I was just able to beat TLD in under a hundred days as a Dunadain ranger, after discovering this on my Isengrad playthrough (which took ~300 cause I didn't find it out until way late).

Getting Strength 18/Ironflesh 6/Power Strike 6, and fighting a few battles without a shirt on, will get you Berserker very quickly. That gives +2 Strength, and more importantly, the ability to heal in battle.

After that, you can tackle impossible armies, like 1 vs a Mordor War Party, and just spam retreating to heal up.

That wouldn't be TOO bad, EXCEPT...Each time you retreat and re-initiate a battle, the game treats it as a second battle for ranking purposes. Thus, I was able to get ~900 rank with Gondor for one battle with a Mordor War Party.

This can be done with every faction. I managed to get rank 10+ with all of them except Erebor and Dale, which were at ~7. I was able to get enough influence for every item, and it also let me accrue a huge army. You can get a lot of it done before the war starts at level 8.

In my first playthrough, I used all of the influence to get armies to follow me around. But that's actually sub-optimal. Because once you pay for the authority to besiege a settlement yourself, you can no longer advise the marshal. That might be a bug.

What I ended up doing instead, was helping Rohan raze Isengrad's initial three outposts, then went to Gondor. I coached Imrahil into taking the Corsair Camp -> Khand Camp -> Haradrim Camp in succession. I was also able to use Berserker to solo-defend West Osgiliath. Then it let me advise him to take Morannon.

By day ~60ish, Morannon only has ~650 troops. It was definitely takeable. In my Isengrad game, it had ~1500 troops and was a HUGE pain to take. The game won't let the player besiege Morannon until every other Mordor castle is taken. But it lets the player advise the marshal to do it. There's a lot of clipping issues with the Morannon siege/defenders getting stuck in unreachable places, resulting in siege fail.

The key to ensuring the marshal's success is heavily recruiting with a decent trainer ranking (high enough to let you turn raw recruits into at least second tier troops in one night), and then constantly reinforcing them every chance you get. I managed to get Imrahil a ~465 size army, by dumping a 130 troops on him the moment it let me offer to reinforce. I did the same for every lord I could find.

You can do the same with West Osgiliath to ensure it repels the constant invasions. But I never had to.

Razing Morannon instantly destroys the Mordor faction.

Random Tips:

- If you're evil, you can get a quest to capture an enemy commander, and then...eat them. It basically lets you execute opposing lords. I did this to Gothmog, and the Mordor armies never recovered.

- If you're good, your best bet is to try and capture either Gothmog or Mog. You won't be able to eat them, but you can hold onto them for ~20 days, in which time Isengrad or Mordor's armies will be at a HUGE disadvantage.

There's a lot of free stat points in the mod. Ent Water gives +1 Str/+1 Charisma. Blessed (a random chance from praying at the grave of an ally) can give +1 Str/+1 Charisma/+20 Weapon proficiency. You can pick up +Strength, +Power Strike and +Agility items with influence.

- The Horn of Gondor, Silmarillion and Light of Galadriel together will give +1 Persuasion, +2 Charisma and +3 Leadership. I ended the game with Charisma 9, Leadership 6, and an army of ~170. I could have pushed it much higher, but the food intake gets crazy after ~150.

- Persuasion does nothing in this mod. Or else it's so obscure as to essentially be an easter egg.

- The Dunadan got his Weapon Master to 10, Athletics to 10 and Riding to 10 by level 30 (there are items which give +1 to each of these). Which combined with the Noldorin Bow and Westernesse Sword (Speed 130 + Power Strike) and ~400+ weapon proficiency. Allows you to basically one hit low tier archers by charging them with the Mearth Stallion, and to obliterate trolls by knocking them down, and then hacking them apart. Weapon proficiency and XP is acquired very quickly when you're routinely soloing large Mordor War parties.

- You can avoid the Nazgul by retreating until there's none flying in the air. I heard that Glorfindel is supposed to scare them off, but that never worked for me.

- You NEVER have to worry about the North. Gundabad/Rhun vs Erebor/Dale, and Imladris/Lothlorien/Mirkwood/Beorning vs Moria/Dol Guldur will be in a state of near permanent stalemate. Though, they'll often manage to raze the Troll Cave/Dol Guldur north outpost. All that matters is Rohan and Gondor. And in my playthrough, I actually destroyed Mordor before Isengrad.

- If you're evil...Gundabad North Clan Riders are level 20 wargs, and they're your best friends. An army of those can wipe out any army of elves or dwarves, pretty effortlessly. Wargs do crazy damage. They destroy elven archers.

- The best evil infantry is the humble Dunnish Wolf Guard. They come with wolf allies 40% of the time. Wolves are blazing fast. As fast as the Mearh stallion. They hit HARD. With ~100+ wolf guard, you can often have 50+ wolves on the field. Those wolves will often either win the battle, or annihilate the enemy's archer screen+cavalry, before your wolf guard ever catch up.

- If you're Good, you're better off just constantly recruiting/training/reinforcing. Doing this consistently and well behooves not getting attached to your own armies. But nothing really beats Rohan youths -> squires -> riders -> veteran riders. They're easy to train up, easy to find and recruit. Arnorian Horsemen or Dol Amroth Swan Knights are better, but Dol Amroth is nearly two days travel out of the way, and Rivendell is often far away from the fighting. You can grab a 100+ Rohan youths in half a day, and have em be squires by that night, riders by the next. Cavalry is devastating in TLD.

- The marshals for a faction will almost instantly regenerate, after a day or so, with a huge army. Constantly fighting them isn't worth your time. What mostly affects faction strength are war parties/caravans.

- Don't get attached to having a huge army follow you around in the early to mid game. It's often better to be able to zip around the map, racking up rank+influence, from demolishing war parties/scouts/caravans, jumping into strategic battles to help out. I only recruited big armies when when helping marshals with sieges and reinforcing them. Doing the Ring Hunters and Sorceror quest is nice, too.

- Abusing rank+influence grinding was the only thing that allowed me to complete my Isengrad game. Isengrad siege AI is horrible vs Mordor. They would only attack Mordor's advance camp, but Mordor's advance camp would keep respawning. I had to grind 100+ influence several times in a row, and then personally sherpa Isengrad's legions to castles beyond the advance camp. Because again, I no longer had the ability to give suggestions to the marshal, after paying the 100k Resources/35 influence to siege castles by myself. By this point in the game, the garrisons were huge, and losing a single siege costs you 250+ rank points and the ability to initiate sieges. You still can't give suggestions. you just have to grind and ask for permission again.

- Compared to that, my good guy playthrough was beyond easy. I never made the mistake of trying to lead sieges, and their siege AI works well.

Suggestions for mod team:

1) Change the Berserker trait to not give health
2) Do not allow infinite arrows
3) Give MORE rank, like at least five times what is given now, but not if someone retreats.
4) Tone down wilderness encounters. The one with the wolves always crashes the game.

I thought getting rank+influence was a horrific, soul-killing slog at first, from trying to do it solely via missions. But if wiping out a Mordor War party at 10 to 1 odds, gave say, 40 Rank, instead of 8, there'd be less incentive to abuse the system.