Help for Dale

[snowguy417]

I gave up searching for a thread on this and started my own...

I am fairly new to playing this Third Age mod and have tried several times now with little success to play a campaign as Dale. By turn 20 or so my borders are being invaded by multiple huge armies of Ruhn which are far superior to my own. What makes things even worse is that I cant field more than one full stack without completely bankrupting myself. This leaves me with no way to garrison my border cities properly or to manuver my armies on the field. What can I do?

[snowguy417]

I should also add the Ruhn keeps using their crusading armies to attack my cities as well even though they are meant to be heading to Edoras. Hard times.

[campesino]

i would recomend fielding only archers in the earky stages, or at least mostly archers

[Lothar135]

Hi there!
Several stacks invading borders - absolutely normal, believe me...

I played Dale recently. I know what do you mean. You can lower campaign difficulty, that can help a bit. You can also place very small armies on bridges and use lots of archers. That way you will have cheap army which can deal with a full stack of Rhun. You can also higher taxes - very high in every town. Build mostly economical buildings from the beginning of the game. Padded roads are the best way to make some money. Take as many rebel settlements you can as soon as you can with the army you begin with.

Hmm, that is all I can think of right now, maybe someone will add another tips. Good luck!

[Benox]

bridges are your best option because dale had better low tier archers and units than rhun, so you can stop his low tier stacks easily
i know because they owned twice a 3/4 full stack army while crusing the bridge

[Baywatch]

Hi there!
Several stacks invading borders - absolutely normal, believe me...

I played Dale recently. I know what do you mean. You can lower campaign difficulty, that can help a bit. You can also place very small armies on bridges and use lots of archers. That way you will have cheap army which can deal with a full stack of Rhun. You can also higher taxes - very high in every town. Build mostly economical buildings from the beginning of the game. Padded roads are the best way to make some money. Take as many rebel settlements you can as soon as you can with the army you begin with.

Hmm, that is all I can think of right now, maybe someone will add another tips. Good luck!

Mostly all good suggestions. The only one I don't agree with is the very high tax rate in every town. I tend to make my tax rates as low as possible to allow my settlements to build up as fast as possible. Sure you may be able to field more troops right away but, with lower tax rates you'll be capable of fielding larger armies much sooner.

Expanding your economy early as Dale, and IMO as anyone, should be your number one priority. They're late game economy is fantastic. So keep your focus on economic buildings and farms. By the time you manage to take all the rebel settlements you should be capable of fielding much more than just one full stack if you do things correctly. For the early battles, your archers are your one ace in the hole. Be sure to use a healthy amount of them and only rely on your infantry to hold the enemy up while you continue to repeatedly fire volley after volley at them. Getting those rebel settlements to the south of your starting position before Rhun does also makes the game much easier.

[Robs]

I had to restart, because the same thing happened to me.
Huge stacks of ruhn armies kept flooding into my territory and i became tired of the repetetive slaughtering work without making any progress myself.

My second attempt, i must confess, was on: hard (strat map) very hard (battle map). I rushed immediately to the east / southeast, took one city and the 2 castles near the lake. A smaller army went south and was later joined by the remaining east forces taking the surrounding rebel settlements.

I think pushing east early is main priority and capping Rhun significantly. Normally they would outnumber your cities nearly by a double. Gives them way too many slots for recruiting and too little distance to your territory. With Rhun having the castles and their northern city lost, every attack from their eastern cities will be delayed by multiple turns, as they have to circle the whole lake.

In summary that means in the early game they just outnumber you with a ratio of 3:4 and their main forces should be heading your way from southeast. And you got 2 castles that can muster good armies and are better defendable. Your center cities can now focus on your financial benefit. And i started building watchtowers.
200g are well invested if you know about attacking plans 1-2 turns earlier.

This time the campaign felt somewhat easy. So the same strategy and hardest difficulty should be challenging but manageable.

[Robs]

EDIT: Double Post

Strange. i edited my first post and it kept the old version and the new one. If that happens again now....i will have three posts and people
rip my head off.
Sorry about that anyway.

[Fenrisulfrinn]

Greetings, fellow Riverman! Nice to see someone else who plays Dale.

The most important move you can make in the first few turns is to blitz Dorwinion (the coastal castle on the north edge of that little inland sea to your south). Basically you've got friendlies all around except for Rhun in the south, so you can pool existing units + a few more that you train and send them straight to Dorwinion before Rhun grabs it. If you have that castle it'll halt their northern expansion as their armies will simply siege the castle trying to take it (it's a super important position to hold for both sides). You'd be very wise to build watchtowers on the borders on the Dorwinion region to let you know when their attacks will come.

Once you massacre a few of their armies assaulting Dorwinion and you've built a port on that sea, Rhun should agree to a peace settlement in exchange for a piece of your lucrative trade, as the only factions with access to the inland sea will be you and Rhun. Now, there's another castle on the west coast of the sea called Uldonavon, which is also an important strategic position at this point in the game. If they get to it first, it's not the end of the world as long as you have Dorwinion, but it will greatly ease the pressure on you if you can take it. This is because it's a castle right by your borders, which means they can create armies right outside your crib. Basically the next step is to take this castle and then try to get back to peace (if you already had it).

Once you have this the Dale campaign should be a cinch. With both those ports you're easily Rhun's best trading partner, which means you've made them your b***h. Then you'll have nice income and you can start getting creative by doing stuff like building strike forces to take all their coastal cities in one turn and then having a few cavalry columns wipe through the rest of their empire while your infantry follows and sacks the towns. That's my favorite part of the campaign.

I don't have much advice on the early makeup of your armies other than, just use what you've already got and maybe make a few cavalry or archer units. And yes, always set taxes to low on the first turn. It'll hurt for the first few, but the population boost you gain pays off big time within like 10 - 20 turns.

So if this was tl:dr
1. Take the castle of Dorwinion ASAP! Ignore the stupid missions to capture pointless landlocked towns.
2. Shoot for the castle of Uldonavon and make peace with Rhun based mostly on trade rights (you're their best trading partner because of your coastal city).
3. Build up your economy for a bit and then surprise attack the pants off Rhun.
4. You know have a huge empire that is an economic powerhouse, you're on the edge of the map, your northern border is allies, and you've got access to Mordor's non-mountainous side from which you can sweep through and save the world.

Have fun!

[Jean=A=Luc]

Yeah, Drwinion is a must. It has a pretty well build up military infrastructure and it pretty comes down to whether you're able to capture it in the early turns or not.

If you do peace with Rhun won't be necessary unless you have a problem wining large battles (especially because it's an unfluffy thing to do) as you'll have a strong recruitment center with which to push down to Uldonowan which should be your next priority.

Keep an eye on the land-locked Rhovannion towns as well. It takes only a small army to capture them and doing so could prevent you from being flanked from there but the focus at all times must be on those two castles.

[Fenrisulfrinn]

Yeah, Drwinion is a must. It has a pretty well build up military infrastructure and it pretty comes down to whether you're able to capture it in the early turns or not.

If you do peace with Rhun won't be necessary unless you have a problem wining large battles (especially because it's an unfluffy thing to do) as you'll have a strong recruitment center with which to push down to Uldonowan which should be your next priority.

Keep an eye on the land-locked Rhovannion towns as well. It takes only a small army to capture them and doing so could prevent you from being flanked from there but the focus at all times must be on those two castles.

Well, yeah, the peace is optional, but if you've become a trade juggernaut they'll pretty much beg for it when you send a diplomat. It just allows you to regroup a little bit and decide when and where the war will start back up since you'll basically have first strike.

[Lordinquisitor]

Also, if you can`t defend a certain border settlement you can gift that city to the silvan elves. Rhun, while evil, is often hesiant to attack the silvan elves. This might buy you some time.

[muter3456]

This will be a good strategy guide for when i start MY dale campaign, right after my orc than gonder ones.....

[Dark_Source]

My tip would be to not build the temples/tombs, or brothels, or leather tanners. They just waste money and you dont get a huge benefit for the price your paying. I also suggest you move all of your units from Dale and the city in the middle of the lake, to your cities that are bordering Rhun. I just left the general and 1 other unit in Dale and the other city, and moved everyone else down.

Hope that helps.

[AlexN]

I had the same problem, it was exhausting, until I made every battle as epic victories... If Rhûn armies are based on infantry (this is in the first stages of the war), then make light dale cavalry to sweep them out with their charges. Be careful with their family members; Rhûn bodyguards can destroy half of your army on their own and they will be always the last to fall. When the enemy bodyguards attack, send ALL your infantry and archers to the fray, hand-to-hand fight, don't let him scape or he will charge you again, causing heavy casualties in your army.

If Rhûn starts making their heavy cavalry, then pray . I normally have them nearly conquered by this stage.

- The point: train cavalry to destroy their huge and numerous infantry armies. At least have minimum 4 or 6 cavalry units in each dale army and always have cavalry reinforcements on their way behind them to recover your casualties after each battle.

- Army prototype: 8 light cavalry, 1 family member, 5 archers, 6 infantry OR 6 light cavalry and etc...
- Reinforcement army (recomended): 2 infantry, 4-6 cavalry

Excuse my english.

[Bubbapat]

Even the basic starting cavalry can be useful in the beginning. Rhun sends large hosts of light infantry, skirmishers, and archers. None of these have great defense against cavalry charges. If you are good enough a troop of 60 yeomen can each take out at least several hundred infantry/ranged units. Good cavalry tactics have won me many battles when I have been fairly outnumbered. Losing 60 cavalry killing hundreds that won't make it to your archers/infantry is good for minimizing losses. The less you lose, the less you spend. As for the economy, spend everything on farming and trade, even if it drives you broke for a turn or two. Your starting army + a very few trained troops can take you far in the beginning, especially since you start with several units of longbow men, and all your generals are great archers. Also rush diplomacy, opening trade with as many other nations as possible early on is great for your economy. Build roads before markets, and farms before roads. Sometimes it's also best to build the cheaper melee training facilities to give you free upkeep in the less developed towns/castles.

[Bubbapat]

I think the numbers you are suggesting are a bit high. If every army you made was that large you wouldn't be making a lot of them, or you wouldn't be making very much money. IMO a good army for Dale is 1 family member, 1-2 cav, 2-3 archers, 3-4 inf. Humans are a lot better at the charge and retreat then comps I find, so if you're good you don't need a lot of cav, and you can usually handle the enemy cav with the hearth watchmen which have spears.

[Jean=A=Luc]

I don't like it because it breaks immersion, Rhun wouldn't make peace in the "real" War of the Ring. But sure, if a player wants to make those kinds of treaties it's their choice.

[FOR GONDOR]

i wouldnt kno what you are talking about, so far its been the first 15 turns for me and nothing, i drove offf a rhun army attacking awraw but i didnt even own that town yet, and i got nothing at dorwinion except for 1 siege but they abandoned that, and currently in taking the vale of anduin and the rovonost reigoins creating a double emopir seperated by mirkwood and the anduin river. hahaha ive taken wyrkiburg and framsburg already and i just took awraw and i have rhovanost under siege

[Fenrisulfrinn]

i wouldnt kno what you are talking about, so far its been the first 15 turns for me and nothing, i drove offf a rhun army attacking awraw but i didnt even own that town yet, and i got nothing at dorwinion except for 1 siege but they abandoned that, and currently in taking the vale of anduin and the rovonost reigoins creating a double emopir seperated by mirkwood and the anduin river. hahaha ive taken wyrkiburg and framsburg already and i just took awraw and i have rhovanost under siege

In the first 15 turns?!