Questions from a noob

[sharkbait459]

I'd like to start of saying that the mod is fantastic. I, like many others, bought Medieval 2 solely for the purpose of getting this mod. Now that that's out of the way, my actual questions.

First of all, is there a map somewhere that shows the state of Middle-Earth at the start of the game? A lot of the guides I read on these forums said to move fast and conquer a lot of neutral territories at the start of the game. I didn't know where any are, so I had trouble with that. I searched the forums and Google, but I didn't find anything.

My only game at the moment is with Rohan, because I read it is a good starter faction because it starts out overpowered compared to Isengard. I wasn't really feeling it though. It was all I could do to scrape together surplus units from all my settlements and build all available units to create one army with about a half stack. I moved it close to isengard, and saw a half stack Isengard army in the field, and both of the visible Isengard cities with half stacks. That small field of vision saw forces roughly equal to that of my entire nation of 8ish cities, and I assume they had even more beyond my vision. I've read about all these advantages the AI gets, but that just seems like overkill, especially for someone only playing on M/M. Is there any way to ramp up unit production so that if I'm attacked early in the game it won't be the end of me?

Now, about the battle system. My last Total War experience was Rome, and the battle system seems way different. First of all, everything seems less deadly. Fights between units are resolved far slower, arrows don't seem to take as much of a toll, and cavalry charges barely take out anyone with the intial charge. They seem to be better in a slugfest, so I'm not complaining too much. Also, it seems to me that the generals in this game are terrible. In Rome, one general unit with 18 would have wiped the floor with 120 grunts with javelins. The intial charge would've killed 20-30 depending on unit density, and enough would have died soon after to make them route pretty fast. In TATW, I charged ~120 orc snaga javilineers(I know that's not what they're called, but I can't remember the name) with my 18 general unit and the impact killed about 4 and I killed about 20 more before all my cavalry died. My normal cavalry units seem to be similarly ineffective, and I'm Rohan. I thought my cavalry were supposed to be awesome. Am I just using them wrong?

Morale also seems to be through the roof in this game. I had a militia unit battle Guards of Orthanc, and they still survived to 14/76 without routing. They would've got to 40ish or 50ish before running in Rome. Other units last just as long or longer before routing, yet they report wavering morale about 20 or so kills beforehand. Is this how it is in vanilla? I didn't really play vanilla other than the tutorial before coming to this game, so I'm not sure. If units last this long, it also doesn't seem as worthwhile to purposely get troops with high morale.

Sorry for the wall of text, and the ranting. I probably have more questions, but I can't think of them off the top of my head. If anyone can answer these, thanks ahead of time.

[FC Groningen]

I'd like to start of saying that the mod is fantastic. I, like many others, bought Medieval 2 solely for the purpose of getting this mod. Now that that's out of the way, my actual questions.

First of all, is there a map somewhere that shows the state of Middle-Earth at the start of the game? A lot of the guides I read on these forums said to move fast and conquer a lot of neutral territories at the start of the game. I didn't know where any are, so I had trouble with that. I searched the forums and Google, but I didn't find anything.

My only game at the moment is with Rohan, because I read it is a good starter faction because it starts out overpowered compared to Isengard. I wasn't really feeling it though. It was all I could do to scrape together surplus units from all my settlements and build all available units to create one army with about a half stack. I moved it close to isengard, and saw a half stack Isengard army in the field, and both of the visible Isengard cities with half stacks. That small field of vision saw forces roughly equal to that of my entire nation of 8ish cities, and I assume they had even more beyond my vision. I've read about all these advantages the AI gets, but that just seems like overkill, especially for someone only playing on M/M. Is there any way to ramp up unit production so that if I'm attacked early in the game it won't be the end of me?

Now, about the battle system. My last Total War experience was Rome, and the battle system seems way different. First of all, everything seems less deadly. Fights between units are resolved far slower, arrows don't seem to take as much of a toll, and cavalry charges barely take out anyone with the intial charge. They seem to be better in a slugfest, so I'm not complaining too much. Also, it seems to me that the generals in this game are terrible. In Rome, one general unit with 18 would have wiped the floor with 120 grunts with javelins. The intial charge would've killed 20-30 depending on unit density, and enough would have died soon after to make them route pretty fast. In TATW, I charged ~120 orc snaga javilineers(I know that's not what they're called, but I can't remember the name) with my 18 general unit and the impact killed about 4 and I killed about 20 more before all my cavalry died. My normal cavalry units seem to be similarly ineffective, and I'm Rohan. I thought my cavalry were supposed to be awesome. Am I just using them wrong?

Morale also seems to be through the roof in this game. I had a militia unit battle Guards of Orthanc, and they still survived to 14/76 without routing. They would've got to 40ish or 50ish before running in Rome. Other units last just as long or longer before routing, yet they report wavering morale about 20 or so kills beforehand. Is this how it is in vanilla? I didn't really play vanilla other than the tutorial before coming to this game, so I'm not sure. If units last this long, it also doesn't seem as worthwhile to purposely get troops with high morale.

Sorry for the wall of text, and the ranting. I probably have more questions, but I can't think of them off the top of my head. If anyone can answer these, thanks ahead of time.

- For a map of the start of the campaign, check this topic:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=463051

Note it's not the first, but the one a few posts below the 1st post.



- Not without cheating. Yet, if you start off right away with blitzing, you can possibly take down Isengard in 20/30 turns on vh/vh even. In order to understand the game, you need to know a little about the scripts. On top of a script that gives the AI extra money each turn, the AI can't go completely broke which means the moment a campaign progresses, the AI will simply continue to churn out units, until stopped. Apart from that, the AI can get extra troops if you trigger a settlement with a garrison script (the moment you start to besiege that settlement, extra troops spawn inside. It takes some experience to know which ones have it) and some factions spawn extra troops the moment you take a specific settlement or is whittled down to only a few regions.

The key with Rohan is to keep attacking with the troops you start with and vanquish the enemy before he has a chance to build up or regroup. No matter what you do, the game will assume you know how to gain victories without gaining too much losses, so you should be able to fight numerous battles with your armies. Note that general's bodyguard units replenish their losses over turn, cavalry being very powerful in this mod and that Rohan specialises in Cavalry. Isengard fields quite some spearmen at the start, but if you can occupy them, you're free to charge into their backs and then run away. Repeat until done.

On M/M, units don't tend to run too often, yet it's possible. There are plenty of units in the game that cause some extra fear, there are burning arrows that cause fear, general's dread decreases morale and some characters have special abilities that cause a decreased or increased morale as well. Apart from that, units don't like to get slaughtered, flanked or being tired. Some special units will never rout, like trolls and Mumakil.

[Ulidian]

- Isengard fields quite some spearmen at the start, but if you can occupy them, you're free to charge into their backs and then run away. Repeat until done.

My experience with Wargs and Rhudaur Scout mercenaries is that some of them die every time I charge into the enemy's front, so...have you experienced that when attacking from the back and then immediately withdrawing, your cavalry unit takes little or no losses?

[Alkarin]

Mumakil can run Amok though.

[Incredible Bulk]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...59#post5127559 check this guide out
The single easiest battle scenario in the entire game is to defend a city with ballista towers as long as you have 3-4 cavalry units to sally. NO supporting army will be able to get to you before the attackers will be at the walls, and as Rohan you simply do NOT have the infantry to hold the walls. The key then is to make sure they never get to the walls, and Rohan is very good at that.

Here is what you do. Load your walls with archers. Look at the attacking force and decide if you want to funnel them to the gate so you can drop oil, or if you think you can handle the whole group with arrows and towers. There will almost always be 2-4 siege equipement, usually some ladders, a tower or two and a ram. Have your cavalry right by the front gate to start, and charge them out ASAP, assigning 1 unit to each piece except the ram. As soon as the cavalry makes contact, give it 1-2 seconds for any charge bonus to happen, then run like hell away from the gates. Whatever units were manning the siege equipement ALWAYS drop it and chase you, but they can not catch you on foot. They do however run past 100 archers peppering them, get 50 meters then decide to go back to their tower, again all the while getting peppered.

As soon as they get back to their equipement, charge them again and repeat. In the meantime, let the ram keep coming. Its slow, so towers may destroy it, but if not, see how battle is going then decide if you want to charge it or not. if not have a few infantry set on guard mode. If you can, have a cavalry charge the ram just like the other pieces, but if you don't have enough, its OK. Once the gate is smashed, the AI lines up in single file to come in. All archers still are peppering the heck out of them, and now you charge and retreat with the cavalry that is still roaming outside the walls.

I LOVE the invasion on Rohan, because using these tactics I usually have a general who gets 4-5 heroic victories in a row, a bunch of gold experience units, and I know exactly where to expect attacks.

In summary, ALWAYS let them attack the city, charge and retreat with cavalry and funnel the enemy to the gate if necessary. I only play vh/vh and this works about 95% of the time. Good luck!!

[FC Groningen]

In 3.2, the invasions don't start right away like it did in the previous games. Also, with Rohan being a cavalry heavy faction, I would recommend to fight outside the settlement and on the open fields as much as possible. Cavalry and AI in general tends to be glitchy in settlements and you more often than not can't get the charge bonus if you're using cavalry inside a settlement. The usual "hammer and anvil" tactic should usually suffice with Rohan, taken that you know how to execute it.

[sharkbait459]

Thanks for the quick responses. I'll probably end up starting a new campaign with this new information, thanks a lot! One more quick thing. I got a message saying it was going to take 10 years or so to get better troops on the field and then a further decade to get the best troops. Is that for everyone, or just Rohan? Also, how many turns constitute 1 year?

[Garriath]

Welcome to the TATW community! You raise a lot of valid questions, and I'll try going through them piece by piece.

To start with, though, I should probably warn you that TATW, while being a fantastic mod, is intended to be a real challenge for people who have played M2TW for years. It's certainly not a reason to not play the game, but it might make things more challenging for you. Having played RTW should at least help you out, though.

I've a couple suggestions, though: try playing a quick campaign in M2TW vanilla to get used to the updates from Rome. Otherwise, play TATW on Easy/Easy, where the enemy morale takes a serious hit. Finally, consider installing one of the secondary mods that lets you delete the garrison script and the stack spam script, both of which exist to make the game as challenging as it is.

First of all, is there a map somewhere that shows the state of Middle-Earth at the start of the game? A lot of the guides I read on these forums said to move fast and conquer a lot of neutral territories at the start of the game. I didn't know where any are, so I had trouble with that. I searched the forums and Google, but I didn't find anything.

Try this map here. It's a tiny bit outdated (a few provinces have been added or modified since then), but it should work fine for what you need it for.

My only game at the moment is with Rohan, because I read it is a good starter faction because it starts out overpowered compared to Isengard. I wasn't really feeling it though. It was all I could do to scrape together surplus units from all my settlements and build all available units to create one army with about a half stack. I moved it close to isengard, and saw a half stack Isengard army in the field, and both of the visible Isengard cities with half stacks. That small field of vision saw forces roughly equal to that of my entire nation of 8ish cities, and I assume they had even more beyond my vision. I've read about all these advantages the AI gets, but that just seems like overkill, especially for someone only playing on M/M. Is there any way to ramp up unit production so that if I'm attacked early in the game it won't be the end of me?

What you're saying makes sense. Personally, I'm of the opinion that Rohan is one of the easiest factions, but that is contingent upon the player having a good grounding in TATW strategy and tactics. Knowing both where the enemy cities are and how to properly use your troops is important. With Rohan, the first 20 turns are pretty critical- you can wipe Isengard out in that time, but if you wait longer, the battle gets harder.

Now, about the battle system... First of all, everything seems less deadly. Fights between units are resolved far slower, arrows don't seem to take as much of a toll, and cavalry charges barely take out anyone with the intial charge. They seem to be better in a slugfest, so I'm not complaining too much. Also, it seems to me that the generals in this game are terrible. In Rome, one general unit with 18 would have wiped the floor with 120 grunts with javelins. The intial charge would've killed 20-30 depending on unit density, and enough would have died soon after to make them route pretty fast. In TATW, I charged ~120 orc snaga javilineers(I know that's not what they're called, but I can't remember the name) with my 18 general unit and the impact killed about 4 and I killed about 20 more before all my cavalry died. My normal cavalry units seem to be similarly ineffective, and I'm Rohan. I thought my cavalry were supposed to be awesome. Am I just using them wrong?

So, you're right that combat takes longer than RTW or M2TW vanilla. Units defense scores are typically higher, so you've a little more time for tactics once melee starts (battles are still much faster than ETW or NTW). This is much more of a TATW thing than a M2TW thing, but once you're used to it, it stops being something you really notice.

As far as horses go, cavalry is without a doubt the most powerful units in TATW. When used properly, three or four general units (especially Rohan's) can easily take down 1000 troops. However, learning to use cavalry isn't exactly intuitive. The key is setting up a charge right; this is something M2TW is pick about in a way that RTW wasn't. Consider googling how to do it; a video would be helpful. Basically, you need to have your cavalry facing the direction they'll be charging, ideally stopped. If their lances are pointing down (towards the enemy), they're ready to charge. When they connect, if the enemies start flying in the air, you'll know you made a proper charge. You'll also know because you'll annihilate a vast portion of the enemy troop with no casualties of your own. If your charge doesn't work (and your enemies don't start flying), the best thing that you can do is pull your cavalry away and try again. You're right in observing that cavalry can hold its own in melee, but that's not their optimal use. I should also point out that, contrary to what you might expect, Rohan actually doesn't exactly have the best cavalry. They have the most numerous cavalry, but the High Elves, for instance, have a better general unit than Rohan does.

As for what you said about archers being less effective, I don't entirely remember RTW, but play one of the Elven factions and then let me know if you think they're underpowered .

Morale also seems to be through the roof in this game. I had a militia unit battle Guards of Orthanc, and they still survived to 14/76 without routing. They would've got to 40ish or 50ish before running in Rome. Other units last just as long or longer before routing, yet they report wavering morale about 20 or so kills beforehand. Is this how it is in vanilla? I didn't really play vanilla other than the tutorial before coming to this game, so I'm not sure. If units last this long, it also doesn't seem as worthwhile to purposely get troops with high morale.

You're totally right that morale in the game is very, very high. This is especially true when you play on the harder difficulties, where enemies get massive morale bonuses. This doesn't mean that routes don't happen. It does mean, however, that to make an enemy route, you need to create a sort of "perfect storm." Killing an enemy general, charging an exposed rear or flank, using fire arrows, and suddenly causing massive casualties (ideally with a cavalry charge), when combined together, forces the enemy to retreat, making them easy pickings for your Rohan cavalry. Again, however, this is a TATW feature, not a M2TW feature. Being used to TATW means that I usually make the enemy route in M2TW before they ever reach my lines .

Keep playing for a bit, and you'll totally get the hang of things. However, I'd like to make a suggestion for you: try playing a different faction than Rohan. The best faction for newbies, I think, is Harad. You've got a huge amount of territory and nice income. You've got reliably good infantry, archers, and cavalry, and some fun units with the Mumakil. You don't need to worry about outside invasion, so you can focus on attacking Gondor however you want while learning how TATW works. If you prefer a different faction, I can recommend the High Elves (safe, excellent troops, but a poor economy), Eriador (a little vulnerable, and slightly crummy troops, but a very fun, interesting game) and Rhun (awesome units and economy, but you often need to fight two enemies at once.)

Anyway, hope this helps, and let us know if you have any other questions!

EDIT: Woo! Ninja'ed five times. Sharkbait, in answer to your last question, everyone has the delay in getting elite troops (we call it the "barracks event" here. Typically, your best troops don't unlock until turn 40.

[sharkbait459]

Garriath, thanks so much. Your information was extremely helpful, especially the advice about cavalry. I'll also try a Harad campaign for practice before switching back. I have seen a lot of people say to get an alliance with Rhun as Harad so you only have to focus on one front, and that seems sound advice, but how necessary is it? I was under the impression that the evil factions were all kind of "on the same team" against all of the good factions. Will Rhun actually attack Harad without an alliance?

[Cyricist]

Sharkbait, since no one else has said it, I'm going to: I highly recommend you install the MOS, or Massive Overhaul Submod.

Link to the MOS thread: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=571022

There are instructions on how to install it there, too. I'd also recommend you install the MOS Expanded Map, and MOS Expanded Ancillaries submods, which are not part of the main submod. It sounds like a lot, but it's pretty straightforward if you read the first post in that thread.

I feel this submod dramatically changes the game for the better. The TATW mod is amazing and awesome, but pretty much every complaint/thing I wished was different, gets rectified in the MOS submod. It's a collection of various submods, such as the ability to reforge the ancient Silvan/High Elven kingdoms, being able to directly aid your allies, improving many generals to make them better, adding something like ~50 more (lore-appropriate) provinces to the map, etc etc. Tons of good stuff.

Anyway, no one else mentioned it, so I thought I would. Good luck with your campaign!

Oh, and if you do install this submod, you'd need to start a new campaign, as your old Rohan one would no longer be compatible.

EDIT: Regarding your question about Rhun vs Harad, both Rhun and Harad start allied to Mordor. This makes it more likely for them to ally with each other, than to declare war against each other. However, it's by no means a guarantee. The game will tend towards a Good vs Evil spread, but you could definitely see some strange alliances happening. For example, in the game I'm currently playing of the MOS submod, Isengard & Dunland somehow struck an alliance with the Lorien elves, and all three of them are pillaging Rohan mercilessly now. I'm playing the High Elves and just trying to establish a strong border for when these traitorous dogs turn their eyes north, towards me and my ally, Eriador.

[sharkbait459]

I'll definately check it out. Thanks!

[Mhaedros]

As been said earlier, be sure to take the fight in the field. Rohan just doesn't have the units to either defend or attack settlements, but their cavalry will break most enemies as long as you bring enough.

[FC Groningen]

Yeah, each time you pull your cavalry, some die, but if you do it fast enough, your losses should be limited. Make sure they run away and don't casually stroll away. Also, wargs and scouts don't have much defensive skill, no shields like most cavalry and probably don't have much armour, which makes them die faster.

[Ulidian]

Dank je

[Ulidian]

Dank je