Siege defense against Harad?

[Rakoua]

Alright, downloaded this mod, played a Rohan campaign which I gave up on after 80 turns due to having only 2 settlements left. So now I'm Gondor and doing OK, but I am having a lot of trouble defating Harad in siege battles. I had this problem in 2.1 too, and it caused me to lose my Gondor campaign there too. The odds are slightly in their favour, yet it seems that their bodyguards and infantry are unstoppable! OK, I do have only militia and such but I have a lot of them and they just cut trough like knife trough butter.

Any tips on defeating them? There is a huge Harad stack about to cut into my mainland settlements and is heading towards one of my cities, and if I don't destroy most of it in the siege I'm dead...

[Bard the Bowman]

I've been playing a Gondor campaign lately too, and have had mixed success against Harad.

If you have Gondor archers or rangers, you can always place stakes at the gate before the battle starts. That takes care of pretty much all the cavalry, including the bodyguard, but it's not exactly chivalrous!

As far as infantry, I usually just pile all of mine on the main road from the gate to the town center. They usually try to bull-rush towards the town center, so this stops them pretty well. The real key is to have archers on one or both sides, so while they're trying to fight towards the town center they're being barraged from the sides by arrows. Really cuts down on their numbers. Pelargir marines work well too, and they're not bad in hand-to-hand once they run out of ammo.

Just wait till they start bringing Mumakil!

[Nastrael]

the best rule of thumb to keeping Harad at bay is to rush Barad Harn ASAP. take that settlement and set up a good sized garrison in there and they wont be able to move into your real territory. as far as in the actual battles, its best to get spearmen...and pplenty of them...theyre cheap and very effective against the lightly armored Harad infantry and their cav are rendered useless. an army of 1 Bodyguard, 5 Gondor Spearmen and 3 archer units works best for me anyway. in a siege battle its best to plant stakes at the gate and retreat ur archers from the wall as soon as they bring their siege equiptment up. then pull back to the town square, set your spearmen up in scholcrom formation at the chokes at the entrence to the square and have your archers behind the spearmen. this will allow you to rain fire down on the advancing enemy and will allow you to completely massacre them while theyre bottled up. and if your spearmen begin to get tired you can always hold a unit or two in resrve, charge them in and pull your other units out to rest. and also keep your general close to the melee action to provide moral support

[Keyser_Soze]

To stop Harad being a problem, you need to try and rush your way to Umbar and Gobel Ancalimon (desert castle listed as capital). Taking these 2 cities in particular will deprive Harad of its main military-building cities (and also allow you to build the foundations of a great sea-trade economy- Umbar can rival Minas Tirith in economy early-mid game if you get a good general in there and lower corruption), leaving them incapable of attacking you. Of course, you could just finish the job and take their remaining cities, but take many more cities and you risk creating a border with Rhun, and a buffer zone will prevent them from attacking you. Additionally, settlements in this area are pretty indefensible, and it's a pain if you get besieged by a surprise Harad army in this area. It's also a pain to go into the desert seeing as how you can't recruit anything due to economy for a long distance. The worst they'll throw at you at this stage are troll-men and hasharii (two-sworded assassin units), which are tough, but which can be killed. Mumakil only appeared past turn 250 or so for me (would be earlier if I hadn't rushed them though.
If you rush them and have enough armies, taking care of Harad can be done easily- Think I had taken Umbar and Gobel Ancalimon by turn 100 or something in my last Gondor campaign (also took castle east of Harad around that time as that seemed to churn out units that attacked me.). Wasn't bothered by Harad again until maybe turn 170, leaving me to focus entirely on Mordor, so I considered that quite a success!

[Pinkie Pie]

Concerning Mumakil, they are completely useless in sieges, if you are defending a castle destroy the Haradrim army using the tactics above then just wait for the timer to end to avoid fighting them, if you do have some siege weapons with ammo left you can send them out to kill them although it takes lot of luck to hit them from range.

[k/t]

Always keep around a unit of Pelargir Marines (or two) when dealing with Mumakil and you won't have problems.

Definitely raid Harad's coastal region (Umbar first), exterminate the population, sell everything that can be sold in the settlements, jack the taxes up to max and leave. Then send one army to start conquering settlements. Take one, convert it to your culture so you can at least retrain militia units there, then move on to the next.

[Keyser_Soze]

Always keep around a unit of Pelargir Marines (or two) when dealing with Mumakil and you won't have problems.

Definitely raid Harad's coastal region (Umbar first), exterminate the population, sell everything that can be sold in the settlements, jack the taxes up to max and leave. Then send one army to start conquering settlements. Take one, convert it to your culture so you can at least retrain militia units there, then move on to the next.

I'd add to this that as of 3.0, retraining is as good as impossible south of Harondor for Gondor- Gondor recruits best in grassland and south of here is desert, which means about 15 turns for a militia unit, so unfortunately, that strategy will be pretty ineffective unless you think you can return units to Harondor, which is a bit of a way..
I'd also try and keep the coastal regions- As I said, it's possible to keep these regions quite easily if you take Harad's more important cities and castles capable of recruiting a lot- Without them, they can't recruit much.

[Rakoua]

Oh snap, I'm at turn 50 something and I think I won't make it, there is a nice little horde overlooking Cair Andros about to own me horribly there and Linhir is about to fall... I have nowhere near the amount of money to pull off a succesfull counterattack... All my hopes now lie with Faramir and his battered and undermanned garrison at Linhir against two large Harad stacks... wish me luck. =P

[Pipoka]

I use this submod that allows militia to upgrade armor so that they last a bit longer untill you can fully replace them with professional units. Does a great job helping you against those though odds ^^
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=513030

[k/t]

Maybe you can keep the coastal regions then. They'll give you a lot of money and they're easy to reinforce by boat.