Evil Isengard - tips and tricks, help me please

[Funeh]

Hi so my favorite evil faction is Isengard but i think its maybe the hardest campaing there. Because you are surrounded by enemies only. I read the Isengard guide but that counts with ceasing fire with rohan and making aliances with gondor/rohan, but that seems not very pro lore to me. So i thought is there a way to win the campaing by conquering the enemies?

When I start I usually take rebel settlements ASAP (both Tarbads, Talsir, Fangorn, and two more settlements to south-west). Fighting only Rohan is quite easy, but then I always get attacked by High Elves and Eriador and I just cant afford to have 3 armies on 3 fronts.

In my current campaing, i have starting settlements + Tarbads, I lost Fangorn to Rahon, and south-west settlements to High Elves. I took 2 settlements from Rohan, but here I am stuck as Rohan keeps sending full stacks on me and I cant move on. I dont have problem defeating double size rohan army but I am about turn 100 and only thing that is happening is that I keep destroying Rohan stacks, but cant move on because eventualy I have to retrain my units, and If I take settlements i cant defend it because i dont have money for keeping large armies because I have already defending armies against Eriador and HE.

Am I doing something wrong or this war is just taking really really really long? Maybe should I turn my focus not to Rohan but for Eriador or HE? Sorry for the long post and thanks for advices.

[DrDragun]

I am playing Isengard right now on H/H with no diplomacy to the good factions, and it took me 120 turns to get to a stable map position. The problem is that nearly EVERY town needs a garrison which kills your money. You have very few money maker towns forming any kind of a heartland.

One gambit that worked really well for grinding Rohan stacks was to skip the outer settlements and take Edoras and use it as bait, because the custom settlement is a giant hill, 1 road wide, and absurdly easy to hold with pikemen. 2 units of pikemen on the first hill can hold a Rohan army of 2000 men. And Rohan will always attack it instead of your other settlements, if you keep the garrison light (say 6 units plus Sauruman). Meanwhile you will be gaining profits since Edoras can produce 1200+ per turn even on low taxes (especially after you have the culture for free upkeep) and you deny the production of AoR units to Rohan. To take this settlement, you will need a half stack to continue defending Isengard and another 2/3 stack to deal with the garrison script at Edoras and discourage meddling while you cross their borders.

Other than than, I expanded North and West, but did not find a good border to form a stable turtling point. If you are strong enough to take Staddle-Bree-Amon Sul, then they can form a stable stronghold in the north, but this requires significant resources. Then the Tharbads and Byring become ungarrisoned profit centers. Against the elves I have the coastal town below Athilin (Eryn something), as well as the castle Argond. Unfortunately, both need a half-stack garrison and are not profitable. I didn't start turning a profit until I got my stable position with all of the towns West of Helm's Deep.

Keep at it. Always keep Isengard producing units. Typically I try to do most production there because I only have the heavy armor upgrades in 1 city. The good thing about Isengard is that you don't have a long marching distance to your enemies, and you have a great training center right next to the front lines. If you are persistent you can overcome all enemies!

[ElvenKind]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-2-VH-VH-Guide

[Funeh]

ElvenKind: I mentioned that I read this guide but I dont like to play like this because I like to play lore-wise.

DrDragun: Ok I think that tactics focusing on Edoras first might work, i thought about it earlier, but I wasnt sure if I could conquer it... with edoras garrison scprit + 2-3 rohan full stacks might come to defend too, i dont think it will be easy. But I guess I will have to try.

The bad part is as you say that you must keep almost all cities garrisoned since they are all bordering with your enemies and that just takes away a lot of money for creating large conquering armies.

[DrDragun]

Another trick which I considered using... if you reach a settlement which you want to defend as your border with the High Elves, then conquer the next town past that and gift it to Eriador. Now you have borders with only Eriador, not the High Elves, and the elves will no longer send conquering armies to you. You might even be able to convince Eriador to ceasefire for a while when you gift the town. And if not, you can at least fight Breeland militia with better efficiency than those Quendi and safely keep smaller garrisons. Many towns in this area are small villages such as Athilin which you would not want to hold as a border anyway.

[Funeh]

mmm seems like good idea but I like to play lore-wise and this is not the thing I would like to do I guess. Also if I ceasefire with some factions, they can just attack me after like 3 turns, and I think they will, since we all know how the AI works.

[Funeh]

Okay so I decided to go straight to Helms Deep with Saruman where i defeated about 4000 rohan men (although half of their army was defeated due to bug, they just didnt reinforce and came after battle as destroyed)....

After I took Helms, sauron called an invasion on Edoras. So I took a general from Isengard with a decent army (3/4 stack) and joined invasion and marched right to Edoras, There I see about 3 Rohan full stacks wandering in Edoras region, but there is one unit right next to edoras which I attacked and Edoras army appeard as reinforcmenet. However when I start a battle it crashes after a while saying some "unspecified error". This is a very important since I can avoid Rohans full stacks, denying garrison script, fullfiling Invasion target and taking Edoras in just one battle. So any ideas how to get rid of the bug/error?


Anyway I realized that the way to destroy Rohan is not by taking settlement after settlement, but focusing on biggest settlements (Helms, Edoras) and catching generals. Anyway my campaing is on progress currently stuck on the bug, so we will see if this is the right tactics.

[DrDragun]

Nice work. Yeah, the reason I did this maneuver with Edoras was because I knew it would be profitable by itself even when not connected to my empire, and also would deny Rohan a major training area with high level barracks. If the same works for Helms Deep then great, and it is also a great custom settlement to defend on the battle map.

Unfortunately, the reinforcements bug is a known issue with this mod. Some maps it happens, some maps it doesn't. If there is another stack beside the city, you can try that one. Or try attacking from a different angle, which will place the reinforcements from a different corner of the map.

Another convenient thing about invasions though is that you can piggyback on an enemy attack if they are your allies. So run Grima down to Edoras and try to get alliance with all the factions attacking. When you attack Edoras, they will reinforce you on the battle map and you can direct them to "Aggressive Stance" and they will attack and take all the losses for the battle.

[Funeh]

unfortunately there is only one unit (not stack) next to edoras so I will try the different angle tomorrow.. I see there is no solution for that?

I could just siege Edoras , but then 2 full rohan stacks would attack me, i maybe would win but then again i wouldnt be able to defend the city after.

Well there are no other invasion armies (although Rhun and Mordor joined) near Edoras, since I reached the city about 2 turns after invasion was called.

[Funeh]

Im just confirming that by conquering Edoras and Helms deep, everything went much easier with Rohan, it is still not very fast, but Im slowly taking them down settlement by settlement... Although it is still kinda hard to defend from HE and FPOE. I am afraid that when I will delete Rohan, gondor and silvan elves might attack me too... I dont like to wage war all around me on multiple fronts.. After Rohan i will focus on HE and then on FPOE... after that it should be an easy task to conquer middle earth.

[DrDragun]

I dont like to wage war all around me on multiple fronts..

That is why Isengard is one of the hardest campaigns in TATW

[LuckyPistol]

It should be easy to avoid war with the Silvans, they're busy with Mordor and OotMM. However, HE and Eriador are going to need your full attention, so leave one stack in a newly conquered Rohan (probably Edoras) and let Gondor duke it out with Mordor and Harad.

Or, you could keep a stalemate with your northern enemies and help Mordor and harad conquer Gondor. Those port cities make quite a pretty penny

[Funeh]

LuckyPistol: Yeah I will be focusing on HE and Arnor after I will delete Rohan, since these are my victory conditions. I hope that mordor will keep Gondor and SE busy to not attack me.

DrDragun: Yeah, but its the only evil faction I like to play

anyway guys, how many turns I have to complete my victory condition? And for how many turns I can play the campaing at all?

[eugenioso]

well, i play MOS 1.61, so me texting here feels a bit off, but here are some tips:

(be aware MOS has different map and more settlements, as well as super good AI and other nasties)

- Ready your economy first. All factions in TATW and MOS start with a poor economy (even mordor or the dwarves), so you have to devote yourself to increasing your income with the usuals: low taxes for higher pop growth (the more people to tax, the better), roads, markets, ports, crop rotation, mines, etc. Do this with all your settlements.

- Dont try to go for the "movie Isengard". That means that, unlike the movie in which Isengard heavily outnumbered rohan, had a strong economy and sent 10000 fully plated uruk hai to conquer helms deep, you start outnumbered and with a poor economy, and even your best units are equals to theirs.

- Build units constantly at first. Snaga stalkers are great garrisons/damage soakers/cavalry speedbump, and skirmishers are the most cost effective unit in the game. If you have a mixed army, kill as many snagas as you want as you will always have more, and used them as Penal Batallions were used in ww2: suicidal attacks, first wave attacks or absorbing enemy charges, setting up the enemy for a countercharge.

- Wargs are the panzerfaust of Isengard: powerful one shot weapons, then they become useless. Keep them as a reserve for chasing down the enemy forces during retreats rather than, again, doing what movie Isengard did. Wargs vs rohan anything = dead wargs, and you cant replace them easily.

- Use Saruman as your main army's commander. He is far too valuable to be left behind in isengard to rot. Uruk armies led by captains are somewhat quite susceptible to morale shocks. Having Saru and his other orc commanders, ugluk and the other guy, all in one big stack is definitely the way to go.

- Start conquering the western part of rohan first, to secure your flank. While some players might go for an early rush of Helms deep or Edoras, ive found that with the garrison script in MOS as well as the spawning armies this becomes practically impossible, or at least phyrric in nature. garrison the west with snagas only, and conquer as far north as you can of all those rebel settlements there. Dont go fighting against Eriador or HE yet.

- Either kill any small army you see along the way, or you can do my strategy, which is siege a city, and the AI will send all of their forces to attack you, sparing you the trouble of hunting them down.

- Siege Helms deep, then Edoras. After those 2 fall, the enemy might spawn a superstack to give one final challenge. either conquer the rest of rohan or kill all their leaders, and you will have freedom of action.

[Funeh]

eugenioso: I am already playing the way you specify, so no new things to me. I am playing TW games for a quite while and I think im pretty good at battles. Anyway thank you!

I wish I could play MOS too, but i have problems downloading it

[Funeh]

My visions came true, when I made myself borders with Gondor, they immediately attacked me, so another front war is on. Rohan has about 3 settlements left on the East, so its a matter of time...
Arnor is quiet now, but HE are giving me hard time, they have 3 stacks wandering around my borders, they mostly never attack me, they wait only for good opportunities, and If i attack them, its very hard because they just camp on the hills and rain arrows on me, so I am avoiding attacking them. I just created archery range, so I can recruit uruk crossbows so I will make huge army of them and push them away hopefully.

a question is: when will I be able to train trolls? I have 8k population in Isengard, no buildings available to build, and next upgrade is on 30k population... that will take very long time...

[DrDragun]

No trolls. Berserkers perform well in their place and are trainable anywhere with a level 3 barracks. You can get spider mercenaries if you bring a general to Mirkwood. Berserkers actually beat trolls if you fight other evil factions, but that's mostly due to their multi-hitpoints directly countering trolls (they have 3x the durability of even the heaviest dwarves/elves assuming ~100% chance of 1hp removal per hit with high troll attack). Against regular units they perform equal to trolls.

Against the HE, use your vast empire to amass as many wargs as you can and hammer/anvil them down. In field battles, march 1-2 snaga skirmishers in spread formation ahead of your lines. They will soak the archer fire. Or try to limit battles to sieges and take your losses from indirect archer fire while fighting in the streets. Either way, you will just have to brute force them with your larger economy and production.

[Funeh]

OK i just wanted trolls because they are cool and huge. Berserkers fully armored and experienced are awesome tho, stats being something like 18attack and 15defense... I dont remember exactly.