Total War: The Third Age – The fight continues…

So a week or two back I made a post about the latest Tolkien mod of Medieval II Total war: The Third Age. The Third Age (TTA) is a completely unofficial modified version of MOTW2 Kingdoms expansion pack complete with uniquely rendered animations, unit & building types, maps and more. The designers of TTA have gone to great lengths in order to make a balanced, playable and extremely enjoyable game.

After hearing about the game from a colleague I immediately got went to work, downloaded the mod and installed the current 1.1 patch. Having decided early on to try out a Dwarf campaign, I fired up the game, selected my faction and launched myself into the world of Elves, dark lords and rings of power. The first thing I noticed about the game is how smooth it runs, it’s essentially the same as Kingdoms, but of course completely set in the realm of Arda.

As most Tolkien fans can probably work out there are only five possible evil factions within the books, these are Mordor, Isengard, Harad, Rhun and the Orcs of the Misty Mountains, in order to balance the evil versus good ratio, the evil factions have been given larger unit numbers and the ability to crusade against good factions.

The Dwarven campaign is a particularly interesting one, first of all your empire is split into two, with two provinces west of the shire and north of the grey havens, and the other two settlements east of Mirkwood and Dale. The other interesting and often frustrating aspect of the campaign is the Dwarven lack of cavalry, this can cause significant problems, but the Dwarfs do command the finest infantry in the game and you do get the option to hire Dale mercenary cavalry every so often. You also begin the campaign allied to Dale with full military access.

The first thing you need to do is to decide on your strategy. Both the Orcs and Rhun have the ability to expand very quickly, and unfortunately the Silvan Elves and Dale are relatively weak and surrounded by enemies. I wanted to keep to the spirit of LOTR as much as possible, so I kept faith with my allies and began to organise a coalition with the other good factions. I also decided that rather than take the easy option and build up in the west, I would stay on the frontline and help my allies fight off the advances of Rhun, OotMM and Mordor. Rather than abandon or trade my western settlements I decided to keep them, but not spend huge amounts on their upkeep or advancement, instead I started to tech up the eastern settlements and moved north to take the nearby rebel town of Wormcove. Luckily for me Dale moved south and embroiled itself in a war against Rhun, which left me free to push the Orcs back towards the Misty Mountains. After a series of battles and manoeuvres I captured 2 forts and 1 town, leaving OotMM with only the mountain provinces and 2 western settlements. The Silvan Elves moved south pushing towards Dol Guldur and east towards Moria, while at the same time Eriador and the High Elves in the west moved east against OotMM. Once again luck was on my side as the Silvan Elves took several provinces to the south, creating a buffer zone between the OotMM near Moria and my northern settlements. With the Elves on my southern flank, I moved my armies into the Misty Mountains and crushed the remaining 2 Orc provinces while Eriador took the final western fort. Within 50 or so turns I managed to reduce the Orcs to just 3 settlements, and at the same time I created a buffer zone between myself and their provinces.

After some great initial successes things started to go pear shaped, Dale’s power was waning and Rhun started to make threatening moves towards my eastern border, while at the same time the Dark Lords arm had grown long and the armies of Mordor were slowly pushing north through Mirkwood slaughtering Elves left, right and centre.

More Dwarvern tales about the great Rhun campaign next week…

The mighty Fingolfin, High-King of the Noldor battles Melkor, the first Dark Lord of Arda.