Trouble as Orcs of Gundabad

[xxMrDeathxx]

Hello! I'm a recent player of this mod! I've been a longtime fan of both total war and LoTR, as most people here are.
I'm having difficulties playing as Gundabad. Not to say I don't enjoy it ^^ (especially the fact that I can place Mountain/Snow Trolls on ladders and walls <)
The faction I'm having the hardest time fighting against are the Dwarfs. In particular their Iron Guards and Dragonslayers. One unit of either of those units seems to be sufficient to kill a unit of gold ranked Snow Trolls with losing only about 2/3 their men!! Even in placing Trolls at the top of walls, with the enemy using regular Ladders, I still find myself reinforcing the Trolls with another unit (Orc Halberds, hoping their "Effective Against Armor" trait helps!) yet the Dragonsalyers and Iron Guards still deal significant damage. (nearly destroying the troll unit!)
I was hoping to find a counter unit that would be useful against these dwarven juggernauts by looking through The Plalantir, but all that did was bring to my attention that they have an even stronger unit above the Iron Guards that I might have to deal with! D:
Considering the cost and upkeep of Trolls (And their observed ineffectiveness against these enemies) I was hoping someone could provide a good strategy against dwarfs that Gundabad could use!

On a side note, great mod! I wish more LoTR turn-based strat games were released! I loved BFME. Your mods like an improved version of it.

[Baywatch]

Gundabad is IMO the most difficult faction to play as. Try not to rely too much on your trolls, they really aren't cost effective against most enemies. Despite what some people may think, they're actually meant to support the horde and not be the backbone of it.

Fighting a strong dwarven garrison in a siege, which I'm assuming you're having the most trouble with, is quite difficult to do as any horde faction. As Gundabad your infantry are no match for them, neither are your trolls, you can completely forget about archers doing anything to them and, you have no cavalry to speak of other than wargs. So, to be honest your best option is to simply overrun them with numbers. Always bring more than one full stack to assault a dwarven settlement.

Field battles are much more easy than sieges against dwarves. There you can use your speed advantage and outmaneuver the AI to even the odds a bit. The best way to use trolls is in unison with the rest of the your infantry. Have them charge into the enemy line right before the rest of your army joins in. You can also use them to tie up archers and stop cavalry charges. But, do not expect them to pull their weight when fighting against infantry with no support. Hope it helped.

[Space Voyager]

What Baywatch said. Don't use trolls as shock troops to destroy the enemy lines. Perhaps a charge (I wouldn't do even that), than pull back until the regular troops engage. Keep trolls nearby for the morale impact and send them into battle after the units are well entangled into the fight. Basically like Ents.

[Hermes Trismegistos]

Dwarves are the best troll killers of them all. Generally longer battles against AP-units usually means losses and that's much more painful with trolls than with other units.

Against Dwarves try to stretch your line wide, shower them with arrows, let them run, when you run out of ammo surround them and outnumber them. You can easier afford to loose 500 snagas than one troll. Use trolls only carefully against dwarves, maybe to kill a general or deliver the last decisive strike.

[Rusery]

Baywatch knows what hes talking about clearly. If you are a horde faction you NEED to be careful. Their true downfall lies in prolonged melee combat. Once you tire out a horde they are done their stats become worse, their movement speed is destroyed you have nothing. What i have realized is using the horde "switch out" system. If you have a full stack try keeping some idle while using trolls to keep cavalry busy (or archers) switch the infantry out with your fresh units and repeat this until you win. Now if the battle goes on long enough for your 2nd wave of attackers to get tired then you need to use them as fodder for your archers if they have ammo left. Trolls are no help unless you can get them to disengage and charge the enemy multiple times which is rare in my opinion as they don't listen worth %^&$ hehe. Archers DO work you just need to position them correctly and use FIRE. This will destroy the dwarves and any other faction.. Doing this is damn hard though.

[Lothar135]

Hi there,

Fighting against dwarves is actually very easy if you know what to do. You can just use the simple way, attack them with melee and charge them with wargs from the back (this is something that work against everything in any TW game...) that will kill even iron guards with no problem. Yes, you will have casualities, but you will win.

Or you can join them in melee and then use your archers to fire into their backs. They will die slowly, but die they will...

Or many charges with axemen from the back.

[Baywatch]

Hi there,

Fighting against dwarves is actually very easy if you know what to do. You can just use the simple way, attack them with melee and charge them with wargs from the back (this is something that work against everything in any TW game...) that will kill even iron guards with no problem. Yes, you will have casualities, but you will win.

Or you can join them in melee and then use your archers to fire into their backs. They will die slowly, but die they will...

Or many charges with axemen from the back.

All good suggestions but, you usually won't be presented with these kind of opportunities unless it's in a field battle or you vastly outnumber them in a siege.

[Santeri]

But against dwarves you should try to avoid siege battles much as you can It's like charging cavarly to spearmen. Something what you always try to avoid
You might win but you will suffer heavy casualties...

[Baywatch]

But against dwarves you should try to avoid siege battles much as you can It's like charging cavarly to spearmen. Something what you always try to avoid
You might win but you will suffer heavy casualties...

Quite right but, sometimes it's unavoidable. It's not too bad on defense, where your ranged units and wargs can be used very effectively but attempting to take a settlement from the dwarves is one of the most challenging parts of TATW IMO. Very satisfying if you manage to succeed when the odds are stacked against you.

[Lothar135]

All good suggestions but, you usually won't be presented with these kind of opportunities unless it's in a field battle or you vastly outnumber them in a siege.

That is absolutely right. And because of that you can chose that you will never play a siege battle. You do not need to. If you want to capture a city, just siege, sit tight and watch them die - if they siege you, just take you army and go out for a sally.

In TW games, you can always play a battle in open field if you want to.

I will ALWAYS be presented with those kind of opportunities...

[Baywatch]

That is absolutely right. And because of that you can chose that you will never play a siege battle. You do not need to. If you want to capture a city, just siege, sit tight and watch them die - if they siege you, just take you army and go out for a sally.

In TW games, you can always play a battle in open field if you want to.

I will ALWAYS be presented with those kind of opportunities...

Sitting tight and watching them die won't always work. The AI will often send another army to attack you in force while you are attempting to starve them out (VH/VH), I'd say it's better to play one dwarven army with the protection of walls rather than two or more dwarven armies in the open. Of course that would depend on the size of the garrison, the size of the army they send against you, and the size of your own army. Point being often times fighting a siege is just a better option. But, I'll agree if the option presents itself it is much more preferable to wait them out rather than attacking them.

[Hermes Trismegistos]

On the strategic level: The dwarves are my favourite goal for invasions. They have only two family members at the beginning, both in their only two eastern provinces. When they are killed, they go rebel. Finishing them of with an invasion has worked for me in 4 of 4 attempts.

[Lagbug]

What you all say is very true. That Dwarven heavy infantry will dice hordes easily. A trick that works well in the open field is to bring along a siege weapon or two. Target from afar their best troops and reduce them to below half life. If the dwarves also bring along siege engines, give them something to shoot at before engaging your siege weapons -something like snagas for their speed and stamina- and make them dance to make them last longer. Once you decimate the most sturdiest of troops you can employ the usual pin and outflanking.

Warning though, this tactic will: 1)slow your movement speed on the map 2) your siege weapons will have trouble firing on uneven terrain 3) sometimes the enemy will impetuously engage you upfront, giving you little time to snuff out individual units

However when this works you can truly wipe entire armies from the field on any difficulty, as long as you have wargs or mercs calvry to swipe the plate, Hopefully bagging you King Dain or the Heir to Ransome for sumful 1000s.

[0069twiggy]

I have never played as Oog but when I played Mordor I leanred to use my trolls like cavalry. Charge your infantry against theirs then send your trolls around their flanks and plow them right into the enemy's real. The Dwarves moral is too good for it to route them but it will inflict heavy casualties.

[cahaya]

I've played all of the factions at least once so far (2.1, no submods), and am just finishing playing the OoG. Someone mentioned OoG might be the most difficult faction to play and I agree.

You ask how to defeat the dwarves in particular. I've found that it's good to have a fairly well-balanced army of about 2-3 leaders, 3-4 trolls, 3-4 wargs, 5-6 archers, and 5-6 solid infantry. The thing that hurts the dwarves most is their lack of mobility and (usually) fairly limited missile fire. Typically I'll post half the trolls, wargs and archers on each flank and set up a solid line in the center with the infantry, with the leaders just behind them as a reserve.

Move the wargs, trolls and archers forward on each flank, oblique to the dwarven main body, but leave the infantry & leaders standing while the other units circumvent the dwarven flanks. Keep the flanking units out of missile range. By the time movements are ready, the OoG army will be in a U shape, with the infantry at the bottom of the U, archers along the lines of the U and the trolls and wargs at the top of each line of the U. Sometimes the dwarves will move a unit or a few units to meet the flanking force, in which case have the archers fire on them in skirmish mode -- this tends to spread out the dwarves units and leave gaps in their positions.

Use the trolls and wargs first to take out any rear units like catapults or iron crossbowmen while the dwarven heavy infantry either sit or approach the OoG infantry line or futilely chase down the OoG archers acting as skirmishers. By this point the OoG army's U closes into an O, surrounding the dwarves in a possibly far-flung position. If the main body of the dwarven infantry haven't moved forward by this time, move the OoG infantry up in a tightly packed solid line with leaders just behind, and charge at short range. Any archers not being chased by dwarven infantry are then free to fire at the flank or rear of the dwarven infantry, where they can do considerable damage (without the frontal armor bonus). As soon as the infantry on both sides engage, bring the already positioned trolls into the rear of the dwarven position, supported with short charges by wargs to close up the flanks on each side. Pull the wargs out after a charge to either recharge or fill another gap in the rear of the dwarven position.

Eventually, one or both of the dwarven flanks will fail and begin routing, but it will take some time. At this point, use the wargs to ride them down, possibly supported by a troll unit or two. Be careful not to continue firing archers at routing positions being ridden down by wargs, lest the wargs fall to friendly fire. Also, earmark the dwarven general's location for special attention by archers, then trolls and wargs. His death often helps lead to a collapse of dwarven morale and much of the dwarven line will either waver or panic. Meanwhile, those dwarven units chasing skirmishing archers on the flanks are open to attacks from the rear by trolls and wargs. Having already taken casualties from bow fire, sometimes this is enough to break them. If not, draw the trolls and wargs back and let the missile fire continue to do its work on a stationary dwarven unit. Before long, the entire dwarven army is in a rout, and easy pickings for the trolls and highly mobile wargs to mop up before they reach the map edge.

I've gone toe-to-toe (VH tactical) with 1 full stack vs 1 full stack on the open field and have usually achieved about 6-1, sometimes up through 12-1 loss ratios while fully eliminating the dwarven stack.

Siege warfare is another matter and I may comment more on it later. One thing, though, that I found works well is to split the OoG army into three groups, one in front and one on each flank of the fort and use at least one of these as a feint so that the OoG units can get significant local superiority at one or both of the other fort locations. It also helps to have a reinforcing partial stack that comes in as reinforcements and also draws the dwarves towards one side of the fort/walls or other.

[InRoninJin]

To win as the Orcs of Gundabad you need to:

Strategically:
-Your first targets should be the Coldfells, Athilin, Pitkaranta and Ruskea Vene.
-Turn your tax to low whenever possible. The additional pop helps far more than the initial burst of income high taxes provide.
-Make some siege equipment and go take out Rivendell as soon as possible.
-Your next priority target should be Ered-Luin and the Western Dwarves.
-If you can take our those two groups you should be fine against the Free People.

Tactically:
-Dwarves are slow. Use your cav and archer advantage to its max. Spam archers and stalkers, flank the dwarves and fire into their back with fire arrows. Numbers are the key.
-Elves are unstoppable but are limited by the game mechanics. Attack them in sieges and kill them with ballista or catapults whenever possible. When trolls become available you can then use them to dominate. Charge the elves with trolls, their low numbers protect them from ranged fire. Follow this up with the horde and you will eventually win. This works when you outnumber the elves.
-If you see a full stack of elves use "auto_win attacker" because otherwise, you're ed.

[Macilrille]

Kind of you to help Jin, but it is 3- 4 years ago. I think he is either no longer asking or has had his answer ;-)

[❋ Flavius Belisarius ❋]

[Ngugi]

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