Relentless orcs attacking Gondor

[Komnenos1100]

So started my Gondor campaign, and set out to take East osgiliath, i easily conquered it but over the coming turns stacks after stacks of mordor troops attacked the city, i held off about 10 attacks but not being able to retrain troops and not having my economy fully developed i couldn't send in reinforcements it soon fell.
So i edited descr_strat so i had a reasonable army to defend and counter attack.
Anyone else have trouble with the relentless stacks of mordor?

[Loki_999]

What difficulty? Any mods?

[Komnenos1100]

What difficulty? Any mods?

Just MOS, which most people use

[ThorHa]

If you are playing unmodded I still recommend taking a look at the faction guides for Gondor - the basic principles still apply for the 3.2 version.

In fact early Mordor stacks are cannon fodder if you organize your Gondor armies right - centered around militia archers and militia cavalry. In 1.4 I took full early Mordor stacks with a bit more than 1/2 Gondor stacks and was confident to win with minimal losses. If you have difficulties in battle I recommend to take a look on the Let´s play videos on youtube, there are plenty for TATW. And of course never ever rely on auto resolve ...

Regards,
Thorsten

[Komnenos1100]

If you are playing unmodded I still recommend taking a look at the faction guides for Gondor - the basic principles still apply for the 3.2 version.

In fact early Mordor stacks are cannon fodder if you organize your Gondor armies right - centered around militia archers and militia cavalry. In 1.4 I took full early Mordor stacks with a bit more than 1/2 Gondor stacks and was confident to win with minimal losses. If you have difficulties in battle I recommend to take a look on the Let´s play videos on youtube, there are plenty for TATW. And of course never ever rely on auto resolve ...

I dont have any problem, its just the amount of half the full sized stacks...

Regards,
Thorsten

[Komnenos1100]

I dont have any problem, its just the amount of half the full sized stacks...

[Wizad]

You said you are using MOS. So I'm going to assume that you are playing with the Eastern Shadows script.

TATW is the most difficult mod for M2TW, it was designed for people who thought that Medieval 2 was too easy.

If you are playing on VH/VH then you are playing the hardest faction on the hardest difficulty settings with scripts activated to make it more challenging.

Good luck with your campaign!

[Goth]

Best bet is to have faramir take henneth annun in the early moves, this has the advantage of dividing mordors attacks between henneth annun and east osgiliath, henneth annun is very easy to defend and takes a lot of pressure off east osgiliath allowing you to use troops from minas tirith and west osgiliath to reinforce east osgiliath. I then use all my other troops in gondor to blitz harad while I hold off mordor as harad becomes very powerful late in the game. Even on VH/VH I am finding that by turn 100 I have conquered Harad and am infinitely more powerful than mordor. Its a shame that this strategy works so well because now the game is too easy as Gondor and I am modding the game to make mordor even more powerful.
Playing MOS with garrison script, eastern shadows, rhuduar warriors, immortal nazgul but not immortal heroes activated
Hope this helps
Goth

[Komnenos1100]

Best bet is to have faramir take henneth annun in the early moves, this has the advantage of dividing mordors attacks between henneth annun and east osgiliath, henneth annun is very easy to defend and takes a lot of pressure off east osgiliath allowing you to use troops from minas tirith and west osgiliath to reinforce east osgiliath. I then use all my other troops in gondor to blitz harad while I hold off mordor as harad becomes very powerful late in the game. Even on VH/VH I am finding that by turn 100 I have conquered Harad and am infinitely more powerful than mordor. Its a shame that this strategy works so well because now the game is too easy as Gondor and I am modding the game to make mordor even more powerful.
Playing MOS with garrison script, eastern shadows, rhuduar warriors, immortal nazgul but not immortal heroes activated
Hope this helps
Goth

I will try this

[Bladvak]

Think ahead and don't let Mordor besiege your cities. Wherever possible, attack the enemy before all of his units are grouped, it is far better to fight 2 battles against 1000 men each than 1 big battle against 2000 men.

Also, at the beginning recruit as many archers as possible (Carn Andros and Henneth Annun are your archer-provinces in the beginning), with some melee units in order to keep the line. Then, in the battle map, have them fire fire arrows, they will lower the morale of the incoming units and make them rout. With cavalry, take out ballistas or catapults , enemy archers and mop up the routing units.

the ultimate goal for the first 20 turns or so will be taking Minas Ithil and holding the crossing between Carn Andros and Henneth Annun (so you'll need 2 armies, not necessarily full-stacked). If you can't hold Minas Ithil, destroy every building that you can and retreat. Just don't let the armies from the Black Gate join those from Minas Ithil.

[Wizad]

You can make your empire look like this within the first couple of turns:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://i.imgur.com/Cw1GJcQ.png

Siege Cair Andros with Faramir in the first turn, siege E. Osgiliath with Boromir. Move your armies in the middle part of your realm southwards to take that settlement Harad gets. Move the garrisons from the western settlements to that western rebel city. Optionally use a boat to move the forces from Dol Amroth to that island, and send a couple of units to Druedan Forest.

After these initial landgrabs, the real war begins. Prepare to fight stacks coming from the Black Gate, Minas Morgul and Harad. Remember that around turn 15, the first Strong Mordor stack will spawn! It is vital that you keep the pressure up on Harad, you cannot fight both Harad and Mordor once they start to go on you at full capacity.

[Macilrille]

Welcome to TATW, we all went through that. You will learn, lots of guides and a few threads here in the main forum with advice. Gondor is not so bad unless you turtle.

[Komnenos1100]

Welcome to TATW, we all went through that. You will learn, lots of guides and a few threads here in the main forum with advice. Gondor is not so bad unless you turtle.

Not new to TATW, i have just never really played as Gondor.
managed to kill the witch king and now the invasion armies hitting me left and right!

[CatoTheYounger]

Not new to TATW, i have just never really played as Gondor.
managed to kill the witch king and now the invasion armies hitting me left and right!

I have been playing Gondor on mos VH/VH with eastern shoadows and all the evil fation bonuses. Also no imortal heroes.

I have had trial and error and had to restart a couple times but now i have the hang of it. For sure you need to battle Mordor for Ithilien as much as you can and use Faramir and his rangers regiments to slaughter small orc bands as they are seperately trying to unite to form a large stack. Build up the Barracks and archery compounds in Osgiliath and Cair Andros and capture the two Ithilen outpost oposite Mordor. The lower one you may be able to leave alone as it has its own rangers in it that often divert and wipe out Mordor stacks. All the while run raids with your Generals BG raid stacks up and down the Harad coast to destroy their building and economy. You don't have to hold them in the early game just hit burn and run. And yes you should have all the Gondor rebel settlements conquered as they improve the economy and often give you free units from the council of nobles.

When eastern shadows starts moving in make sure you have at least one or more marines of Pelargir in Minis Tirith, East Osgiliath and Cair Andros. This will offset the Mumaks that travel with the Mordor eastern shadow stacks. Hold them back with skirmish off and auto fire off. When the mumaks move in keep the marines free to empty their javelns on the Mumaks. Watch the mumaks fall and go from an army destroyer to a non issue. Use any left over javelins on the Olog Hai. I prefer to hold off Mordor from owning anything outside Mordor save Dagorlad while i ware down and conquer Harad. Eventualy your Harad raids have to turn into conquest and thats when Generals BG raids wont cut it anymore and you need the armies of Dol Amroth joined with those of Pelargir to combine to march through Harad and start capturing and holding settlements.

Playing as Gondor on Mos on VH/VH with eastern shadows is SUPPOSED to be as dire a situation for Gondor is it was in the lore. Forget cheats and changing the script take the challenge and go through the trial and error until you think you can turn the long defeat into Gondor's renewl. Dont forget later in the game when Arnor is reforged Aragorn can join if you want and you will have a new ally although it wont be close enough to help yet. Enjoy the challenge don't cheat but fight!

[Loki_999]

Something nobody else has mentioned yet. As long as Harad holds Umbar you will get hit by Corsair raids as well from time to time. When you are ready to go against Harad I recommend jumping on a boat and taking Umbar first. That will also whack their economy hard (not that it matters so much because the computer cheats like buggery) and will stop the raids.

[Arindur]

The AI seems to be pretty good at defending against Mordor as Gondor, they usually get overrun only by Harad's pressure once they get too strong.

Taking the faraway settlements of Harad and Rhun is very effective at thwarting their latent "we suddenly have 15 full stacks" and pretty easy if you can perform a surprise penetration from the rear. This way, the stacks will have to hurry at you from their front lines and they cannot properly regenerate with reduced settlements, though a surprise army can pop up from nowhere (had it happen when playing against Harad and Silvans).

[knight of meh]

pretty easy if you can perform a surprise penetration from the rear.

other people see the funny side to this right?

also don't compare Gondor defence as Ai to your defence plan , remember if hes an AI he cheats on all sorts free stacks popping up if he is defending a key settlement(if you choose that) , money out of thin air to recruit stuff always , as well as population and happiness bonuses to buildings that you don't get , and lets not forget the last stand Stack or maybe even a horde at the end .. yeah this little rant ended up not being Gondor specific sorry

[Macilrille]

Turtle for real challenge ;-)

Do not be afraid of the Eastern Shadows dreadstacks, they have no generals, so they are easy to rout- except the Mûmakil and Ologs, for them you need Marines and Axemen of Lossarnach respectively, though a Ballistae is even able to make the Mûmaks run amok before they reach your line, so get a Ballistamaker fast.

Try and create a general with high dread and you can actually rout the infantry pretty fast with a charge from behind or on a flank combined with fire-arrows when they have suffered some losses.

Gondor is bad, but I hear Dale, Isengard and the two Ork factions are worse. Take the challenge, do not cheat- improve.

[Arindur]

Gondor is bad, but I hear Dale, Isengard and the two Ork factions are worse. Take the challenge, do not cheat- improve.

You mean improvise? He could:

1. Migrate somewhere and let some faction's AI take care of Mordor

or

2. Trade one of his settlements for an evil faction's settlement, wait until it goes rebel and then re-take it and use it to trade for another evil faction's settlement, thus weakening them.

or

3. Join an evil faction, though it's easier the other way around.

[Macilrille]

No I mean improve his play. perhaps trying Gondor on a lower dif setting. That is what I did and how I learned. It is also how I test new factions, on a lower setting.