The factions at a glance, my opinions...

[Outlawstar15a2]

Ok, I have finally tried out all the factions both in custom battles and the Third Age campaign and I will give a short and brief summary of all factions their strength and weakness. I'm doing this for educational purposes and also to see how everyone views them. To me the factions are as follows:

Kingdom of Gondor -
Strength: Superb defensive capabilities good at holding a position. Professional army, even their militia kick ass!
Weakness: Very few assault oriented units, poor at attacking, best assault unit only recruitable in Dol Amroth.

Kingdom of Rohan -
Strength: Strong cavalry.
Weakness: Sub par infantry, poor foot archers though cavalry based ranged troops are much better. Can't defend for in a defensive battle so you must stay on the attack.

Kingdom of Dale -
Strength: Somewhat cheap troops, nice start position if you know how to play it.
Weakness: Poor cavalry, difficult start position if your not experienced.

Dwarves -
Strength: Very strong infantry, units look badass!
Weakness: Divided start, no cavalry at all so chasing routing enemies and quickly reinforcing a collapsing flank is impossible. Have to forego the hope of chasing a fleeing foe, and must have very good foresight in battle. This shortcoming can be somewhat mitigated with mercenary Dale Cavalry but not by much.

Kingdom of Eriador -
Strength: Greenway Guard, interesting start position. You start off with a somewhat large faction. Holy crap! Aragorn is King! (Actually he's a Chieftain of the Dunedain....)
Weakness: Crappy units, where Dale has mediocre troops, Eriador has straight up piss poor units. Greenway Guards are somewhat good but their just one unit and limited in number. Eriador's army is mostly non professional militia. Morale breaks like tigs, Your hemmed in between Isengard and OotMM two very powerful factions (althought for two diametrically different reasons...)

High Elves -
Strength: Lead by Elrond (My n***a, bad ass MoFo)! Surprisingly good melee, ranged, and cavalry troops.
Weakness: Low numbers I mean really low get these people some viagra. Expensive units. Micromanagement heavy because all of the retraining needed. Weak start. Only one cavalry unit recruitable so no real choices...

Silvan Elves -
Strength: Legolas is faction heir :XD! very very good ranged ability, arrow storm anyone? Lets darken the skies with arrows so they have to fight in the shade!! Surprisingly easy to defend start position.
Weakness: Low numbers. Horse Archers have Tau like melee (Not a WH40K fan? Ok that means their melee is almost non existent)

Mordor -
Strength: Vast numbers. Strong troops. Very defensible start position. Surrounded by allies in the south and east.
Weakness: Dol Guldor can be seen as your Achilles' Heel. Lack of cavalry however this is offset by Mountain Trolls and later Olog Hai but both are late in the campaign.

Isengard -
Strength: Very strong infantry, Uruk Hai, nuff said.
Weakness: Cavalry unreliable at times still nowhere near as good as Rohan's late cavalry. Warg's slower then horeses in full gallop.

Orcs of the Misty Mountains -
Strength: Extremely vast numbers, goblins breed like cockroaches. Interesting start position can immediately attack several factions at once.
Weakness: Goblins breed like cockroaches and die like them to. No cavalry but they get Cave Trolls so it balances out.

Harad -
Strength: Nice mix of units, somewhat the Evil equivalent to Gondor but slightly more attack oriented. Oliphants (Mumakil)! Nice cavalry. Decent archers. Wickedly sick melee infantry. Very strong start position.
Weakness: Harad (Harodnor) is a vast place and hard to maneuver about on the strategy map. Mordor and Rhun tends to give you the cold shoulder.

Rhun -
Strength: Awesome late game units, golden armor is truly made bad ass! Damn good cavalry.
Weakness: Early infantry is lackluster, poor economy. Rhun is doomed into a costly early war with Dale and Dwarves. Weak start position.

[tesb]

i haven´t played harad yet (only rhun and gondor), but their units seems rather week compared to gondors troops, although i mainly fight corsairs, archers and spearmen and those dual bleade wieling troops.

[Muffer Nl]

Rhun -
Strength: Awesome late game units, golden armor is truly made bad ass! Damn good cavalry.
Weakness: Early infantry is lackluster, poor economy. Rhun is doomed into a costly early war with Dale and Dwarves. Weak start position.

The Balcoth Tribesmen kick ass and if you get some generals together in the same army...
Don't forget that the Dwarves and Dale can't build pikemen or spearmen in the first stages of the game so you can kick ass with the bodyguard against both of hem.

[Warmaster Tibs]

The Balcoth Tribesmen kick ass and if you get some generals together in the same army...
Don't forget that the Dwarves and Dale can't build pikemen or spearmen in the first stages of the game so you can kick ass with the bodyguard against both of hem.

Just dont forget to take them out of the fight after the crushing impact and repeat till they are all dead.

[iron88]

The Balcoth Tribesmen kick ass and if you get some generals together in the same army...
Don't forget that the Dwarves and Dale can't build pikemen or spearmen in the first stages of the game so you can kick ass with the bodyguard against both of hem.

That's exactly what I did with them in my campaign. Two stacks with four generals each. One pushing on Dale and the other on the Dwarves. The Dwarves were somewhat tough, but the bodyguard just rips through Dale.

[Theseus1234]

That's exactly what I did with them in my campaign. Two stacks with four generals each. One pushing on Dale and the other on the Dwarves. The Dwarves were somewhat tough, but the bodyguard just rips through Dale.

Keep in mind that the majority of Dale's units Have no shields, not even the spearmen! Use that to your advantaged and you can even rip apart their archer bodyguards with your cavalry

[Muffer Nl]

[Louis Lux]

Kingdom of Dale -
Strength: Somewhat cheap troops, nice start position if you know how to play it.
Weakness: Poor cavalry, difficult start position if your not experienced.

What would be the way to play their strong start position?
I probably played a handicap here regarding start position. I expanded east till the lake, west till the misty mountains and south till Dol Guldur.
They have good archers which makes it easier to defend, been playing a lot of ambushes and bridge battles.

[Outlawstar15a2]

What would be the way to play their strong start position?
I probably played a handicap here regarding start position. I expanded east till the lake, west till the misty mountains and south till Dol Guldur.
They have good archers which makes it easier to defend, been playing a lot of ambushes and bridge battles.

Since Dale starts off allied to Dwarves a good strategy would be to send troops to cover the river crossing between you and Rhun who will be your primary enemy. After covering the river that spans your entire eastern border send troops to secure the southern road pass into the Araw region. While doing all this try to secure a alliance with the Silvan Elves and get military access as you'll want to maintain good relations with them the military alliance is needed because sometimes you'll need to send troops to keep them afloat. Rhun will be your main military target so plan accordingly you can expand to the south a little but try to build your coffers with trade between you and the Elves and mount a campaign against Rhun ASAP. Also send troops into Elven and Dwarvish territory to scoup out enemy threats that may have evaded yoru defenses elsewhere.

[Mythre]

Interesting summary.

I am still playing my first campaign as Gondor. Outside of facing Olog Hai (Utter Nightmare.... one battle i had to take on 60 trolls.... *shudders*)
It has actually been fairly easy. The Gondorian units play right to my strengths. Awesome HI and solid archers with adequate cavalry.

I have taken Minas Morgul, The Black Gate, The Orc encampment, Durthang, and Barad Dur and destroyed Harad (all their territories are mine). Isenguard is falling to my assault in the North and my economy is rip roaring strong.
It is about turn 110 or so...

[Georgy Zhukov]

Interesting summary.

I am still playing my first campaign as Gondor. Outside of facing Olog Hai (Utter Nightmare.... one battle i had to take on 60 trolls.... *shudders*)
It has actually been fairly easy. The Gondorian units play right to my strengths. Awesome HI and solid archers with adequate cavalry.

I have taken Minas Morgul, The Black Gate, The Orc encampment, Durthang, and Barad Dur and destroyed Harad (all their territories are mine). Isenguard is falling to my assault in the North and my economy is rip roaring strong.
It is about turn 110 or so...

How do you keep the Haradim out of the south? All of my troops are usually facing off against Orcs at osgiliath or Cair Andros and the Haradim rape my south.

[Mythre]

How do you keep the Haradim out of the south? All of my troops are usually facing off against Orcs at osgiliath or Cair Andros and the Haradim rape my south.

I mainly just put strong border garrisons on the outer cities, struck out with double assaults, one leading from pelagir and the other leading off from Dol Amroth. Those combined did the trick; although i did fall on a stroke of luck, I was able to Kill all Haradrim family members at around turn 60. That of course sped up the process rather quickly, although the decision was never in doubt.

Also i recommend becoming very very skilled using the fewest troops possible to defend a city. I can defend a large town with 3 Gondor Militia with 1 (preferably 2) units of archers against an entire early period stack of Haradrim. The later period stuff gets much harder at times though. Hopefully by then you at least have Gondor spearmen or archers.

And finally, fight on 3-4 fronts if you can swing it.... expensive yes but worth it.
I had 2 Haradrim fronts and two Mordor fronts, each front being assigned the designation "northern" or "southern"

[Staffen]

I can defend a large town with 3 Gondor Militia with 1 (preferably 2) units of archers against an entire early period stack of Haradrim

How???

[tesb]

put all militia at the gate, archers behind. now block the gate so that most of enemy stack gets killed by the burning oil while shooting them with flame arrows ==> they flee and you just have to sack them witch your general.

[Staffen]

Aha.

Here I was thinking that you could beat them 'clean', without a general's bodyguard, burning oil and a gatehouse shooting stuff into the enemy masses.

[OfficerJohn]

Aha.

Here I was thinking that you could beat them 'clean', without a general's bodyguard, burning oil and a gatehouse shooting stuff into the enemy masses.

All strategies except cheating in console are 'clean'...

[Outlawstar15a2]

All strategies except cheating in console are 'clean'...

Amen! Preach on brother! Hallejulah!

[OfficerJohn]

Amen! Preach on brother! Hallejulah!

Okay.

When there's a bug in the game, don't throw your screen out of the window, eject your disk and eat it, and then write a two-lines long rant on the main TW forum. So, peasants in vanilla Medieval 2 are able to kill almost anything when defending walls? In that case, use peasants to defend your walls.
If a bug favors you, don't think about it, if a bug favors the AI, it's givin' you a challenge, if a bug favors no one, then try to use it for own gain, or leave it to get the challenge in return.

Abusing bugs aren't cheating, they're a part of the game you're playing. You may want them away, but now they're there.

Only cheating in console is cheating that diserves the title "cheating".

[Staffen]

Dude ... I just thought he had a way of using those 4-5 units to defend a pallisade settlement, which would be quite the achievement.

So I asked a simple question.

That is something entirely different from a rant.

Also, I don't understand how you interpreted my post as implying that using a bodyguard and towers would be cheating. Again, I was just curious about a potential way to defeat an entire stack with a bare minimum of units.

[OfficerJohn]

Dude ... I just thought he had a way of using those 4-5 units to defend a pallisade settlement, which would be quite the achievement.

So I asked a simple question.

That is something entirely different from a rant.

Also, I don't understand how you interpreted my post as implying that using a bodyguard and towers would be cheating. Again, I was just curious about a potential way to defeat an entire stack with a bare minimum of units.

Okay.

The link is that all clean activities are those who are not cheating...