Isengard

**meese** · August 26, 2009, 02:51 AM

I've been playing Isengard for around 50 odd turns now and have mainly been fighting Rohan who are more or less gone now...but the High Elves seem to hate me all of a sudden and I've had to keep churning out silly goblins or my economy fails. Not to mention they seem to work better than Uruks if only because of numbers and the fact that the Elves kill anything I throw at them.

Anyway, my question is: Does anybody else find the Elves a constant drain on military and money? I've got taxes varying from Very low at Fangorn (which still has only 700 population) to Very High in about half of the cities. But the retraining costs after killing 1000 elves with 3000 goblins is rather high...Snagas are pathetic too against them (though they did most of the work against Rohan).

**Clumber** · August 26, 2009, 03:33 AM

Uhhh....don't piss of the elves? Get a trade agreement with them or something early on so it wouldn't be profitable for them to attack you.

But I suppose it's too late for that now. I think your best bet would be to get some warg riders, because the most dangerous part of any high elf army is going to be their archers. Once you have their melee tied up with your orc swarms, just slam into their archers from the side or back to reduce your casualties a ton. Other than that though...don't piss off the elves?

**Gothic Revenge** · August 26, 2009, 03:43 AM

Well, the Elves are very good with bows and mow down the enemy before he gets into combat range......
But they are not overpowered, just change your tactic.... as Clumber said above use different approaches
and use each faction weaknes to your advantage
I fought yesterday Harad in a city and they had Mamuks, I won but the loses were so great I will probably restrain from doing so again..... especially terrible after they go on an uncontrollable rampage! They are just big lawnmowers and and your troops in the confined streets are the weed that needs to be cut.......... what a waste of good troops! And you think the elven bows are overpowered!

I think they have now balanced out the stats quite well, I am very happy!

**meese** · August 26, 2009, 03:53 AM

Haha I wasn't saying they're unbalanced, just wondering if anybody had another tactic aside from goblin swarming. And yes, I've been recruiting wargs as often as possible, without going into an economy crisis but I don't quite seem to have enough especially since they die so quickly and need retraining.

Oh well, it's fun so I'm not complaining

Gothic Revenge, I think I know what you mean...I threw almost an entire army of snagas (both fire arrows and javelins) at Treebeard...I lost horribly...ah well, they're cheap

**Gothic Revenge** · August 26, 2009, 04:13 AM

I would try a combination:

- don't forget your (evil nation) siege engines have longer ranges than all other good nations, soften up the archers and the ranks behind them before advancing with fire ammo.
- use sacrifical units to advance first, like you do for trolls (the cheapest in your rooster) to keep the archers busy (Note: They willl always fire at the closest enemy infront of them!) send some better troops behind them, watch the spacing to the first ranks so they won't be hit by stray arrows!!!
- move your wargs to the sides, not to close to be engaged but also not too far away to be ignored...( the army will mostly try to counter your incircelment an move..... Note: When they move they can't shoot, while your troops are already closing on them!)

Once your sacrifical units + reinforcements engage the enemy swarm the rest of your army, by this time the archers most likely have retreated behind the main battle line, now come around with your wargs into the back of the army and attack the archers.

Have fun! Thats how I did it!

**meese** · August 26, 2009, 04:21 AM

Oh I forgot about siege weapons completely!

I tend to be so lucky with them (killing generals constantly when not even targetting them).

I have another question...later on, will I still be relying on massing units (though somewhat better Uruks) as all Evil fations love doing? or are berserkers on par with the "elite" units of, for example, Gondor - Swan Knights/Fountain Guard etc. Stat-wise, the Uruks aren't all that great :/ Just...better than goblins I guess

**sturmdg** · August 26, 2009, 04:43 AM

in my isengard campaign i relied on uruks, because units were just as big as snaga ones and they were way stronger... (but that was in 1.1)
In my case I was in trade relations with both Eriador and High Elves since early in the game and all of a sudden they declared me the war and sieged one of my settlements each(I had my stacks on the East, crushing the two last cities of the rohirrim) but my problem wasnt really to win against them but that Elven seemed not to have had any other enemy so long in the game so before they conquered the city they had like 5 or 6 full stacks in my range of view.

And about Eriador... I laugh at Eriador