This Game CHEATS!!!

[danconnors]

Going in to conquer an unowned county, I sent a small force of about 180 swordsmen and archers to get rid of the county's archers. They suceeded, killing off all 150 of them. Immediately after, in the same season, I sent in my big army to finish them off.

Lo, and Behold! They still had 150 archers. The county generated 150 archers in zero time. My main force was beaten. This is just out and out cheating by the game. No county could replace 150 archers immediately.

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

Yep, the game cheats a lot. On higher difficulties it cheats even more. Fourtunately, the AI is about as smart as a bag of hammers so once you know the game fairly well, it's pretty easy to win in general. Even without doing one of the many exploitative things that are around.

[armywannabe]

sounds like you need a better strategy

[Rhythmson]

This is not the game cheating you lol.

People forget a key element of many games especially in the rts or tbs genres, which is the representation of the game's variables, events and triggers. In other words how the key elements of the game react with the player, in this case how the passing of game time is presented or interacts with the player as a key game mechanic.

Many things can happen in a single season, if you attack and killed the fort garrison, and then brought another army in to do the same, regardless of the size of the force, the game is still showing you that in that same single season the time it took you to deploy your 2nd force to attack the fort the 2nd time that county had already formed another garrison force of 150 archers which happens to be the exact same amount as the first. Funny as this may seem this might amount to the game simply mocking you by swiftly deploying the same exact force back into garrison to defend your 2nd attack lol.

I have often found with these kinds of older but extremely well thought out and designed games that the devs or coders often built in funny mocking or joking aspects like this to make the game more interesting haha.

[danconnors]

This was not a fort garrison. This was an army of The People, fought in the open field. I attacked the town, bringing the People's army out. Aim of my smaller army was to take out their archers and a lot of their peasants, which they did. My large army attacked the same town in the same turn, and found they had cranked out 150 new archers immediately, to replace their losses.

Even when my empire has swelled to four or five counties, there's no way I'm going to replace 150 archers in one season.

[Rhythmson]

What do you mean? Of coarse you can even with one county...
if you already have bows or other weapons ready, we both know you can keep creating armies in a single turn as much as you want and each new army starts with 15 movement points.

[danconnors]

Minimum army size is 50 men. I suppose they could have kept 150 bows in reserve, but that's not the way The People usually fight. I don't take over a new county and find they have a hundred bows to add to my arsenal.

[Rhythmson]

Yes you're right. It's gauranteed the 150 bows would not be there if you conquered The People with your first army. It's always like that to make the game harder i think.

[Kowloon Goreksson]

The game is easy enough, especially with how stupid the AI is at managing and in battle.

The enemy needs all the handicap they can get. Just make massive knights with pikemen for sieging, and you can win easily. Just turtle in 1 county forever until you get 1500 army of knights+pikes.

[Rhythmson]

that would work but would take awhile, there are faster ways lol.

[Nero]

slaughter a village first.

[JD]

Neutral counties don't follow the same rules that the other nobles do. Neutral counties don't have a regular inventory of weapons or soldiers. Neutral counties can always produce an army which is a certain percentage of the county's population, and that army will always have 30-40% of their troops as armed (archers, pikes, and a few maces on large armies). Therefore it doesn't do any good to attack a neutral county in waves - wait until you have a good army of at least 500 before attacking a relatively strong neutral county. You can tell how powerful a county is by the message you get when your army crosses the county line - if the messenger's tone is aggressive you are in for a fight.

[JD]

Originally posted by Nero:

slaughter a village first.

I'd only consider this if you're weak such that you might lose or lose a big chunk of your army, and even then it would probably be easier in the long run to just build a bigger army. I'd rather not kill off a big chunk of the population before taking over a neutral county, as it will take longer to repopulate and develop the new county - it's always important to get a castle built quickly in a new county so it's protected.

[Nero]

I think the nobles do not cheat this way. When they run out of weapons they'll only have pawns defending their county. Neutral ones are different or so I remember it.

[Rhythmson]

Originally posted by author:

Neutral counties don't follow the same rules that the other nobles do. Neutral counties don't have a regular inventory of weapons or soldiers. Neutral counties can always produce an army which is a certain percentage of the county's population, and that army will always have 30-40% of their troops as armed (archers, pikes, and a few maces on large armies). Therefore it doesn't do any good to attack a neutral county in waves - wait until you have a good army of at least 500 before attacking a relatively strong neutral county. You can tell how powerful a county is by the message you get when your army crosses the county line - if the messenger's tone is aggressive you are in for a fight.

yes this is a good point and something to keep in mind.

although if you play customs on impossible like i do, neutral counties on some maps take to castle making pretty early on, and if you have the county status on strong as well they can get pretty damn tough surprising early. this is where i have found hitting them in waves as early as possible can actually be a working strategy and depending on your map positioning sometimes the only early game strategy to survive.

[Kowloon Goreksson]

Originally posted by z i g - z a g:

that would work but would take awhile, there are faster ways lol.

Eh, if you speed run, it's quite easy and boring honestly. The more efficient you try being in LotRII, it gets even easier than it already is. There are probably even faster ways, but if I wanted to speed run, I'd make and hire as much macemen as possible and send them straight to the enemy, forgetting about happiness and neutral counties. hell, 200 macemen can beat an enemy royal castle because of how abbysmal the enemy AI is and how stupid the castle flag option is (Oh, I took your flag, so your 500+ archers are now going to have to surrender to that 16-32 macemen who took it, zooming by.

Even on impossible, they feel way too stupid. Just focus building a keep with 100 archers it comes with and 100 crossbow (to kill their siege weapon). Then just make your county inhospitable by selling your food, drafting full macemen, combining your 200 units from your keep, and then charging the enemy, which the enemy will lose unless you just sit in front of their archers on game speed 10.

I remember thinking this game was super amazing, but the more I play other Sierra Games like LoM, I can tell how incomplete this game is (granted LoM can easily be cheesed to "win", it's not as fast and simplistic as LotRII and the mods being even updated to this day keep the game fresh along with the nearly impossible bonus quests).

Was really hoping that the new campaign missions were harder or with better AI. Still no reason to ever use diplomacy too in this game, which is sad. Even the impossible AI feel like a joke :/ The only thing keeping me playing this game even to this day is Keith Zizza's beautiful arrangements, the narrator, and voice acting.