I'm playing with nightly r2145 and I'm having the same problem, but I'm playing with Rohan. In the North good factions protect each other, in the south Rohan does nothing to help Gondor. And Gondor armies never seem to rally and this brings to the 15 troops problem.

I'm fine with Gondor and Rohan not helping each other, but the 15 troop thing is really frustrating, I just don't know what to do.

Maybe in my game it depends on the fact that Gondor has fallen to 'fair' strength. I've just razed Isengard and Rohan is moving to help Gondor so maybe things will change.

once you defeat Isengard as Rohan, Rohan will move to help Gondor and they will do so to great effect, but how to defeat the evil factions as gondor I dont know as I have never played as Gondor

Defending Gondor is supposed to be hopeless and almost impossible until Rohan moves in. The problem is, Rohan will never sort its ♥♥♥♥ and move in without the player's help, so playing directly as Gondor is kind of a lost cause. There are plans for a quest that will instruct Gondor players to go help Rohan so they can help Gondor in turn, but in the meantime Gondor will suffer a lot.

Hmm, if this is true it's a bit disappointing. I understand wanting to stick true to lore, but I don't remember an army of Dwarves showing up at Minis Tirith either :P

The game is designed in a way that it is very hard to defeat Mordor IF you play as Gondor WITHOUT the help of Rohan and the Northern Factions.

Same goes with Rohan (needs Gondor & Northern Faction Support).

I'm working on a way for the player to learn this through a quest (i.e Gondor / Rohan cannot win this alone).

I know what you mean regarding 'an army of Dwarves showing up at Minis Tirith', but in this mod, we 'allow' it to happen for gameplay sake.

The devs had to balance lore and gameplay, and allowing the player to play as / ally themselves with the Northern Factions are one of the few gameplay compromises.

I'm not complaining about Northern Factions showing up at Minis Tirith, I'm just saying it would have been nice if Gondor could have defeated Mordor on their own, even if it's not consistent with lore.

Also, this is a pretty minor complaint, I've really enjoyed the game so far. I was just hoping to be able to ride to the rescue of the Rohan with Gondor, instead of the other way around.

Yea, I know what you mean :) Mordor and its allies are just way too powerful for Gondor alone.

From all my games, Mordor (and its allies) are usually the last to fall. The North wins first, then goes down to help Rohan, then Gondor.

When I played as Rohan, I helped my faction a bit, then went up to help the North, who then went down to Rohan, then Gondor.

If there are other people out there who was able to do otherwise, please let us know so we learn about your experience!

In the game that I ultimately didn't finish, starting with Rohan, I took Morannon and Mordor was defeated. In the North instead, no factions had been defeated without my help.. So after you defeat Isengard with Rohan, assuming you helped Gondor a bit as well, occasionally fighting Mordor allies, Mordor is easy. My main complaint in this sense is that Mordor is much easier than Isengard, often easier than Umbar or Harad. I find Nazguls are against you only if you fight Mordor War Parties, but I never saw them during sieges or against hosts. I'd rather have Mordor a bit harder to fight against.

Gondor is a long game. You shouldn't be sieging anything until you're at least level 30 and understand how the long term strategies for factions work imo. It's the one thing I would change about the mod - gondor is probably one of the hardest starts there is and the implication that it's the easiest isn't really cogent.

I do agree that Mordor can be much easier to defeat than Isengard simply because the trigger events for Isengard are more difficult than just beating the ♥♥♥♥ out of Mordor, but if Mordor had similar events it would definitely demonstrate the power balance in its favor. Also it should be taken into account that the Corsairs and Harad are really only ranged against Gondor, meaning Gondor is fighting at minimum a 1 vs 3; Rohan sometimes clashes with Khand but most of Khand is against Gondor as well, which means you're fighting four enemies, with Mordor at the forefront. In contrast, Isengard only has Dunland as a buffer.

I am not sure what triggers nazguls other than fighting Mordor or Dol Guldur parties but they definitely aid in large battles regardless if it's a war party.

Play a long term defensive game as Gondor. Keep it stable and go help northern allies where you can. Either you will get an advantage in the south you can seize or you will help defeat a northern theatre that can eventually move down to help you. It's probably the longest game in TLD.

In reality your starting faction is mostly a matter of convenience and doesn't necessarily define how you'll play. I start with Rohan because Edoras is in the best position to keep the reserve troops, you can move from south to north easily, and also help Gondor from time to time. If I started as Gondor, I'd play in the same way, helping Rohan first and defeating Isengard as soon as possible.

Winning in Gondor is certainly difficult, but not by any means impossible. I've done it I believe three times now, more than any other faction. I typically stay only in Gondor, but I occasionally go to Rohan if they are under siege or if I can't see any opening in Gondor. I never go north of Rohan until Isengard is defeated. Here are some tips for winning the campaign as Gondor:

1. Get really good at horse archery. The best way to keep your high level troops from dying is to charge out, kill as many as you can with horse archery, and then run back to refill your arrows when you run out. If you are good and they don't have too many shields, you can kill the majority of them with relative ease. I typically target the archers first, so that I can choose my shots carefully against the infantry.

2. Use every tactic you can on the campaign map to give your faction an edge. You may have noticed that in the massive battles of hundreds of troops on each side that occasionally it breaks apart into smaller fights, most of which dissolve and end up in the main battle again. One thing I do is stand right next to the big fight, and wait for it to break apart. The moment it does, I leap into the small fight and resolve it entirely. Without a massive numbers disadvantage, you should be able to win with acceptable casualties. Rinse and repeat. I've used this strategy to win when multiple factions engage at once. It often starts out being maybe 700-800 assorted enemies against maybe 400 Gondorians, and you can usually win in the end, even though it's very tedious.

3. I strongly recommend having your army be comprised of mostly cavalry. I personally am a big fan of Swan Knights. I find that they usually give me the most kills with the least deaths, and they happen to do it faster than mostly infantry or mostly archers.

4. Take prisoners to make money in the early game. You desperately need strong gear for yourself to make a difference in the war at large, and you need it ASAP. Later you can do this to pay your troops' outrageous salaries. I typically end up with around 50 Veteran Knights/Swan Knights, plus a dozen or so each of Swordsmen of the Tower Guard and Archers of the Tower Guard. That gets expensive fast.

5. You will lose the first series of battles. 100% chance. You simply don't have the time to get a strong army and good gear before it happens. You can use this to your advantage, however. After winning a few battles, it's not uncommon to see an enemy army wandering the map with 50ish prisoners. If you fight it yourself, all those prisoners you don't recruit dissappear into the ether, but if you escort a friendly commander to the fight, he will end up with the soldiers. This is a good way to boost your allies so they have much stronger than normal armies. Maybe then you can stop babysitting them for a few minutes... Be warned that this works in reverse. If you lead one host to victory time and time again vs one of the human evil factions, it will amass a huge army of prisoners. I've seen over 100 before. They all get released when your ally loses. Not fun, especially because by the time they've amassed all those prisoners, they are likely extremely weak themselves.

6. Drop EVERYTHING if Imrahil decides to stop being lazy and siege one of the main camps of Umbar/Harad. Do everything you can to make that happen. In my last game he did it suprisingly early, because I had leveled up really fast, and it helped so much to only be 3v1 instead of 4v1.

There's probably more, but that's what I have off the top of my head. Good luck!

For gondor I am finding that while they get bullied rather hard by the evil factions, only cair andros seems to get lost, even then it is seldom. They can weather sieges rather well, especially even without your aid, but your main attackers still run around with barely any fighters.

Rohan I have found to just plan suck at siege defense, instead of helping gondor out more, I find that I got to keep running back up to help with the sieges of their cities, and it is especially a race against time to recruit ulfas from west emmat if you want to be running around with the four companions at least with gondor. (If he was in aldburg or eastford would be a lot more able to get ahold of him without running the clock)

If you go as gondor, you probably will be spending most of your time trying to ensure that rohan does not get its ass handed to it too fast, while you try to grind down isengard. Rohan is key to your winning as gondor later