What am I doing wrong?

[hairrorist]

Hey folks,

I just became aware of this extraordinary mod, dug out my dusty Medieval II discs, and hunkered down for some serious gaming sessions. The quality of the work is simply fantastic!

I'm not sure whether it's due to me being rusty at the game mechanics, if the mod changes how the basics work significantly, or what, but after numerous starts with many different factions (Isengard, Mirkwood, High Elves, Lorien) I simply cannot make a profit, or even stay in the black for more than the first ten to twenty turns.

For instance: with even just one large army in active service, supported by High Elven cities ranging from Forlond down to Lon Daer, my cash pool is drained thousands of gold into the red by turn 30. I've tried stationing the capital at Mithrond which helped a lot, slow playing taxes early on in favour of population growth as well as the converse, jacking taxes supported by strong garrisons, building governmental buildings in Rivendell to reduce corruption loss, followed by a policy of only constructing buildings that increase income, and stationing governors in as many towns as I can manage. If I attempt to expand at all it becomes impossible to keep money in the bank. The combination of massive campaigning upkeep, extreme distances between settlements, the size of the map, etc, all make conquest a zero-sum-gain proposition at best. I'm expanding losing 10-50 soldiers maximum per battle. With two armies, one stationed at Rivendell and the other marching on Dunlend, stopping to maintain order in whatever new conquest its made, I then move the other army a city, careful to never have two armies in the field at the same time, because even with 10+ cities for financial support, I lose so much money having even one army in the field that it takes many turns with nothing fielded to make up for the loss.


This is at Hard campaign difficulty, with FROME and AUM. I never had this problem in MTWII before... what am I missing?

-edit-
Could DLV be messing with anything? I was under the impression that mods don't interfere with one another.

-edited edit-
One last question: what other submods are compatible? Is there a battle AI enhancement that'll work?

[Lord Butters I]

High Elves have no major cities so they have no money. Try dropping your army size; elven archers are so ludicrously powerful and their enemies die so easily that you can hold out against pretty much anything Gundabad or OotMM sends after you with a half-stack. Isengard is a little tougher but still, you can drop them without trying.

One good idea is to bring a (full) stack down to Isengard proper and take the Orthanc. High Elves don't start with any settlement bigger than a large city, so getting your hands on a Citadel will give you a big boost to both money and unit recruitment. A trade agreement with Rohan is mandatory if you do this.

[Russian Gondor]

Happened to me first time I started playing. This is much more challenging that Vanilla.

1) Key is to keep taxes low (more population, more tax payers)
2) Max you can have first 20 turns is one stack
3) Keep your generals on the battlefield, not in the cities.
4) Make more farms
5) Don't build in every city on the first turn
6) Conquer more cities, each city usually 500-1k + gold.

[hairrorist]

Hrm, I could try that, but I was having the same issues with Mirkwood and Lori... oh wait. I see.
So are you guys playing with automanagement disabled then? I was playing traditional style where you need to have a governor present to directly control production.

[hairrorist]

Aha! You scoundrels.

Well, that will certainly help things, and if everyone else is doing it... it can't be cheating, right?

How about other submods that are compatible that add depth, more content, AI enhancement, etc? Anything else that works with FROME, or is recommended over FROME + AUM?

[Russian Gondor]

Yep

[Russian Gondor]

Cheating is only when you turn your car to Shell with their overpriced prices.

Nah, unless you open the Counsel then it is not cheating. Enjoy! Hehe. But no, I play clean v 2.0.