Did a Minas-Tirith start once and it was great fun. Loved the moment when you (allied with Mordor) conquer last of Gondor and do this "He-he-he, surprise, Sauron, now it's your turn". Also another cool starting point is Izengard. You remove potential stack spammer right from the start and then you have access to human units of Rohan/Dunland/Enedwaith. No ports though, but it's bearable.
I read that in a funny voice in my head when you decide to turn on an ally. It’s always fun to do that! I suppose it’s a good starting point if you can deal without the corsairs. You can always expand to the coast too.
I am literally going to do an Isengard start with the AGO Sub Mod of DaC. I did it once with regular DaC a while ago and played played as an ally to Rohan and Gondor. Thankfully, between Mordor and Harad, Gondor got beaten to a pulp and I was still able to take the needed victory conditon cities after they fell. Rohan i left alone. Didn't have a reason to fight them and they were a strong ally against Mordor Mid-ish game. Mordor had a power trip that needed to stop and Rohan helped more than a fair few times. They didn't bat an eye later when I began to move north against the Dunidine. Must say, they were not the ally I expected to have going into the late game. I am looking forward to a new Isengard start with AGO.
@@go2hell4eva Not going to lie, even on a normal game, I never use the Corsairs. They feel to expendable to be worth an investment. In general I prefer to find my "happy three" and run what you could call a "professional army" as opposed to just a army of random units available in the recruitment tree. The game runs a little slower in terms of expension when you have to wait for recruitments to expand your army, but I like it. I am wondering through that with AGO if I might have a reason to use them like looting bonuses or something. It would make them more useful IMO.
@@christopherpoet458 Happy three being the Nardutarik, Narduzagar and Nardubawib? That's fair enough because having several different units can be a pain when commanding your army as well. Having said that, I like to have a few armour piercing damage dealers usually.
That is true but if you are able to defeat it you are in the clear. There are ways of abusing the tower defence to your advantage even if you are sallying out. It is still a challenge!
Tharbad is a very good point to start you must restart and go to their because you are going to good way so go to tharbad and ally with northern Dunedin and bree and high elves as well so you provide all north good people to focus on goblins and angmar
Meh I’ve played a campaign there before in v3 and it was quite a slog due to culture and being under constant siege. Galu has a similar campaign on his channel that inspired me to try it and the game starts after 100 turns basically. Perhaps it’s different in v4 but I’ve not tried it.
Best part about the Minas Tirith start is access to Gondor & Dol Amroth Auxiliary Units. Most of the infantry is decent for Militia Tier & Cavalry!!! Gondor Cavalry Miltia can tide you over until you get Dol Amroth's Squires & they are superb early game Heavy Cavalry. By doing this you supplement one of your biggest weakness & that's lack of Cavalry.
interesting choices all THREE of them yes, three, but anyhow I'm surprised of all the ones you mentioned you didn't mention Fornost or annuminas which has your elite heritage unit recruitment slots (although if you were to hold off on taking it until it's rebuilt and it gets rebuilt VERY QUICKLY you'd get one of the best capitals on the map imo) albeit not alot else at start. another comment though, you don't need your "militia" in the slightest as AA rather your conscripts will do 10x more work for you regardless of which set we mention
Indeed that’s another good place to go! With the militia it does make things easier but if you can handle the hostility without then you’ll do very well. It’s also nice to assert dominance on the dunedain like that too!
it will take turn 27-28 to get to annuminas but if you wait somewhere between 3-5 more turns they will rebuild fornost and annuminas for you somehow, not sure how they rebuild it so quickly in the test games I've done but if they don't lose either of them to Angmar before you get there you are set with some of the best defenses and income for any 2 cities next to eachother in the game affording you your standing army and conscripts since first problem after settling is usually not enough income to support your army even if you lost half of it during said sieges. (little bonus is getting rid of your ships and having so many turns of even more kings purse to sit and bank on) Side note doing this as the main plan I had a struggle with Bree for the first time in any of my campaigns as I pushed my defenses to fornost to keep off the dunedain I had Bree focus their entire military on Annuminas to the point Dunland took Bree itself.
I recently went to isengard for my starting location. I killed saruman and allied with Rohan. My only worry is that Rohan will betray me eventually cause I heard from other people. They will declare war on you if you hold Isengard. I have great relations with them so I hope not.
Eventually a faction might declare war if there are no other factions bordering them. In my Gondor campaign I had Dol Amroth attack me for instance. Isengard is an interesting starting position though if you can stomach having no militia.
@@go2hell4eva That's interesting and good to hear. Yeah, I just love the look of Isengard so I gotta go there. I kinda wanna try erebor one time, but I feel like it would be pretty challenging. Anyways great videos man!
Isengard's probably the best option, despite not having sea access. You can readily conscript Dunlendings from the city, and you are afforded access to both Adunaim Armsmen due to the special building there *and* even your mainstream elite Abrazanim units due to Isengard having a barracks from game start.
My Tharbad start campaign just got rough when the HE objected to me picking on Bree. I owned all of the Enedwaith and Dunlend territory by then but the High Elves started started nipping away at me in the West and East and it got sloggy. This Vid has got me thinking that a Mithlond start might make the mid game a lot easier. Who's gonna white knight for Bree if HE is reduced to just Imladris at a time when Moria actually poses a threat to them? Then Dunland and Enedwaith are as easy to play off of each other as ever and the ND have hopefully built their cities up for you when you get around to taking them.
I once tried to occupy as much neutral land as possible. One army captured the surrounding regions of Umbar and then besieged the city itself, another army took several settlements in Harondor (between Gondor/Dol Amroth and Harad) and the third army sailed off to Tharagrondost (western Gondor) and later Enedwaith. It was a disaster, since the outlying settlements kept rebelling due to "distance to capital" and mercenaries were pretty much unavailable.
Is this with the starting army? That would be a thin spread for sure and quite the challenge. I like the idea of colonising the coast and striking at the points in between.
@@go2hell4eva Yes, plus some cheap Azrazair troops, which I recruited whenever possible. But due to the thin spread I did not capture any huge settlement for a long while and didn't have a trading network either, eventually resulting in bankruptcy. On my next attempt I shall take Umbar straightaway, using your trick to lure out the defenders into the open field. Thanks for the idea.
I’d quite like to play one where I throw the balance of the game off completely - say by taking Thorin’s Halls early and creating an alliance with nobody. Would Thorin’s Halls be problematic?
Thorin’s Halls could work. It makes good money with its mines and if you oust the dwarves completely then you have a strong position along that coastline. Fahamgathol and Garth Helegof are castles with ports so you get a full array of units from there.
@@go2hell4eva cool!! Thanks for the reply, I’ll try that then - I’d imagine Dol Amroth and Harad will have a different mechanic to usual without AA down there, and for once Ered Luin won’t steamroll Angmar after ~80 turns
Sorry for the late reply but how do you mean long moves? You can cheat move or reset an army or agent’s movement range by entering the console as ‘character_reset “character name”’.
@@go2hell4eva yeah, probably anuminas should have port and river from lake should go all the way to sea. Also it would make possible corsair invasions on anuminas if you play as dunedain :)
Great video! Sailing out t Osgiliat and then walking until you can take Lest is also fun, you can decide i you want to go after Dorwinion or Rhun first and you can ally with the other one. Western Gondor in general and specificly Tharagrondost in also an interesting.
By the time you reach Lest it may not be rebel held anymore so you’ll have to make a decision there. Western Gondor is good too. Balorn makes good money nearby and taking Annulond for conscripts is a good strategy.
One tip, just starve out your target location. Why? Money. You're gonna be behind so much in terms of stuff, its best to have as much money as possible available to you. So taking 10 turns to siege down a Minas Tirith is worth it more than taking it straight away.
If you siege them out you can also draw in several of their early game ‘armies’ that they will struggle to replace for the final sally out too. With that you don’t have to deal with the bonus garrison.
I am surprised Fuirost and the far north where not suggested, its a really fun challenge, and by becoming a "renewed" Angmar you can have some crazy lovely time, tho its a really really slow early game, tho it pays off with the Angmarim elites at your side, I enjoy that one a lot
I hadn’t really considered it but that could be interesting. If the dwarves have taken it then it would be perhaps better to take a different settlement of theirs which would be of more use.
@@go2hell4eva I actually just started as the kings men campaign taking fuirost in the north. I just started my war with angmar. 32 turns in. Its a great early challenge with how little troops im able to recruit. Super fun. Makes me feel like I'm the vanguard holding until reinforcements (when my culture is dominant enough).
