Battle for Middle Earth - Evil Campaign - Old Brown Lands




Battle for Middle Earth - Evil Campaign Map - Old Brown Lands (+10% Resources)
This is a hint/walkthrough post for Battle for Middle Earth. You can find an index of all our Battle for Middle Earth posts here.

The Old Brown Lands is a tough and long map for a mere +10% Resources, but you need to capture it in order to conquer Mirkwood (+20% Resources, +3 Power).
If you look at the Skirmish maps, the Old Brown Lands has a lot of castle-sized locations, although the enemy will start with the resources to support only 3 initially. If you move quickly, you can capture one or two without a fight or before they are built up significantly.

This map is annoying because it can be hard to box them in and predict where they will come from because they can establish bases and pump out troops from many directions.
I found the easiest way to do this map is to have a small defensive force at the starting location to secure my resource buildings (I focussed on keeping all my squads alive so that I could build veterancy, and not have to keep making fresh troops). I used Lurtz/Isengard and my infantry were all slow-moving Pikemen-Archers, so I kept them together as my invasion force and used my Wargs as "firefighters" -- as cavalry, I could rush them against appearances of Gondor trebuchets and take them out.
Whenever I captured a camp, I built it up with only defensive buildings, and didn't panic if they were attacked since there wasn't anything really vital. The camp was just to distract the enemy and delay their advance on my resource-producing initial camp site. I then rushed over some Wargs to either trample infantry or destroy trebuchets, then retreated them inside the camp so that new enemy sorties would hit buildings first instead of units -- Gondor will have fire-trebuchets, which hit hard even against veteran units.

When exploring the map, don't leave wide spaces that might conceal an encampment. Even a 3-build-point encampment can make a lot of trouble for you. In this way, you can be sure of where the enemy IS NOT, and thereby limit the directions from which they can attack you. If you get flanked, it will be very annoying to keep chasing them all over the map.

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