Need some in-depth advice with Dale

**SeanO91** · August 10, 2016, 10:51 PM

Hey guys, I've been playing TATW for years and despite like 20 attempts (or more!) as Dale over the years I'm not having any success. I've read all the guides (including TheNorseman's one) I could find and followed some of the strategies in-depth, including rushing the AI, aswell as using other strategies but I keep getting my ass kicked and usually its apparent by turn 20-30 that the game is only going to go downhill from there. lest you think I'm quitting too soon, I have stuck around to 100+ turns in 3-4 campaigns fighting losing battles.

I'm playing vanilla 3.2 TATW and have tried a variety of difficulties including M/M, H/H,and VH/VH. I followed a strategy I read online (TheNorseman) that suggests rushing in the beginning for Araw and then Uldonovan (with the same army) and using a separate army to hit Kugavod. I wonder if I reduced the success of this strat by sieging out Araw and stopping to siege Dorwinion en route to Kugavod. By the time I got to kugavod there was a Rhun stack with bulk cavalry and javelin units (Turn 23) and at Uldonovan I waited for Rhun to siege it out as suggested so I could swoop in and crush their weaker army, but they were also far too powerful with a full stack against my half stack.

I have three problems:

1) I can't beat Rhun on the battlefield. I'm used to using cavalry a la Eriador and not having any kicks my butt - plus Rhun always has lots of cavalry plus javelin and archer units so I take bulk casualties when I do fight - too many to retrain/shrug off.

2) Economy is weak. I lower taxes in the beginning and use Bard as my 'builder' - giving him the Dale Staua and other retinues and use him to save $$ on buildings. The city he's in always has very high taxes in the beginning in an attempt to get him good traits.

3) related to the first two problems, plus the great distances that Dale must cover - I never seem to have enough troops to take rebel settlements without weakening my two main fronts.

Are there any experienced Dale players out there with suggestions/ some handy tips and tricks or a good macro plan to follow?

*seems I can't edit my threads. I had a fourth question which was - is MOS any easier to play as Dale? I remember getting my bum kicked in it also, but it's been a few years since I played so things might have changed.

**Veteraan** · August 11, 2016, 06:03 AM

You can edit your posts after you have 25 posts and been a member for at least a week.

Look HERE for a guide on how to play DALE.

It has been quite a while since I played vanilla TATW, but I am somewhat familiar with MOS.

I would say it will probably not be easier than playing Dale in standard TATW, but MOS of course changes a lot of things which all influence how campaigns turn out. It also depends on your personal playing style how things work out.

This is not the place to discuss MOS though, any further questions should be posted in the submods section, either in the MOS thread or in THIS thread, which is the place to be when comparing submods and asking for advice on which one to play.

**LuckyPistol** · August 11, 2016, 10:47 AM

I love Dale, probably one of the top 3 most satisfying campaigns in the game.

Originally Posted by SeanO91

I have three problems:

1) I can't beat Rhun on the battlefield. I'm used to using cavalry a la Eriador and not having any kicks my butt - plus Rhun always has lots of cavalry plus javelin and archer units so I take bulk casualties when I do fight - too many to retrain/shrug off.

2) Economy is weak. I lower taxes in the beginning and use Bard as my 'builder' - giving him the Dale Staua and other retinues and use him to save $$ on buildings. The city he's in always has very high taxes in the beginning in an attempt to get him good traits.

3) related to the first two problems, plus the great distances that Dale must cover - I never seem to have enough troops to take rebel settlements without weakening my two main fronts.

Are there any experienced Dale players out there with suggestions/ some handy tips and tricks or a good macro plan to follow?

*seems I can't edit my threads. I had a fourth question which was - is MOS any easier to play as Dale? I remember getting my bum kicked in it also, but it's been a few years since I played so things might have changed.

1. Use Dale's specialty to its fullest. Archers, archers, archers, as well as some javelins for General killing. Your beginning horsemen are awful, your Hearth Watchmen and Dalesmen will only just stand up to Rhun's basic militia units. Early game Rhun has a lot of lower armor units, you should only have cavalry recruited for the purpose of running down routing enemies or taking out a lone enemy archer unit. Rhun's generals are the real challenge of any field battle, the best way is to hope they die on your stakes or swarming them with spearmen. Siege battles are much easier, but need more preparation to recruit Rivermen. Your javelins will really save the day.

2. This is something you can't really do much about. Farms first, then roads, markets, and ports. I usually just decide on lowest build time/cost for the latter two. You've got a while before you can build your best barracks, so don't fret about mobilization too early. There should be a general that you can give the governing ancillaries to so you can free up Bard. In my experience he's best used as a general in Vanilla.

3. I can't really remember the Vanilla map too well, but what I used to do was build up my economy and take a rebel settlement, then gift it to the dwarves so that Rhun would attack them and hopefully take their focus off me. Be warned, sometimes this didn't work and they ignored each other. But blizting Uldonovan is a solid strategy. I wouldn't worry too much about Araw, its not as valuable, so you can take it later. Same with Dorwinion, take Uldonovan first. Another less used strategy is to build an army and just start sacking Rhun's settlements and destroying all their buildings. This will give you some income as well as set Rhun back a bit. Though I think this is easier to do in MOS than Vanilla.

4. MOS Dale is easier. Better map, more ancillaries, new scripts, no upkeep on mercs (besides ships), and Rhun's roster is greatly increased with a lot of low armored units, making the archer strategy usually more effective. Vanilla is a great game on its own, but MOS feels like a true successor to TATW 3.2 despite the changes. But as Veteraan said, this is not the thread to discuss it.

**SeanO91** · August 12, 2016, 10:23 PM

Thanks Veteraan, but the guide you posted was the one by The Norseman which I mentioned that i'd read

. I completely forgot about stakes! D'oh. However, and I'm not sure if the archers get stakes more often in MOS - in Vanilla, the only Dale unit that gets stakes (so far) is the athala rangers, of which I've trained precisely 0 in my entire 94 turn campaign so far. You better believe I nursed that first unit that you start with ! Neither woodsmen (tier 1), longbowmen (tier 2) or generals bodyguard Bardian Marksmen get stakes.

I followed LuckyPistol's suggestions (thank you!) and rushed straight for Uldonavan with my first half stack (playing H/H), and went straight for the town east of Kugavod (??) with my second half stack. Then I danced around, won a few heroic battles at bridges and gradually took most of Rhun's production centres. Then I couldn't take Mistrand because I had one 3/4 stack but they had two 3/4 stacks, so I took all of rhun's small villages like rhunaer etc. I had some help on the periphery from the sylvan elves and dwarves who mercifully took Kugavod and ... west rhovanion(?). I later bought these back off them. With some clever tactics and ballsy generals I beat the stacks using bridges close to mistrand, took mistrand, then took upper khand.

Things started to go very pear shaped because an invasion stack spawned (i think, it came from nowhere anyway) and a second full stack showed up out of Wilderlands in teh west. I used timing to my advantage and captured wilderlands and lower khand before their armies could reach me/ cause too much havoc, and that was the last of Rhun's settlements so it was game over for them! I got some major help from the AI at the lower khand though...there was 150 men in the city and 2000 men outside it, the ai moved the 2000 men to the wrong square and when the 150 men sallied I only had to face them instead of both armies! hehehehe....its a bit cheap but I'll take it. Otherwise it would have been back to uldonovan to start training again (Plus I would have lost Bard and his heir).

One thing I noticed that's really tough is that dale doesn't get any meaningful military centres - the best is Uldonovan, which is just a castle and has only 2000 population or so (req 15k pop for upgrade(?) ). Rhun doesn't have any castles, so Dale misses out on a lot of its best units for most/all of the campaign. I've somehow remained on good terms with mordor though and just swapped them 15k and trade rights for Dol Guldur. They don't know it yet, but I'm going to pump out doomstacks from there while I send troops from Uldonovan around the long way to enter mordor from the rear.

A few key things I learned helped me a lot:

1) Forget hearth watchmen - use Dalesmen as much as possible. They absolutely wreck cavalry, especially enemy generals in melee (as long as they don't get charged). Rivermen are good but I could never get enough.

2) I ended up putting all of my archers in single file in the front lines (sometimes if i have ~4+ generals i put generals first, and archers right behind), as this way they fire more effectively. I put hearth watchmen and dalesmen on the flanks to keep the cavalry away - they get ruined if they get charged, but if the enemy's charging/shooting them they're not hitting my precious archers, which is a win-win. If the enemy charges my archers, then the dalesmen can attack the flanks for free. This worked best for me in terms of keeping casualties down - i didn't use any cavalry, except for 1 unit of merc rhovanion riders the whole campaign so far (turn 94).

3) Bridges in Rhun saved my bacon. So much bacon. Without them this campaign would have gone down the toilet like the last few.

4) I took ALL of my generals into Rhun, and every time i got more generals they lead reinforcements into Rhun. But, Dale generals are cheap upkeep and if you get a good one or two, you can put them in your big cities and actually increase income by more than their upkeep (plus if you get + population or - build cost, that's even better). It's nto a big difference but i build a lot of watchtowers so an extra 200gp here and there is important to me. I used this around turn 40-50 cos I had no economy from too many troops and was barely keeping my head above water (especially when a random 3-unit rebel army showed up, sieged and captured grasgard

5) timing was everything - especially given the great size of Rhun. If i'd mucked around for 5-10 more turns it would have all come unravelled. As it was I didn't get mistrand until like turn 60, thankfully they didnt produce any loke-rim units - if htey had i had nothing to match it with and it would have been game over. Even being super aggressive, a couple of times I was 2-3 turns too late training/bringing in reinforcements, which nearly wrecked my conquests.

Thanks for your help

Having played Rohan, Eriador and Dale in recent days, I think I'm just about ready to try out MOS....