The Third Age 3.2 is a lord Of The Rings mod for Medieval Total war 2 Kingdoms Expansion.
With MOS submod, garrison script off.
Playing as Gundabad as they have trolls.
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Gundabad's starting position is to the north.
Our starting enemies will be Dwarves to the far west at Ered Luin and Erebor to the far east.
Our starting ally will be the Orcs Of The Misty Mountain(OOTMM) in the mountain range south of Gundabad with Moria as their biggest settlement.
Eriador with Humans and Hobbits lie to our southwest. Bree is their Capital and Aragorn their leader.
The Grey Havens is to the far southwest past Eriador. It is controlled by the High Elves with Erlond as their ruler who resides in Rivendell east of Eriador.
Gundabad starts with 4 settlements. Carn Dum used to be the capital of Angmar. It is the only settlement that can produce high tier troops for a long time.
Mod comes with flavour movies from Peter Jackson's movies. They also use pictures of the actors in the movies for portraits.
We can't recruit trolls for a while but we get 1 unit of trolls at the start.
Carn Dum has this build order: barracks>wargs>siege>archers>trolls. Top tier troop buildings are unlocked after a certain time.
Start off by taking over Framsburg, an unguarded rebel castle to the east.
Our main army march south grabbing an unguarded Amon Sul(Weathertop) and a village called Coldfells to our south.
Towns of our allies OOTMM can be seen to the east as we attack Imladris (Rivendell).
Taking out Rivendell at the start will help OOTMM tremendously.
1365 Orcs vs 338 Elves and the odds are still even.
Orcs are terrible troops but are numerous and cheap.
Rivendell is a custom made map, no towers for the defenders but movement is restricted to a narrow path where I cannot surround the elves with my superior numbers.
I was hoping to lure the Elves out to a kill zone but their archers outrange us and I chose to charge them. Trolls lead the way as they are the fastest troops I have. They pin the archers down as the rest of my melee troops engage them.
Don't just stand there! Start trolling!
Erlond lead most of his troops out to help his archers and we managed to surround and kill him but it cost me all of my trolls.
The Elves are left with a unit of elite spearmen that are impervious to our arrows. Our archers have a missile attack rating of 1! The arrows just bounce off their armour.
We lured them out of the city square and tried to capture the square but they just ran back in killing anything in their way.
Rivendell was taken but at the cost of 950 Orcs for 330 Elves. After the battle, the only full strength unit we can muster are archers. The heir to the throne was killed as well.
Marching west from Rivendell, King Gorduf hired some mercenaries and took the rebel-held-Hoarwell. This is the area where Bilbo encountered the trolls discussing how to cook Dwarves.
The assault on Hoarwell took place at night. My usual tactic is to attack the city square from different directions.
Peace was made between the High Elves and Gundabad, so we only have the Dwarves as enemies for now.
We continue to take the surrounding rebel settlements.
This is the assault of Tharbad, its walls are high and manned by many men.
As can be seen in the map at the top-right, I build rams and ladders and attack from 4 directions.
The confused defenders could not assign troops to man all four walls and fell back to the city center.
South of Tharbad are the Dunlandings (allies of Isengard) and you can also see Moria to the East.
We have created an army to the east to help defend OOTMM's Dain's Halls (Grey Mountains). Marching east, we took the nearby town of Wrakyaburg. The neutral Silvan Elves ruled by King Thranduil are to our Southeast.
Another army was created and they march west.
We found a rebel village, a small army of murderous Dwarves and Gandalf The Grey of Eriabor.
Gandalf sneak attacked one of our units and war was declared between Gundabad and Eriabor.
Our unit fled from Gandalf to the safety of my western stack.
Ignoring Gandalf who is too fast and strong to kill with my western stack, we took the village of Pitkaranta and attacked the Dwarves invading our teritory.
We sent our only archer unit behind the Dwarves as they marched towards us. Even when fired from behind, each volley of arrows only kill 1 Dwarf! I ordered the archers to get within 20 meters of the heavily armoured Dwarves and got better results.
The Dwarves ignored our archers, I doubt they can catch us.
The two armies clashed and with our superior numbers surrounded and slaughtered the Dwarves.
The spy we sent scouting in the east found the eastern Dwarves and their king. Erebor is too strong for our eastern army to take, we should hang around ambushing marauding dwarves instead.
To the southwest, Dear Leader Gorduf is in a stand off with Eriador stacks at Amon Sul and Hoarwell.
The occasional wandering Eriador unit gets caught by our Ever Victorious Army.
Silly little Hobbits wandering in Orc territory!
But killing little Hobbits cause the High Elves (allies of Eriador) to declare war on us! It also made our allies OOTMM join the war against Eriador.
End of part 1.
Snaga Stalkers make up the main bulk of our armies. With an attack of 2 they are terrible against heavily armoured opponents, some of them have 20 to 30 defence! To kill such foes it is best to use armour-piercing troops but they are currently only available in Carn Dum.
Rivendell and Amon Sul can produce them but they suffer a recruitment rate penalites due to terrain. Orcs prefer mountains.
Wargs are good against high defense troops but they are costly and are slow to recruit.
Current Status:
3 stacks, 1 in the west, east and southwest.
At war with Dwarves, Eriador and High Elves.
Military strength:
Orcs Of Gundabad: 50,000
Dwarves: 70,000
High Elves: 40,000
Eriador: 40,000
