Horde Factions

[Kroem]

Hi All,

Are any factions in the campaign horde factions? (i.e. the mechanic from Barbarian Invasion)

I seem to remember reading North Rhun was one, but that was some years ago and it could have changed since then?

Cheers
Kroem

[athanaric]

Hi All,

Are any factions in the campaign horde factions? (i.e. the mechanic from Barbarian Invasion)

I seem to remember reading North Rhun was one, but that was some years ago and it could have changed since then?

Cheers
Kroem

All three Easterling factions (NR, Rhûn, Khand) can go horde, but no others.

[Kroem]

Ah nice thanks for the info! For some reason I've always wanted to do a migration campaign in Fourth Age, and this would make it a lot easier with those factions.

[athanaric]

Ah nice thanks for the info! For some reason I've always wanted to do a migration campaign in Fourth Age, and this would make it a lot easier with those factions.

One of the guys on our Discord server had a fun campaign migrating to the Shire with Rhûn. It's not easy but you can theoretically recruit decent units almost anywhere.

[Kroem]

Nice that's very similar to what I wanted to do with North Rhun, a new kingdom centred on Fornost! I think the 'official' guide for Harondor used to recommend a migration strategy before just because their starting position was mightily difficult.

[CountMRVHS]

When you abandon your last settlement and get 4 or 6 full stacks with no upkeep, you'll feel like you sneakily won the game.... but a horde strategy has its drawbacks, some of which are peculiar to FATW.

First, all "horde" units have 0 experience. Most units you train from your homelands will have 6, and I think any unit you train anywhere on the map will have at least 3 to start. So while you will have some normal xp units in the ones you started with, the majority of your units as a horde will underperform compared to others.

Second, FATW's supply traits will start to kick in if you have a long migration (IIRC). The longer you spend outside your own territory, the worse your supply trait gets, ultimately leading to all kinds of problems like low morale for troops, low movement points, low line of sight, etc. Of course, this only affects family members, so one solution might be to put all your FMs in a single stack - but I think that might actually be worse, since it seems armies without generals tend to do worse overall. And for a horde, it's very important that you avoid losing men.

Other horde challenges are the vanilla things: no retraining or training until you settle (except mercs, which have upkeep); settling will eventually see you lose all your horde troops, so you can be extremely vulnerable if you settle without ensuring you have a good 10+ turns to set up infrastructure and train - and enough cash on hand to fund it all.

With North Rhun, one option might be to head south and severely weaken Rhun (since they will be a big problem for you sooner or later), then head north and do the same to Dale - or vice versa, actually, since Rhun's territories are either Homelands or Fiefdoms for you. Either way, you kind of want to knock out the biggest threats in the area to ensure that, when you settle, you'll be ok for a while.

I'm starting a horde campaign as Khand, which I'll be uploading to youtube, if anyone wants to offer me advice or just watch as I flounder about I have tried a horde campaign as Khand before, but it didn't turn out too well; settling was just too difficult. This time maybe I'll get the hang of it!

[athanaric]

I think the 'official' guide for Harondor used to recommend a migration strategy before just because their starting position was mightily difficult.

I would not recommend doing that with Harondor though, since their range of homeland and fiefdom regions is very limited and hence, upgrading settlements takes forever (not least because Harondor is a high-tech faction) and the rosters you get aren't all that great.
I actually think that Far Harad, Rhovanion and maybe North Rhûn have the most difficult campaigns. Harondor is manageable if you know what you're doing. The key is garrisoning a force of Swords of Harad in your border settlements, they'll help you autoresolve most of the annoying siege battles when RK or Harad come knocking.

[Kroem]

Yea I have made it over to Fornost before but got bored when I realised that the outland dominion would take so long to build! I'm surprised that Khand is a difficult faction tbh given how absurdly good horse archers are in RTW.

I remember a RTR campaign as Partia, I massacred so many Selukid armies that I started to feel bad for bullying the AI XD

[athanaric]

HAs are still extremely annoying in FATW, but they're better balanced and less OP than in the other mods I've played (haven't played vanilla RTW in ages).

First, all "horde" units have 0 experience. Most units you train from your homelands will have 6, and I think any unit you train anywhere on the map will have at least 3 to start. So while you will have some normal xp units in the ones you started with, the majority of your units as a horde will underperform compared to others.

It's true that horde units start with zero experience, but in FATW, they have higher base stats to compensate for that. Thus, a horde unit with 0 XP is more or less equal to a regular one with 5 or 6 XP.

[CountMRVHS]

It's true that horde units start with zero experience, but in FATW, they have higher base stats to compensate for that. Thus, a horde unit with 0 XP is more or less equal to a regular one with 5 or 6 XP.

Great to know, thanks for that!