Third Age Total War 3.0 Released (for M2TW)

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That would probably be my reaction as well

It's good to hear that my generals should stick around for a while at least.

I understand the reasoning behind it and can agree with it to a point and I did have my taxes set to low already in most small settlements. Didn't try to get the 'chivalric' traits for my generals yet, as most of them usually get the bad traits through battles anyway. And my tendency towards using spies and assassins (although the latter are seriously nerved in this game) means that at least my king is a total dread monster.

Is there an overview of at which population level settlements go to the next level. So far I've not seen a single settlement get an upgrade yet, though. And I do prioritise food improvement buildings over pretty much anything else.

I'm the same, and I do try to let as few enemies escape any battle as I can, so I get Dale cavalry for each of my armies as much as possible, even though I have to ferry them over from one end of my kingdom to the other. And to retrain them I have to do it twice...

They don't have much in the way of archers either, and as of yet only that starting castle near Erebor can train the crossbowmen. So not that different from Dale cavalry for the time being.

Maybe, but in order to get to Goblin Town, I have to go all the way around Dale and Mistywood, while the both elf factions can go there pretty much in the first couple of turns. Kind of hard to beat them to it. Do spies still increase civil unrest so I can make the settlements revolt?

And why is it somehow ok for these elfs to move their armies across my lands while it's not ok for me to move mine over their lands and they won't accept military access when I try to negotiate for it?

In other news, I just killed the chieftain of the orcs of gundaband in battle and apparently there weren't any successors so their faction is now gone. I'm moving in as quickly as I can to secure all areas bordering on other factions so I can take my time with the other areas. Do bandits also get the benefit of calling in reinforcements if you besiege a settlement that has that kind of trait? Because that would kind of suck if I'm trying to take Carn Dum because it went from two units of weak orc units to 8 units of peasant axemen. They're not so strong, but have the AP trait so can still hurt my troops a lot. And it would seriously suck if they get another 6-8 units as back up when I attack.

At least that frees up some space for me to quickly move against Goblin Town and hopefully after that to Moria.

Actually the orcs of gundaband and misty mountains have it rough too. And they don't really have good units aside from the trolls either. Especially the orcs of gundaband have pretty much just fodder and trolls. The orcs of the misty mountains at least have some more choice in between.

I wonder how it plays with Mordor. If I look in the custom battle screen, they have a ridiculous amount of very strong units. They seem kind of overpowered in that respect, though I don't know how and when these units become available to them. It's interesting that only one evil faction doesn't have access to strong units like trolls and elephants, while there is only one good faction that does have access to similar units.

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Well, it appears that the bandits don't get reinforcements from fighting in a settlement that has that kind of trait, so that's positive. Another positive thing is that settlements that are left after a faction is destroyed don't automatically seem to get garrisons. Or maybe this only applies to villages and motte & baileys. At least Coldfells, Pitkaranta and that settlement north of it didn't have any garrisons occupying it at all. Makes expansion very easy, at least.

I also managed to take Goblin Town, where they did get reinforcements, but at least I was prepared for it. Then there's only one town left until I get to Moria, but I'll want to take the army currently still besieging Carn Dum down to take Hoarwell, from where I've got a nice gateway to start attacking Isengard.

I see now that the limit for going to large towns is at 4000, which means that most towns will take a while still before they get to the next level.

 

When I destroyed Mordor by destroying the One Ring, none of their settlements had garrisons either, so I was able to quickly take over the black lands, which was good. That said, Harad was quickly able to take everything west of the black lands, including Minas Tirith, which was less good.

Make sure you bring a big army to Moria, and be ready for a serious fight. Plenty of axethrowers for their effective against armor ability at a range, and some good cannon fodder that you don't mind losing. That's all I'll say about that.

 

The settlements I mentioned didn't have any garrisons in them, but Carn Dum and Gram did. And I think I read the spoiler about Moria from you already, although with that unit showing up in the custom battle screen for the orcs of the misty mountains, it wouldn't have been hard to guess either. At least that nasty surprise will make it harder for any AI to try to take the settlement before I do. If it spawns in AI battles, that is.

 

Yes, as I understand it these sort of spawns, including the garrison script apply to both the player and the AI. The particular event won't occur before like turn 90 though, so if you attack before then you won't "disturb" any slumbering powers. I've also heard a rumor that advanced mines need to be constructed, but I'm not certain about that one.

My Arnor campaign is moving along okay, currently in turn 40 or so. Orcs of Misty Mountain, Orcs of Gundabad and Isengard all declared war on me! I somehow thought this would start out as a slower paced campaign where I could just focus on building my economy for a good 60 - 70 turns, but so far I'm having to pump my military quite a bit to ensure I have sufficient defenses.

And unfortunately, the tactic of setting taxes to low is giving most of my generals the "poor with taxes" and "incompetent trader" type attributes, or if that's not the cause, I'm just having a lot of bad luck in that department. Even Aragorn just received "poor with taxes" a few turns ago. :/ I rarely saw those types of attributes as the high elves, and I had nearly every settlement on low taxes.

At the end of the day, I guess I don't care all that much. I'd rather have the growth, and earlier access to better military and economic facilities, so I'm keeping everything on low taxes.

 

If it won't spawn before turn 90, I should be ok. I'm currently at turn 47, I believe and the next turn I can move against the Mountain Fort and Moria shouldn't be far behind. At the same time, I've just taken Hoarwell, the village in between Imladris and Amon Sul, and will move on to the small town just west of Moria with the other army. The idea is to make a full stack from components of both armies and send that against Moria, then take the final required settlement.

The remainder of the two armies will go against Amon Gastal, a small village just east of the Mountain Fort and most of it will go against Isengard's settlements. I got a message a handful of turns ago that the One Ring was found by a general in Dunland. Presuming the general is still in the same area/settlement, I can take it quite quickly, although I'm not really sure I want to go to Mordor. On the other hand, in order to reach the 40 settlements, I'll have to move significantly beyond the mountains, and recruitment rates tend to go down rather severly away from the mountains.

I don't know if this is typical of lowland settlements, but for instance Framsburg has recruitment rates of 20 turns for simple dwarfen miners, as does the neighbouring Wrakyaburg. On the other hand, Nenuial and Lunelaith have comparitively normal recruitment rates. In Framsburg had the same trait as for instance Pitkaranta, which specifically states that recruitment rates are really, really low, I would understand, but it doesn't.

It's probably intentional, but it would make invading Rhun - a prime candidate for further expansion - a chore because you would always need to ferry your troops back to Erebor or the Grey Mountains. Actually not necessarily that much different from what I have to do now, and the solution would probably be similar as well - use the console command character_reset to speed up movements.

I wonder if the mountains around Mordor also allow normal recruitment rates for Dwarfs. That would make it more interesting to go there.

I just got a message at turn 45 that the war machine is now fully up to speed and it appears that this unlocks some of the higher level buildings that for instance allow me to build catapults, but also army barracks that will finally allow me to retrain my Iron Guard unit that you begin the game with.

I've never noticed the poor with taxes traits for generals being bound to the level of taxes. In vanilla M2, I got them just as well on generals in settlements with very high taxes. And yes, I'd rather have growth than high taxes. In the long run it pays off. And anyway, what else can you do with lowly villages until they grow to something that is actually useful and can do more than just pay for that one unit of garrison that they need?

/edit
I also had my first fight against some cave trolls. Not from the orcs of the misty mountains as one might expect, but from one of their armies that had turned rebel. I see now how artillery would be largely useless. Luckily almost all dwarfen units have the AP trait, that helps a lot.

 

Yeah, you'll be fine in that regard then. Here's what the FAQ says (added spoiler for those who don't want to know):

Spoiler

Q: Can I get the Balrog ?
A: It is only possible when you play as the Orcs of the Misty Mountains. You need to construct Mithril Mines in Moria. This is only possible if you have upgraded Moria to a huge city. Furthermore it is not possible to resurrect the Balrog before turn 90.

Settlements are all classified as 1 of 4 settlement types: mountains, grasslands, forests or dessert. Every faction has 1 or 2 that grant good replenishment rates, 1 or 2 that grant moderate replenishment rates, and 1 or 2 that have horribly slow replenishment rates. I'm not sure how this works out for the dwarves, but my logical guess is mountains: good; grasslands: moderate; forests and desserts: poor. Some settlements it's hard to tell what they are by looking at them; you have to check the description of the settlement (i.e. the book that displays in your list of constructed buildings). I was surprised that Dol Guldor was a mountain region, for example, as it's in the middle of a forest. This makes it viable for Mordor though.

I would guess that you'd have good replenishment rates in Mordor, as all regions there are classified as mountain regions, unless there's some whacky script that makes "Mordor mountains" different than others... but I doubt it. Might make a nice second home for your kin!

This is where the campaign kicks up a notch or two, because not only can you get improved troops, so can your enemies! Better get good at taking down trolls! And yes, your AP dwarves will have an advantage here, though it's not as great as you might think. Most of the the defense rating comes for the trolls natural defenses, rather than armor, which isn't affected by armor piercing. A cave troll, for example, has 7 armor and 24 defense skill, for a total defense rating of 31. When you attack with AP melee units, you will only consider half of the armor rating, rounded up, which comes out to 4 in this case. So the defense rating you will need to be is still a hefty 28. Your axethrowers and crossbowmen will completely ignore the defense skill, however, so they will only consider half the armor rating, which is a total effective defense of 4. I'll let you do the math on who your best troll killers will be!

Cavalry charges work like a charm too, but, well, you shorties can't seem to make it into the saddle very well!

I'm not sure if it's the low taxes that cause this. I think I read on honga's site that it's more likely to get these traits when you set taxes to low while settlement happiness is in the green. I guess it's something to do with not bleeding your people for taxes makes you a bad taxman. On the other hand, these traits can show themselves on any general, and it may be that I had bad luck, or that somehow Eriador/Arnor generals are predisposed to being poor managing money.

I also suggest trying to charge them as much as possible. If you can, run some lowly miners that you won't be too sad to lose into their front, and do a flanking charge from behind with some nice dwarven 2 handed shock troops. Your Dale cavalry will be great in that flanking role also, but make sure to pull them out quickly, or you'll be running them back to the homeland for friends! Once you get the hang of it, you should be able to use your cavalry against trolls with minimal losses.

 

That actually only concerns the building of this unit, not whether or not you'll encounter it in battle. I'll find out soon enough, I think.

Ok, I just checked, and this appears to be the breakdown. For Dwarfen Miners (and presumably for other units as well, as more units have the same recruitment rate), mountain areas give a new unit every 7 turns, and grassland and forest areas give a new unit every 20 turns. I don't own any desert areas, but presumably it won't be any better So I was wrong when I thought that Nenuial had a faster recruitment rate than Flamburg.

Do you know what the trait Reduced building capacities entails? I noticed that for instance Pitkaranta and Ruskea Vene have this trait, but since they're just a village and a motte & bailey, I can't check what would precisely be reduced by this (and probably won't be able to for a long while yet.

Thanks for the explanation. I don't think I have much to fear about trolls for some time to come, as the orcs of the misty mountains shouldn't be able to build the army barracks before I get to them, Isengard has lost its only high level settlement to Rohan so shouldn't be able to produce trolls either. That means only Mordor is left, and I don't think I have much to fear from them for some time to come.

Last time I didn't manage to field my axethrowers very efficiently against the trolls, so I'll try to pay more attention to setting my ranged units up behind my infantry.

 

Yeah, based on comments I've read on the TA message boards and the particular excerpt from the FAQ: "Furthermore it is not possible to resurrect the Balrog before turn 90," I don't believe the Balrog will make an appearance in the game before turn 90. If I'm somehow wrong, I'm sure you'll let me know, however!

Yes, this means that not all buildings that would typically be available to construct are buildable in that settlement. For example, Amon Hen is a Fortress with reduced building capacities. In this settlement you can only build buildings that would normally be available in a wooden castle. I guess this is because Anom Hen is a ruined fortress, and can only be restored so much during the War of the Ring. I'm not exactly sure how this translates to cities (vs. castles), but I imagine the concept is similar.

How about the Orcs of Gundbad? Do they not have Carn Dum anymore? By the way, Isengard can't build trolls. Their "scary" unit is the Uruk Berserkers, which are far less scary than trolls.

Crossbows might prove to be a little more practical in this role, due to their higher range... once you can field them, that is. I've heard that axethrowers can be extremely effective against trolls, however, not to mention Balrogs and Sauron.

 

I sure will, unless I manage to kill off their family members first

Didn't check properly for Isengard, then. The orcs of gundaband perished a long time ago after I got their leader in a field battle. Carn Dum is a scary place to storm, by the way. If my spy hadn't opened the gates for me, and the AI actually had made use of the inner walls, it would've been a very costly place to storm. As it was, it was barely more than a mop up action.

I can build them already, but for now only in the Iron Hills settlement. Their range is superior to anything else I've encountered for now, so they're definitely handy against most enemies, but because axethrowers can arc their throws, it's quite possible to position them behind some infantry and have them pelt anything beyond that infantry. Plus they have a pretty high firing rate.

 

I had forgotten that you mentioned taking out OoG earlier in this thread.

Regarding siegeing Carn Dum, I'm gearing up to do that soon as Arnor. OoG have a handful of intimidating stacks roaming around, with plenty of Warg riders, to the north. Then there's OotMM to my east, and some serious conflict with Isengard to my south and south east. I have to really cripple one of these factions soon, as we just got to the "build anything" stage of the game at turn 45. Carn Dum is far more reachable than Moria or Orthanc (Isengard), but there's a good chance I'll see some serious opposition on the way. I've got a half stack led by Aragorn who plan to siege the settlement, and another half stack led by Aragorn's second "son" mainly to ensure that Aragorn doesn't get pounded by a full OoG stack that's wandering the Coldfells. I can't really afford much more than this troop-wise at the moment, so I'm just going to have to make it work. Wish me luck!

I certainly bow to your first hand experience using axethrowers on this. With trolls, it's easy to look at stats and consider tactics, only to find that in reality what you thought would work best, simply doesn't.

Have fun attacking Moria! You should be in a pretty strong position with both Moria and Carn Dum in your control (or perhaps more importantly, NOT in control of your enemies). The fact that Rohan has Orthanc doesn't hurt either. I'm amazed they managed to beat the garrison script!

 

Good luck! But I hope for you that you have a high level spy inside the settlement and that they don't have too much of an army inside the walls. Contrary to most citadels in vanilla M2, Carn Dum is actually set up in such a way that each level of the citadel is pretty much a killing ground until you get to the next gate. Positioning ballistae or catapults to take free shots at the gates of the inner walls is basically not possible so they'll either take continuous damage, or you'll have to rely on battering rams.

So even without the garrison script (which I assume you didn't disable), it would be a tough battle to take normally, but with you'll be sure to incur heavy losses. Unless your spy opens the gates for you and you can basically just walk right in. The AI will probably just fall back to the courtyard in that case and you'll be able to slug it out without them gaining too much of an advantage. You can park your archers on the walls with your infantry in front of them to make it an easier win.

So far, I haven't been able to do it succesfully in an actual battle, mostly because the trolls tend to charge me before my infantry is able to move in front of my axethrowers, who then also become embroiled in the ensuing melee.

You and me both. Although a concentrated attack should be able to win the day quite easily, as the AI has a tendency to leave their settlements rather lightly guarded, the other factions have been fairly passive so far. Except Rohan, because to get to Isengard, they'd have to take a few rebel settlements in between too. By contrast, there's still I think around two rebel settlements just south of Eriador, which neither the high elfs, Eriador or Isengard have seen fit to actually take. More for me, but it's getting a little bit like taking candy from a baby.

Haven't gotten to Moria yet, as the OotMM have still a few armies in between here and there which I don't want to leave at my back - I'm so glad I've got a fair few cavalry units in that army so I can actually take care of them in an open battle.

My other army is all poised to take Ost-in-Edhil (Eregion), which is only lightly guarded and should be able to get to Moria from the other side by the time the first army arrives there, so I can combine their forces.

 

Well, Moria is mine now and is renamed to it's former name, Khazad-Dum. Oh and remember that one Q&A you quoted from the FAQ? Yeah, I think the answer on the question right above that one applies.

So it spawned, but apparently it was the only thing to spawn as no other extra garrison spawned. Aside from this unit, there was only some snaga skirmisher and goblin infantry. A good thing too, because this one guy literally killed half my infantry. And I had six units of dwarven warriors in it too. I tried to line up my axethrowers, but with little luck because they refuse to attack if my own units are in the way. And given that they're pretty much like trolls in this respect, my own units were always in the way.

I'm just glad that this one fairly big army they still have around decided to bivouak in the nearby fort instead of in the city. Although if they had, I would've just besieged it until reinforcements had arrived.

Anyway, I've got all the required settlements I need to win the campaign now, so will have to think on how to progress from here. If I take Amon Gastel and the silvian elfs this time deem to accept my offer of military access, I can march on Dol Guldur with one army and start attacking Isengard with the other.

But before that, I have a severly beat up army to retrain. It's bothersome that the nearest settlement that can help me retrain is Gundaband and if I want to retrain all my units, I'll need to march for Erebor even. Which would probably take somewhere around 12-15 turns by my estimate. One way trip.

This is all slightly annoying, so I'll probably just character_reset the crap out of it and do it in just a couple of turns instead.

 

Congrats on taking Moria, and taking out the big nasty Balrog of Morgoth!

I managed to take Carn Dum in my game. Yes, I had a spy to sabotage the gates, which certainly made things easier. I also had some good luck in that the their Chieftain, who was part of the garrison, started the battle directly next to the entrance. This allowed me to send in my cavalry immediately and take him out first. Once he was dead, the remaining forces (3 additional garrison units + around 6 units that were added by the garrison script) were pretty easy to break and mop up as I made my way to the center of the castle.

Haven't had any time to play in the last couple of days... maybe tonight I'll get a little time to enjoy my strategic win against OoG.

 

Congrats on taking Carn Dum. Unfortunately I'll never have the chance to defend it in my game, because it would be a lot of fun, but the nearest evil faction is half a map away at this point.

Didn't get any further in my game, but was thinking about how defensible Khazad Dum (Moria) is in case of attack. My spies opened the gates for me, so there wasn't much resistance at the walls, but there doesn't seem to be anywhere where any archers could hold off any attacking force. There's no walls, just sheer mountain cliff that you can't place anyone on. Am I missing something here? What's the use of the ballista towers that you can build in the city if you can't seem to use them?

If the attackers come from the east, they'll need to pass that small bridge. It appears you can destroy this with assassins, which leads me to wonder if you could stop invaders from this side completely if you destroy the bridge yourself. On this side of the city it is also possible to set a few archers on top to rain down arrows onto the bridge (though the area where you can place them is pretty small so it doesn't appear to be overly effective). You could plug up the bridge with infantry and place archers on the slopes behind them to rain some more arrows onto any attackers, so it seems quite tough to get in from this side (as it should be).

Attackers from the west can be stopped at the fort if you want to, so potentially you only need to deal with attackers coming to the other side of Khazad Dum if they came down the mountains. On this side, it appears a lot less defensible. There's two ramps leading up to the center on which you could place archers, then hold off any invaders with infantry placed further down the ramps while the archers do their stuff, but overall it doesn't seem as hard to take as it should be.

If you're fighting AI, then the only thing that actually makes this city hard to take is the fact that Balrogs spawn as soon as you besiege the city.

I suppose I could try out some things in the custom battle screen. At least I think I should be able to select to fight a battle at Moria... Might as well try my luck at fighting a defensive battle at Erebor, as I don't think I'll ever see a battle there as things stand now. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll see a battle at the Iron Hills, but the Rhun don't seem that assertive in this game.

 

I think the idea with Moria and a lot of the other custom settlements is to require new strategies to win, rather than the usual attack/defend the walls. Defending walls with nice arrow/ballista towers certainly is a lot more straight forward than defending Moria, I agree.

First off, DO NOT build ballista towers in custom settlements. It's technically a bug that they are available to build, as they don't do anything.

As for Moria, I have attacked it twice from the west now, and defended it once from an attack on the east (in a custom battle). Here are my thoughts on how to defend it:

Western defense... place your archers on the 2 sets of stairs and even up top near the castle square (I learned that archers can fire through the wall there... as I sieged it last night and had many goblin arrows landing on me!) Divide your melee forces into two groups blocking either stair. With your archers height advantage you should be able to rain death upon your foes (assuming you remembered to bring some archers).

Defending the east offers a couple of possibilities, perhaps 3 if you do a combo of both. I guess the obvious one is to set your melee forces on the far side of the bridge to create a choke point for the attackers. The elevation increases beyond the bridge, so you've got some good places to position your archers.

The other possibility is to divide your army in two, and force the attackers to traverse the long, very steep walkways that lead up to the castle square, and the open area up to the left. Of course, make full use of your archers while the enemy is coming for you, and by the time they reach you, they should be good and tired, making for an easy, downhill battle for your fresh, dwarven soldiers.

I actually did a hybrid of this, where I started with my archers down near the bridge, and periodically moved them up and away, in order to maximize their damage potential. It worked quite well, as I managed to inflict heavy enemy casualties before taking much of a beating myself.

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In my campaign I have now taken Moria. It was quite a fight against the Balrogs, but they were easier to kill this time than they were last time. I got to pelt them with arrows for a good long time before they came into melee range. I lost a lot of infantry once that started, but I still managed to end the battle with most of my army intact.

I opted not to sacrifice Gandalf the Grey to destroy the Balrog. As much as I'd love to see Gandalf the White in the game, the problem is, he comes back as a general for Gondor. Since I'm playing as Arnor... that means I'd be losing one of my best generals. So Gandalf the Gray gets to stay.

I had a full stack led by Aragorn camped outside Isengard for a good 10 to 15 turns. Isengard has been driven back to a single settlement, but Rohan has been blocking it with their armies...! Not attacking, not doing anything... just making the settlement inaccessible to me. Grrr! The last turn I play last night actually left me an open though... I knew it was just a matter of time. My next battle in the game will be against 1 and a half Isengard stacks, comprised mostly of Elite uruk units. Rohan has a 3/4 stack in vicinity that should reinforce me. All told it looks like there will be close to 10,000 soldiers on the battlefield! That ought to be a fun one, and it will certainly put my PC to the test, considering that I have all graphics options maxed.

The Orcs of Gundabad have been destroyed for a while. I fought a huge, and very exciting battle just outside of Gundabad, where I killed the faction leader and the faction heir who joined as a reinforcing army. It was one of the nastiest hill battles I've had to fight, as it was all uphill for me, but lots of flaming ballista bolts, fire arrows and non-fire arrows played havoc on the enemies rear ranks, while my men struggled on the front lines. Once both enemy generals were taken out, it wasn't too hard to route the remaining orcs, and mop up with my completely exhausted soldiers.

Once Isengard is out of the picture, and the OotMM are a little more under control, my plan is to take it slow and focus on the build requirements to reunite Arnor and Gondor. From there, Gondor will come under my control, and the remainder of my campaign will focus on taking out Harad and Mordor. Hopefully I don't get another CTD and can actually carry this through to the end this time!

 

Good job on taking Moria too. I don't think the OotMM will be able to pose much of a problem without their biggest settlement. Except for Goblin Town, everything is either a village or a motte & bailey up in the mountains, so they won't have the ability to produce strong troops anymore.

The OotMM are out of the picture now, wiped out. So one army is now marching against Isengard and the other is marching against Mordor, after I did some accelerated retraining. They're going for Dol Goldur, and that, being a citadel in a mountainous area, is prime real estate for the Dwarfs. And will give me a nice entrance to Mordor itself.

It seems that Mordor itself is having a hard time without the reinforcement stacks, and are definitely not gaining any ground on Gondor, like they usually do.

Last turn I played this night, I was asked for support an army of Rohan that was trying to attack Duneard. I had a half stack army nearby as I was planning to take that settlement too, but agreed to help Rohan anyway. I don't really know what happened, but my army is now parked directly outside the town walls (they were still a bit away before the end of the turn), the Rohan army has retreated into my territory (Byrig), much diminished and apparently having lost a fight with the town garrison and a nearly full stack of reinforcements that appeared from somewhere. Now I've got that slightly less than full stack army standing right next to me.

I wonder if I was marching to their rescue and just came too late, because my units weren't harmed at all from the looks of it. I'd expected to go to a battle map, but nothing at all happened or it was autoresolved or something. Weird.

As it stands, though, I can now attack that big army camped just outside the city walls, hopefully manage to deal with the reinforcements of the city as well, and then take the town without having to actually besiege it. Should be an interesting battle.

On the other side of the map, I'm wondering if I should finally move against Rhun. I do need 15 extra settlements, but I'm not looking forward to the long supply lines as I try to retrain my armies after a couple of fights.

 

It sounds like you installed a feature of Baron Samedi's mod that I did not, with regards to having other factions request your aid with battles. I'd be interested to know what you think of the feature overall.

How are you dealing with the cavalry limitations now that you are farther along in your campaign? Do you generally have to go out of your way to avoid field battles, or are there enough Dale cavalry to compensate for the Dwarves in ability to field cavalry "natively?"

A war against Rhun sounds fun, and seems like a logical choice as the Dwarves... as they're right in your back yard (depending how you expanded your empire, I guess). OTOH, I guess the lack of mountain regions would make that area less useful to you. OTOOH, Rhun's lands are very rich in resources, so they would make you quite wealthy.

 

Possibly, but I have no idea which feature I actually activated to make this happen. And since I didn't really play the game without all these features, I can't really comment on how I like them - for me they're just part of the game

So far, I have only two armies and by now they both have 2-3 cavalry units. It works quite well, I can just fight any field battle I want. Overall, I let the opponent come at me, and when they rout, I round them up with cavalry. The only offensive action I use the cavalry for, is to drive archers into my infantry. Typically, archers will outrun my infantry so we can go on a long and merry chase if I don't turn the tables. By letting my cavalry circle round, I can drive the archers actually into my infantry, which usually makes them rout quite quickly too.

Even though I try to keep them out of direct confrontations, they will inevitably suffer losses from time to time. And to retrain them, I have to send them to Erebor or the Iron Hills. This is of course a long way away, but since retraining most normal infantry also requires a significant trek until some settlements finally get their culture and/or building options up, it's not as much of a downside as I'd initially thought.

I guess I should start attacking them some time. Some extra settlements and extra income are nothing to scoff at, and I do have a few late re-trainees that are playing garrison duty at the moment.

You mentioned earlier that you were going to try to reunite Arnor and Gondor, but is this possible in the same way as the resurrection of the kingdom of Arnor is done in the game? Or is it just to have lands bordering on Gondor to make it metaphorically happen?

I was also wondering if it's just the Dwarfs that can build all units in any type of settlement, or if other factions have this as well. What I mean is that I can build all unit types in both cities and castles, unlike how it was in vanilla M2. Plus they can have upkeep free units in castles as well.

 

Fair enough. I'm not sure which feature this is either, actually, but I do recall that there's is a feature that allows your allies to call for aid, and for you to call your allies for aid, IIRC. If I get some time, I'll look for the feature to see what it is.

That doesn't sound too bad. Maybe I'll consider trying the Dwarves at some point in the future.

Indeed, once you start dealing with fighting Mordor's territories, and their many, many armies, having the funds to produce some extra elite units will be a good thing for you, I think.

Not a metaphorical unification. This is a scripted event that can occur when you are playing as Arnor or Gondor. As Arnor, you have to restore the ancient borders of Arnor, which are basically from Carn Dum and the Coldfells in the north all the way down to Lond Daer in the south. You also have to rebuild several important historical structures/landmarks of Arnor, including the Tower of Amon Sul, the Port of Lond Daer, the North South Road, and the kicker is the House of Kings (which requires that Annuminus be expanded to a large city, and the 32,000 gold structure is built there). I believe that Aragorn (or a blood descendant of his) must be King of Arnor and Gondor must be an ally.

Once all of those requirements are met, the Gondor faction comes under your control. From all of Gondor's starting settlements you will be able to recruit soldiers from Gondor's unit roster. From every other settlement you will recruit from Arnor's unit roster. A pretty cool addition, actually.

All of this works in reverse if you play as Gondor, and meet a set of similarly difficult requirements.

You opted to install the Real Combat feature that is included in Baron Samedi's compilation. If you install this, all factions in your campaign will be able to recruit their any units in their roster from the beginning of the game, as long as they have the correct building. In this case, even the lowest level barracks building will allow for the highest level units, and the incentive to build higher level buildings is faster replenishment rates/unit pools. You still have to meet the culture requirements to train the units, and Area of Recruitment (AoR) units can still only be trained from the appropriate settlements.

I do not play with this feature. I prefer to have to wait to train higher tier units, as this gives my campaign a greater sense of progression. I tried it for about 5 minutes in a Mordor campaign, and didn't like it much -- the fact that Gondor was fielding lots of Fountain Guards against me from the beginning probably had something to do with my reaction, I must admit!

 

I noticed that Baron Samedi's mod pack got an update to version 5.

The feature you're talking about is the The Beacons of Gondor submod, I think. But as I understand it, this gives you the option to build a building (in the case of the Dwarfs, it's a raven's nest that you can build in Erebor), which would allow me to ask for assistance, but only from Dale. I would assume that Rohan (by the name of the mod) would have to build the beacons of Gondor and would then be able to ask Gondor for assistance.

I could be wrong, though.

That sounds pretty awesome, is that also a submod of Baron Samedi's pack, or is it native to the TA mod? I did notice that one of the settlements just to the south of Eriador (but currently owned by Isengard) has a building that is apparently a destroyed bridge and I figured that it would play some part in the Arnor resurrection, but I suppose it's actually for the unification of Arnor and Gondor.

Did you become Arnor in your game yet, btw? And did your economy take a hit like they say it usually does?

No, I didn't install this mod, although I didn't think as far ahead as to that my opponents would have high level units to start with either. Like you, I prefer to have some progression in my games in terms of units.

No, what I'm talking about is that I can build for instance Iron Crossbowmen in both cities and castles, once I build the prerequisite building (the Practice Range). Same for any infantry unit. There's a few units that are specific to settlements, like dragonslayers being build only from the Grey Mountains, or Axemen of Erebor only being able to be build from Erebor, but that's not what I'm talking about here. It's the normal Dwarfen Warrior or axethrowers that I can build from any settlement type once I build the appropriate buidlings for them (and have enough culture).