Migration campaign

[Nigthawk]

First of all, hello I am new to this forum but not to total war or tatw. Recently I got bored with the usual Gondor campaign approach, keeping Mordor at bay while conquering Harad. I decided I would try something new and although it is not very lorewise I think a migration campaign will bring me a big and fun challenge. For the people who don't know what a migration campaign is, it is a campaign in which you gather all your armies together and move to the other side of the map and create a whole new empire while abandoning your old one The problem is I don't want to get in any big debts as my generals will develop bad traits and I don't really know which place is most suitable for migration.. If you have your own migration campaign stories I would gladly hear them and maybe you could give me some advice!

[DrDragun]

Well, how do you get rid of your old territories? Could you gift them to Rohan/Elves for 300-500g/turn for 20/30 turns to offset your costs?

My only campaigns close to your ideas were a migration campaign of Dwarves to Moria (failed badly, OotMM brought a serious flood of stacks after it was taken, and before I could change over the culture), as well as a sea invasion from the High Elves in Lindon to Umbar (but I did not give up my home territory). Was fun.

Gondor migration by land to Isengard could work. It's a great settlement that can also upgrade heavy armor and outputs some serious income. Plus you would get Fanghorn/Ents which are fun (extend their duration in the script files so you can march on Mordor with them later).

[Nigthawk]

The old territories will soon get overrun by Mordor and Harad when you leave them unguarded, you can sell some of the cities to Rohan or Silvan Elves who will offer you a fair price. Isengard is a good place to settle but I do not think those settlements are able to support a mighty gondorian army. Also when Isengard is defeated you have nowhere to expand, well maybe the misty mountains but I would end up with some serious debts..

[DrDragun]

The problem I see is that if you give Mordor/Harad a double size territory before Turn 20 then they will roast Rohan very quickly, while you are migrating somewhere trying to change the culture to Dunedain for the next 20 turns with 3-4 settlements. You will not be ready to return to your homeland before turn 50-100 time frame by which point there will be a really frustrating number of Mordor stacks that need to be chopped down.

I would definitely suggest giving at least a portion of your territory, perhaps the western part, to Rohan so that they can at least delay Mordor and Harad. These you can sell to the AI for money to offset your costs.

You could try swapping the rest of your settlements for other good settlements if you want to take a different area than Isengard. For example, you could try swapping Minas Tirith and Pelargir to the Dwarves or High Elves in order to get settlements in the Northwest, in which case Mordor would conquer them quickly anyway and you would have a coastal base and territory to fight and expand vs the Orcs of Gundabad across the north of the map. Although I don't know if those factions would trade away settlements that are required for their victory condition.

I still think Isengard is the best region overall, but invasion by sea is fun too.

[Ultima_Segmenta]

I tried something such as this once, and it was as Gondor as well. In fact I pulled it off fairly well, so I may be able to give you some advice on how to accomplish what I think is a decent evacuation based on what I did:

Basically I completed a sea-borne evacuation of all of my holdings in Gondor, building ships at Dol Amroth and Pelargir when I could and loading as many generals and armies onto them as possible except for a single unit in each settlement to hold them before they were given to another faction, and a single diplomat, thereby virtually abandoning all of my settlements except for West Osgiliath, where I left a token garrison to ward Mordor off (note that you cannot accomplish the evacuation in a single turn before Mordor or Harad can possibly attack), in case they tried to make an early move against me.

After everyone was loaded onto the ships, bar the Osgiliath garrison and the settlement garrisons, I sent the diplomat to Rohan where he negotiated with them for my settlements, and I ended up selling some of them to them for a handsome price, while just gifting them the rest, all except for West Osgiliath when I knew they'd run out of money. The settlement garrisons were then steadily loaded onto ships, while the token Osgiliath garrison was left (they had to be left behind again to stop Mordor from overrunning Rohan's new lands prematurely), and I then sent all the ships up to where my new lands would be, the north western zones of Eriador, near the Icebay of Forochel (there are rebel settlements around there that should still be available by the time you get there to start off with conquering).

I chose that location to go to due to the availability of potential allies (you are virtually surrounded by good factions, i.e dwarves, high elves, and free peoples of eriador) as well as the availability of expansion opportunities (you can move east and take on the Orcs of Gundabad, conquering them before sweeping down through the Misty Mountains and/or moving further east). From there it was a fairly straightforward playthrough doing the above. Eventually late in the game I reached Rhun, came down behind Mordor, and captured Barad-Dur, and so ended the Third Age of Middle Earth in this Campaign.

Hope all that helps and that reading it all (it is a fairly long post after all) was worth it.

[Nigthawk]

That's amazing! But how did you manage to keep your armies standing, aren't these regions all mountain type or too small for recruitment?

[Ultima_Segmenta]

Well, as soon as I got there I captured the few unclaimed settlements around and sent a few smaller armies east to go capture some Gundabad Orc territories and hold them. When i'd captured enough I essentially hunkered down and planned to go for Carn Dum to conquer as a recruitment centre. With some luck (and after a while more) I managed to gather everyone up (I think I left my new western settlements with no units in them if I remember) and used the last of my cash to hire some mercenaries, and then used this combined force to capture and reinforce the areas around Carn Dum. From there it was just a matter of waiting some more and building up my armies using this newly claimed citadel.