Lost the battle, won the war!

**Loki_999** · March 27, 2013, 03:58 AM

Funny thing happened to me. Playing Dwarves for the first time, making assault on Moria. Army was not ideal, badly outnumbered (yeah, stupid i know), and was trying to be clever having some siege along to deal with the Balrog. The OoTMM are down to two territories by this point, Moria and Ost-in-<something>. I wasn't worried about Ost-in-? because even though they had a full stack with Wargs and more there i'd just secured an agreement with the Silvan elves to attack the OoTMM, and expected them to handle that territory soon.

But Moria had an almost full stack with some good units inside (not to mention the Balrog) and their General had more stars than mine.

I tried to be clever by positioning most of my siege on the hill to the right and shoot down into Moria itself as i was attacking the gate. However, i presume by design, my siege could barely hit anything in the city due to the walls and stuff (i think they killed like a total of 20-30 units), so it was left to my guys, largely made up of Dwarf Nobility and some Iron Crossbowmen and a Ballista to take the front gates.

The battle went badly, and the Balrog didn't even venture out from the center... i think he knew he didn't need to bother. Dwarves are vastly superior to Orcs one on one, but the numbers were against me.

However, a stroke of luck. The enemy general took point and i killed him. With the timer ticking down, and knowing even if i could win the battle, i'd never do it in time, so i decided to be satisfied with killing the general and withdraw before taking more losses.

So, withdrew and ended the battle.

To my everlasting joy, i discovered this was the last "royalty" of the orcs. I get the message that i have wiped them out and the remaining units have gone rebel. Gone is the big full stack near Ost-in-?, and gone is the full star general from Moria.

I can now take my time, bring down reinforcements from the north, and assault Moria at my leisure. Isengard is being handily dealt with by the combined forces of Eriador, High Elves, and Rohan (Isengard is really getting a pounding), and the only evil faction i am bordering are Rhun, who seem to be focusing on Dale for the moment. The Orcs of Gundabad are already gone as well.

To top it all off, a few rounds earlier i had got the One Ring from an Orc General, and am on my way to Rivendell for a meeting there.... things are looking good!

(For those who are interested, i'm playing on M/M. I'm not so hardcore and not a masochist).

**Flinn** · March 27, 2013, 04:28 AM

Basically, this happened because you killed their last family member, which means the faction has been destroyed, so the rest gone rebel (and the original OotMM troops should be substituted by general rebel units, I think it is scripted)

In TATW it only happend to me with OotMM (twice with Eriador, once with HE), probably because they have only few generals at the beginning and for some reason they do not get more during the campaign.

If playing MOS (in which you have dread stacks spamming when you conquer the last settlement from an enemy), if you manage to kill the family members and so sending the rest of the settlement rebels the dread stack won't spam (or at least it happened to me)

good luck for the rest of the campaign

**jthewonder** · March 27, 2013, 08:32 AM

Good read, and good luck with the rest of the campaign

**HandKing** · March 27, 2013, 10:58 AM

Sounds like a good choice on the withdrawal!
Good luck with the one ring!

**The Mouth** · March 27, 2013, 02:41 PM

This happens all too often, OotMM could really use some more generals.

**Loki_999** · March 27, 2013, 04:22 PM

Golum stole the one ring after i had been to the meeting at Rivendell :-(

But on the up side, i've just got Moria after sieging for like 8 turns and forcing them to come out and face me in the foothills.

Hehe, slow and steady wins the race!

**Viskahn** · March 28, 2013, 06:21 AM

When I was playing my HE Vanilla campaign the dwarves lost their generals very early on (about turn 20) meaning I took over their western territories, that's the only really early one I've seen.

had an interesting balrog experience the other day though, a fantastic bug i thought. I was playing as the dwarves, had wiped out OOTMM and the Balrog and was building up Khazad Dum fairly happily when someone sieges Moria. For some reason the Balrog script comes up again... I then noticed that the OOTMM faction had been resurrected and upon sending out a spy from Khazad Dum, I noticed that the Balrog was indeed back, and hence why the faction had ressed.

Ok I thought, just a Balrog by itself, not a big deal. I noticed however that it was listed as the faction leader (since it was the only live unit from OOTMM). My spy report showed it as being full stats and everything (eg command, fear, authority etc) and it even had a little biography "trait" like most heroes do (this I found odd as it meant that TATW has provisioned for a Balrog general unit, whereas it normally spawns as just a normal unit). Then a thought occurred to me... If Balrog is the general, what is the bodyguard unit? After a few more spy attempts I found my answer - more Balrogs. A Balrog king with a Balrog retinue, 102 of them no less (as I'm on huge unit size). So a single army of 102 Balrogs roaming around merrily. Hmm. Oh, and since they are a bodyguard they replenish between battles. Sensational.

I decided that taking him on head on was probably a poor idea so I remained neutral and tracked him with my spy while devising an alternate strategy - Assassination. My spy followed the Balrogs past rivendell until he eventually settled down next to Bree. My Assassin moved in and on the first attempt (with a 5% su cess chance) the Balrog was slain, and OOTMM was once again destroyed.

My only regret is I didn't take a save game or screenshots of this, I was going to but truthfully didn't think my Assassin was going to nail it so easily.