Recruiting Orcs

[Brannagyn]

I've started up an Orc campaign and at the moment can only recruit in one of my settlements. The other three each have "recruitment pool = 0" and despite having buildings for troop production and decent populations, won't produce troops. Its making it quite difficult to ammas enough troops to take on the dwarfs and get out of the starting region.

Is this normal for the Orc faction or am I missing something?

Another point is that Kurgis' guide for the Orc faction mentions having starting armies far from your settlements but my initial armies were right beside the settlements. I'm assuming this is a change made since the guide was written but if not I'd like to know before I invest too much time in an Orc campaign.

Any tips, especially regarding the first point, would be appreciated.

[Hilldric]

You can't recruit in those settlements because they haven't evolved, yet. As in, you need to wait for the Wooden Walls upgrade.

[Brannagyn]

Thanks for the info! Seems like it takes a lot of time for the Orcs to build up any decent armies, which wouldn't be a problem if they weren't surrounded by massive amounts of aggresive enemies.

From the start I have two full stacks and can easily put together a third. Replacements for these or a 4th stack won't happen till about turn 10. With those three stacks I need one watching incursions by the dwarfs up north, another watching incursions down south and the third to take the offense with. I take the southern rebel city (Trolls) with it and that weakens/ties up that stack. Meanwhile two full stacks of elite dwarfs come in the south, a stream of Slayer half stacks keep attacking in the north, and both the Chaos dwarfs and the Night goblins ambush me. I can potentially win all these fights but the impact on my armies would leave me unable to push outside of the Badlands. I'm also totally strapped for cash.

This is my second try with the Orcs. On the first I focused more on the north passage and managed to take their city using two stacks. This led to me being rolling in money but with no way to recruit new troops quickly. Meanwhile both Northern stacks had been crushed defeating the dwarfs and my south was being torn apart by crusading dwarfs and aggressive Goblins.

There must be an alternate strategy I'm missing that makes better use of the limited resources the orcs have.

[Hilldric]

Well, usually, the Night Goblins will offer you an alliance and I suggest you accept it, they might not be really strong or anything but it'll help against the C.Dwarves and the Dwarves. But AFAIK, if you capture Mount Grimfang (if I'm not mistaken that's the correct name), they'll just declare war on you and there won't be a way for you to ally them.