Re: Guide: Turtling in TATW and MOS (hints & tips)
Hi onurlu06, weel met again
for Mordor, please have a look here: this guide is for TATW 3.2 and is pretty old at the moment, still it can give you some good food for thought about what to do with Mordor.
Furthermore, let me add few lines on Mordor as an experienced MOS player.
- start to save money since the beginning, from the very first turn, you need to:
1. move all the generals you have in Mordor (Nazguls included) to Ithilien;
2. disband all the regular units you have in Mordor that are farer than 4/5 turns from Ithilien, move all the rest to East Osgiliath;
3. use Kamul and the other buddy to conquer the rebel settlements between Dol Guldur and the Morannon, but do not take any other settlement in Mirkwood;
4. take the fort south of East Osgiliath and take Hennet (be careful about ambush);
so far for the first moves, then:
1. build only mines, hunting camps and roads to increase income
2. do not recruit any regular unit as long as you still have the ones you begin with
3. orc generals are bad governors, therefore only use them in battle and use cheap snagas to garrison your settlements
4. do not accept/adopt more generals as long as you still have the ones you begin with
5. rise taxes at the maximum you can, everywhere. No orcish village or town into Mordor will ever grow to something interesting, better to get some extra money now and use them to build up an army to conquer Gondor, where the money is.
then, it depends on how you want to develop your campaign, but if I intended you well you like to turtle, therefore:
- Nazguls are AWESOME troops, they can help you crush Gondorian troops easily, especially if backed up with your swarming orcs. Have two half stacks with 4 nazguls each and 6/10 orchish units in the Ithilien, use them to crush any army Gondor might send in.
- Nazguls works the best in open field battles, therefore do not take Cair Andros yet (but camp in front of it), same with East Osgiliath, retreat if they outnumber you during a siege and defend south Ithilien with another half stack.
- there is a lot of half stack fighting in this stage; you'll need to replace often the loss from regular orcs; do not retrain them, it's not worth the time you have to wait, better to group up survivors ("M" key in the campaing map IIRC) and bring into the army new fresh units.
- basic battle strategy: use orcs (everything you have, even snagas are good if used in loose formation) to block the line of Gondor and charge/retreat/charge/retreat etc with the Nazguls; if possible aim at the enemy general with your charges, but beware that Gondor usually deploy one unit of Fountain Guard in the back and they can butcher your Ringwraights.
- at about turn 50/60 you should have enough money to maintain two stacks, composed by 4 nazguls each + 12/16 orcs batallions; once more, cheap units works fine (but do not use only snagas), then use Invasions at your advantage and aim to the big targets (Minas Tirith possibly). Once you have conquered the hearth of Gondor (turn 100 or so, depending on skill on battlefield and luck of course), you can plan forward to conquer whole ME;
there would be much to add, but I still hope this will help