging and entertaining faction for a pure turtler, as it has both the best conditions, so to say chokepoints and very aggressive and dedicated foes. Let’s clarify one point, how hard it is in truth, depends on how you’ll move on the very beginning, as closing the two gaps to Mordor (Minas Morgul and the ford/bridge north of Hennet) makes the things easier, at least for the first 50 turns of the campaign. Honestly holding Mordor at bay does not present big problems, your real concern is Harad; though you have basically two points where to hold them (mouth of Anduin and Pelargir) they tend to spam more and more stacks over the turns, so the longer the time passes the harder it will be to hold them, possibly they will overrun you if you simply sit there and do not at least kill all the stacks that gets close to your borders. So it is going to go a really entertaining turtling campaign, in particular if you like to play lorish and be on the defense, plus here too you’ll get the chance to battle in many customized places, which is always great. A must try for any true turtler.
Mordor: Medium and Not so Fun – the starting position and the backdoor warded by allies makes turtling with Mordor pretty easy, but not so entertaining IMO.. Mordor gives its best when you push it to the end and try to conquer the whole Middle Earth, that’s the way to really enjoy this faction, invasions and the One Ring, but if you wish for something not so hard to turtle with, it can be a good choice, but be aware of: economy is poor, so don’t train too much units out of Mordor and use as free garrison much as possible; there is no sense in getting nearby rebel settlements to Dol Guldur, no economic gain, only widening your borders there, so wait for the Elves there and hope to get some trolls before they will really keep pushing at you; use invasions against Gondor, and kill their best generals (Faramir and Boromir) as soon as you can; leave a way open for Rhun into Gondor. As I said it is not that hard, but I got bored pretty soon because economy will take ages to grow with your original settlements.
Harad: Very Easy and Not Fun – a walk in the park; you only have Gondor to defend from and they are not really aggressive usually, plus your economy will grow much faster than their and I don’t see any real challenge here. Furthermore, being passive does not mean that Gondor will come to you at all, sometimes they focus on Mordor, so it is possible that you’ll have to sit there for countless turns. Frankly, Harad is much more fun played on offence and does not offer any real lore reason to just sit there and do nothing.
Dale: Hard and Fun – I loved to play on defense with those guys, but honestly it has been pretty hard to hold Rhun, due to the damned skirmishers. Basically you can defend the line of the river but in Vanilla TATW Rhun generals get some extra movement points which makes them able to pop up almost everywhere; if you want to have a stable point where to hold them, Uldonovan is the place for you. Being an archer based faction you have the best arrangement to defend yourself, try to get to bridges/fords as much as possible to maximize your advantage, use plenty of watchmen as meat shields and wisely charge your cavalry and you can manage it, anyway it will be hard and long, so also fun for me.
Silvan Elves: Easy and Fun – as for Isengard you get two difference sets for TATW and MOS; in MOS you are split with Lorien, but basically it does not change much. Elves in general are great to turtle with thanks to their excellent archers and superior troops, and Silvans also have the luck to have many forest settlements around to grow on and to easily recruit in. You can sit on the forest and wait for OOM, Mordor and possibly Rhun to come at you, and you won’t have much problems to defeat them (except maybe for some heavy stack with Balrog, many Ologs or many Golden troops from Rhun). A good alternative to HE with a little less lore behind, they prove to be fun if you love elves and pinching down enemies before they get at you.
Lorien: Medium and Fun – I found Lorien just a little bit harder to turtle with compared to other elven factions, mostly because they start with only two settlements and you don’t really have anything around to take that is good for you; the best places (which you are not supposed to attack anyway) which are worth something are Moria and Dol Guldur (both mountains), the rest is formed by pretty useless villages. At any rate, if you want to experience a slightly more challenging turtling with elves, they prove to be really entertaining; plenty or orcs to banish from your forests and a solid lore base, though after a while you really feel the need to conquer Moria, at least to have the chance to show to the Balrog who’s the boss in that area. A must try if you have had enough of HE.
Rhun: Easy and Not so Fun – pretty much the same logic of Harad, those guys are more fun when you bring the tribes to fight in Dale, Esgaroth and Erebor. Basically your economy is good enough to allow you to field 3 or 4 half stacks to defend both north east and north west of the Sea of Rhun, but honestly I got bored pretty soon of waiting for the slow dwarves to come at me; Dale can give a slightly harder challenge, but if you manage to have some cavalry they are really not that hard to beat down, especially if you wait for them on fords/bridges (there is plenty there). The only way I see to make it fun is to turtle as long as Sauron comes back and then using at least invasions to attack Rohan and Gondor.