Total War: The Third Age

The war for Middle Earth continues… In my last post about Total War: The Third Age I gave a quick run down on the initial start of my Dwarvern campaign and their heroic struggle against the evil Goblins and Orcs of the Misty Mountains. As I recounted in my last piece, the battle against the OotMM had been long, bloody and based primarily in the north eastern areas of the Misty Mountains. After a few turns my Dwarvern troops managed to fight of the remaining Orc insurgency and consolidated my grip over the Angmar provinces. With the Orcs in full retreat, I crossed the mountains and besieged Gram while Eriador and the High Elves moved in from the west to contain the remaining southern Orc settlements.

While I’d been campaigning in the west, the armies of Rhun and Mordor had been pushing ever northwards into the lands of Dale and Mirkwood. The port settlement of Dorwinion around the sea of Rhun had remained stubbornly rebellious, both Dale and Rhun conquered the settlement, but were unable to retain control of it. While those two civilizations were squabbling, I sent my southern army into the east, captured Kugavod and held on to the bridge crossing leading to Rhomen. For some bizarre reason Dale pushed southwards towards Mordor and attempted to attack Rhun’s southern settlements, which made my life easier as it kept Rhun under control while I finished of the Orcs to the west. With the west under control I changed tact, recruited a second southern army and took Dorwinion by storm. Both Rhun and Dale were suffering from AI brain freeze, the majority of their stacked armies were moving one direction and then in the next turn they would turn back, this fortunately allowed me to consolidate my position and brace for the impending Rhun invasion.

While I was consolidating in the north, Rhun was thrashing Dale in a running battle to the south. At the same as this, Rhun amassed 3 fully stacked armies near Rhomen, the AI took one stack to the bridge crossing and moved the other two stacks towards Dorwinion. I managed to quickly send some troops down south, gathered some mercenary cavalry and marched my remaining troops to the bridge east of the settlement. Rhun’s army outmanoeuvred me, marched through the forest and into the mountains south of Kugavod. Sensing a backdoor slaughtering I decided to bite the bullet, it was now a do or die situation, so I left my position on the bridge to Rhomen and headed into the mountains after Rhun’s army. Luckily Rhun had left one stack opposing my army near Dorwinion, and fortunately the army I battled in the mountains only consisted of missile and archer units. The gods were smiling on me, and my merc cavalry romped home on the field, cue the sound of slaughtering hapless prisoners.

Over the next 5 turns I managed to eliminate three other fully stacked Rhun armies, with them out of the way I crossed over into enemy territory and pushed south towards the settlement of Rhomen. Once again I placed the majority of my army on a bridge south of Rhomen while my other army besieged the settlement. Again another case of AI stupidity allowed me to maintain the siege while Rhun amassed on the other side of the bridge, periodically the AI sent a few stacks around the side, but I continually massacred them and then regrouped on the bridge. In a desperate attempt to regain ground, Rhun launched 5,000 men against my holding army. The battle was intense, but the last thing you really want to do is attack a bridge defending army of over 1,000 Dwarves. I set up a few shield walls on the exit to the bridge and organised a dead zone by setting up my crossbowmen in crossfire; in true AI style Rhun launched a full frontal assault. It was a complete massacre, I lost 900 men and Rhun’s entire army was wiped off the face of the map. With Rhun severely weakened my armies marched south and captured the two remaining sea of Rhun settlements.

Both Rhun and OotMM were now effectively powerless and I was left free to consolidate and begin preparations for the oncoming battle with Mordor. The Dark Lord had been slowly pushing north into Mirkwood and the Silvan Elves were under the threat of extinction. More on the war against the shadow next week…

Ungoliant the spider and the Dark Lord Melkor desecrate the light of two trees and steal the Silmarils